This article originally appeared in Real Clear World.
By Stephen Nagy, July 8, 2026
Today’s alliance politics, our assessments of the relationships between the U.S. and her allies, lacks cognitive empathy. And without empathy we retreat into caricature: the “Ugly American” on one side, the “sanctimonious free-riding ally” on the other.
The Ugly American has long served as a moral cudgel, conjuring a loud, incurious hegemon, overconfident and underinformed, certain that power justifies preference. And yes, recent interventions by the United States have been poorly calibrated, its polarization has unnerved allies, and its leaders have lurched between multilateral rhetoric and unilateral action. President Donald Trump has amplified these anxieties with transactional diplomacy, tariff threats, and open contempt for burden-sharing. But cognitive empathy demands we look deeper: how did allies help create the conditions that made Trump possible, even sustainable? America’s partners often comfort themselves by blaming his personality or American dysfunction. It is less comfortable to admit that decades of allied free-riding, public condescension, and selective moralizing fed an American constituency that concluded enough is enough.
In 1958, a book titled The Ugly American became an international bestseller. Today, one could just as easily write companion volumes about America’s friends.
First on the list: The Condescending European. Many European leaders have treated America as a necessary but unsophisticated cousin, mocking its religiosity, gun culture, and electoral theatrics while assuming the superiority of their own social model. Yet for decades, much of Europe underinvested in defense, confident the U.S. security umbrella would stay open. NATO’s burden-sharing debate did not begin with Trump; he merely voiced it bluntly. The contradiction is obvious: deride American leadership in public, rely on American power in private. Europe’s scramble to rearm after Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine implicitly conceded that Washington’s complaints were never invented. Moral superiority rings hollow when it is subsidized by another country’s taxpayers.
Second, and a personal favorite (if not a personal shame as a Canadian) is The ‘We Are Not Americans’ Canadian. Canada’s national identity is unfortunately often constructed in contrast to America — more polite, less violent, more communitarian. Healthcare is the talisman. Canadians frequently cite universal coverage as proof of moral and institutional superiority over the U.S. system. Yet the contradictions are visible at home. Many face months-long waits for non-urgent MRIs, extended delays for hip and knee replacements, emergency room waits stretching many hours in major cities. Universal access does not eliminate scarcity; it redistributes it. Meanwhile, Canada’s prosperity is deeply intertwined with the American market, and its security rests within the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) framework and broader U.S. deterrence.
Third is China’s inverted world. Beijing does not present itself as a revolutionary power; it speaks the language of sovereignty, development, and mutual respect. Yet beneath this rhetoric lies an inverted vision of order, in which economic dependence is recast as partnership, political compliance as non-interference, and regime security as collective stability. The controversial Belt and Road initiative binds infrastructure finance to strategic access. Human rights scrutiny becomes “politicization,” coercive trade measures become “legitimate countermeasures,” and militarization of the South China Sea becomes “defensive modernization.”
This is not a peaceful rise within existing rules but a gradual redefinition of the rules themselves. Institutions are not rejected, they are repurposed; standards are not overturned, they are diluted. The aim is not chaos but hierarchy: a world in which deference to Beijing replaces alignment with Washington, and power, not principle, quietly arbitrates disputes.
It is here that the debate over “middle powers” becomes especially relevant. Canadian discourse has long celebrated middle-power diplomacy, the idea that states like Canada can convene coalitions, broker compromises, and uphold a rules-based order between rival great powers. There is nobility in that tradition, but it risks sliding into fantasy when it substitutes for material investment or becomes a vehicle for distancing from Washington.
Prime Minister Mark Carney has floated the idea of a middle-power coalition capable of engaging China while resisting American pressure, a bloc that can shape global rules without being subsumed by U.S.-China rivalry. In theory, attractive. In practice, it collides with geopolitical gravity.
Such strategies can drift into what might be called epistemological capture: a tendency among policy elites and academic forums to internalize narratives that underplay coercion from Beijing while overstating American culpability. Critique of U.S. policy becomes reflexive, while the CCP is treated as a misunderstood stakeholder rather than an actor that has wielded economic leverage, maritime coercion, and hostage diplomacy.
Canada’s own experience should temper romanticism. Under former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Ottawa pursued expansive engagement with Beijing, even entertaining a free trade agreement, while articulating a values-based foreign policy of feminism, multilateralism, and human rights. Yet when Canadians Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor were detained in apparent retaliation for the arrest of Huawei’s Meng Wanzhou, Ottawa discovered the limits of middle-power leverage and turned, inevitably, to coordinated pressure from the United States and other allies.
This is not a criticism of seeking help, but a reminder of contradiction. One cannot publicly denigrate the U.S., its president, and its voters, then in the next breath request expedited trade deals, security guarantees, or the diplomatic muscle to free citizens from hostage diplomacy. Cognitive empathy cuts both ways: if American voters sense their country is treated as both shield and scapegoat, they will elect leaders who say the quiet part out loud.
Trump’s behavior is abrasive, transactional, and sometimes norm-breaking, but it did not emerge in a vacuum, nor will similar impulses vanish with him. Many Americans concluded that allies had grown comfortable criticizing U.S. policy while underinvesting in their own defense. When Trump demanded higher NATO spending or threatened tariffs, his methods were polarizing, but the underlying frustration had bipartisan roots.
Middle-power discourse often frames this as evidence of American unreliability or decline. Some commentary exhibits what critics call Trump Derangement Syndrome: a posture in which nearly all global turbulence is attributed to one man, one pathology. That narrative absolves middle powers of agency and ignores how decades of burden-shifting and public moralizing fed U.S. domestic backlash.
To be clear, allied neuroses have reasons. American politics is volatile, its electoral cycles produce sharp policy swings, and allies fear abandonment as much as entrapment. But hypocrisy arises when those same allies present themselves as uniquely virtuous while quietly depending on the system they criticize. Likewise, some analyses emphasize American hypocrisy over the “rules-based order” while downplaying CCP revisionism in the South China Sea, its coercion of Australia and Lithuania, and its pressure on Taiwan. A balanced approach scrutinizes all great powers; an imbalanced one becomes selective outrage.
The deeper problem is psychological. Proximity to American power breeds ambivalence. Allies want autonomy without vulnerability, influence without responsibility, moral clarity without strategic cost. When Washington pushes back on defense spending, trade imbalances, or technology controls it can feel like betrayal rather than overdue adjustment. Hence the temptation to construct coalitions designed to “resist” the United States while still relying on its security architecture.
Cognitive empathy demands something harder. Americans must recognize that their scale and unpredictability can intimidate partners. They must invest in diplomacy, not just deterrence. But middle powers must also recognize that American patience is finite. Voters who perceive freeloading or condescension will not indefinitely subsidize it. The release of the kraken — Trump and a more transactional America — was not solely a product of one personality. It was also a reaction to decades in which allies publicly scolded Washington while privately benefiting from its guarantees.
If the Ugly American is a cautionary tale about arrogance born of power, the sanctimonious middle power is a cautionary tale about arrogance born of insecurity. Both suffer from a deficit of cognitive empathy. Both would benefit from looking in the mirror. A durable order requires shared burdens, honest acknowledgment of trade-offs, and the humility to admit contradictions. Without that, middle-power fantasies will remain just that: fantasies. And American voters will continue to ask why they should tolerate whiny, hypocritical allies who demand protection while withholding respect.
Stephen R. Nagy is a professor at the International Christian University, a senior fellow and China project lead at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute and the Center for North American Prosperity and Security (CNAPS), and a JIIA CGO fellow at the Japan Institute for International Affairs.
