Donald Trump’s desire to avoid foreign entanglements was not new. In 1987, he paid for advertisements in the New York Times, The Washington Post, and the Boston Globe in which he argued that the US was being taken advantage of by other nations who were building their economies “unimpeded by the huge costs of defending themselves because the US was doing it for free” – writes Dick Roche former Irish minister for European affairs and a former minister for the environment.
Dick Roche, former Irish minister for European affairs
Trump’s position at that time and now is not out of line with US history.
George Washington urged that the United States should stay out of foreign wars. He felt that the US should try to maintain a policy of neutrality in its dealings with foreign governments. Thomas Jefferson favored a policy of involvement in European disputes.
The US was a reluctant and late participant in World War 1. President Wilson only decided to become involved following German submarine attacks on passenger and merchant ships.
After WWI, the US grew weary of involvement in foreign wars.
Noninterventionist tendencies regained the upper hand in American politics. The US was a reluctant partner in the League of Nations. In the 1930’s critics argued that U.S. involvement in the First World War had been driven by bankers and munitions traders with business interests in Europe.
In 1935, Congress passed the first Neutrality Act, prohibiting the export of “arms, ammunition, and implements of war”. In 1937, the Neutrality Act was expanded. In 1939 President Roosevelt’s efforts to provide arms to Czechoslovakia ran into trouble in Congress.
The US kept out of World War 2 until after the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbour in December 1941. When the US declared war on Japan, Germany and Italy declared war on the US.
Things changed after WWII
After WWII, concerns about the spread of communism led to a change. In 1947, the UK government announced that it could no longer afford to support the Greek government that was dealing with an armed communist insurgency.
This was the latest in a series of “pullouts” by the British. In serious financial difficulties following World War II, the British government had pulled back on its commitments to peacekeeping in Palestine, wound down its commitment in India and was pulling its military presence from Egypt.
Fearing that a vacuum arising from Britain’s withdrawal would leave the door open for Moscow to rapidly extend communist influence, the American president decided that action was necessary. [A British withdrawal from Greece, Egypt and Palestine would, the Americans feared, create military vulnerabilities in the eastern Mediterranean and could mean that the Suez canal would fall under Soviet control.]
President Truman announced, “it must be a policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressure.” That became the basis of the Truman doctrine, the Marshall Plan and ultimately the foundation of NATO – and to the US assuming ‘responsibility for the leadership of the free world.’
Since the Vietnam War, the pendulum swung slowly back towards non-interventionism in the US.
Donald Trump clearly saw this as a potentially significant political movement as far back as 1987 when he bought his ads in the New York Times, The Washington Post, and the Boston Globe.
During his first term in office, Trump lacked the experience or the capacity to move in the direction that he advocated in those advertisements. He is in a much stronger position to move during his second term. That poses a very real problem for Europe. It also raises 2 questions for EU policymaker
Why has it taken so long to see this coming ?
Dick Roche is a former Irish minister for European affairs and a former minister for the environment.
