Leadership isn't optional: What rural America taught me about global power

I watched President Trump's seemingly staged humiliation of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky with a sick recollection of how I felt at age 22, standing in a basement office in Heidelberg, Germany — my desk drawer perpetually stuck half-open, like America's understanding of its own power. My worldview, shaped by my experience growing up in a town of less than 1,000 collapsed during my federal service in Germany.

As a child, other countries were places on maps or in textbooks. Our problems were real, theirs were theoretical. Our hunger was urgent, theirs was distant. Our needs were American, theirs were foreign.

Rwanda transformed my understanding of America in the world, and how geopolitical power works. I was tracking rice shipments through vast logistical and budget systems. A clerk with a tie clip taught me how $400 million of supplies runs through cables while I thought about all the people struggling back home and wondered how to understand this vastness of resources we just give away.

It wasn't data that changed my understanding — it was human testimony.

A colonel handed me a Rwandan mother's letter that had moved through seven levels of clearance before reaching my desk. Then soldiers returned from deployment — farm boys who shared my background and initial skepticism.

"I didn't want to go," a specialist from Nebraska told me, his hands still raw from carrying rice sacks. "Kept thinking about my grandma's medical bills, schools in my town with no heat." He paused, eyes distant. "Then these mothers — I’ve never seen skin stretched tight like that over bones — they handed me their babies. Sixteen hours they'd waited. When we unloaded those pallets, whole villages appeared from nowhere."

A staff sergeant, with a Mississippi drawl, described the sound that haunts him: "America," he whispered, "America, America." The only English word they knew, chanted by mothers holding starving babies as our helicopters appeared over mountains. Not because we're heroes, he told me. Because we showed up.

The staff sergeant's eyes found mine across the forms he was signing. "I thought I knew what it meant, being American," he said, voice cracking like spring ice. "Thought it was about my town, my family, my rights. But ma'am, when they say 'America,' they're not talking about a place. They're talking about whether their children will see morning. They talk like we’re the only ones who matter and the only ones who care."

This is America's invisible hand holding up worlds. Feel good stories are only the front half of the equation. This is geopolitical gravity with economic mass that affects every American’s paycheck, including those who believe global leadership is someone else's burden to carry. The emotional reality anchors a strategic truth: American global leadership directly impacts American prosperity in measurable ways:

In regions where China has expanded its influence through the Belt and Road Initiative, U.S. exports have significantly declined, leading to substantial job losses in American industries.
After America reduced its leadership role in certain international organizations (2017-2021), we lost decision-making influence over $428 billion in international development contracts. American companies were disqualified from 42 percent of those opportunities.
Areas where America maintains strong diplomatic, economic and humanitarian leadership saw faster growth in American business opportunities over the past decade compared to regions where our influence has waned.
Every $1 billion in U.S. exports supports approximately 6,000 American jobs. Our global leadership enabled $3.2 trillion in exports last year — that's 18.6 million jobs dependent on American global influence.
The security umbrella we provide through NATO and other alliances saves us in additional defense spending we would need without these partnerships.

Global leadership is not charity — it is a strategic investment with measurable returns. When we abandon leadership positions, we don't save money; we lose economic opportunities, security advantages and influence over systems that govern global trade.

This reality makes President Trump's treatment of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky particularly concerning. When Zelensky departed the White House looking stricken after being criticized for his casual attire and insufficient gratitude, the damage wasn't merely symbolic.

Within 48 hours, Zelensky was meeting with European leaders to discuss how to continue, to win, potentially making the U.S. obsolete, or at least diminished in this global conflict. European allies privately expressed concerns about committing to joint ventures with an America that treats partners as supplicants.

What's at stake is a core principle of post-World War II American strategy: America leads or is replaced. Leadership isn't eternal or guaranteed. It requires consistent investment of resources, respect and strategic engagement.

In global affairs, there is no "America First" that doesn't eventually become "America Alone" — and consequently, "America Diminished." The infrastructure of American prosperity depends on global leadership that can't be maintained through demands for gratitude or public humiliation of allies.

If you don't think America can afford soft power efforts or that it should concern itself with global leadership, consider that we don't do it just to be charitable. It's because the alternative costs far more — in dollars, in jobs and in the American way of life we all want to protect.

Cheryl Kelley is a former senior government official with experience across five U.S. Cabinet agencies, including serving as director of planning, management, and budget. She is an adjunct fellow at the Pell Center at Salve Regina University and the author of “An Informed Citizenry: How the Modern Federal Government Operates” and the novel “Radical, An American Love Story.”

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