For much of the last century--ever since Theodore Roosevelt dragged us, kicking and screaming, onto the world stage--the US has been a major player in global affairs. With the exception of the periods of disillusionment and loss of confidence in ourselves and our institutions, the dull and dismal years when the Isolationists reigned supreme in the Twenties and Thirties or the hand-wringing decade of thinking small which followed our defeat in Vietnam, the US has been a major player, at times the major player in world affairs.
When we have been engaged with the world, our focus has been the preservation of democracy. When we have retreated from the global stage, the loser has always been democracy.
One of the most compelling lessons of Twentieth Century history is that provided by the results of our twenty year love affair with isolationism. The roots of this disastrous lurch were readily apparent then and now. The outcome of World War I was not, as we had been promised by the highly idealistic President Wilson, an end to war and a world safe for democracy. This unfortunate split between promise and consequence made it very easy to surrender to the appealing message of George Washington's Farewell Address and recoil from not only "entangling alliances" but any non-commercial relationship with any country beyond our borders.
The seductive nature of "minding our own business" was enhanced by a strong strain of nativism which ran through American society as reflected by the increasingly restrictive immigration laws of the post-World War I period. Keeping to ourselves seemed to assure maintaining our purity. The notion of foreigners and foreign ideas polluting us was reflected as well by the resolute policy of non-recognition regarding those evil commies of the new Soviet Union.
The consequences of our willful retreat from the world were not only drearily predictable, they were highly and immediately visible. The iron jaws of authoritarian rule clamped hard and fast on Italy and, a few years later, Germany. These ideologically propelled regimes formed two thirds of a new anti-democratic steel triangle. The final component was the military dominated government of Japan.
All three anti-democratic, authoritarian regimes were expansionist. In each case the expansionism was predicated largely upon artifacts of mythology which rivaled religion in their attractiveness and pervasiveness. In these features the ideological/mythological bases of Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and Shinto/Imperial Japan were rivaled by the Marxist-Leninist faith of the Soviet Union.
The democracies of Western Europe never went "officially" isolationist, but, led by Great Britain and France, all had lost belief in the power of their own polities and societies in the mud and blood of the World War I trenches. The self-confidence, the belief in national values, the assurance that one's way of life deserved protection even at the cost of millions killed had all perished in the vast slaughters of what was called, "the Great War."
Had the US not embraced the false security of retreat behind its own borders, it is arguable that not only would Hitler and his counterparts in Rome and Tokyo have had to take account of the US in pursuing ambitions, but the political will of the European democracies would have been reinforced as well. The absence of the US, the almost literal rejection of the world by Americans, made certain that the wobbly democracies of Europe would wobble all the more--and the ambitions of ideological frenzy stoked.
When the US was finally given no choice--bombs on Pearl Harbor being an invitation that could not be declined--it entered the war with one paramount goal. The goal was that of making the world safe for us by making it decidedly unsafe for dictators.
Stripped of cant and other rhetorical trappings, the goal of the US during the long, frustrating, and occasionally down right terrifying years of the Cold War was the same--self defense by preserving democracy against the threat of expansionist, ideologically committed authoritarian regimes. While the monolithic global communist menace never existed in realty, and the Soviet Union often quite conservative, cautious in pursuing its goals, the fact remained that democracy--and its adjunct, state regulated capitalism--were under real, ongoing threat from the Kremlin, from the Forbidden City, from numerous other regimes which embraced Marxist-Leninist ideology.
Looking back at the half century of the Cold War it is evident that the single greatest category of errors committed by the US was that of counting as allies countries which were not democratic but merely "anti-communist." By confusing means with ends we often were our own worse enemy. Democracy cannot be preserved, let alone expanded, by authoritarian governments.
In hindsight the errors of relying on totalitarian regimes in the defense of democracy are in high relief. No one can miss them-or their harmful effects.
There is a cliche which relates to this reality quite well: To be forewarned is to be forearmed. The same cliche applies to the latest threat confronting democracy both here and abroad. We have been forewarned about both the threat posed by violent political Islam and the danger of reposing defense of democracy in regimes which are not democratic.
The US is at a tipping point. The elections of 2010 and 2012 will go a long way in determining how--or even if--the US will seek to preserve and defend democracy against its latest adversary.
It doesn't matter that the most recent incarnation of anti-democratic, expansionist authoritarianism comes in the guise of religion or, at the least, religiously based ideology. Quoting sacred literature, waving copies of a sacred book, invoking religious sensibilities does not make violent (or non-violent) political Islam any less of a threat to our democratic center than were those presented by secular ideologies. As any number of contemporary Muslim clerics, scholars of jurisprudence, and governmental figures have made abundantly clear, there is no compromise possible between political Islam and democracy.
The threat is real. It is here and now. It will continue. If successful, political Islam will result in a world in which the US is less secure, less influential, less comfortable. If successful, political Islam will result in a world order in which the US is more isolated, more confined, more ill at ease.
The argument for confronting political Islam, by armed force if necessary, is identical in all respects to the one adduced to justify our opposition to the totalitarian regimes and their ideologies of the past century. Stripped down to the essentials, it is defending the US by defending democracy throughout the world. Their defense, the preservation of democracy over there is to defend ourselves, to preserve our core values.
The question confronting We the People is not so much "should we" as it is "who will?" That means who, what group, which party, will have the best ideas, the greatest political will, the orientation necessary to adequately and effectively preserve democracy both here and abroad?
It has become painfully obvious that the current president not only has no clear vision of the nature of the enemy, he has no real commitment to the idea that the US deserves to be preserved even in the most basic feature of democracy. Despite his recurrent mention of democracy in his speech to the UN General Assembly, one listens or reads Mr Obama's remarks with the uneasy feeling that he sees the US as being in some ineffable way inferior to the rest of the world.
In this Mr Obama is representing the strain of belief which permeated the American academy in the post-Vietnam, post-Watergate period. This period was the second outbreak of isolationism in the US. Unlike the first go-around during which Americans disengaged on the principle that the rest of the world was irredeemably inferior to the US, the second period, the one which was so influential on Mr Obama's world view as it has been the world views of so many others of the American hoi oligoi, grew from the warped notion that the US was inferior to the rest of the world.
It is the impact of the "blame America first" school of belief which is responsible not only for Mr Obama's hesitancy in defending American interests or even acknowledging that our interests and values are under attack by foreign exponents of political Islam but the identical attitude on the part of so many in the American political, media, and academic "elites." These individuals sincerely believe that the US is so impeached by its past and present record of discrimination, exploitation, racism, environmental destruction that it is exceptional only in the evil which it has wrought on the "less fortunate" in the world.
This is not to imply that the neo-isolationists reside only in the big tent of the Democratic Party. The advocates of disengagement are to be found in the ranks of the Republicans--and the Tea Party--as well. In these contexts, the proponents of "mind our own business" are not throwbacks to the first generation of isolationists. They, even the Ron and Rand Paul sort, are not atavistic in their arguments or conclusions.
Nor are they simple minded folk who equate our foreign involvements with the motives and goals of jihadists. They do not blame the US and the policies of administrations over the past sixty years for the attacks upon us by al-Qaeda and all the deadly others.
Their arguments and conclusions are based on the budgetary constraints operating on the US today. Correctly, they contend these constraints will not evaporate in the near future. As a result they are of the view that the US cannot afford either an ambitious foreign policy or the military forces which may (will?) be essential if we are going to preserve democracy. They contend the US must cut its foreign and national security policies to fit the financial cloth available.
This is not an irrational position. Nor is it irrational to view the American defense establishment and its collaborator, the foreign policy community, as vast money sumps in which dollars almost literally beyond counting can disappear without visible--or at least, useful--result. Every detached observer of the Pentagon, including the current Secretary of Defense, agrees this is and has been the case all too often.
Wars are expensive. But the wars we are currently fighting are on the cheap side of expensive costing less than either the Korean or Vietnam wars when expressed as a percentage of the GDP. Using the same method--percentage of GDP--our current defense expenditures including those of the foreign policy and intelligence communities are half of what they were in the days of Ike. (Back then they ran about ten percent and today a little under five.)
Too much of a reduction, arguably, any reduction in our defense and foreign policies would be a false economy of the worst sort. A retreat to our own borders might seem attractive not only for reasons of costs but also because our efforts seem so purposeless. (Take a dekko at Pakistan for complete justification of the latter contention.)
We have traveled that road before. Twice. In the first case, the retreat ultimately cost us much more not only in dollars, but, infinitely more importantly, in lives. In the second, the consequences were not so great, but that was due to an intelligent decision by We the People which aborted the second flirtation with withdrawal before the results became inordinately costly.
Given the state of play today with nuclear weapons available in Pakistan and soon to be such in Iran, the existence and growth of powerfully motivated groups adhering to violent political Islam, the existence of groups such as the Organization of the Islamic Conference, the Arab League, and states willing to support these entities in pursuit of national interest, it takes very little time for the costs to reach the unacceptable level. This means we do not have the luxury of time. If We the People do not decide quickly that our best means of preserving our democracy and all that arises from that is through an effective and robust foreign policy backed by a highly competent armed force so that democracy can be preserved wherever it exists, the consequences will be both irrevocable and unpleasant.
It's real simple, bucko. Democracy is worth preserving because we are worth preserving. To paraphrase a famed American admiral during the Civil War, David Porter, "Damn the expense! Full speed ahead!"
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