Another year, another unintelligible description of President Bush's agenda for our nation and the world. This year, President Bush decided to obscure his plan's shortcomings even (and the recent flak both he, his party, and his projects have taken) by emphasizing the idea of isolationism, confounding many in this country, myself included.
President Bush spoke about America's role as a leader of the global community, happily burdened with the task of economically and politically developing the backwards nations of this world. Bush cited that this was no time to adopt an isolationist policy, as it would "end in danger and decline". More specifically, President Bush emphasized that it was necessary to stay the course in Iraq and work for a global economy that can develop and benefit all.
I'm assuming President Bush was attempting to illicit memories of US "isolationism" from the 1930s, so negatively attached to the rise of Nazism and Japanese Imperialism and a direct cause of the Second World War. Many historians attribute President Roosevelt's isolationist policy allowed the initial successes of the Axis powers and the continuation of mass murder in both Europe and Asia. While this is a noble but futile attempt to justify, glorify, and relate his cause, I would argue that the United States was being neither isolationist then as it is now.
If we are assuming that the United States stood by and watched Europe and Asia destroy itself starting in 1937, we are denying a historical truth: the United States was the strongest and most productive country in the world. US products were shipped to the entire world and its economy dictated the global economic environment (see Great Depression), as it does today.
What does this mean? The United States was far from neutral during the early years of World War II simply because it had national interests abroad. Even before Hitler invaded Poland in 1939, full scale war had existed for two years in Asia, where Japanese troops marched into major cities in China. America, fearing a threat to its interests in the Far East and a powerful Japanese Empire, placed an oil embargo upon the Japanese, severely limiting its navy and national ability to produce. America's aggressive actions toward Japan, while not direct, forced Japan into an unwinnable situation where it was forced to advance south to aquire another source of oil. Standing in their way?
The US Pacific Fleet stationed at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. Now ask yourself again who started the Pacific War?
How about the lend-lease program, where US material was sent to England and the Soviet Union for use in the front against Nazi forces. While the United Stgates remained diplomatically neutral, they obviously had an agenda. It was in America's best interest to defeat Fascism, and I suspect that President Roosevelt was simply waiting for the right moment to rally the nation around this goal. Pearl Harbor seemed to do the trick.
What kind of isolationism is that? Seems to me that the United States was very heavily involved in foreign affairs, even though US troops were not technically fighting and the nation was not at war. I say that isolationism is not an appropriate way to describe US foreign policy in the 1930s and the early 1940s.
I can go on…how about US troops being sent to the Phillippines and Cuba during the Spanish American War? Whoever says America has never pursued an imperialist agenda must have missed the American banana plantations and US military bases in the early 20th Century in Havana and Manila. US troops were sent to China to quell the Boxer Rebellion; was it for suffering Chinese people…or for rights to ship US goods to Shanghai?
My point is that the United States has never adopted an isolationist attitude toward the world: they have too much going for them, even at its inception. Isolationism then was not the same as the isolationism now that Bush condemns. Bush's isolationism is almost a sense of apathy toward world affairs and a desire to remove America from foreign affairs and global markets. This is simply an ideal, not to be confused with the misnomer from the past.
In this sense, President Bush is trying to instill an unnecessary ethic of sacrifice into Americans, that it is somehow our full responsibility to oversee the development of this world and to ensure the freedoms and rights of all (see Kipling's White Man's Burden for the British version from 100 years ago).
I can't completely disagree with these statements. I have no problem with globalization; in fact, I think its a great idea, benefitting everyone with the ingenuity of not just American but everyone's goods. In this sense I agree with President Bush that American should strive to produce and sell abroad, because in the end it benefits everyone. I'd go futher into this, but that's for another post.
America must look to its best interest, and it is President Bush's job to do just that. But Bush has warped this idea of best interest a long time ago, invading a country that posed no threat to our nation and prolonged a war without purpose. Whats more, instead of trying to fix his mess, Bush has instead looked to future campaigns in order to further his dream of "pax-americana". He mentioned Iran, emphasizing that America wanted to be the "closest of friends". But he alluded to a religious elite that held the nation hostage and its people down.
President Bush: friends don't pursue regime change for its friends. Especially if they're closest friends.
Maybe what I'm trying to say is we need to reassess our idea of global involvement. Granted, the United States is the most powerful country in the world and its technology can benefit everyone, whether it is helping cure AIDs victims in Africa or developing genetically enhanced food for starving people in India. But my bold claim for the day is perhaps America is being too bold in also pursuing regime change in nations deemed "rogue", because this demonstrates the problem the globe has with us: our arrogance has led us to assume that our way is the only way, that democracy, this western notion we know and love so much, is the prescription for everything, and that alternative states are outdated, misguided, and ultimately wrong. We are currently teetering between pursuing our own national security abroad and establishing an American hegemony.
As this next year unfolds, we have to look to past precedent and ask ourselves: is our selflessness truly for those we want to help, or for American interest abroad?
