Daily Despot Update

Insights, analysis and must reads from CNN's Fareed Zakaria and the Global Public Square team, compiled by Global Briefing editor Chris Good

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January 9, 2026

Fareed: Trump’s Naked Power Grab Undoes America’s Greatest Strength

Compared to other large and powerful countries, the US has enjoyed a historic advantage that has allowed it to lead and succeed on the world stage, Fareed writes in his latest Washington Post column. With his operation in Venezuela, President Donald Trump is undoing that critical edge.
 
“Throughout history, the most powerful countries have often had a hard time finding friends,” Fareed points out. “As a nation grows dominant, others tend to balance against it. Look at Russia’s neighbors in Eastern Europe; countries rushed into NATO the moment the world allowed it. Look at China’s neighborhood in Asia, where Japan, India, Australia, Vietnam and others have steadily tightened their security ties with the United States and each other in response to Beijing’s rise.”
 
America’s case has been different. By and large, countries in Latin America and Europe have not balanced against the US in the same way. Rather, they have sought its alliance. The reason: historically, the US hasn’t acted like other regional hegemons. Instead, it has sought rules and order, not its own naked self-interest. Even in a notorious low moment for US multilateralism—the Iraq War—the US painstakingly attempted to build a case against Saddam Hussein’s regime, assembled a “coalition of the willing” before invading and sought (but failed) to win approval at the UN. 
 
“That effort to translate power into legitimacy is the hidden pillar of American primacy,” Fareed writes. “When the U.S. acts like a rulemaker rather than a shakedown artist, it buys something more valuable than fear: consent. Consent is what turns hegemony into leadership—and leadership into a system that other states find preferable to the alternatives. It is also what keeps the balancing impulse from igniting. … This strategic capital built over decades is now being squandered. And in the long run, an America that behaves like an utterly self-interested predator on the world stage will not grow stronger; it will grow lonelier. Allies will hedge. Partners will search for options. Neutrals will inch away. And the balancing that history predicted all along may finally arrive—not because America became weak, but because it forgot the real source of its strength.”