The liberal vision of American foreign policy, now being revived by Biden, has its own historical narrative.
President Joseph Biden announced with his usual flair that “America is back!” In other words, the haphazard foreign policy of the man he replaced, Donald J. Trump, was being turned upside down and inside out. U. S. Allies could once again count on U. S. power to defend them; Trump’s withdrawals from the Paris Climate Accords and the Iran nuclear agreement were being reversed; and China and Russia were informed that they would no longer be treated gently by the Democrat in the White House. The new president even called Vladimir Putin a “killer.” Admirably, though largely because the policy was indefensible, Washington cut off its support to Saudi Arabia’s war against civilians in the beleaguered, impoverished state of Yemen. Once again morality as understood by the liberal foreign policy elite would be combined with the overwhelming military and economic strength of the United States to restrain challengers to the power and influence of United States wherever they are and to reassert American hegemony across the globe.
The liberal vision of American foreign policy, now being revived by Biden, has its own historical narrative. Beginning in the early twentieth century, Democratic president Woodrow Wilson attempted to convince isolationist Americans, particularly the Republican Party, that the United States had to abandon its fear of involvement in “foreign entanglements,” as its first president George Washington had cautioned, and work with the world community in the League of Nations. Instead of heeding Wilson, the policy establishment turned inward, retreated to concern for the Western Hemisphere alone (the Monroe Doctrine forbad Europeans to extend their power westward), and to let the rest of the world fight its own battles. As this very plausible story goes, in the interwar period (1918-1939) the USA refrained from exercising military power (outside of its frequent interventions in Latin America, which usually go unmentioned) and instead concentrated on disarmament conferences and antiwar agreements. American isolationism opened the door for expansionist powers like Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy to use their military forces to spread out across Europe and into Africa until a reluctant United States came to the rescue of the desperate democracies in World War II (the alliance with the Soviet Union is also conveniently forgotten in this scenario). America in the Cold War years, it is proudly claimed, saved Europe and the world from Communist expansion through the formation of NATO and the buildup of nuclear armaments. Eventually, the Soviet Union was defeated, and the world was safe once again for democracy and the free market.
What is wrong with this story?
Besides painting the globe in stark black and white – one side predatory and evil; the other virtuous and innocent – this Manichean vision is highly moralistic and does not take seriously the interests and limitations of the other side. In the years of the Cold War, after establishing their hold on East Central Europe, the Soviet Union did not physically expand anywhere except for its late incursion into Afghanistan in 1975. Meanwhile, the United States not only built military bases around the globe to contain the USSR and Communist China but intervened militarily into dozens of states from Grenada to Lebanon and launched major wars in Southeast Asia, Afghanistan, and Iraq, in which hundreds of thousands, even millions of people died. The United States achieved largely unchallenged power after the fall of the Soviet Union on land, at sea, in the air, and in outer space. Its nuclear arsenal was matched only by the Soviets, and today it can take pride in being the number one arms dealer in the world, just ahead of number two, Russia.
Under Trump the Americans allied themselves with the insurgent Kurds of Syria only to abandon them when Turkey decided to invade and destroy the relatively democratic enclave of Rojava. However, the reckless narcissist in the Oval Office did not open up new fronts or engage in new wars; he had promised to disengage America from the rest of the world. An American critic of US foreign policy wrote, “it is far from clear that the demagogic militarist in the White House [Trump] caused more harm through warmaking than his two bipartisan predecessors.” One remembers that the initiator of the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, George W. Bush, had hoped to establish liberal democracy and neo-liberal economy in these countries but instead gave birth to chaos and mass death. His successor, Barak Obama, discovered—as Trump would later -- that pulling out is much more difficult than going in. Once a Great Power has destroyed an enemy regime and upturned its society, it is nearly impossible to put all the scattered pieces back together in the way the invading country desired. As well-intentioned and ambitious as the program for promoting democracy has been, a bitter lesson has been learned: democracy withers when it arrives at the point of bayonets. Americans should have learned that doing bad things for good reasons paves the road to disaster.
Americans pride themselves on their uniqueness, and indeed they are unique in many ways, certainly in the size of their power, wealth, and prestige. Even after Trump, the United States retains some tatters of its reputation as a good-willed democracy. That remains a strength, but one that requires a sense of responsibility. Pragmatism and realism have to be combined with ethical, more restrained behavior in foreign policy. Grandiose goals should be abandoned, but the ideals of democracy, rule of law, tolerance of differences should be defended – more through example and by judicious promotion of those who support them and less by relying on the military. If you want to remain a “shining city on the hill,” remember to keep the lights on!