The United States turns inward. It happens every so often. There exists in this country an age-old compulsion toward isolationism that began with George Washington and re-emerges intermittently. "Mind your own business" is a most American expression.
President Barack Obama is moving in that direction. He came to power intent on ending the two wars, in Iraq and Afghanistan, in which his country had become mired. He has almost achieved that (with the majority's applause, it should be said). America's enthusiasm for war is like a television series: it lasts 13 weeks.
According to a study published by the Heritage Foundation, when Obama leaves office, the U.S. Army will have barely 450,000 soldiers ready to fight, parceled in 30 combat brigades. It will continue to be the world's most important military force, probably invincible, but it will be 20 percent smaller than what it was when Obama became its commander in chief.
Obama wanted to close down the Guantanamo prison and, before ending his term, he will end up returning that military installation to Cuba's Castro brothers. His new Cuba policy consists of unilaterally eliminating any vestige of militant hostility toward the dictatorship, even if that means sacrificing Cuba's democrats. That means his abrogation of the "regime change" objective.
His accords with Iran are heading in the same direction. The White House doesn't mind weakening to exhaustion its relations with Israel, so long as it can cancel its conflicts with the ayatollahs. Nor is it excessively concerned that the Saudis, Egyptian, and Turks may end up developing a Sunni nuclear arsenal to counter the Shiite equivalent that Tehran will inevitably manufacture.
This isolationist tendency has deep roots in the self-perception of the U.S. ruling class. To the founding fathers, "the American people" were a society composed of peaceful people devoted to working in the fields and commerce. That was Thomas Jefferson's vision: a sweet rural Arcadia. He thought that his country should exert great international influence, but through the example of its republican virtues, not through force.
But there were other visions. The first half of the 19th Century saw the rise of the idealists, who were very much into the English political philosophy of the time. These Americans believed in the different nature of the United States, a different nation, chosen by Providence to improve human beings. The country was called to lead the world toward development, democracy, law and liberty.
In 1839, a journalist coined the expression Manifest Destiny. The nation ought to civilize the planet. That slogan served to justify the annexation of Texas and northern Mexico. It was also a matter of racial responsibility. The whites were to carry the load of that civilizing task. In 1899, Rudyard Kipling wrote some verses defending the greatness of the conquest of the Spanish-held Philippines by the United States: "The White Man's Burden." Teddy Roosevelt considered it a bad poem but an excellent political alibi.
Shortly before, in 1893, American colonists allied to religious missionaries staged an unjustified but bloodless military coup against the very creative Hawaiian Queen Liliuokalani, a writer and composer. President Grover Cleveland was horrified and refused to accept the coup. It fell to his successor, William McKinley, to incorporate the archipelago into the Union and grant U.S. citizenship to its inhabitants.
However, it wasn't until 1959, two years before Obama's birth, that Hawaii became the 50th state. I have always thought that the Hawaiian factor must have weighed heavily on the President's perception of his country's history and his own role within that narrative. What does a biracial Hawaiian, the son of a Kenyan, by way of Indonesia, have to do with John Adams or Andrew Jackson?
In Hawaii, someone is born and raised not celebrating the nation but rancorously commemorating the original imperialist sin. The territory is distant and different from the U.S. stereotype, the ethnic composition is different. Hawaii was untouched by slavery or the Civil War, and mixed-race marriages were commonplace. Until the raid on Pearl Harbor, it was a state without battles or glorious heroes, a land that preferred hula dancing to military marches.
Within those circumstances, it was predictable that Obama would tilt toward isolationism, as half the population is doing today. Of course, eventually the pendulum will swing to the opposite direction and other leaders will proclaim that the mission of the United States is to defend freedom worldwide -- as Harry Truman and John F. Kennedy during the Cold War did.
Internationalism is not permanently worn out. It has only faded temporarily.
(AP photo)
