spectator.org
‘America First’ Didn’t Start With Trump. It Started With Washington.
The core policies that make up the much-derided America First program have their political roots in the presidential campaigns of Ross Perot in 1992, Patrick Buchanan in 1992, 1996, and 2000, and the Tea Party movement in the early 21st century.
But the movement’s intellectual roots can be traced to two of the most important presidential farewell addresses — those of George Washington in 1796 and Dwight Eisenhower in 1961.
The First Gulf War Debuted America’s Post-Cold War Foreign Policy
The modern America First movement was a reaction to the neoconservative/neo-liberal policies of the 1990s and early 2000s. After the U.S. victory in the Cold War, many citizens who had vigorously supported the Cold War policies of the previous 45 years wanted America, in Jeane Kirkpatrick’s words, to again become a “normal country” that takes care of its own problems and minds its own business when it comes to the disputes among and within other nations. Kirkpatrick herself was one of the great Cold Warriors, helping Ronald Reagan formulate and implement policies that brought about a peaceful end to the Cold War with the Soviet empire. (RELATED from Francis Sempa: Yes, Ronald Reagan Did Win the Cold War)
The First Gulf War in 1990-91, was the first “test” of America’s post-Cold War foreign policies. It was a successful war with limited political aims and was tied to concrete U.S. interests in the free flow of oil from the Middle East/Persian Gulf region.
Saddam Hussein’s army was swiftly defeated and ejected from Kuwait, restoring the status quo ante. The outcome of that war, however, drew a fiery response from neoconservatives and neo-liberals who called for regime change in Iraq and continued aid to the separatist Kurds. President George H.W. Bush understood, however, that U.S. interests in the region required an Iraq that was stable and strong enough to balance Iran, which posed a greater threat to the Middle East balance of power.
Bush 41 was simply following the advice of George Washington who in his Farewell Address counseled observing “good faith and justice toward all nations,” and the cultivation of “peace and harmony with all.” Washington also advised against “permanent, inveterate antipathies against particular nations and passionate attachments for others.”
“The nation which indulges towards another an habitual hatred or an habitual fondness,” he wrote, “is in some degree a slave … to its animosity or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interest.” Foreign policy, Washington counseled, should be formulated and implemented with no regard to sentiment or passion, and be guided solely by the national interest.
Expanding NATO and Waging Endless Wars Make Enemies
The policy debates surrounding the First Gulf War set the stage for the Iraq War waged by the George W. Bush administration, which ignored the wise policies of Bush 41 and the prudent counsel of Washington. After the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Bush 43 launched a “global war on terror” that recklessly sought to transform the Middle East into a democratic paradise, resulting in the endless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that helped further fuel the America First movement.
The neoconservative/neo-liberal approach to foreign policy also affected the debate over NATO enlargement. Bush 41 prudently managed the end of the Cold War, achieving the reunification of Germany within NATO and improving NATO-Russia relations. This was a policy consistent with the sound advice of Washington’s Farewell Address.
It was the neo-liberal Clinton administration that subsequently rejected the advice of numerous foreign policy wise men and Russia experts, including George Kennan, Richard Pipes, Edward Luttwak, Jack Matlock, Jr., Arthur Hartman, and many others, by initiating the first round of NATO enlargement in the face of opposition by Russia’s ruling elite (including Gorbachev, Yeltsin, and later Putin). Bush 43, staffed with neoconservative heavyweights, further enlarged NATO and publicly called for the admission into NATO of Ukraine and Georgia.
George Washington had warned about the folly of “permanent alliances,” recognizing that the United States, to paraphrase Britain’s Lord Palmerston, had no permanent friends and no permanent enemies, only permanent interests. NATO enlargement was a direct repudiation of Washington’s advice — by the early-to-mid 1990s, NATO had achieved its original purpose, but instead of accepting victory in the Cold War, NATO looked for other things to occupy its time and resources and, like all bureaucracies, sought to expand.
The hubris of our Cold War victory led to what George Kennan called the most fateful error of post-Cold War American foreign policy: Not only did NATO enlargement help fuel Russian nationalism and imperialism, but it also helped push Russia closer to our next peer competitor — China. The triangular diplomacy begun under Nixon and continued under Presidents Carter, Reagan, and Bush 41, was abandoned. The result was that the two largest and most powerful nations on the Eurasian landmass formed a “strategic partnership” against the United States.
America First Opposes the Expansion and Influence of Our ‘Scientific-Technological Elite’
The neoconservatives and neo-liberals essentially formed the intellectual consensus that continued what President Dwight Eisenhower called the “unwarranted influence” of the “military-industrial complex” and the “scientific-technological elite.”
Eisenhower warned in his Farewell Address that the “conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry” had “grave implications,” including the “potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power” at the highest councils of our government. “We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes,” he said. And we must not allow U.S. public policy to become the “captive of a scientific-technological elite.”
The military-industrial complex thrived during our endless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and it continues to thrive as we fuel the continued war in Ukraine instead of working for an imperfect but stable negotiated ceasefire. We have seen how the government coordinated with the scientific-technological elite to censor dissenting voices and damaging political information during the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2020 presidential election. Eisenhower was remarkably prescient about these threats to our liberty and democracy.
Presidents Washington and Eisenhower kept us out of wars by always acting in America’s interest. Their respective presidencies promoted peace and prosperity based on prudence coupled with what Robert Kaplan calls a “tragic mind” which recognizes that, in the words of John Quincy Adams, we are the well-wisher of freedom for all but the champions only of our own. The America First program seeks to emulate those two great presidents.
The post ‘America First’ Didn’t Start With Trump. It Started With Washington. appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.
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