Watching USA from Melbourne, Australia it’s hard to escape the sense that something foundational has broken. Each day brings another shock. For much of the democratic world, trust is fraying fast, and the loss feels personal, because the United States once mattered enormously to us.
I’m a whole hemisphere away, but it is impossible not to see what is unfolding in the United States.
It is shocking and depressing. Each morning brings a new travesty. From outside the USA, it feels like something foundational has broken, and much of the democratic world no longer knows how to relate to America with trust.
We feel for everyday Americans who are suffering. At the same time, we recognise a hard constraint: only Americans can fix America.
I’m responding publicly to a question posed by Dave Winer.
Dave is not just another commentator. He is a software and internet pioneer and a deep thinker who has been blogging continuously since October 1994. Few people have observed the evolution of the web, media, power, and democracy with such sustained attention over such a long period.
When someone with that perspective poses a question like this, it deserves to be taken seriously.
The question
“Wouldn’t it be something if the leaders of European democracies said if democracy and self-government around the world is to have any hope the American government has to stop attacking their own citizens. We see where this is headed, they might say, and there will be no coming back from this for the US, if they turn the country, which still is the leader of the free world, into a police state. What if the European leaders said out loud and in public the things the Republicans and most of the Democrats refuse to say.” Dave Winer 23 Jan 2026.
It is a confronting thought. And it leads naturally to a second question.
Why hasn’t this happened already?
Why foreign leaders stay silent
Most democratic nations act with restraint, grace, and diplomacy. They are reluctant to lecture other countries on how they should behave, particularly when those countries are notionally democratic.
That restraint is not indifference. It reflects a recognition that sovereignty still matters, and that external pressure can easily backfire.
As recently as 8 September 2023, the Presidential Foundations and Centers of thirteen former US Presidents issued a joint statement warning Americans that their global credibility depends on order at home:
“Americans have a strong interest in supporting democratic movements and respect for human rights around the world because free societies elsewhere contribute to our own security and prosperity here at home. But that interest is undermined when others see our own house in disarray.”
That warning came from inside the United States, aimed squarely at Americans.
Likewise, at Davos in 2026, California Governor Gavin Newsom spoke bluntly about masked federal forces, the erosion of due process, and what he described as a “private army”. Former Presidents and sitting Governors are making these arguments to Americans, yet they are not gaining traction.
If those voices are not breaking through domestically, why would foreign leaders have any more success?
The view from outside the United States
From abroad, the consequences are already visible.
Allies are being repelled. Nations are quietly recalibrating to protect themselves from the United States and to reduce their dependence on it. Speeches at Davos by Canadian and French leaders made that shift unmistakable.
The US is no longer widely seen as the leader of the free world. Increasingly, it is perceived as a powerful, heavily armed bully, willing to exert its will through threats rather than leadership. Rhetoric directed at Canada, Greenland, and Colombia has reinforced that perception.
This is not leadership. It is not behaviour others wish to emulate, unless they too are authoritarian.
Instability and its long shadow
The return of Trump in 2024, after the debacle of 2017–2021 and the events of January 6, revealed a deeper instability.
From the outside, US politics now appears fickle and subject to violent churn. Even when Trump eventually exits the stage, America’s credibility will take decades to rebuild, much as Germany’s did in the decades following the Second World War.
Trust, once lost, is slow to recover.
Why this feels like a loss
This is not written with malice. It is written with regret.
The United States and its people have often been a positive force in the world. Australia has not forgotten that the US Navy’s actions in the Battle of the Coral Sea significantly reduced the risk of our own invasion during the Second World War. We remain grateful.
We have watched Americans achieve extraordinary things, from landing a man on the moon to building much of the modern technological world: the transistor, the internet, modern software, and now AI.
America mattered. It still could.
Collaboration versus withdrawal
Some of humanity’s greatest advances have not come from nationalism, but from collaboration.
The World Wide Web, devised by British researcher Tim Berners-Lee in a collaborative lab in Switzerland and built out largely with open-source software, is a striking example of what cooperation can achieve. The rapid development of COVID vaccines was another, enabled by shared data, multinational science and global logistics.
An “America First” posture that turns its back on the world is not just bad for the world. It is bad for USA.
The harder conclusion
Looking on from afar, many of us are left puzzled.
As Canadian journalist David Cochrane put it:
“America is not the way it is because Trump is president. Trump is president because America is the way it is.”
Trump the individual is aberrant and repulsive, but he is also symptomatic. Should he fall, others will step into the vacuum carrying the same authoritarian ideas.
And that brings us back to the uncomfortable truth.
Only Americans can fix America. External pressure will be dismissed as interference or opinion. At best, the rest of us can bear witness. At worst, we prepare for a world in which the United States is no longer a reliable democratic anchor.
It is a sobering thing to write.
It is an even more sobering thing to watch.
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PS As if to underline the unilateralism and turning the back on the world, USA has just formally quit WHO - World Health Organisation. Reuters 22 Jan 2026