“America First” Is Leaving Human Rights Behind — A Dangerous Shift in U.S. Foreign Policy

After World War II, the United States and its allies argued that defending and promoting human rights was both a moral obligation and the foundation of a stable international order. That principle — imperfectly applied at times but enduring — is now being rapidly dismantled.

A New Tone From the Top

In a May 2025 speech in Riyadh, President Trump signaled a decisive break with that postwar consensus. Praising Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman — whom U.S. intelligence has assessed ordered the killing of a Washington Post journalist — the president rejected what he called Western moralizing about governance and insisted that "it is God's job to sit in judgment" while his duty is "to defend America." Two weeks later in Singapore, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth reiterated that the United States would abandon a "moralistic and preachy" approach and defer to other nations' traditions and militaries.

Policy Changes and Institutional Withdrawals

The administration's new National Security Strategy pairs noninterventionist rhetoric with a preference for unilateral action to protect U.S. economic and security interests. It decries multilateral institutions as "sovereignty-sapping" and characterizes bodies such as the United Nations and the European Union as relics of a discredited globalism.

Concretely, the U.S. has withdrawn from or scaled back participation in multiple international bodies and agreements, including UNESCO, UNRWA, the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, the World Health Organization, the Paris climate agreement, and the U.N. Human Rights Council (the United States also skipped its Universal Periodic Review for the first time). The administration has ordered a review of all treaties and international organizations to identify further candidates for withdrawal.

Pressure on Accountability Mechanisms

Beyond withdrawals, the administration has imposed sanctions on International Criminal Court judges and prosecutors following the ICC's move toward an indictment of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, cut U.N. funding, and effectively shuttered USAID operations that historically supported human-rights and humanitarian programs.

Rewriting Human Rights Diplomacy

Secretary of State Marco Rubio described the State Department's Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor as a platform for "left-wing activists" and proposed a sweeping reorganization that would eliminate many human-rights offices and create a new Office of Natural Rights focused on what he terms traditional Western freedoms. The practical effect is a reorientation of U.S. diplomacy away from many longstanding human-rights priorities.

The State Department's annual Country Reports on Human Rights Practices have been radically reworked. The revised reports pay less attention to torture, extrajudicial killings, political repression, and abuses by autocratic allies, while critiquing some liberal democracies for laws that regulate hate speech and extremist parties. For example, the El Salvador report is roughly 75 percent shorter and judges there to have "no credible reports of significant human rights abuses," while the United Kingdom report highlights "serious restrictions on freedom of expression."

Entire topical sections have been removed from the reports, including violence against women, racially or ethnically motivated violence, LGBT and transgender rights, government corruption, environmental justice, and fair-trial guarantees. One official described the new emphasis as focusing on rights "given to us by God, our creator, not by governments," and U.S. embassies have been instructed to treat issues such as gender-affirming care, state support for abortion, affirmative action, and certain speech-related investigations as potential human-rights violations.

Why This Matters

Looking away from — or tacitly endorsing — human-rights violations does more than change rhetoric; it strengthens autocrats, weakens democratic movements, and undermines the rules and institutions that help preserve global stability.

These shifts in policy and tone risk hollowing out U.S. influence at a moment when robust international cooperation is needed to address authoritarian aggression, mass atrocities, public-health crises, and climate change.

Glenn C. Altschuler is the Thomas and Dorothy Litwin Emeritus Professor of American Studies at Cornell University. David Wippman is emeritus president of Hamilton College.