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The recent whirlwind of Trump administration foreign policy measures―many reversing those of the Biden administration―illustrates the fact that Americans have sharply different opinions about their relationship to other nations.
The Trump approach―which he has labeled “America First”―is clear enough. He has blocked U.S. 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, the Open Skies Treaty, and the INF Treaty). Taking a hard line against the foreign-born for their alleged criminality and “poisoning the blood” of Americans, he has suspended refugee asylum in the United States and begun the process of arresting and deporting 11 million migrants.
Trump’s vision of America’s role in the world relies upon a vast U.S. military buildup and tariff wars to coerce other nations into line with his aims. Indeed, he has even blatantly championed old-fashioned imperialist expansion by calling for annexing Greenland, Canada, the Panama Canal, and Gaza―the latter to be purged of its Palestinian population. Not surprisingly, his administration has shown particular contempt for international organizations, promising a crackdown on the United Nations and sanctioning the International Criminal Court and its supporters. Recently, he has withdrawn the United States from the World Health Organization and the UN Human Rights Council.
Although it’s doubtful that this mixture of strident nationalism and xenophobia benefits Americans, it does have deep roots in American history. In the nineteenth 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 century, when the U.S. government colonized and annexed the Philippines, Hawaii, Guam, Samoa, and Puerto Rico and, also, militarily intervened in Mexico, the Caribbean nations, 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 century. 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 century.
In the aftermath of World War I, what became known as “isolationism” swept through the United States, ultimately leading the U.S. government to reject membership in the League of Nations and the World Court, as well as to adopt a policy of “appeasement” of the fascist nations, then busy conquering portions of Europe, Africa, and Asia. Even after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor brought the U.S. government into World War II and produced growing respect for international law, the U.S. government, during the Cold War years, insisted upon maintaining the world’s mightiest military establishment. 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 that 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, in moving beyond isolationism (and its leading advocate, the America First Committee) and defeating the fascist powers. It also played a very significant part in establishing the United Nations, appropriately headquartered in America’s largest city. Just as, in the years before World War II, the American government terminated its occupation regimes in Caribbean nations, so, 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, the U.S. government became its leading funder, promoting the international organization’s worldwide international security, humanitarian, and health programs.
Nor was this all. In the postwar years, the U.S. government supported the termination of colonial regimes by the European colonial powers that had ruled much of Africa and Asia, thereby dramatically increasing the number of independent nations. Meanwhile, it swept away the previous U.S. discriminatory immigration system, resulting in a more multicultural society. Although the U.S. government continued to engage in great power confrontation during the Cold War, it eventually accepted that conflict’s peaceful termination through international agreements. These included very significant nuclear arms control and disarmament treaties―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 the creation of a nuclear weapons-free world. Furthermore, determined to tackle the growing 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?
The answer appears to lie in the fact that America’s relationship to 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 celebrating a mythical “Americanism.” And there have also been plenty of people―from the League of Universal Brotherhood, to the United Nations Association, to Citizens for Global Solutions―who have argued that we’re all in this together.
At present, the America Firsters are clearly in control of the U.S. government. But, of course, the future is never predictable. Indeed, it’s quite possible that there will be a revival of the impetus to build a global community—one that can address the world’s problems and even, perhaps, overcome them.
That would be a great day for both America and the world.
