Isolationist America was not isolated from the world. We spend more money on our military than the next ten largest spending nations combined. But empires come with a problem: because they control other people’s countries, they generate resistance, and thus continuous wars on their periphery.
Voter polls report that Donald Trump has at least a fifty percent chance of being elected President of the United States once more.
Here in Europe, Trump’s “America First” rhetoric, trade protectionism and contempt for international norms have created anxiety that US foreign policy will turn “Isolationist.”
Let’s start by defining the term.
If what you mean by Isolationist is a nation cutting itself off from the rest of the world – like North Korea or Myanmar – than neither Trump nor most Americans qualify.
As President, Trump owned at least 144 separate businesses throughout the world. His main product line is luxury hotels and resorts, which depend on a global tourist market. He attacked illegal immigrants as vermin and rapists, yet he hired them throughout his corporate network.
He called the US military corrupt and ineffective, yet he increased its budget to use to threaten other countries.
Today, he says he opposes our intervention in the Ukraine, but applauds Israel’s invasion of Gaza and wants to escalate the trade war with China.
Trump is a demagogue. But he is not an ideologue. His politics are personal, opportunistic and often contradictory. He loves Russia’s Putin, North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, China’s Xi Jinping and Tic Tok some days and hates them on others.
His inconsistencies seem the result of an unstable mind. Another explanation is they are part of what he – a transactional politician—sees as bargaining tactics. Both motivations may be at work.
Whatever the ultimate truth, trying to determine what Trump really believes about foreign policy is a waste of time.
As for most Americans, polls show they want their country to be a responsible world citizen. They support the United Nations, international peacekeeping and humanitarian agencies. But, if you define Isolationism as a desire to pull back from US military commitments abroad then, yes, Isolationist sentiment in in America is growing, and will continue to grow no matter who wins the November election.
Donald Trump, the demagogue, has cynically exploited this trend.
In the process, he has raised questions that both Democrats and traditional conservative Republican Party leaders have denounced as “irresponsible”. But to the average American the questions seem reasonable. For example, since the purpose of NATO is supposed to be the defense of Europe, why has the US been paying a disproportionate share of its costs? Many in Europe would say it is because the United States controls NATO and uses it to promote US, not European, interests.
The American governing establishment – its politicians, pundit and press -- does not want to discuss that claim. So, it has been quick to denounce any questioning of NATO as a Trump aberration that is out of step with the last 80 years of US foreign policy.
But American history goes further back than that. And it tells us that Donald Trump is not the root cause of Americans growing weariness with being the world’s policeman.
From the beginning of our Republic in the late 18th century until World War II, America generally pursued what most historians consider an Isolationist foreign policy. It reflected the new nation’s geography, protected by two oceans, as well as its political philosophy. George Washington, the first President, told Americans they should avoid getting trapped in “foreign entanglements”. Another early president, John Quincy Adams, warned his fellow citizens against “roaming the world seeking monsters to destroy”.
This Isolationist America was not isolated from the world. America was a trading nation, fought pirates on the high seas and embraced immigration. Its citizens traveled and interacted with others on culture, scientific and technological progress. But the central priority of the country’s politics was its own continental economic and social development-
The brief 1898 war with Spain extended US control over Puerto Rico and Cuba. As well as the Philippines. But a brutal conflict with indigenous Philippine rebels was not popular and turned the country away from European-style colonialization. The US involvement in World War I lasted 19 months. Afterwards, most Americans thought was a mistake that should not be repeated.
So, by 1938, America’s army was smaller than Portugal’s. We reluctantly entered World War II more than two years after it started, and only after the Japanese attacked Hawaii. Hitler, thinking that the US was not strong enough to fight in both Asia and Europe, declared war on America. He didn’t understand that the economic depression had left us with a huge unused industrial capacity to use for war production.
Over 400,000 American soldiers died in the war. But the civilian population of some 132 million remained safely behind their ocean moats. Moreover, war spending brought prosperity, ending the economic depression of the 1930s.
Victory also created an exaggerated belief in America’s exceptional wisdom, military strength and moral superiority. As Madeleine Albright – Bill Clinton’s Secretary of State later boasted, Americans “stand taller and see further than other people.”
World War II also brought us a global empire, By the war’s end, the US was producing 50 percent of the world’s GDP. In comparison, the past great empires of China, Rome, Britian at their peak produced 25-30 percent.
Today, the United States has some 750 military bases in other countries. We spend more money on our military than the next ten largest spending nations combined. We are the world’s largest weapons exporter. The US Navy patrols the seven seas. Our Coast Guard, whose mandate is to protect our domestic shores, operates in the Persian Gulf and the South China Seas. “Full spectrum” (land, sea, air and cyberspace) dominance of the globe has been the explicit purpose of US foreign policy under Biden, Trump, Obama, Bush and Clinton. The dollar is the chief international currency and English is the chief international language.
American policymakers consider Europe as part of their empire. Carter’s National Security Advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, referred to Europe as a US “vassal”. After the US engineered a coup against the Russian-friendly elected government of the Ukraine in 2014, the US State Department decided who should be in the succeeding government. When the American ambassador suggested they check their decision with the Europeans, the State Department official replied, “fuck the EU.”
Roaming the world for monsters to destroy also turned out to be good for business. It justified the government’s massive spending on the arms industry –and supported US corporate interests abroad. As a German businessman once said to me, “when an American corporation walks into a meeting in Europe, the Sixth Fleet sails in behind it.”
But empires come with a problem: because they control other people’s countries, they generate resistance, and thus continuous wars – hot, cold and in-between – on their periphery.
The first major peripheral hot war of the Cold War with the Soviet Union was in Korea. This was not popular at home. So, despite its military strength, the US had to settle for a draw.
A decade later, we intervened in the civil war that followed the French withdrawal from their colony in Viet Nam. Again, despite our huge military power, domestic resistance to drafting young men to fight in faraway Asia and to paying war taxes forced the US to give it up.
In response, the US governing class ended conscription in favor of a military of volunteers and mercenary contractors. The increased cost was financed by borrowing. Because of the unique status of the US dollar -- another legacy of World War II –we could pay our debts by printing more of our own currency.
This restored the domestic social contract. Americans did not have to fight or pay for their country’s wars. In return, so long as living standards kept rising, the governing class was free to pursue empire – even after the Soviet Union disappeared.
A study at Tufts University in Boston found that during the 43 years of the Cold War, the US intervened militarily in other countries 46 times. In the 25 years following the end of the Cold War, the US intervened in other countries 188 times.
For most Americans, war became something they watched on TV, cheering for Team America. When they were bored, they changed the channel. Safe from the consequences of foreign policy, Americans gradually became less informed. Thus, for example, 90 percent of Americans initially supported George Bush’s invasion of Iraq. But only 15 percent could find Iraq on a map of the world.
The British historian Niall Ferguson, a strong supporter of U.S. imperialism, once observed that “the great thing about the American empire is that so many Americans disbelieve its existence”.
There was some dissent. The political left occasionally protested US foreign policy on humanitarian grounds. And a few prominent policy intellectuals – including George Kennan, the architect of US Cold War strategy – opposed the eastward expansion of NATO as unnecessarily and dangerously provocative toward Russia.
But few Americans cared. Until now.
Think of the American empire as resting on a 3-legged stool. The first leg is military power. Although it is not as dominant as it once was, the American military remains the most powerful in the world.
The second leg is economic power, which also has lost some of its former dominance. Running trade and fiscal deficits for the last 45 years, the United States now depends on borrowing to maintain its domestic living standards as swell as its foreign influence.
The third leg is public tolerance for a maintaining a foreign policy that requires perpetual conflict. Now, for the first time since the Vietnam War, that public tolerance is weakening.
There are two main reasons for the discontent. One reason is the breakdown of the social contract between the governing class and the ordinary working American.
In America’s two-party system the Democrats have played the role of champions of the working class. Labor unions, especially those in the manufacturing sector, were critical to the Party’s base. Even when many white workers broke with the Democrats over racial integration in the 1960s and 70s, enough white union members stayed loyal to the Party for economic reasons.
But in the 1990s, Democrat Bill Clinton embraced Ronald Reagan -style neoliberalism, exposing American workers to competition from China and other low-wage countries. Clinton told Americans that because they were “exceptional” -- better educated, motivated and productive than others -- they would easily win the competition in the global labor market.
Instead, the industrial base was devastated, factories closed, and unemployment rose. Because the US has a thin social safety net, living standards of workers and communities in the industrial regions sank.
Clinton also claimed that prosperity would turn China into a vassal state, like Japan. This also was delusional. A more prosperous China became a rival for influence in Asia and is today the object of war preparations in the Pentagon.
All this this created an opportunity for a demagogue like Donald Trump to appeal to working class anger. Trump won the election of 2016 by capturing the industrial Midwest with an anti-immigrant, protectionist platform. Manipulated by the rightwing media, working class resentment on economics, spilled over cultural issues - abortion, sex, and race.
Trump, of course, had no program help workers. But many disaffected Democrats no longer believe that government can help, despite the public benefits they already receive. Trust in government among American voters has fallen from 80 to less than 20percent.
The politics are complicated. For example, despite Trump’s vile language against Latin-Americans, he has gained support among them on the immigration issue. Why? Because Latin-Americans are disproportionately represented in the low-wage jobs that illegal immigrants compete for.
A second cause of the rise of Isolationist sentiment
is the long string of failures of US military adventures around the world - from Korea and Vietnam through Iraq, Somalia, Afghanistan, Lebanon and many others. Today, the United States is stuck in the Ukraine and in the horrendous bloodbath in Gaza. We have spent billions in the last 20 years on the War on Terror in Africa, which by the Pentagon's
own analysis has made that continent much less stable, with American trained military involved in coups and atrocities. The Pentagon’s internal analysis also shows that we could not win a war with China in the Taiwan Strait.
The result of all this is a spreading sense that we have overreached -- that we no longer have the capacity to support empire, and at the same time solve our own problems of lack of competitiveness, rising inequality, crumbling infrastructure, crises in the health care and educational systems, and serious threats to our constitutional democracy.
In addition to domestic challenges, we share the international threats of climate change and nuclear proliferation. The global cooperation needed to deal with these issues is impossible if the leadership of the United States is stuck in perpetual conflict with China and Russia and intervening in civil wars in much of the developing world.
For the first time since the Vietnam war a serious gap has opened on foreign policy between the governing class and the general public.
President Biden says we will stay in the Ukraine as long as it takes to defeat Russia. But 69 percent of Americans want to negotiate to end the war now. Both Biden and Trump have maintained steadfast support for the Israel' intention to destroy the Palestinian state, while 55 percent of the American public want a ceasefire now. Slight majorities of American think the US should help Taiwan if attacked by China, but very few are willing to send US troops to fight.
The angry debates and demonstrations on college campuses over US complicity with the Israeli genocide in Gaza are both symbol and substance of these divisions. Doubts and dissent are growing among policy professionals in government, universities and think-tanks. Recently an American airman set himself afire in front of the Israeli embassy.
These issues are not of course settled. And most Americans still believe in their country’s unique goodness. But more now think it is time stop trying to solve other people's problems and concentrate on ours.
Which brings us to the upcoming November election.
As polling has shown, most Americans do not want either Trump or Biden to be the next president. Trump is clearly unfit. And Biden was clearly too old. Polls also show Trump core voters are committed and passionate.
Biden's were not. Kamela Harris, the new Democratic Party candidate, is young, energetic, and quick on her feet. The race is now very close.
But whether Trump or Harris wins in November, domestic resistance to America’s imperial role in the world will continue. – as will the desperate determination of the American governing class to maintain and expand that role.
To repeat: Trump is not an isolationist. Leaving aside his personal greed and egomaniacal obsessions, Trump does not want a to disengage from the world. He wants to dominate it. Alone.
Harris’s views are less clear. Given her lack of experience, her foreign policy -- like Biden’s -- will generally follow the lead of the Democratic Party establishment. They also want to dominate, but they sensibly understand that to do that, the United States needs help from others.
But for both Trump and Harris, maintaining the empire will relentlessly become more expensive, complex and demanding much more national unity, commitment and sacrifice than American society is now capable of providing.
So. Let’s imagine two scenarios. One: Trump wins. Two: Harris wins.
In Trump's first term, he had a few people from the traditional center-right of the Republican party who acted as a restraint against his most irrational whims. Most of those are gone. So, US foreign policy will be more subject to Trump’s volatile personality and therefore more unpredictable
Everything we know about Trump indicates that his overwhelming priority will be domestic politics - personal revenge against Democrats, business deregulation, more tax cuts for the rich and a destructive effort to eviscerate the Federal professional civil service.
Whether he succeeds will depend on which party controls the Congress and Senate. But the effort will create chaos at home, and a less reliable and competent American presence in the world. In any event, in the absence of some new global disruption, foreign policy will probably not absorb as much energy and interest in Trump’s first two years as it did in Biden’s last two.
In terms of foreign policy, Trump’s coalition is made up of three groups. One is a circle of family and cronies and corporate business interests. Fundamentally, they are opportunists with little interest in solving the country’s most pressing problems. Their goals are personal favors, subsidies and tax cuts financed with more borrowing, which will further weaken US credit ratings and encourage the growing search for alternatives to the dollar.
Some idea of what to expect from this inner circle is the proposal of Trump's son- in-law and foreign policy adviser, Jared Kushner, to relocate all Palestinians from the Mediterranean coast of Gaza to camps in the Negev desert. There he expects the Israeli army "finish the job." In their place Kushner would then level the area to the ground and sell the land for luxury hotels and resorts.
A second group is made up of rightwing ideologues. They do care about national policy. Although there are differences among them, they are committed to empire. A detailed plan for a new Trump administration from the influential and reactionary Heritage Foundation opposes addressing climate change and proposes withdrawal from the World Bank, the IMF and other international agencies. It also calls for more military spending and corporate tax cuts paid for with drastic cutbacks in the already modest levels of social welfare.
Their plans include the downgrading of the American civil service – replacing professional public servants with an army of bureaucrats loyal only to Trump. This is a formula for incompetence, corruption and chaos that will drastically weaken, if not destroy, many of the programs and services that the vast majority of middle-class, working Americans depend on.
If they succeed, it may create conflict the goals of a third part of the Trump constituency –the rightwing populists who want to make the working class a permanent part of the Republican political base. This includes the Republican nominee for vice-president, J.D. Vance. If this group means what it says, it will have to oppose the Heritage Foundation’s radical agenda designed to undercut working American’s living standards. The result could be civil unrest. Perhaps some form of civil war.
We can expect Trump to diminish – if not end - military support for Ukraine despite opposition from some Republicans. If so, Europe will have to go it alone or force a ceasefire and eventual settlement. His implicit threat to withdraw from NATO is another matter. Opposition from the foreign-policy military elites will be very strong, although as in the past, he can try to buy off the military-industrial complex by increasing its already bloated budget.
Trump has been ardent supporter of Israel, and he and Netanyahu have been close. But Trump may not want to continue financing what looks like a hopeless investment and could look for a way out. If he does, Trump will tolerate no dissent from Netanyahu if the latter is still in power.
The US is already withdrawing from the failed War on Terror and there is no reason to think that Trump – whose contempt for Third World countries is well known – will reverse course.
On China, Trump will be threatening and boisterous as part of his bargaining tactic on economic concessions. But so far, he has not shown Biden’s intense commitment to “winning” a war with China over influence in Asia – and might be willing to let potential regional conflicts between China and India and Russia play out without him.
Kamila Harris does not have a strong foreign policy record. As Vice-President, she of course followed Biden’s lead, although she has been critical of Israel’s behavior in Gaza. But her chief foreign policy advisors share the conventional imperial agenda. Therefore, because the US is relentlessly losing financial strength and global goodwill, they can be expected to depend even more on America’s already over-extended military power.
In the Middle East, even if Israel gradually pulls out of Gaza, the war will have left a massive humanitarian and political problem for both Israel, the US and the rest of the region. Iran will remain the designated enemy that keeps the Israeli-us alliance together and thus further motivated to develop its own nuclear capability. The spark of hope for a peaceful settlement represented by Obama’s nuclear agreement with Iran was extinguished by Trump and Biden. If it is to be reignited by a Harris regime, it is not likely to be until later in her presidency.
Fear of Trump kept many Democrats from breaking with Biden over foreign policy. But it will change once election is over.
So, if a President Harris follows the Biden pattern, she will be in conflict with many in her own party, as well as Republicans.
To sum up: except for the unlikely event that the winning candidate has a huge majority in the Congress, divisions in American domestic politics are too deep for a return to any national consensus on foreign policy.
One implication is that Europe will have to take more responsibility for itself – especially regarding defense.
And if the world is going to deal with issues like climate change, nuclear proliferation and forced migration, Europe and other regions will have to provide more leadership than they have in the past. American will remain a player in the geopolitical game, but with a diminished capacity.
Is it possible that Europe can unify itself to operate in its own interests independent of the United States?
An American can raise the question, but only Europeans can answer it.In any case, the best advice I would have for Europeans is don't trust your future with either Harris or Trump.
(Update of lecture at Cy Cergy Université, Paris France, 23 July 2024)