The Hill

Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) and Rebeccah Heinrichs

October 2, 2026

Last week at the United Nations General Assembly, President Donald Trump issued a “challenge for every nation in this room” to “go forward strong and united against the enemies of all humanity” and, by doing so, “make this world a far better and safer place.” While it is tempting to write Trump’s words off as rhetorical fanfare, the mission they describe is real, critical and — unfortunately — now being dismissed by many in the United States.

Lately, a foolish worldview is growing in popularity among elected leaders in Washington. You hear it from voices ranging from Tucker Carlson to Hasan Piker. Some on the left and right have become convinced that solving America’s domestic issues requires our retreat from leadership on the world stage.

Their narrative requires us to ignore history and believe that America is in irreversible decline and has shriveled in form from her former greatness. But America’s best days are ahead, and we can and must stay energetically engaged in foreign policy to protect Americans and our way of life. And so, we must be clear about what a U.S. retreat would mean and how American life would look if we allowed Communist China to write the rules and our enemies to establish a New World Order.

These views, often sold as populist ideas, are nothing new. Nearly a century ago, America faced similar choices as evil around the world began to threaten our security.

In the fall of 1939, the devastation caused by the Great Depression hung like a dark cloud over the lives of many Americans while Nazi Germany invaded Poland. While the news out of Europe was troubling, there were plenty of “leaders” in Washington telling hardworking families that America couldn’t possibly be worried about the security of Europe when our own citizens couldn’t guarantee the security of their own jobs.

These are the same arguments being sold today as young Americans worry about grocery bills, the cost of electricity, and how they are going to afford to raise a family. Of course, the choice between global leadership and domestic prosperity is a false one.

The American Dream depends on the United States’ leadership in the world, where we set rules in a way that protects the American people, secures our economy, and advances our goals.

America First is not possible if America surrenders its position on the world stage. We want an America strong enough to deter our enemies and win a war if an adversary starts one. That does not mean getting entangled in forever wars and needless regime change operations with no goal and no endgame.

What the Tucker-Piker camp fails to understand is that America still has enemies. Communist China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, and Cuba have created an anti-American coalition — an authoritarian alliance — to undercut us as the global superpower and sever the ties between the U.S. and the Western coalition.

And it doesn’t end with China — Russia is waging a war of choice in Ukraine to test the resolve of NATO and to scare Americans into believing that they must surrender peace among their oldest and most prosperous Western democracies or risk catastrophic war.

Those powers — supported by authoritarians in Iran, North Korea and Cuba — are consolidating with one goal: undermine the United States, replace its influence with those of authoritarian powers, and undermine the world that the West has built.

This is happening at different levels and with different methods. The Chinese Communist Party is leveraging economic dependence against the West to bend our allies towards the CCP’s interests. Russia is attempting to break NATO to claim territory from sovereign democratic nations. Iran is destabilizing the Middle East and global trade. Meanwhile, North Korea is investing in its illegal nuclear missile program while providing soldiers to Russia’s war against Ukraine.

All four nations are collaborating in various ways, and aim to push the United States, its forward deployed bases, and its influence out of their regions. In our own, Cuba has proven to be the greatest destabilizing force in the Western Hemisphere for decades.

I have no doubt our foreign adversaries see a useful domestic asset in Islamist-Socialist Hasan Piker — an American via birthright citizenship only — who wants capitalists dead, believed 9/11 was justified, and campaigns for socialists in our elections.

It cannot be any clearer: the authoritarian alliance desires the destruction of the postwar order, and the rights and prosperity generations have died defending.

If we retreat and allow this authoritarian alliance to take hold, America will suffer. Communist China and its accomplices will starve us, isolate us, and deprive us of every resource possible until America is weak and dependent. We will have no autonomy, no opportunity, and no freedom. Our financial markets will be powerless to fuel innovation, our business will shutter, and the American Dream will die.

President Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio understand what’s at stake, and they’ve shown that there’s a smarter way to do it than the mistakes we’ve seen this century. They showed the world America is not giving up. President Trump made NATO allies recommit to the alliance and have encouraged others outside the alliance to join the cause.

They also understand the need to reduce our exposure to our enemies, especially via trade. Every dollar we send to Beijing — and the rest of the authoritarian alliance — is capital for them to hurt us and our allies.

Retreating from the challenges to our power will not appease them; it only increases the cost of confronting them down the road. Strong leadership creates the environment for domestic security and economic prosperity. Without it, America and her allies remain vulnerable to criminal regimes who hate our way of life.

We cannot sacrifice national and global security to a false dilemma of domestic versus overseas issues. It is not a zero-sum equation. To believe it would destroy a century of American greatness and the American Dream itself.

Americans deserve a future that is safe, prosperous and free. For that to happen, America must lead.