FLASH
Shkruar nga Menachem Rosensaft
Is America returning to a long tradition of isolationism...
Regardless of how the winners and losers are calculated in the deal to end the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, it is clear that a big loser was the United Nations.
Trump did not invite the UN to the ceasefire celebration, and that turned out to be irrelevant to both the negotiations and their outcome.
The avoidance of any role for the UN was consistent with Trump's disdain for international institutions, from USAID to NATO. Many have criticized this continued withdrawal from global institutions as a departure from long American traditions of global leadership.
But, in my opinion, it is a mistake to see Trump's approach to foreign policy and international relations as a departure from established norms of American policy and behavior.
Rather, I would argue that it is the internationalism of the 84 years after America's entry into World War II that should be considered a deviation.
International altruism played no role in American foreign policy. As long as European emperors, czars, and kings did not threaten or negatively affect American interests, the United States would stay well out of any entanglements on the other side of the Atlantic.
At home, as abroad, what we are seeing on the political scene is not an unprecedented break with American tradition. It is more a return to these old patterns.
Trump's widespread disdain for international institutions, including the UN, is reminiscent of the way President Warren G. Harding viewed the nascent League of Nations after World War I.
"It is right to say to the world, and especially to our war partners, that the League covenant cannot have any sanction from us," Harding declared in a 1921 speech.
In the same speech, Harding said: " I believe in protecting American industry, and our object is to make America first. The privileges of the American market are offered too freely to the foreign manufacturer today, and the effect on the greater part of our productivity is to destroy our self-reliance, which is the foundation of the independence and good fortune of our people. Moreover, imports must pay their fair share of our cost of government ."
International altruism played no role in American foreign policy.
If Harding's words sound a little familiar, that's because Trump's approach to tariffs is also firmly rooted in the long American isolationist tradition embodied by the Harding-Coolidge-Hoover administrations that preceded the election of Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932.
I'm not saying that the revival of a 'Hardingesque' ideology is a good thing. Not at all. But understanding the contemporary scene requires confronting the darker side of American history, rather than sweeping it under the rug./ Adapted from "Pamphlet", taken from "MomentMag".
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