Just Finished Reading: America in Retreat – The New Isolationism and the Coming Global Disorder by Bret Stephens (FP: 2014) [231pp] 

When this arrived on my doormat, via Amazon, I read the blub on the back and almost decided NOT to read it. With everything going on right now, I thought a book on US isolationism (which, as far as I know has been a strong  and persistent theme in American politics from the earliest days) would be just the thing to illuminate things. The blub though made it quite clear that this book was going to be, above all else, a partisan critique of President Obama’s foreign policy to date. But, as the book was already bought and paid for and I had a companion volume already lined up, I bit the bullet and started reading. I’m actually glad I did, because this wasn’t half as bad as I thought it would be. 

It was, as you might imagine, about the idea of the US being or at least being portrayed as the world’s policeman. What really surprised me, especially coming from a right-wing commentator was that the author was in favour of America taking that role – up to a point. What he clearly wasn’t in favour of (and neither am I) was the twin ideas of regime change and nation building. The problem he sees is that American idealism leads to the belief (and subsequent actions) to ‘fix’ other countries problems and then hold themselves responsible to put them on the ‘right track’ to Freedom and Democracy. All laudable aims, but somewhat difficult to achieve in a reasonable timescale or at reasonable cost – both in blood and treasure. I think someone in the Bush administration, in reference to Iraq, said something along the line of ‘if you break something you own and need to fix it’. Of course, getting into a quagmire is much easier than getting out of one – as we’ve seen on our TV screens far too often. So, is retreat and new isolationism the answer? No, says the author. We know where isolationism and a refusal to interact with the real world ends up. What is needed is smart intervention, targeted, pragmatic, reasonable. Less of taking the moral ‘high ground’ and more supporting the global ‘rules-based order’ that has provided peace (by and large) and security (ditto) since the end of WW2. More cruise-missile, less boots on the ground, in fact more than analogous to the ‘broken windows’ policy practiced in US cities and exported elsewhere to combat low-level crime BEFORE things get out of control. 

Despite the obvious partisan slant and the personal animosity towards Obama throughout this book (which I mostly managed to ‘edit’ out whilst reading) I did find a fair bit of this book either at least interesting or illuminating. It’s useful, from time to time, to hear the arguments from ‘the other side’ to see how they fly or die on examination. I actually surprised myself more than once nodding in agreement with some of the authors arguments regarding both the failures of US Foreign Policy and what could be done better. Interestingly, some 10 years after initial publication, we are indeed seeing chaos and collapse increasing across the world as the US has steadily withdrawn – sometimes with spectacular bad ‘optics’ as in Afghanistan – from at least some of its involvement in geopolitics. Power abhors a vacuum and when the US refuses to act, and others are unwilling or unable to take its place, then still other actors will be more than happy to enter the breach for their own ends. The ‘trick’ is the ability to walk the line between being a cop on the beat and being an invading soldier. Interesting and worth reading. More to come...