There is a risk that, over the long term, the United States will move towards isolationism. A majority of Americans might decide that their government should renounce claims to leadership on a broad range of international issues and focus instead on preserving domestic prosperity and homeland security.
Much will depend upon American public reaction to inevitable changes in the international balance of power. The pre-eminence of the United States has an expiry date, not because there is some inherent weakness in the American system but because other nations are coming into their own. The European Union and Japan have long since emerged as economic powerhouses. China, India and Russia continue to shed the straitjacket of central economic planning and are enjoying a formidable expansion. Brazil and Mexico are leading Latin America toward a new market-based self-confidence. High energy prices are empowering the governments of oil and gas exporting countries to punch above their weight in international politics. The balance of global market power has already begun to shift toward a multi-polar international order. This perceived loss of status could lead Americans to question the value of an internationalist. foreign policy.
For the present, only the United States can project its political influence and military power in several regions at once. This luxury is unlikely to last. Lieutenant Colonel John Nagl, a counter-insurgency expert, recently discussed, in an article in the Washington Post, the need to intensify efforts to defeat the Taliban in Afghanistan. Unfortunately, the colonel doesn't believe that will happen: "We don't have the troops." After more than six years of war in Afghanistan and nearly five years in Iraq, the US military is stretched thin. The army has some 250,000 soldiers stationed in 80 countries. A poll published in February by the Centre for a New American Security, a think-tank, found that 80% of 3,400 current and former senior military officers surveyed responded that it is "unreasonable to expect the US military to successfully wage another war at this time."
Recent polling suggests that a substantial shift in US attitudes may already be taking place. Some 58% of Americans surveyed in an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll published on March 13 said that globalisation has been bad for the United States. Just 25% said that it has been good. A report released last autumn by the Pew Global Attitudes Project found that 59% of Americans surveyed said they consider international trade "very good" or "somewhat good" for the United States - down 19 percentage points from five years earlier.
In the run-up to the US presidential election in November, several candidates, both Republican and Democrat, have called for a more restrictive trade policy. Foreign investment is under suspicion. A state-owned Chinese energy firm was forced to withdraw its bid for the US oil company Unocal in 2005. A proposal by a state-owned Arab firm to operate several US ports was rejected in 2006. Critics of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, the agency charged with reviewing and approving all proposals by foreign firms to acquire US assets, want it to be strengthened.
China is seen as the main problem by some in Congress. They claim that the Chinese manipulate the value of their currency to boost the country's exports, adding to an already huge trade deficit suffered by the US. The Bush administration has worked hard to stop excessive protectionist proposals directed against China becoming law, but there is no guarantee that the next president will do the same. The Republican nominee John McCain, though an outspoken advocate of free trade, is a frequent critic of China's authoritarian politics and military expansion, and might use protectionist threats against Beijing to gain political leverage. The Democrats Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have pledged support for free trade only when it is "fair trade" and promise to oppose agreements that do not include US-mandated protections for labour rights and environmental standards. The protectionist climate in Washington will also undermine America's credibility as a leader on trade liberalisation.
Domestic political realities ensure that any US president, of whatever political view, will insist on the right to act forcefully, and alone if necessary, where America's vital interests and national security are thought to be at stake. Yet Bush will bequeath his successor an over-extended military, a wobbly economy, and a surging federal budget deficit. The next president cannot fully embrace a unilateralist foreign policy, because Americans won't support it and their government can't afford it. The Bush administration estimates that the Iraq war has so far cost between $500 billion and $600 billion, 10 times the figure it forecast when the conflict began in 2003. Others say the price has risen much higher. Whatever the true cost, it leaves Bush’s successor with a much narrower range of foreign-policy options than he enjoyed in 2001.
McCain has called for a "worldwide league of democracies," a group of like-minded nations under US leadership that can collectively take on the geopolitical challenges that America can't afford to tackle on its own. So even the Bush-endorsed Republican standard-bearer recognises that the United States lacks the resources and clout to achieve its foreign-policy objectives through unilateral action. For those who prefer to see America renounce unilateralism in favour of a more cooperative approach to foreign-policy challenges, this is good news.
For all that, there are reasonable arguments why a full US retreat toward isolationism still remains unlikely. As long as Americans believe that the United Nations, NATO, the World Trade Organisation, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank sometimes advance US interests, there is no reason for Washington to give up its influence within them. Second, while there are few outside the United States who would miss the arrogance implicit in a unilateralist foreign policy, there are plenty who will want America to continue in its role as a provider of international aid. Traditional US allies will offer Washington the material and political support necessary to keep Uncle Sam from heading home and locking the door behind him. Third, internationalism has become a part of the American identity and will not disappear easily. US exceptionalism - critics call it vanity - will prevent Washington from settling firmly on a policy of minding its own business.
The United States will not create a wholly new foreign policy until a new generation of politicians assumes positions of leadership in Washington. But although a future American president will not have the troops to realise the grandest ambitions of the neo-conservatives, the needs of the war on terror will ensure that any moves toward a reduction in military power will create its own limits.