America’s place and purpose in the world have been fiercely debated over the centuries. President Washington’s farewell address, for instance, was laced with warnings about foreign entanglements. In fact, he used the words “foreign” and “world” 17 times in his valedictory—almost all of them in a negative light. “It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world,” he declared, cautioning against “foreign alliances, attachments and intrigues.” Echoing the father of our country, President Jefferson called for “peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none.”
Yet the record shows that the United States was engaged with
the world—even in entangling alliances—right from the start. While we tend to
think of hostility to foreign alliances as part of America’s DNA, it pays to
recall that Benjamin Franklin was dispatched to Paris in 1776 to negotiate and
secure an alliance with France. Between 1778 and 1782, as a State Department
history details,
France “provided supplies, arms and ammunition…troops and naval
support…transported reinforcements, fought off a British fleet, and protected
Washington’s forces in Virginia.” And just four years after President
Washington left office, President Jefferson would engage in significant foreign
involvements: To fight piracy off the coast of Africa, he built a
power-projecting Navy, declaring, “It will be more easy to raise ships and men
to fight these pirates into reason, than money to bribe them.” In 1803, he made
a deal with France for the vast Louisiana Territory, opening the door to
countless new foreign entanglements.
Between 1798
and 1810, America waged war on the Barbary States of Africa, landed Marines
in the Dominican Republic, invaded Spanish holdings in Mexico and sent troops
to occupy parts of Spanish Florida. By 1823, President Monroe unveiled a
doctrine that, thanks in large measure to the help of the British
navy, made the United States a hemispheric hegemon. President McKinley and
President Roosevelt would use President Monroe’s foreign policy doctrine to
guide America onto the world stage as a force for good, even as some
worried about America being seduced by empire.
After the Great War, America retreated from the world stage for a generation.
However, the attack on Pearl Harbor shattered the idea that the oceans could
protect America, silenced those who argued that isolation was preferable to
engagement, and revived America’s interest in alliances: Just weeks after Pearl
Harbor, the U.S. organized a 26-nation
alliance to wage a “common struggle against savage and brutal forces
seeking to subjugate the world.”
In short, the notion that America avoided involvement in the world, disdained
alliances and lived in blissful isolation up until World War II is a myth—as is
the notion that the alliance system America built after World War II is no
longer needed.
In fact, our alliances serve as force-multipliers, sources of moral and material
support, layers of strategic depth, and outer rings of our own security. And
far from entangling us in conflicts, our alliances have deterred great-power
war and repeatedly helped us through the conflicts of the post-World War II
world. After all, it wasn’t an alliance that pushed the U.S. into World War II,
but rather an attack on an isolated outpost of an isolated America. And by
building up a common defense, specifying clear consequences and clear
commitments, and recognizing that America’s security is tied to other parts of
the globe, the postwar alliance system surely helped prevent World War III.
While alliances didn’t push or pull America into Korea,
Afghanistan or Iraq, our allies surely helped us once we were in those fights:
Fifteen countries deployed troops to join America and South Korea in repelling
the communist attack across the 38th Parallel. NATO personnel, equipment,
infrastructure and interoperability served as the foundation for the coalition
that liberated Kuwait.
It was always thought that Article V of the North Atlantic Treaty—NATO’s “all
for one” collective defense clause—would be invoked when Europe came under
attack and sought America’s help. But the only time Article V has ever been
invoked was after 9/11, when America came under attack and sought Europe’s
help. In the long campaign that followed, NATO played a key role fighting our
common enemy in Afghanistan, where more than a thousand allied troops were
killed in action.
When America asked for help taking down Saddam Hussein’s terrorist tyranny, 37 nations sent troops to Iraq. All told, more than 100,000
Brits, 20,000 South Koreans, 13,900 Poles and 6,100 Japanese cycled through
Iraq during Operation Iraqi Freedom.
Today, as we confront a revisionist Russia and a rising China, our NATO allies
are adding tens of thousands of troops to
their ranks and tens of billions in fresh defense spending. Germany, Britain
and Canada are spearheading NATO’s Baltic battlegroups. In the Indo-Pacific, Japan,
South Korea, the Philippines, Australia, India, Thailand and Singapore are
working with America to repurpose old alliances and build new partnerships. Japan
has increased defense spending 10 years running, Australia by 40 percent the
next decade. Led by France and Britain, NATO allies are devoting more resources
and attention to the Indo-Pacific. And allies such as Britain, France, the
Netherlands, Poland, Israel and Australia remain stalwart partners in the long,
twilight struggle against jihadist terror.
In short, the idea that our alliances are unhelpful
entanglements, that America is safest when America is alone, that alliances
forged in the 20th century are “obsolete”
in the 21st, that our allies are “free
riders” may make for good political rhetoric, but the historical record
paints a different picture. Similarly, the notion that Americans can take a
break from the demands
of leadership, unilaterally
end wars the enemy is still
waging, engage the world only when it poses “a
direct threat” to “our
vital interests,” and “focus
on nation-building here at home” may sound soothing on the campaign trail,
but it doesn’t survive in the real world.
The American people may be tired of shoring up the liberal
order built from the rubble of World War II, but there’s no other nation
with the reach, resources and resumé to lead the Free World. Those that share
our values lack the strength or the will; those that possess the strength and
the will don’t share our values. Churchill’s Britain—worn down by six years of
war—didn’t have that problem as World War II gave way to Cold War I. That’s
because Churchill’s Britain had America—a sister nation which not only shared
its values and vision for the world, but also emerged from the war stronger
than when it entered. Postwar America, as historian Derek Leebaert observes,
was “the one unscarred liberal power.” Thus, historian Niall Ferguson writes that
British leaders “regarded the transfer of global power to the United States as
the best available outcome of the war.” There’s no such partner the United
States can entrust with the mantle of global leadership today, as the world
lurches into Cold War
II.
All of this underscores the important role played by the
Sagamore Institute Center for America’s Purpose (CAP). CAP’s mission is to
promote America’s leadership role in the world by: identifying historical
guideposts to bolster national security strategy in the 21st century, applying
the lessons of history to the challenges of today and reminding the American
people that the United States remains a force for good in the world. CAP is
idealistic about America’s purpose in the world, optimistic about what America
and its allies can achieve in the world, and realistic about how and where to
employ American power in a world that cries out not for American retreat and retrenchment—but
for smart, steady and sustained American engagement. CAP seeks to make this
case forcefully and thoughtfully.
