Remember the Statue of Liberty? Then Take Note of How American Foreign Policy Approaches Moral Bankruptcy

The views expressed below are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy or Harvard Kennedy School. These perspectives have been presented to encourage debate on important public policy challenges.

Everybody knows the Statue of Liberty. Few objects in history have obtained this level of recognition around the world, and no other object so distinctly stands for the United States of America. The statue was a gift from France on the 100^th anniversary of the American Declaration of Independence, reminding Americans not only of shared values, but also that they did not obtain independence on their own. The French sent just the statue, however, leaving it to the Americans to figure out the rest. A fund-raising drive was started to support construction of a pedestal, and New York-based poet Emma Lazarus was asked to write a poem for the occasion. Lazarus interpreted the statue as a symbol of American power. The poem – eventually inscribed on a bronze plaque on the pedestal – reads as follows:

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

 

The “brazen giant of Greek fame” was the Colossus of Rhodes, erected to celebrate the defense of Rhodes against invaders.  The “twin cities” are New York and Brooklyn, which at the time of Lazarus’s writing were independent cities (what we know as New York City being limited to Manhattan). Lazarus interprets the statue in the context of immigration (which was not part of the original gift-giving context) and specifically as welcoming the world’s “huddled masses” to American shores. Beyond the narrow context of immigration, she interprets the U.S. as a new kind of empire, which cares not about “storied pomp,” but about the world’s most vulnerable. Lazarus defines American Empire in terms of service to world. 

Her poetic imagination has never been reality, neither in the narrower field of immigration nor in the broader domain of the U.S. being an empire in the service of the world. But regardless of many negative points about the role of the U.S. in the world over the decades, as far as the human rights movement is concerned, much good has arisen from this country. The United Nations system is sensibly interpreted as global adaptation of the American New Deal from the 1930s, when under Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s leadership American government grew considerably to bring more economic security and fairness to the American people. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was crafted by a commission under leadership of Eleanor Roosevelt.

And while the U.S. has always had its difficulties with the kind of international supervision associated with human rights, the country is home to the world’s most flourishing scene of human rights NGOs. Important parts of American civil society have strived to heed Lazarus’s call to turn the U.S. into an empire in the service of the world.  In the post-Cold War world, the U.S. appeared as the unrivaled global super power, with, as the 2025 Munich Security Report attached to the Munich Security Conference put it, “deep interests in, and responsibility for, maintaining the international order.” That international order has the UN system as its institutional core, international law as its legal framework, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as its moral blueprint for the future of humanity. I will not claim that the only or primary goal of American foreign policy was the maintenance of this order. Of course not. Much as not all the huddled masses were ever welcome to the U.S., American foreign policy has always been conducted in pursuit of national economic, political, or military goals. But enough of American foreign policy has been in the service of the world understood as maintenance of this order, if only because national economic, political, and military goals were regarded as best pursued within it. So by and large this order has actually been maintained.

What we currently see is the shaping up of a foreign policy in the second Trump administration that is no longer guided by insights about the relevance of an international order for American goals. We see the U.S. transform itself into a country that, as the Munich Security Report has it, other parts of the world must see as a risk to be hedged against. What is most troubling from a human rights standpoint is that we see the beginnings of a foreign policy tantamount of complete moral bankruptcy, only weeks into this new administration. This is profoundly alarming and likely to come with consequences that will haunt the U.S. (and the world) for the rest of this century.

Take Gaza. In March 2024, Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, at an event at Harvard, discussed the Gaza area as valuable waterfront property waiting for suitable development. Trump reconnected to this theme in early February 2025, referring to Gaza as “a big real estate site.” He made clear that the two million Palestinians there would be permanently relocated. This plan has no chance at realization other than through large-scale ethnic cleansing: the Palestinians and the Arab states do not support it, and even if some Arab governments could be persuaded, chances are public opinion in their countries is so strongly against anything like this that it would jeopardize their own political future. What must be clear is that there will never be peace in the Middle East unless a way is found to respond to the Palestinians’ need for self-determination much as the existence of the state of Israel responds to the Jewish people’s corresponding need. A disturbing and plainly disgusting video Trump put out without commentary on his Truth Social platform on February 25 envisages Gaza as a giant Trump hotel area, featuring golden Trump statues of various sizes (days after he referred to himself as king), Elon Musk relishing food at the beach, Trump and Netanyahu enjoying drinks while sunbathing, and belly dancers for the entertainment of these distinguished gentlemen. A president who puts out such obscene nonsense will not be capable of bringing peace since he will not be capable of offering anything acceptable to Palestinians. But anything else will just lead to more Hamas-like organizations that commit more atrocities in the style of Oct 7, 2023.

Take Ukraine. Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022. Anybody who wants to get a sense of the brutality of the assault should watch a video shot in the Eastern Ukrainian city of Mariupol in the early stages of the conflict that reveals how Russia’s army conquered territory. Trump called Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky a dictator, declined to call Vladmir Putin a dictator, voted against a UN resolution urging Russia’s withdrawal from Ukraine, and adopted Kremlin talking points on Ukraine to such an extent that Russian state-run media expressed delight at the new American approach. Much as at the Munich Security Conference on February 14, JD Vance gaslighted the rest of the world about freedom and democracy, Trump is gaslighting the world about the nature of the war in Ukraine. 

When Zelensky visited the White House on February 28, first Vance and then Trump berated the leader of this multiply-invaded nation because he did not buy into their narrative that nobody had thought of addressing the Russian aggression with diplomacy. “Moneyed ignorance loudly lectured exhausted experience,” as one commentator noted correctly.

Trump boasted through his election campaign that he would bring peace to Ukraine quickly. Putin is in a strong bargaining position since he has no compunction sacrificing Russian lives in the hundreds of thousands and is already going through a large-scale militarization of Russian society. Any stable peace – whatever agreements around Russian-occupied Ukrainian territories and Ukrainian minerals it will include – requires security guarantees for Ukraine that Trump is so far unwilling to give. Any peace short of that might turn Ukraine into a failed state, with enormous consequences for the rest of Europe (and thus also for American economic interests there). Moreover, Trump would signal that taking territory by force will not get you into the crosshairs of the United States of America.

Take USAID, the United States Agency for International Development. USAID has been one of the world’s largest aid agencies and has accounted for most of America’s foreign assistance, which used to be the highest in the world in absolute numbers. At the time of this writing Trump is moving ahead terminating 90% of the agency’s workforce. “The World’s Richest Men Take on the World’s Poorest Children,” states the title of an opinion piece by Nicholas Kristof in the New York Times from early February. It is worth pondering the “richest-men” part of this headline for a moment. One of them is Elon Musk, head of Trump’s aggressive efforts to shrink government. His net worth as of the time of this writing is about $350,000,000,000. Think of it this way (and I owe this to an HKS student): If you had earned $100,000 every single day since the beginning of the common era, you would reach about 20% of this. That a man of such astronomical wealth is allowed to remove aid from the world’s poorest children without any semblance of serious oversight should make us gasp.

Successful development work is notoriously difficult, and there have been many changes to it over the decades. But it is worth recalling the basic rationale behind development work, and this is the more important point to make here than anything pertaining to Musk. One reason for development assistance is the plainly moral one that human life is precious everywhere. But around the world human beings are born into vastly different circumstances, and they deserve no credit if they are born into lucky circumstance or blame if they are born into misery.  “Some are born to sweet delight, Some are born to endless night,” as William Blake states timelessly. A reasonable response to this situation is to share some of the wealth in support of the human rights of those who have lost out.

Secondly, there is the fact that the global political and economic system is highly intertwined. The contemporary world has emerged from centuries of colonialism and processes of state formation that have unfolded from there. What countries get to do in this world is a function both of a shared history and of the ways in which the overall system works. So those who are poor are poor within a system that at least to some extent creates the circumstances in which they must operate. To that situation, too, a reasonable response is to provide support and ensure human rights protections for those who have least. And thirdly there is enlightened self-interest. Providing development assistance is a wonderful manner of exercising American soft power. It is a way of making friends around the world who in turn create friendlier places for American business, tourism, etc.  It is a way of presenting the U.S. as a better partner than, say, China. USAID support is not only money appropriately spent on the world’s poorest, but also a smart investment in America’s future on a shared planet. The Trump government is not guided by any of this. It unleashes the world’s richest men on its poorest children instead.

To complete our discussion of where this government’s foreign policy is headed, take the termination of the temporarily protected status of both Venezuelans and Haitians, affecting about 350,000 Venezuelans and 500,000 Haitians. Under Nicolas Maduro’s leadership Venezuela has lost more economic strength than Germany lost during the Second World War while German cities were bombed to pieces. Haiti has been overrun by gun violence, and at the time of this writing for deported Haitians to actually reach the capital Port-au-Prince, they would need to be taken there by helicopter because it is too dangerous for airlines to fly there.

Investing in human rights is a way of making the world safer. Undermining them will do the opposite.

Haiti has always had a special relationship with the U.S. that has not worked out well for the Caribbean nation. Haiti arose from a revolution against colonial masters roughly when the U.S. did. But it was a revolution by Black people against White enslavers in a world run by White Empires, which is why, as any book on the history of Haiti will explain, White nations joined forces to make sure Haiti would fail. Among them was the U.S., which was worried an independent Black Republic so close to its shores would inspire revolts by enslaved Blacks in the U.S. Haiti’s history has been shaped by efforts to keep it in pariah status. A good deal of what we observe there today is explained thereby, and then of course there is the occasional massive earthquake. It is to this violent place that some of the huddled masses who made it to the U.S. might be sent back. That in the midst of all of this Trump offers refugee status to White South Africans – who still hold a disproportionate share of economic power there and apparently have no interest in this status – would be comical if it did not happen under such dire circumstances.

American foreign policy approaches moral bankruptcy. Unfortunately, the four topics I touched on are not the only ones one could cover. There are many more. Moral bankruptcy at this scale is not only a grievous wrong inflicted on those who find themselves on the receiving end. It will create conditions from which it might take decades to recover. Getting things right morally and acting in enlightened self-interest often coincide.  Being an empire at least in some measure in the service of the world has many benefits that we will only appreciate once the moral bankruptcy is fully upon us. Investing in human rights is a way of making the world safer. Undermining them will do the opposite.