Resisting the New Isolationism
David Skidmore
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Even as globalization impels much of the world toward novel forms of international
cooperation, a new age of American isolationism appears to be at hand. Not since
the 1930s has the United States shown such indifference - even hostility - toward
the need for international engagement. The renewed parochialism that currently hobbles
American foreign policy threatens U.S. values and interests, both at home and abroad.
Consider recent headlines. Congressional opposition forces President Clinton
to withdraw his request for fast-track trade negotiating authority. Proposals for
funding U.S. contributions to the United Nations and the International Monetary Fund
fail due to congressional squabbling over international family planning programs.
The Clinton Administration refuses to sign a new global treaty banning the production
and deployment of landmines. Congressional leaders denounce a new international accord
to combat global warming.
These are not the only ways in which the U.S. has begun to isolate itself
from the global community. The Congress has refused to approve a major international
convention on biological diversity. The U.S. is one of only two countries in the
world (Somalia is the other) which has failed to ratify the U.N. Convention on the
Rights of Children.
The U.S. is currently over $1 billion in arrears on its assessments for
the United Nations budget, a debt that is threatening to cripple the UNís
effectiveness. Among 18 advanced industrialized nations, the U.S. ranks next to last
in the percentage of its national income devoted to foreign assistance for poor countries.
Overall, spending on government agencies that deal with international affairs, including
the State Department, the Agency for International Development, the United States
Information Agency and the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, has fallen by firty
percent in real terms since 1984.
Media coverage of international events has shrunken dramatically over the
past decade while surveys show that public interest, knowledge and concern over world
affairs has fallen off sharply.
American parochialism not new. Isolationism largely defined American foreign
policy for almost a century and a half following the War of Independence. While World
War I briefly pulled America out of its cocoon, the Senate rejected American participation
in Woodrow Wilsonís visionary League of Nations after the war, undermining
the potential for U.S. international leadership over the ensuing two decades.
The threats to American security posed first by Nazi Germany and later the
Soviet Union prompted domestic support for a new American role in the world. As long
as the United States faced a clear and compelling overseas threat, Americans were
willing to back an internationalist and outward-looking foreign policy. Fear, more
than any positive vision of global order, provided the domestic foundation for American
international leadership.
Thankfully, the end of the Cold War and the absence of any new global adversary
has relieved this sense of insecurity toward the outside world. Unfortunately, however,
another byproduct of this more relaxed attitude toward international affairs is the
revival of isolationist sentiment.
A new internationalist consensus must be based upon something other than
the traditional foundations of fear and the need to rally against a powerful enemy.
The case for international engagement rests fundamentally upon the positive benefits
to be had from global cooperation in areas such as economic exchange, arms control,
environmental protection and human rights.
Only vigorous political leadership at home can create a climate in which
Americans understand and embrace the need for continued U.S. participation in devising
a more peaceful, prosperous and just international order. Unfortunately, the cause
of internationalism has no visible champions among the nationís political
leadership today. We have a president who treats international affairs as an afterthought
and who seems unwilling to invest his political capital in combating the drift toward
isolationism. The congress is increasingly dominated by politicians from both parties
who take refuge in popular but irresponsible nationalist rhetoric.
There are some bright spots. Citizens diplomacy, bubbling from the bottom
up, has proven an increasingly potent antodote to isolationism. Consider (1) the
grassroots campaign to ban landmines, (2) the threat of a consumer boycott that forced
Nike and other multinational corporations to improve conditions in the Third World
sweatshops where their products are made or (3) the success of environmental groups
who have compelled the World Bank and other international economic institutions to
pay more attention to environmental sustainability in their lending policies. All
of these initiatives and others are the products of a far-sighted minority committed
to weaving ties of morality and mutual interest across national borders. Perhaps
it is to ourselves that we must look for inspiration and positive action.
Global leadership is a wasting asset. Left unexercised, it can easily wither
away. During this critical transition period in world politics, a golden opportunity
to help shape the contours of a more cooperative global order is slipping through
our grasp. Amid the ravages of World War II, many Americans came to regret the complacency
that enfeebled U.S. diplomacy during the twenties and thirties. Let us hope that
the lesson can once more be remembered.