President Joe Biden governs like his word matters on the world stage. So, too, have his predecessors. Increasingly, however, the world ignores the United States. Some academics and diplomats talk about the rise of near-peer competitors in a multipolar world.
Adversaries such as China, Russia, and Turkey and even allies such as France may relish cutting Washington down to size, but the main reason for the decline of America’s diplomatic cachet is self-inflicted: America’s word no longer means much. American policymakers govern as if history restarts every four years, the world believes American spin, or Washington deserves a blank slate.
International actors are not so gullible, though. They remember lies. In 1994, for example, the U.S., Russia, the United Kingdom, and Ukraine signed the Budapest Memorandum that had Ukraine forfeit its legacy Soviet nuclear weapons in exchange…
