Washington, we have a problem. The United States appears to be retreating into isolationism in ways not seen in a century and a half, with potentially appalling consequences. And we couldn’t be handling it worse if we were Kremlin plants.
If you value the Pax Americana, and you should, we must find some way of persuading our neighbours and long-time protectors not to lay their burden down. Childish abuse won’t get it done. Calling Donald Trump a pro-Russian tyrant will certainly not persuade him or his MAGA supporters to reengage with the world on our terms.
Our problem isn’t treason or tyranny down south. It’s isolationism. In the National Post Terry Glavin quoted Vice-President J.D. Vance from 2022, as if it were self-refuting, that “I don’t really care what happens in Ukraine one way or the other.” But he really doesn’t. It’s not about being pro-Putin. He, Trump, and many regular Americans think it doesn’t matter much how the war ends, just that it does, at least for them. And if you disagree, reason with them. Don’t heckle them.
Americans have been carrying the main burden of defending freedom since 1945, political, commercial, intellectual, even of the seas, at considerable cost in treasure and some in blood. Not perfectly, of course. But the world has benefitted enormously, despite pundits childishly enthusing about China’s rise. Unfortunately many Americans are now tired of it.
They’re tired of the burden, and fed up with the ingratitude and endless insults. Consider Vance’s pointed remarks to a European security conference. It’s the kind of thing Americans have been trying to raise with their European counterparts since the Nixon years. And Europeans have chronically responded with a ghastly combination of weakness and haughtiness.
As for Canada, ever since I was a kid cheap anti-Americanism has been a staple of our politics and culture. They were going to steal our water, abscond with our economy, pollute our airwaves with their vulgar materialism blah blah blah. Remember Carolyn Parrish and her “Damn Americans, I hate those (*&^!%#$”?
Thus spake Canada’s intelligentsia. And now we boo their anthem. But if we hate them, why would they like us? And why exactly do we hate them for having protected us from tyranny for four generations?
Even if you disagree that we’re free-riding ingrates, suppose they mistakenly decide they’d be better off retreating into Fortress America and leaving us to face Putin and Xi with our cardboard militaries and gossamer sanctimony. Will it really help to rant with Andrew Coyne “The United States, under Mr. Trump, cannot be considered an idle bystander in the great twilight struggle between the democracies and the dictatorships, as it was in the 1930s. It is now on the side of the dictatorships…. The democratic world must therefore regard and treat it as it does the other non-democracies: not as an ally to be consulted but as an adversary to be contained.”
Riiight. Canada and Mexico will clamp America in a ring of steel while Conrad Black slaps it around and Eurocrats weep theatrically. Never mind that the Canadian Armed Forces might struggle to defeat the New York Guard, let alone the New York Army National Guard. Puff yourself up and hiss.
Alternatively, if we’re frightened of a U.S. retreat into isolationism under Trump or someone better-informed, we could lay aside feckless insolence for an adult analysis and an adult solution.
On the first, drawing on foreign policy expert Walter Russell Mead’s superlative Special Providence, the U.S. actually has two deep-seated “isolationist” traditions. One Meade calls “Jeffersonian”, a largely left-wing concern that imperial entanglements undermine Americans’ republican virtue (think Vietnam protesters). Another is “Jacksonian,” on the right, contemptuous of foreigners and their quarrels but powerfully resentful of attacks on American interests or honour.
Both have long been subordinate because of the lessons of the 1930s, and indeed 1900s, to America’s two internationalist traditions: Mead’s “Hamiltonian” Realpolitikers on the right, like Nixon, and “Wilsonian” New World Order types on the left, from George Bush Sr. to Obama. But the across-the-board crumbling of the “Establishment” grip on American public affairs, due to its many arrogant failings, has helped put isolationism back in the driver’s seat. Jacksonian isolationism.
Now for the adult solution. The more this retreat appalls us, the more we need respectful persuasion not crass insults. We must convince Americans that abandoning their role of world policeman will endanger them too, which starts by showing appreciation for their irreplaceable contribution to Western freedom.
Swallow your bile if you must. Because the truth is we need the U.S. a lot more than it needs us on security. Which requires a mature, courteous approach, assuring them they need no longer carry the burden of defending liberty unilaterally on behalf of allies impersonating ungrateful adolescent halfwits.
After all, we are the grownups, right?
National Post