America’s Place in the World

Here’s something to think about: The Pew Foundation and The Council on Foreign Affairs have just completed their survey on the American public’s view of the world. America?¢?‚¬?„¢s Place In The World 2005.

Looks like America is headed back to its isolationist home. The post World War ll engagement in world affairs was an aberration. World powers always oscillate between going it alone and multi-lateralism, and reality always intrudes into the policy maker’s vision. Unfortunately the past few years have shown the limits of America’s ability to go it alone: it has failed [or barely succeeded depending on your politics] to subdue a middling nation, and to suppress an insurgency that cannot be anywhere near as well funded as the American military. The world now knows the limits. So does the American public.

Add that to the dawning reality that the American standard of living is highly [if not totally] dependent on international relationships — sometimes negatively as in outsourcing etc. — and you have a potent isolationist brew: we hate everyone out there because we can’t boss them anymore, they are ungrateful for all our ‘help and aid’, and now they hit us beneath the belt by ‘stealing’ our jobs.

Neither political party has an agenda that maps to that reality: they have failed to persuade Americans that the world counts for much other than being a source of danger. If you can’t bully anyone anymore, and you don’t want to play ball with a whole bunch of argumentative foreigners, what else can you do but to pick up and go home?