“After 9/11, America had the world’s support. Trump changed that.”, USA Today
From Argentina to the former Yugoslavia, even in Moscow, the world stood with the U.S. after 9/11. Trump and time have changed that.
Susan Page, September 11, 2025
- Nearly every country in the world declared they stood with the United States in the wake of the 9/11 attacks in 2001.
- Since then, the alliances forged in tragedy have been fractured.
- Trump’s transaction diplomacy and belief in stiff tariffs have accelerated some global trends already underway.
It is Donald Trump’s world now, and it is a lonelier place.
Twenty-four years ago, the first foreign leader to reach out to President George W. Bush in the wake of the catastrophic 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington was the new Russian president, Vladimir Putin, offering condolences and help. The NATO alliance invoked Article 5 for the first time, calling it an attack on them all.
Nearly every country in the world, from Argentina to the former Yugoslavia, declared that it stood with America.
Since then, the alliances forged in tragedy have been fractured by the long war in Iraq and upheaval in the Middle East, the revival of “America First” populism and the steepest U.S. tariffs in nearly a century, a transactional president and the passage of time.
That’s not a surprise. Over a quarter-century, national interests shift and foreign alliances change.
But the anniversary of the deadliest terror attack in modern history is a reminder of how much a global campaign against terrorism has been succeeded by the rise of China as a competing world power and the decline of faith in U.S. steadfastness among nations that had been its closest partners.More: The world won’t wait: Trump’s foreign policy takeover begins, from Syria to Ukraine
Consider Canada, a friend since the end of the War of 1812, now locked in a trade war with its southern neighbor. Things have gotten so bitter that bars in Canada have even removed Kentucky bourbon from their shelves.
‘Looks like we’ve lost India and Russia’
In another sign of how times are changing, a week before the 9/11 anniversary, Chinese leader Xi Jinping greeted not only Putin but also Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi − who used to tout his closeness with Trump − to a chummy meeting in Shanghai. It was Modi’s first visit to China in seven years.
In a sarcastic Truth Social post beforehand, Trump asked Xi to “give my warmest regards to Vladimir Putin, and Kim Jong Un, as you conspire against the United States of America.”
Afterward, he posted again. “Looks like we’ve lost India and Russia to deepest, darkest, China,” he wrote. “May they have a long and prosperous future together!”
The president’s tone was mocking, but he was acknowledging the gravitational pull to China by India, the world’s largest democracy and a nation that Washington has long tried to cultivate. The 50% tariff the United States has slapped on India has strained those efforts, though Trump on Sept. 9 announced upcoming trade talks with “my very good friend, Prime Minister Modi.”
Less surprisingly, the leaders of North Korea and Iran also attended the Shanghai Cooperation Organization meeting. So did those from U.S. allies Egypt, Turkey and Vietnam.
Trump isn’t responsible for such long-term trends as Beijing’s determination to rival the United States in global influence, or Putin’s evolution to an entrenched authoritarian with expansionist ambitions.
But he has accelerated those trends and reversed others with his brand of transactional diplomacy, which eschews pro-democracy declarations in favor of the cold, hard cash of tariffs. With two nonconsecutive terms, his impact has spanned the longest period of time of any president since Franklin D. Roosevelt.
During the first eight months of his second term, Trump has driven a rethinking of the NATO alliance. European nations have moved to increase their defense spending and take more leadership to back Ukraine in its defense against Russia on the assumption that the United States’ role is no longer a reliable one.
Trump has alienated Brazil by defending its former president, charged with trying to overturn a legitimate election, and South Africa, accusing it of mistreating its White citizens. He has ordered military strikes against nuclear facilities in Iran and a boat of alleged drug-runners that originated from Venezuela.
Putin, now 25 years in power, has frustrated Trump by intensifying the war in Ukraine, not negotiating the peace Trump promised during last year’s campaign. In August, the two leaders’ summit in Alaska was cut short, and the bilateral-then-trilateral talks Trump heralded then are nowhere on the horizon.
Giuliani is disbarred, and the Taliban is back
This year, on the morning of Sept. 11, the president is slated to participate in an observance of the somber anniversary at the Pentagon, one of the sites where hijacked commercial airplanes crashed. A total of nearly 3,000 people were killed at the Pentagon, in rural Pennsylvania, and, most of all, at the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York.
In a USA TODAY/Suffolk University Poll on the 20th anniversary, most Americans said the attacks had permanently changed life in the United States.
Trump will travel to New York for an evening game by the Yankees that will include a commemoration.
Some things have changed in the past 24 years; some have not.
The Yankees are now competing for the American League pennant, just as they were in 2001. It was at Yankee Stadium that Bush threw out the first pitch in a World Series game just weeks after 9/11, a declaration of normalcy.
Rudy Giuliani, then exalted as “America’s mayor” for his leadership after 9/11, has now been barred from practicing law in New York and Washington after spreading misinformation to try to overturn Trump’s defeat in the 2020 election. In recent days, after Giuliani was injured in a car crash in New Hampshire, Trump announced he planned to award him the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
The Taliban is back in control of Afghanistan, even after America’s longest war.
And terrorism? It’s still a global threat.