Meditations on American Foreign Policy – VII America Again

American politics tends to follow the trend of American popular opinion. Yuval Noah Harari, in his 2018 book 21 Lessons for the 21^st Century, talks about how people’s views are shaped by stories. We used to have three major stories in the world – Fascism, Communism, and Liberalism. World War II killed fascism as a viable story. The fall of the Soviet Union killed communism as a viable story. And now liberalism is falling apart. So we are left with no story, and as a result, political chaos until a new story emerges.

I think Harari’s argument is an interesting way to look at American foreign policy. Something significant is certainly happening in American culture. Note that in the last election, there was almost no talk about foreign policy. Note that the current crop of 2020 presidential hopefuls are all talking about domestic issues – free college, universal health care, social justice, immigration policy, etc, etc. There is almost no talk of foreign policy – of America’s place or responsibilities in the wider world. I think perhaps this reflects the inward – even selfish, even egotistical – focus of the younger generations, who are fascinated with “selfies”, who seem to share a sense of entitlement, some of whom need to document their every daily thought and action on twitter (as if anyone cares), and whose major political concerns tend to be centered around themselves or the group they identify with as victims of this or that oppression.

That self-centered approach to life will no doubt be reflected more and more in our foreign policy, in which we Americans may become even more clueless to the differences in other cultures, and may pull back even more from world affairs. Certainly America, like all nations, has at times been ignorant, heavy-handed and incompetent in its foreign policy, but despite that on the whole the American presence has been good for the world – it has largely kept the peace. Robert Kagen, in his 2012 book The World America Made, argues that without America the world today would be a much poorer, much grimmer world, and I find his arguments convincing. Peter Zeihan, in his 2016 book The Absent Superpower predicts just such a withdrawal of America from world affairs, since we are no longer dependent on Middle East oil (because of fracking), and therefore don’t care much what happens elsewhere.

If these predictions are accurate, the Washington foreign policy establishment that emerges as today’s neocons lose influence will be sharply different. But will they be better, or worse??