INDEPENDENCE FOR ME, BUT NOT FOR THEE / PROJECT SYNDICATE

Independence for Me, But Not for Thee

The Declaration of Independence spoke of all states as being "separate and equal," reflecting the founders' deference to the norms of international law and practice. Yet 250 years later, Donald Trump's administration has inverted this posture, much to the detriment of America's standing in the world.

Aziz Huq

CHICAGO—When the American founders spoke through the Declaration of Independence, they beseeched a “candid world” to count the future United States of America as another “Free and Independent” state under the norms of international law and practice. 

Yet their plangent and angry appeal reflected the weakness of Britain’s North American colonies. 

The Declaration’s 1,320-odd words distilled their desire—indeed, their desperate need—for respect and legitimacy at a moment of confrontation with the world’s maritime hegemon.

The drafters had reason to be worried about their new nation’s integrity: France had seized Corsica in 1768, and Prussia, Austria, and Russia had carved up Poland in 1772. 

John Adams rightly feared that “our proposals and Agents” would be “treated with Contempt.” 

Writing in 1826, one of the young country’s leading jurists, James Kent, insisted that by declaring itself a nation “subject to that system of rules which reason, morality, and custom had established among the civilized nations of Europe, as their public law,” the US had rendered itself worthy of respect.

Yet 250 years later, the US is the global hegemon, and President Donald Trump’s administration has repudiated the Declaration’s deferential posture toward international norms. 

America’s founding document insisted on the “Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce,” as well as “other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do.” 

Beyond levying war, though, the Trump administration has abandoned alliances, choked off commerce with tariffs, and shucked off any perceived obligation to explain by what “right” it takes any action in the international sphere.

Where the Declaration spoke of all states as “separate and equal,” the Trump administration has no patience for such normative “niceties.” 

Its war against Iran, its starving of Cuba’s people, its decapitation strike against Venezuela and murders on the high seas, and its territorial threats against Denmark and Canada—to say nothing of the erratic belligerence of Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs—all signal contempt for the principle that underpinned the founders’ basic argument.

This inversion of the Declaration’s posture toward other countries, and toward international law itself, is something new. 

No doubt, earlier administrations played fast and loose with international law when it came to covert operations, assassinations, coups, bombing campaigns, and—in the case of Iraq—outright invasion. 

Yet through the Cold War and thereafter, there at least was some effort to explain, to justify, or to obscure the tension between realpolitik and international norms.

Whether one calls this hypocrisy or necessary insincerity, reference to international law introduced some friction against interstate violence. 

Previous US leaders still made gestures of respect toward other countries. 

By leaving open the possibility of criticism, moral doubt, and even condemnation, their episodic hypocrisy or insincerity reflected an underlying commitment to shared rules.

Of course, it is easy to criticize international law and US leaders’ long-standing fair-weather relationship to it; but it is worth pausing to think about what the world would look like without any rules to check states’ use of force against each other. 

If the Declaration is inverted in favor of a “might-makes-right” posture, history shows that all manner of horrors will ensue. 

That has been obvious at least since Thucydides’ famous Melian dialogue.

It is easy to scorn the inversion of the Declaration’s posture toward other countries as the personal reflex of a brutish and domineering president, one who seems to see international relations through the monochromatic, zero-sum lens of a real-estate developer. 

Yet Trump is not wrong about one thing: The US position in the world has indeed changed radically since 1776. 

If weakness has receded and the fearful have become the feared, why not abandon the Declaration’s deferential posture?

American Twilight

Perhaps because the Declaration’s logic still applies even under dramatically different conditions. 

It should be praised and preserved not because it is venerable and hallowed, but because it is needful. 

While the Iran conflict is the most striking case in point—Trump’s desire for an alliance to support free navigation through the Strait of Hormuz was nothing if not ironic—many other recent US policies also have inadvertently demonstrated the fragility of American power.

Consider Trump’s profligate use of tariffs, which have not only failed to generate any meaningful reshoring of manufacturing, but also catalyzed a scramble to reroute trade around the US. 

The European Union has finally concluded a trade deal with Mercosur (Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay), and China’s exports to the EU, Southeast Asia, and Africa have all spiked. 

The Economist reports that, “Vietnam is sending more farm goods to Europe, India is shipping more textiles to the Gulf, and Brazil is selling more beef to China.” 

As the 19th-century economist David Ricardo showed, such trade will continue to make participating countries wealthier—just not the US.

Nor are US policies attracting diplomatic allies, even among ideological fellow-travelers. 

This spring, for example, far-right parties in both Denmark and Germany conspicuously distanced themselves from Trump, as has Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s government in Italy. 

The number of countries from whom the US commands “decent respect” can now be counted on one hand.

But it is the Iran conflict that most starkly underscores the limits of US power. 

By failing to reckon with the well-known risk to global trade through the Strait of Hormuz, the Trump administration allowed a militarily overmatched foe to choose a battlefield that would reveal the natural limits of US hard power. 

At the same time, America’s inability to protect its Gulf partners’ infrastructure demonstrates how an alliance with the US can generate new vulnerabilities, rather than protection. 

Even apart from the growing missile shortage exacerbated by the war’s hyperbolic start, America’s recent conduct has plainly delineated just how limited US military power actually is.

The Trump administration’s Middle East blunder also further undermines its diplomatic influence. 

After twice surprising Iranians during negotiations by commencing hostilities (in June 2025 and then again in February), Trump has eroded America’s credibility, and in doing so its ability to pursue international agreements in general. 

Similarly, despite publicly standing by pledges to invest trillions of dollars in the US, Gulf states are no doubt privately grumbling about the downside risks of economic entanglement with so fickle a superpower. 

As global supply chains for renewables and battery technology become increasingly important, America’s lack of credibility as an international dealmaker will start to undermine its economic position.

To be sure, some small points could be made in favor of Trump’s inversion of the Declaration’s logic. 

Although the dollar has fallen by roughly one-tenth during Trump’s second presidency, there has been no palpable change in its status as a reserve currency. 

In cases where America’s strength depends on the relative position of its nearest competitor, its power will not change unless a meaningful rival emerges. 

But it remains to be seen whether this pattern will hold in the monetary domain even as US military hegemony erodes.

As the Athenians learned during the Peloponnesian War, hegemonies can be fragile, especially when a superpower does not perceive or understand the limits of its arms, or fails to appreciate the ways in which it, too, is dependent on others. 

The drafters of the Declaration understood that. 

The country’s current leadership, in contrast, doesn’t even begin to know what it doesn’t know.

Aziz Huq is Professor of Law at the University of Chicago Law School and an associate professor in the University’s Sociology department. Before teaching, he represented civil liberties claimants with the Brennan Center for Justice, worked for the International Crisis Group in Afghanistan, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka, and served as a law clerk for Judge Robert D. Sack of the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg of the Supreme Court of the United States. He is the author of many books, including How to Save a Constitutional Democracy (University of Chicago Press, 2018) (with Tom Ginsburg), The Collapse of Constitutional Remedies (Oxford University Press, 2021), and The Rule of Law: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2024).