Should we re-up?

America debates its world role

The presidential election of 1940 hinged on one question above all: whether the United States should enter the war in Europe, thereby taking upon itself responsibility for peace and order in a part of the world far from American shores. The election of 2024 is raising various issues, but none more important than the direct descendant of the 1940 question: whether the United States should continue to bear responsibility for peace and order in the world.

The answer of the electorate in 1940 was yes. The precedent-breaking third election of Franklin Roosevelt led immediately to Lend Lease aid to countries fighting Hitler and his allies, and within another several months to American belligerence. After the war ended in victory for the American side, Americans continued to support broad-gauged American involvement overseas. 

Eighty-four years later, Americans are being asked to re-up. President Joe Biden has wrapped himself in the cloak of Roosevelt in contending that the fate of democracy depends on the outcome of the war in Ukraine. And on the outcome of a possible war over Taiwan. And in a less clear-cut way on peace in the Middle East.

Former president Donald Trump has staked out a different position. By undercutting American support for Ukraine and threatening to renege on American commitments to NATO, Trump has reopened the 1940 debate. The election in November will be the closest thing to a referendum on America's world role in many decades.

This being so, it's not unreasonable to ask how well global responsibility has served the United States in the three generations since 1940. A related question is how well it has served the world. But the world doesn't vote for America's presidents, and candidates for the presidency plead the world's case only at their peril. Don't expect to hear that perspective this fall.

In absolute terms, the era of American hegemony has been the best time in American history. Americans today are far richer than their grandparents or great-grandparents were. The rights and privileges of American democracy are more widely spread and respected than ever. In defiance of most expectations at the end of World War II, the world and hence America have been spared World War III. On the core issues of peace and prosperity, Americans have thrived since 1940. The answer to the question of re-upping should be an easy yes.

But Americans in 2024 don't measure themselves against their grandparents or great-grandparents. The operative question in politics, including the politics of presidential elections, is what have you done for me lately? Candidates don't ask voters whether they're better off than Americans were in 1940. Candidates ask whether voters are better off than they were four years ago. 

The answer here isn't so straightforward. Many Americans hold a view articulated by Trump that their country has paid too much for whatever benefits it has derived from its large involvement in world affairs. Perhaps NATO helped prevent a major war in Europe, but the non-American members have been free-riding on American taxpayers for years, the skeptics say.

The critique of American globalism broadens. Others besides Trump chime in, asserting that the regime of free trade and dollar-centric finance the United States has sponsored since 1945 let China and other countries steal jobs from American workers, while rewarding the top one percent with exorbitant unearned profits. American immigration policies have reflected soft-headed liberalism rather than hard-headed self-interest. 

Meanwhile America engaged in several overseas wars—against communism in Korea and Vietnam, against Saddam Hussein in Iraq, and against the Taliban in Afghanistan—not one of which produced a clear and lasting victory. The wars in Vietnam and Afghanistan produced clear and excruciating defeats.

The doubters don't deny that Americans are better off on average today than Americans were eighty years ago. But they argue either that Americans are not as much better off as they would have been under different policies, or that the benefits from past policies won't continue into the future. Many lament the high and never-ending cost of American commitments overseas and believe tax dollars should be spent on domestic priorities.

Their case, being counterfactual or prospective, is impossible to prove. But it's equally impossible to disprove. Anyway, voters are moved less by arguments that end in QED than those that evoke WTF.

The latter is Trump's specialty. For most of the time since 1940 leaders of both parties have broadly accepted the FDR dictum that world peace required American leadership. A few Republicans followed Robert Taft in raising questions in the early 1950s, and George McGovern briefly beguiled the Democrats in the early 1970s. But the Roosevelt consensus held.

It continued to do so until Trump rode into the White House in 2017 on a wave of populism. Defenders of the consensus screamed “Isolationist!” in horror, as if that would silence the mob. It didn’t. Nor did the mob disperse. Instead it took over the Republican party and is carrying Trump to another nomination.

Defenders of the Roosevelt view are going to have to do better than name-calling. Trump’s followers haven’t been fazed by being branded as racists, sexists, homophobes and Nazis; they’ll hardly be daunted by being called isolationists.

This is as it should be. A policy as profound as the one positing a need for American leadership across the globe ought to be subjected to scrutiny every so often. Eighty-four years after it was adopted isn’t too soon to see if it still persuades a majority of Americans.

If it doesn’t . . . well, that’s how democracy works.