Andrew J.

Get ready for a wild ride

Going by his behaviour so far, it’s either that or win big

Every American president since Harry Truman has arrived in the White House committed to globalism — a belief that America must lead always and everywhere — as the central organising principle of US foreign policy. In recent years, we have seen Barack Obama’s faith in globalism waver. The prospect of President Donald Trump abandoning globalism altogether is real.

For US allies as varied as Britain, Japan, Saudi Arabia and Israel, American globalism has been the gift that has never stopped giving. Nations enjoying a ‘special relationship’ with Washington have relied on American power to shield them from danger and, to some extent, from bearing the consequences of their own folly, past and present.


Listen to Andrew J. Bacevich and Freddy Gray discussing Trump’s foreign policy


Motives other than kindness and goodwill have shaped US policy throughout. Sustaining American globalism has been the conviction that its benefits are reciprocal and its costs affordable. British diplomatic and military support has on multiple occasions endowed American muscle–flexing with a sheen of legitimacy, especially since the end of the Cold War. Japan’s willingness to host US forces has helped sustain American primacy in the Pacific, won at Japanese expense in 1945. In return for guaranteeing the security and survival of the Saudi monarchy, the US gained privileged access to the world’s most abundant oil reserves. Providing extraordinary military largesse and diplomatic cover to Israel ostensibly kept alive prospects of resolving the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, believed in some quarters to hold the key to restabilising the Middle East.

At the outset of his presidency, Obama was a true believer in American globalism. Yet his was a faith that had not been tested. Over the course of his two terms, a succession of crises and disappointments transformed believer into sceptic.

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