Walking away

Last week, America’s improbable president Donald Trump sent seismic shockwaves through the diplomatic, political, and environmental spheres with his entirely predictable announcement that the United States would proceed to withdraw from the 2015 Paris Accord on global warming. In doing so, he set his country on a course in direct opposition to virtually the entire planet, with no likely advantage to be gained. Astounding as the decision may appear, however, it could be the most essentially American diplomatic decision he will ever make.

The Accord, whittled down almost to the point of meaninglessness in a futile attempt to mitigate American intransigence, proved too be entirely too disadvantageous in the mind of a man who can only see negotiations in terms of winners and losers and who insists he can make ‘a better deal’ for American taxpayers - an assumption completely absurd on the face of it. Nevertheless, Trump is not inventing entrenched domestic opposition to the agreement, which has been powerful for a variety of reasons, but neither is he inventing the United States’ reluctance to enter into binding agreements with anybody, for any reason. The decades of American global interventionism are recent and reluctantly arrived at.

From the beginning of the Republic, Americans have been leery of the “foreign entanglements’ that George Washington warned them about in his farewell address. It became part of American mythology that the nation’s uniqueness and strength stemmed from its separateness from the dynastic quarrels and unfairness of European society. Safely shielded by two vast oceans, American growth could overrun indigenous peoples and customs at will and help itself to vast untapped agricultural and mineral wealth.

This strategy generally succeeded until the early twentieth century when the ultimate clashing of European Empires eventually drew the young industrial giant into its murderous maw. America emerged from the First World War victorious – and incalculably more powerful – but nevertheless shaken by the barbarity, the destructiveness, and the ultimate pointlessness of it all. It was also intensely aware of the role that the domino effect of European alliances had played in the catastrophe.

Following the devastation, Europe fell under the compelling sway of American president Woodrow Wilson and his idea for preventing similar catastrophes through a global mechanism of arbitatration and compromise, moderated (and policed) by the international community. It was a revolutionary concept at the time and required a form of international cooperation hitherto unknown. Amidst great optimism and hope, the League of Nations was formed. Abruptly, the treaty fell victim to American partisan politics and was rejected by the very nation that had imagined it, inspired it, and set its political parameters. The League itself continued, but without the backing of the United States, but it’s effectiveness increasingly became more symbolic than real.

The League’s ultimate futility became evident in the 1930s as it crumbled in the face of the ambitions of both a militarized Japan and a vengeful Germany, once again dragging a reluctant America kicking and screaming into global international conflict. This time, however, America’s role was crucial, undeniable, and ultimately extremely impressive. This time, America’s dominance, its rejuvenated industrial might, and its overwhelming military capabilities placed it alone among the world’s powers. The Soviet Union, its only potential adversary, was menacing to be sure, but also exhausted, broken, and riven with its own internal strife.

Recognizing too late that the idea of an international organization might not be such a bad idea after all the United States and the victorious Allied Powers imposed the United Nations on a desperate world determined to establish a form of international cooperation on a fundamentally disorderly planet. The UN allowed the United States (along with four other ‘major powers’) to exercise their economic and military muscle in a controlled atmosphere, while allowing itself to veto any intervention of which it does not approve.

The United Nations served American purposes extremely well in its early decades allowing the wealth and power of the Western democracies to more or less set the terms of international relations, but as the conquests of the British, French, and other European Empires emerged as newly independent nations with UN membership, western hegemony in terms of international agreements and concerns slowly began to dissipate and the needs and concerns of different communities forcefully began to emerge. As America began to find itself facing increasing and more diverse opposition within the forum, its faith and commitment have waned, and once again, America is turning in on itself and reverting to a traditional response.

America’s other major international commitment has been the North American Treaty and the organization it spawned, designed to thwart the enormous threat posed by the Soviet Union, which had borne the most, and suffered the greatest, in the war against Hitler. Armed with a compelling ideological argument, the menace was real and posed a revolutionary threat to the battered western democracies that has emerged from the war. During the Cold War, NATO served as a vitally useful political, economic, and strategic extension of American Foreign Policy. As such, it struggled to find its purpose in the postsoviet world and in doing so, has made some problematic decisions the consequences of which are only now becoming apparent.

In the rush to fill the vacuum left by the collapsing Soviet Empire, the alliance was quick to welcome former the latter’s newly liberated former subjects as full members, and, in doing so, extending a military commitment that could only be seen as aggressive by the chaotic Russian state as it struggled to adjust to a post-communist world. In some eyes, NATO had changed from a defensive organization to the instrument of a new imperialism, and a potentially dangerous one at that.

When Donald Trump let it slip that he believed that NATO is ‘obsolete,’ he wasn’t entirely speaking out of his rear end, although he might not really be aware that. In the absence of any real threat to Western Europe from Russia, a huge military enterprise geared specifically against such a threat really can be described as ‘obsolete,’ although, as even the Donald might have learned, it won’t be universally well-received if you do.

So ultimately, Trump’s decision to withdraw from a climate treaty is not terribly surprising or unusual. What is significant, however, is the clear decision to aggressively turn the country’s back on meaningful cooperation for mutual benefit. As huge swaths of the American economy are not only committed, but dedicated to reaching the Paris Agreement requirements and political attitudes are joining with market pressures to head in the same direction. trump’s bombastic announcement may be meaningless ecologically in the long run.

Politically, however, it is a declaration to the world that the United States is abandoning the world leadership that has created so much of the world’s strife and is returning to the isolationist, selfcentred attitude that pervaded the 1930s and which first bellowed ‘America First’ as a guiding principle. This time, however, the threats are not external, but once again, there’s nowhere really to hide.