The image is almost too perfect for a satirist’s pen. While the world’s footballing nations gather to kick a ball and pretend at brotherhood, the President of the United States sits home, tweeting grievances about trade deficits. The World Cup, that great global circus of bonhomie and nationalism, has seen its guest list trimmed of one notable name. Donald J. Trump, the man who promised to put America first, has apparently decided that putting America in the stands is too much trouble. The question being asked on cable news: why is he not there? But the real question, the one that should haunt us, is this: what does it mean when the leader of the free world cannot be bothered to show up for a photo opportunity that every tin-pot dictator would jump at?
Let us first dispense with the obvious. The man does not like football. He does not like anything that does not involve him being the centre of attention, and a football match has the gall to focus on men kicking a ball. There is no trophy for him to hold aloft, no crowd chanting his name. His absence, we are told, is due to a scheduling conflict, or perhaps a preference for his own brand of sports entertainment. But to accept this explanation is to miss the forest for the trees. We are witnessing the deliberate abdication of soft power by a nation that once understood it better than any other.
Consider the Victorians, who used the Great Exhibition to showcase their industrial might and moral superiority. Consider the Romans, who built amphitheatres not merely for entertainment but for the propagation of imperial ideology. The World Cup is the modern heir to these traditions: a stage upon which nations project their values, their wealth, and their leadership. When the American president stays home, he is not merely missing a game. He is signalling that the United States no longer wishes to play the game of international prestige. He is saying that the world’s respect is not worth the flight time.
This is a catastrophic error, and one that his predecessors would have recognised. Kennedy understood the power of a well-timed gesture at the Berlin Wall. Reagan understood the symbolism of standing at the Brandenburg Gate. Trump, by contrast, understands only the power of a well-timed insult. He turns his back on the one arena where Americans are still welcomed with something approaching enthusiasm. The men’s national team failed to qualify, yes, but that has never stopped a president before. A leader goes to the World Cup not to watch his own team but to be seen. To be seen shaking hands with the Emir of Qatar. To be seen cheering for the underdog. To be seen acting like a statesman rather than a talk-radio host.
The diplomatic absence, then, is more than a snub to the tournament’s organisers. It is a symbol of a broader retreat. America under Trump has withdrawn from the Paris Accords, from the Iran deal, from the Trans-Pacific Partnership. It has questioned the utility of NATO and the importance of the European Union. The World Cup is just another multilateral institution to be scorned. And what does this retreat achieve? It leaves the vacuum to be filled by others. China, ever eager to claim the mantle of global leadership, will send its officials to shake hands. Russia, having hosted the last tournament despite its pariah status, will see its antagonism validated. The free world’s leader is absent, and the free world begins to wonder if it still has a leader.
One can hear the objections: the president is busy with domestic affairs, with the economy, with the border crisis. But these are the excuses of a man who does not understand that foreign policy is domestic policy conducted by other means. A president who cannot spare a week for the World Cup is a president who has forgotten that his nation’s influence depends on its presence. He is a man who mistakes isolation for strength, who believes that the world will come to him. It will not. The world will go on playing its games, building its alliances, and moving past America’s exit. The empty chair at the World Cup is a metaphor for an empty seat at the table of history. And we all know what happens to those who do not sit at the table: they end up on the menu.
