32 HARPER’S MAGAZINE / MARCH 2020
LED BY A FOREIGN-POLICY
ESTABLISHMENT SUFFERING FROMTERMINAL INERTIA, WE HAVELOST OUR STRATEGIC BEARINGSyears called Operation Enduring Freedom), U.S. forces are not equipped to
accomplish such demanding work.
This record of non-success testifies to the bind in which the United States
finds itself. Saddled with outsized ambitions dating from the end of the Cold
War, confronted by dramatic and unanticipated challenges, and stuck with
instruments of power ill-suited to existing and emerging requirements, and led
by a foreign-policy establishment that suffers from terminal inertia, the
United States has lost its strategic bearings.
Deep in denial, that establishment nonetheless has a ready-made explana-
tion for what’s gone wrong: as in the years from 1939 to 1941, so too today a
putative penchant for isolationism is crippling U.S. policy. Isolationists are
ostensibly preventing the United States from getting on with the business
of amassing power to spread freedom, as specified in Marshall’s doctrine.
Consider, if you will, the following headlines dating from
before Trump took office: “Isolationism Soars Among
Americans” (2009); “American isolationism just hit a fifty-
year high” (2013); “America’s New Isolationism” (2013,
twice) “Our New Isolationism” (2013); “The New American
Isolationism” (2014); “American Isolationism Is Destabiliz-
ing the World,” (2014); “The Revival of American Isolation-
ism” (2016). And let us not overlook “America’s New Isola-
tionists Are Endangering the West,” penned in 2013 by
none other than John Bolton, Trump’s recently cashiered
national security adviser.
Note that when these essays appeared U.S. military
forces were deployed in well over one hundred countries
around the world and were actively engaged in multiple
foreign wars. The Pentagon’s budget easily dwarfed that of
any plausible combination of rivals. If this fits your definition
of isolationism, then you might well believe that President
Trump is, as he claims, “the master of the deal.” All the
evidence proves otherwise.
Isolationism is a fiction, bandied about to divert atten-
tion from other issues. It is a scare word, an egregious
form of establishment- sanctioned fake news. It serves as
a type of straitjacket, constraining debate on possible al-
ternatives to militarized American globalism, which has
long since become a source of self-inflicted wounds.
Only when foreign-policy elites cease to cite isolationism
to explain why the “sole superpower” has stumbled of late
will they be able to confront the issues that matter. Rank-
ing high among those issues is an egregious misuse of
American military power and an equally egregious abuse
of American soldiers. Confronting the vast disparity be-
tween U.S. military ambitions since 9/11 and the results
actually achieved is a necessary first step toward devising a
serious response to Donald Trump’s reckless assault on even the possibility
of principled statecraft.
Marshall’s 1942 formula has become an impediment to sound po licy. My
guess is that, faced with the facts at hand, the general would have been the
first to agree. He was known to tell subordinates, “Don’t fight the problem,
decide it.” Yet before deciding, it’s necessary to see the problem for what it
is and, in this instance, perhaps also to see ourselves as we actually are.
For the United States today, the problem turns out to be similar to the one
that beset the nation during the period leading up to World War II: not isola-
tionism but overstretch, compounded by indolence. The present-day disparities
between our aspirations, commitments, and capacities to act are enormous.
The core questions, submerged today as they were on the eve of U.S. entry
into World War II, are these: What does freedom require? How much will it
cost? And who will pay? QDonald Trump at a rally in Lake Charles, Louisiana, 2019 (detail) © Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images