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The Isolationist Temptation

또랑i 2016. 8. 9. 15:10

A Donald Trump supporter at a rally for the Republican presidential candidate, Portsmouth, N.H., Feb. 6.
A Donald Trump supporter at a rally for the Republican presidential candidate, Portsmouth, N.H., Feb. 6. PHOTO: BRIAN SNYDER/REUTERS
By 

It has been only a quarter-century since the end of the Cold War, but the U.S. is already in the midst of its second great foreign-policy debate of the post-Soviet era. The first, which carried us from the administration of the first President Bush through the second, was over the appropriate extent of America’s global ambitions. It took place largely among foreign policy elites, between those who (roughly speaking) wanted to stabilize the world and decrease the chances of conflict, and those who sought to liberalize other countries, hoping to spread democracy and improve the lot of people suffering from tyranny and civil war.

The second debate, which is being played out today, centers on whether the U.S. should retain the leading international role it has held since the end of World War II. Unlike the earlier debate, this one is taking place among elites and non-elites. It pits internationalists of every stripe against those who are isolationists or very nearly that, holding to a minimal view of what the U.S. should be doing beyond its borders.

It is worth reviewing how we got to this point, because the seeds of the second debate were sown in part by the first. The 25 years since the end of the Cold War have been a time of uncharacteristic, even unprecedented, American primacy. Not surprisingly, some in the U.S. argued that this situation should be exploited. on the left and right alike, voices called for the U.S. to do things in the world not out of necessity but out of choice, not because vital national interests were at stake but because there were perceived opportunities to do good.

This view wasn’t universal. The principal alternative was a more modest view of what the U.S. could accomplish—one consistent with what is known as the realist school, which holds that the principal aim of U.S. foreign policy should be to shape the foreign policy of other governments, not their internal political arrangements.

This debate was intense and prolonged. It actually started before the Berlin Wall was torn down, when pro-democracy protests erupted in the spring of 1989 in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. Voices across the political spectrum urged President George H.W. Bush to support the students and to severely sanction China’s communist government, but he resisted. He thought that U.S. pressure would serve only to alienate leaders with whom we needed to work in meeting a growing number of regional and global challenges.

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Even more pronounced was the debate over the 1990-91 Gulf War. The George H.W. Bush administration, with its mostly realist approach to foreign policy, was content with forcing Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait, restoring that country’s sovereignty and reducing the threat posed by Iraq to the region. For others, this wasn’t enough. They were disappointed that U.S. forces didn’t march on to Baghdad and oust Saddam Hussein when he was on his heels.

Realism won out in this case, but the debate was hardly settled. Idealists were right to argue that a search for stability alone would never be enough to capture the imagination of the American people and that U.S. foreign policy needed to be premised on principles as well as interests. But after Bill Clinton’s defeat of President Bush in 1992, the new Democratic administration found it hard to reconcile its desire to do good with the difficulty of doing good. That tension helps to explain the Clinton administration’s limited and inconsistent responses to civil conflicts in the former Yugoslavia, Somalia, Haiti and Rwanda.

Activists hold a rally to protest the Trans-Pacific Partnership, President Obama’s signature Pacific trade pact, Feb. 3, in Washington, D.C.
Activists hold a rally to protest the Trans-Pacific Partnership, President Obama’s signature Pacific trade pact, Feb. 3, in Washington, D.C. PHOTO: OLIVER DOULIERY/GETTY IMAGES

The next watershed event was 9/11. President George W. Bush wished to go beyond removing the Taliban government in Afghanistan that had harbored al Qaeda. Saddam Hussein quickly became the administration’s focus. The president and many of his advisers wanted to make sure that Iraq did not possess and would not develop weapons of mass destruction. Even more, they were attracted to the bold idea of bringing democracy to Iraq, creating an example that the rest of the Middle East, including Iran, would feel pressured to emulate. (I served in both Bush administrations, father and son, and favored the first Iraq war but not the second.)

Events didn’t work out as planned. It was one thing to oust a dictator, something quite different to put in place a successor government that was democratic and enduring. Iraq thus became the third costly war of choice in modern American history, joining Korea (in our vain attempt to unify the country by marching north of the 38th parallel) and Vietnam.

The Arab Spring of 2011 at first played into the hands of those with a more ambitious approach to U.S. foreign policy. The revolutions in Egypt, Yemen, Syria and other Arab autocracies seemed to present a second chance to make good on George W. Bush’s objective of democratizing the Arab world.

 

But with the partial exception of Tunisia, possibility turned to disappointment: A military strongman staged a coup in Egypt; a civil war in Syria has left 400,000 dead and has displaced most of the country’s citizens; the removal of a tyrant in Libya created killing fields now exploited by Islamic State. Meanwhile, the two countries where U.S. investment and involvement have been the most extensive, Iraq and Afghanistan, appear to have become open-ended civil conflicts fought between flawed regimes and even more flawed opponents.

A statue of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein is toppled in Firdaus Square, Bagdhad, April 9, 2003.ENLARGE
A statue of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein is toppled in Firdaus Square, Bagdhad, April 9, 2003. PHOTO: JEROME DELAY/ASSOCIATED PRESS

What has become painfully clear is that our effort to remake the Middle East has failed. The gap between promises and results, benefits and costs, has been huge. At home, disillusionment and recrimination are pervasive. Intervention fatigue has set in, and the public no longer has an appetite for an ambitious foreign policy. The first foreign policy debate, over the scope of American aims, is effectively over.

But more than just foreign-policy failure explains how we got to where we are. A foreign policy dedicated to changing or saving the world is a foreign policy of luxury. It is one thing to sacrifice on behalf of vital interests, and another to pay in lives and dollars for preferences. Americans today are in no mood for such extravagance in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, the slower-than-normal economic recovery, the realization that certain jobs are never returning and the mounting evidence of rising inequality.

It is this combination of dissatisfaction with foreign policy and economic frustration that has given rise to a new isolationism. A recent poll by the Pew Research Center found that most Americans prefer for the U.S. to deal with its own problems and to let other countries handle their own as best they can. A plurality of Americans says that the U.S. already does too much to solve the world’s problems.

These preferences cross party lines. Indeed, today’s debates are more within the two major parties than between them. There is considerable overlap between the policies ofDonald Trump and Bernie Sanders and between the Republican and Democratic platforms. Foreign policy gets short shrift: The Republican platform is awash in generalities, while its Democratic counterpart consists mostly of criticisms of Mr. Trump. Both platforms are skeptical of the benefits of free trade and oppose the Trans-Pacific Partnership as it has been negotiated.

The 25 years since the end of the Cold War have been a time of uncharacteristic, even unprecedented, American primacy.
The 25 years since the end of the Cold War have been a time of uncharacteristic, even unprecedented, American primacy. PHOTO: ROBERT NICKELSBERG/GETTY IMAGES

There are differences, of course, between the parties and the candidates. Mr. Trump is explicit in his call for a radically different U.S. role, questioning the value of American alliances in Europe and Asia alike. It is revealing that his adopted slogan of “America First” initially gained currency in the 1930s as the isolationist banner of Charles Lindbergh, who fought to keep the U.S. out of the fight against Hitler’s Germany.

Hillary Clinton, by contrast, fits squarely within the foreign policy mainstream. But many in the Democratic Party do not. It was telling that former Secretary of Defense and CIA Director Leon Panetta had his speech at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia interrupted by chants of “No more war.” Mrs. Clinton is the Democrats’ candidate, but she may not represent the future of a party whose activists echo their 1972 presidential candidate George McGovern and his call for America to “Come Home.”

The result is a second great foreign-policy debate, between a besieged traditional internationalism and an energized new isolationism. The stakes in this debate are very high. It is one thing to question American overreach; it is something very different to question American reach.

The world is not self-organizing. An invisible hand may help to guide the markets, but no such force is at work in geopolitics. For the past 75 years, the visible hand of the U.S., more than any other factor, has created and maintained conditions of stability. Given the number and strength of forces now undermining order around the globe, a capable and reliable U.S. is more essential than ever before.

The consequences of a lasting American retreat from the world would be dire. The Middle East is arguably the most salient example of what happens when the U.S. pulls back. Under President Barack Obama, the U.S. has mostly stayed out of Syria, failed to follow up on its intervention in Libya, largely left Iraq and committed to leave Afghanistan. We have since returned to Iraq, and our withdrawal from Afghanistan was never complete, but the substance and signal of a diminished U.S. role have contributed greatly to instability in the region. Not acting can be every bit as consequential as acting.

In Asia, whose countries represent the greatest concentration of population, wealth and military might, the results of U.S. disengagement would be dangerous indeed: preeminence in the region for China along with a much greater likelihood of conflict on the Korean Peninsula and in the several places where there are rival claims to territory and seas. Likewise, a reduced U.S. commitment to Europe and NATO, as Mr. Trump has proposed in his ad hoc way, could lead to greater Russian influence and more frequent conflict.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, and Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, left, at Navy Day celebrations in St. Petersburg, Russia, July 31.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, and Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, left, at Navy Day celebrations in St. Petersburg, Russia, July 31. PHOTO: MIKHAIL KLIMENTIEV/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

Commitments to allies serve two purposes. one is to deter would-be adversaries and to reduce the chances of conflict. The other is to reassure countries that would otherwise have to appease their more powerful neighbors or develop their own capacities for self-defense, which in this era could entail developing nuclear weapons. The benefits and influence that the U.S. derives from its longstanding alliance commitments far exceed the costs.

Isolationists must not prevail in this new debate over foreign-policy fundamentals, one which I had never imagined would take place in my lifetime. Turning away from global engagement would mean not just opportunities lost: in jobs reliant on exports, the chance to invest overseas, the ability to travel without fear. It also would bring conflict and nuclear proliferation. As the world unraveled, Americans would be more vulnerable to terrorism, illegal immigration, climate change and disease.

We do not have the option of becoming a giant gated community. Sooner or later, we would feel compelled to step in to restore stability and to right the balance of power.

What will it take for internationalists to advance their cause in today’s bitter debate? A start would be to rebuild a consensus in favor of free trade. Trade has multiple benefits. It contributes to economic growth and to well-paying export-oriented jobs. It can fuel development, thereby reducing the number of weak or failed states that host terrorists, pirates and drug cartels. It can strengthen allies. And it can enmesh potential adversaries in a network of mutually beneficial ties that make the option of disrupting them through war less attractive.

Winning the debate, though, will take more than marshaling facts. Those who lose their jobs because of trade deserve assistance, both to tide them over and to train them for new jobs. Trade partners must be held to high standards when it comes to labor conditions, the environment and manipulation of currencies. The playing field must be level.

The cause of internationalism would also be helped by policies that increase economic growth, from infrastructure modernization to tax, entitlement and immigration reform. Populism and parochialism are much more likely to gain traction amid anxiety over jobs and stagnant or declining standards of living.

It also will be important to remind Americans of the benefits of U.S. leadership—and the likely costs of abdication. Current U.S. spending on defense as a percentage of GDP is close to a post-World War II low. We can do what we should in the world at a reasonable cost.

Congress has a role to play in this wider discussion of America’s global role; televised hearings dealing with fundamental foreign policy issues could be invaluable. The next secretary of state will want to spend more time at home explaining why American world leadership is as much a favor to ourselves as to others.

Above all, the president will want to take advantage of the unique classroom that is the Oval Office. Mr. Obama could do worse than to use some part of his remaining months as president to discuss with the American people why the world matters and how the U.S. gains from what it does beyond its borders—and stands to lose if it fails to do them. Success in reminding Americans of their deep stake in the wider world could turn out to be one of his most important legacies.

Dr. Haass is the president of the Council on Foreign Relations and the author of “A World in Disarray: American Foreign Policy and the Crisis of the Old Order,” which will be published in January by the Penguin Press.

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