PeaceVoice: Two different approaches to the world around us
The recent whirlwind of Trump administration foreign policy measures — many reversing those of the Biden administration — illustrates the sharply different opinions Americans have about their relationship to other nations.
The Trump approach — which he’shas labeled “America First” — is clear enough. He’sblocked humanitarian assistance abroad by shutting down the U.S. Agency for International Development, twice pulled the United States out of the Paris climate agreement, and scrapped numerous nuclear arms control and disarmament accords, including the Iran nuclear agreement, Open Skies Treaty and INF nuclear arms treaty.
Taking a hard line against the foreign-born for allegedly “poisoning the blood” of Americans, he’s suspended refugee asylum in the United States. He’s also begun the process of arresting and deporting 11 million migrants.
Trump’s vision of America’s role in the world relies on a tariff wars and military threats to coerce other nations into line with his aims. He’s even championed old-fashioned imperialist expansion by calling for annexation of Greenland, Canada, the Panama Canal and Gaza — the latter after being purged of its historic Palestinian population.
Not surprisingly, his administration has shown contempt for international organizations, promising a crackdown on the United Nations and sanctioning the International Criminal Court. He’s withdrawn the United States from the World Health Organization and United Nations Human Rights Council.
Though it’s doubtful this mixture of nationalism and xenophobia truly benefits Americans, it has deep roots in American history.
In the 19th century, the fledgling U.S. government acquired vast new continental territories, thanks to wars and treaties at the expense of indigenous peoples. The largest of these land-grabs included the Mexican War and countless Indian wars.
Overseas expansion surged during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when the U.S. government colonized and annexed the Philippines, Hawaii, Guam, Samoa and Puerto Rico, and intervened militarily in Mexico, the Caribbean, South America and China.
Although the rapidly growing United States remained open to immigrants during its first century, restrictions on Asian immigrants began in the late nineteenth. And a discriminatory National Origins Quota System — designed to drastically reduce immigration from Eastern and Southern Europe — was put into place in the early twentieth.
In the aftermath of World War I, isolationism swept through the nation, ultimately leading our government to reject membership in the League of Nations and World Court, and adopt a policy of “appeasement” toward the fascist nations then busy conquering portions of Europe, Africa and Asia.
Even after the attack on Pearl Harbor led the U.S. to turn the tide in World War II, our nation continued to maintain the world’s mightiest military establishment during the ensuing Cold War period. Pursuing what was termed “the national interest,” it also engaged in numerous unilateral ventures, including toppling foreign government and waging brutal, vastly destructive wars (such as the one in Vietnam).
But this is only part of the story, for there was always another America — one recognizing it was just and necessary to move nations beyond national selfishness to global cooperation. This tendency might be called “Global Community.”
After all, the U.S. government did play a major role in initiating the League of Nations, and ultimately moved beyond the isolationism embraced by the America First Committee to engage and defeat the fascist powers. It also played a significant part in establishing the United Nations, which is appropriately headquartered in America’s largest city.
In the years before World War II, the American government terminated its occupation regimes in Caribbean nations. After the war, it ended its postwar occupation regimes in European and Asian nations.
To aid in postwar European recovery, it created the Marshall Plan, a massive economic aid program that played a key role in reviving war-torn Western Europe. After the establishment of the United Nations, it became the body’s leading funder and promoter of international security and humanitarian aid programs.
Nor was this all.
In the postwar years, the U.S. government supported termination of colonial regimes by European colonial powers that had long ruled much of Africa and Asia, thereby dramatically increasing the number of independent nations. Meanwhile, it swept away its previously discriminatory immigration system, resulting in a more multicultural society.
Although the U.S. government continued to engage in great power confrontation, it eventually accepted that conflict’s peaceful termination through international agreements. These included very significant nuclear arms control and disarmament treaties that did not give primacy to America or any other country.
Some years later, the Obama administration followed up by pressing, albeit unsuccessfully, for creation of a nuclear-free world. Determined to tackle the global climate crisis, it signed the Paris climate accord.
How did it happen that these two quite different approaches to the world developed in the policies of the same nation?
In fact, America’s relationship to the rest of the world has always been contested terrain. From the Know Nothings, to the Ku Klux Klan, to Trump’s nativist movement, the United States has always contained plenty of people hostile to foreigners and celebrate a nativist “Americanism.” There have also been plenty of forces on the other side — from the League of Universal Brotherhood, to the United Nations Association, to Citizens for Global Solutions — who’ve argued we’re all in this together.
At present, the America Firsters are clearly in control. But the future is never predictable.
Indeed, it’s quite possible there will eventually be a revival of the impetus to build a global community — one capable of addressing the world’s problems and perhaps even overcoming them. From my perspective, that would be a great day for both America and the world.
Dr. Lawrence Wittner, syndicated by PeaceVoice, serves as a professor emeritus of history at the State University of New York/Albany.
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