Jihadists seize northern Iraq and eastern Syria, declaring a new caliphate. Ukrainians desperately bid to preserve their independence against Russian subversion. As many as half a million people march in Hong Kong against Beijings bid to quash the promise of democracy. All this—and were only mentioning events of recent weeks—takes place during an American Presidency whose main idea of a foreign policy is to eschew overseas entanglements in favor of nation-building at home. So it is that when America retreats from the world, freedom retreats too. To say the cause of freedom is directly correlated with an active and muscular American foreign policy is not fashionable these days. Wasnt the lesson of Iraq that the U.S. cannot impose democracy? Havent we learned that meddling in other peoples business only harms our reputation? Such has been the conventional wisdom among American progressives since Henry Wallace denounced the Truman Doctrine—the policy to support free people who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressure—at the start of the Cold War. Its a conventional wisdom that, with some honorable exceptions, has dominated the Democratic Party since the Vietnam War. Now its gaining a following on the Rand Paul right as well. Related Video A look back at the role of Opinion over the past 125 years and the lasting effects the editorials have had on The Wall Street Journal and the world. And yet its a conventional wisdom that ignores history. When this newspaper was first published in the summer of 1889, Benjamin Harrison was President and political power in the world lay overwhelmingly with kings, kaisers, czars and colonial overlords. Democratic government had a brief flowering after World War I but soon wilted as the U.S. retreated into an isolationist—and, with the passage of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff in 1930, protectionist—shell. Hardly a year passed when one country or another did not see its democratic constitution violated by one or other brand of dictator, wrote historian Norman Davies. It cannot be attributed to a simple cause, save the inability of the Western powers to defend the regimes which they had inspired. At its nadir, in 1942, the free world consisted of the U.S., U.K., Canada, Switzerland, Sweden, Australia, New Zealand and, arguably, a few countries in Latin America. The restoration of freedom that followed—beginning with the occupation and rehabilitation of Germany and Japan as liberal democracies—is also the story of Americas forward march in the world. Though the U.S. is routinely denounced for underwriting anti-Communist dictatorships during the Cold War, the U.S. in 1986 pushed longtime ally Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines to leave office and midwifed transitions to democracy in South Korea and Taiwan. Victory in the Cold War led to an unprecedented expansion of freedom, as the number of democracies rose by 31 countries in the decade after 1988. Underwriting this expansion of freedom was American economic prosperity—postwar annual growth averaged 3.3% until 2009—along with a broadly bipartisan commitment to an open global trading system, starting with the 1948 General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. The strength of the U.S. and other free-market economies was a powerful rebuke to anti-capitalist propaganda from Moscow, Beijing and Havana. And it should be a rebuke today to neo-isolationists who argue that military and global security commitments come at the expense of domestic prosperity. On the contrary, the reach and dependability of U.S. power meant that two generations of Americans could live without knowing another world war. Pax Americana comes with many headaches. But we can think of no other global order that could conceivably provide the global commons with the kind of prosperity, progress and freedom that we have enjoyed for nearly 70 years. The danger now is that we will abandon this historic achievement for the Obama Administrations promise of European-style social democracy. The world is taking note that America and its President are in retreat, and the consequences are already apparent. As in the years after World War I, democracy is under siege. Freedom House notes an eighth year of decline in political rights and civil liberties. Under the banner of sovereign democracy, Vladimir Putin has effectively outlawed his domestic political opposition. China, Turkey, Venezuela and Ecuador are less free today than they were a decade ago. A recent Rand Corporation study found that there are twice as many jihadist fighters today than in 2010. Allies such as Israel and Japan are quietly exploring their strategic options in what they fear may soon be a world without American leadership. *** Will this old-new world be a reprise of the 1920s and 1930s, when Americas inward turn contributed to a global tragedy? Or will it be more like the late 1970s, a comparatively brief period of economic stagnation and strategic feebleness that ended the day of Ronald Reagans first inauguration? Today as 100 years ago the political choices of the American people, and the statesmanship of Americas leaders, will furnish the crucial margin between freedom and fear, promise and peril, in this still-young century. Jeffrey Neal
Posted on: Wed, 09 Jul 2014 14:57:01 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015