Elements of Trump’s security strategy will survive. But—taking the long view—America needs Europe as much as Europe needs America.
By Tom Arms | London
It is too easy—especially in today’s 24/7 instant news world—to become overly focused on the minutiae of daily news events. Sometimes it is best to sit back and take the long view.
For instance Trump will not be in office for ever. Even if he manages to circumvent restrictions on a third presidential term, he may not be re-elected and he will certainly die. Looking at the Democrats lead in US opinion polls, there is even an outside chance that he could be impeached after next year’s mid-term elections.
As for the far-right of American politics. Its exponents may have over-reached themselves and they may be headed for an extended period in the political wilderness. And then again, they may not.
But this blog is mainly about foreign policy and President Trump recently published his 32-page Security Strategy which lays out his foreign policy priorities. So let’s examine his strategy within the context of a backward long view, starting with Washington’s Farewell Address in 1798. The first president’s last speech is most noteworthy for his warning against political involvement in European affairs. Commercial involvement—yes, great—but no alliances or political favoritism.
The great man’s successors followed his advice religiously. America was both a late and reluctant entrant to the battles of the First World War. And it only joined the fray because US banks were heavily committed to Britain and France and Germany was threatening the return of unrestricted submarine warfare. After the war, men like Senator Cabot Lodge, invoked the name of Washington to keep the US out of the League of Nations and in its splendid isolation.
Actually, it wasn’t completely isolated. From very early on, the US was heavily involved in the affairs of other countries in the Western Hemisphere. It started with Canada which became a refuge for many British loyalists fleeing the American colonists. They were angry neighbors and there was a plethora of border disputes and arguments over British forts in the Ohio River Valley. When the War of 1812 came along many American hawks thought Canada would be annexed and become an American state—beating Trump to the idea by 213 years.
Then there was the 1823 Monroe Doctrine. The inspiration of the United States coupled with the endemic weakness of Spain led to a series of revolts against Spanish rule in South and Central America. The result was a series of US-type revolts against Spanish rule. Washington was concerned that the newly-independent countries in the southern hemisphere would be re-colonized by other European powers, notably the “Unholy Alliance” of Russia, Austria and Prussia which had been formed to suppress moves towards independence and democracy.
The 1823 Monroe Doctrine was actually an informal alliance between Britain and America. The Americans got all the political kudos for warning off the Unholy Alliance and the Britain’s Royal Navy provided the necessary military muscle to make it work. The British reward was domination of South American trade for the next century (for full details see “America Made in Britain,” by Tom Arms, page 302-303).
Read: Unpacking a Trump Twist of the National Security Strategy
America’s next big foreign policy step was the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine which was the result of a clash between Britain (and France) over the Europeans insistence on using naval powers to collect debts from hard-up South American nations. Theodore Roosevelt basically said that the only country allowed to use force in the American hemisphere was the United States and it could do so in cases of “chronic wrongdoing, political instability or failure to meet international obligations.
And he used it. The most obvious example being the intervention in Panama which led to the US-built Panama Canal and US-controlled Panama Canal Zone. In the first 30 years of the Twentieth Century Roosevelt’s successors also made good use of his corollary to flex American muscle in Mexico, Haiti, Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic and Cuba.
America was well on its way to becoming an All-Americas imperial power when Franklin Delano Roosevelt put a stop to his cousin’s corollary with his “Good Neighbor Policy.”
Vestiges of both the Monroe Doctrine and the Roosevelt Corollary exist to this day. They were cited in Trump’s recent National Security Strategy and were used by post-World War Two administrations for interventions in Guatemala, Chile, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Grenada. El Salvador and Guatemala. But by 1950 they had been married with the anti-Soviet “Containment” policy of diplomat George F. Kennan and successive Cold War doctrines from Harry Truman, John F. Kennedy, Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan. Collectively they turned the US into the world’s policeman; a responsibility that Trump wants to shed.
World War two and the follow-up Cold War were a major departure from what had become the norm for the United States. But they also signaled the next evolutionary stage in the country’s development. By the start of the 20th century the American economy had grown so big that it was impacting on and being impacted by the wider world. America fought in the two world wars simply because it could not afford to stay out of them.
In the aftermath of the Second World War, it took a leading role because the bad experience of interwar isolationism. There were the additional facts that the US was needed to fill a power vacuum. Two world wars had virtually bankrupted the European powers who had been responsible for international stability and the rise of the Soviet Union threatened the basic political, economic and cultural values of the United States.
The focus of American foreign policy pivoted dramatically to Europe in the immediate postwar years because that is where the greatest threat was. The creation of NATO was the most obvious result and with NATO came the stationing of hundreds of thousands of American soldiers in Western Europe, and the extension of America’s nuclear umbrella to its European allies. Washington’s advice against permanent European alliances was ignored.
NATO prevented a war in Europe but proxy wars sprang up around the globe with the main backers being the US and Soviet Union and sometimes China and Cuba. These were Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, the Horn of Africa, Angola, El Salvador, Nicaragua, etcetera. Then the Cold War ended. The West won. The Soviet Union collapsed under the weight of an arms race and false ideology which had to be enforced through dictatorship and lies.
The search was on for a new focus. The Clinton Administration’s answer was globalization, the promotion of democracy, NATO expansion into the former Soviet empire, humanitarian intervention in Bosnia and Kosovo; all of which was a reflection of what was perceived as unipolar American dominance.
Then came the attack on the World Trade Centre and the Bush Administration shifted to the “War on Terror.” This in turn quickly led to the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, both of which were foreign policy disasters for the United States and its allies.
While America continued its role as the world’s policeman, its NATO allies in Europe were taking a Cold War “peace dividend.” Countries that were devoting 4-5 percent of their GDP during the Cold War years cut their defense spending to as little as 1.5 percent of GDP.
The row between Europe and America over defense spending had deep roots. It dates back to the Nixon Administration. President Johnson’s “guns and butter” policy had landed Richard Nixon with runaway inflation. In 1969 he issued his Nixon Doctrine which called on America’s allies to provide more troops for their own defense while at the same guaranteeing that the United States would honor its treaty obligations and continue to provide its nuclear umbrella. Trump’s Security Strategy uses similar language, only stronger and more politicized.
Every US administration since the 1970s has tried to reinforce the Nixon Doctrine. Up until Donald Trump they all failed. Trump has succeeded for two complementary reasons: He linked increased European defense spending to the threat of American withdrawal from NATO, and, more importantly, the Russian bear showed its talons by invading Ukraine.
President Trump’s National Security Strategy has echoes of America’s 19th century foreign policy but with some distinct differences. The biggest echo is the emphasis on Latin America and the distancing from Europe and its problems. The differences are the reasons for the change: immigration and plans for US financial and political dominance in the western hemisphere.
The biggest problem with the strategy is that we no longer live in the 19th century. America is so intermeshed with the wider world that it cannot afford to retreat from the rest of the world to concentrate on one region. It especially cannot afford a retreat from Europe. Trade between Europe and America tops $2 trillion a year and accounts for a third of all world trade.
Elements of Trump’s security strategy will survive. But—taking the long view—America needs Europe as much as Europe needs America.
Read: Observations of an Expat: MAGA Conned
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Tom Arms is foreign editor of Liberal Democrat Voice. He is also a contributor to “The New World” and the author of “America Made in Britain” and “The Encyclopedia of the Cold War.”
