America’s 'No' to global policeman role, a notable foreign policy shift

US President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump greet members of the US military during an unannounced trip to Al Asad Air Base in Iraq on December 26, 2018.

January 2, 2019, 10:15 pm 

The decision by US President Donald Trump to withdraw his country's troops from Syria with the declaration that the US would be no more the global 'policeman' marks a notable shift in US foreign policy. Up to now, the world was not given any reason to believe that the US would cease from being militarily involved, in a largely offensive mode, in the world's conflict and war zones, but Trump's pronouncement ought to set the world thinking.

If the US President is to be taken at his word, the US would drastically reduce its active military presence the world over, beginning with Syria, to be apparently followed by Afghanistan. Paying a lightning visit to US troops in Iraq at Christmas time, Trump was quoted as saying by way of justification for his withdrawal decision that, 'It's not fair when the burden is all on us. We don't want to be taken advantage of any more by countries that use us and use our incredible military to protect them. They don't pay for it and they're going to have to.'

If the US goes ahead with this decision in a thoroughgoing manner, there could not only be a drastic US military disengagement from the world, but also an eventual total international withdrawal on the part of the US in the vital area of global security. Is, then, the US heading for a policy of international isolation? 'This is the Question'.

The minds of the more seasoned observers of international affairs ought to go back to the inter-war years when the US opted for a policy of international isolation. It persisted in this stance until the compulsions of World War Two, such as the non-aggression pact between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union at the height of the war, coupled with Japan's alliance with Germany, compelled the US to enter the war on the side of the Western alliance.

The decision by the US to enter the war proved crucial in that it enabled the West to triumph over Germany. Needless to say, this result led to the emergence of the US as a super power along with the eventual domination of world affairs by the West. The post-war international power system would have been vastly different if the US persisted in its policy of international isolationism.

Thus, the US has proved a crucial factor in protecting and perpetuating Western interests in the world system over the decades. The presence of the US in international politics in the post-World War Two order did not necessarily translate into sustained support by the US for liberal democracy world wide but the US has proved an important counter-weight to repressive, totalitarian powers that were not fully supportive of liberal democracy in its more vital pro-people aspects. Accordingly, the US played a role in maintaining some space in the international system for liberal democracy although it was also an opportunistic backer of repressive regimes in the then Third World, which were prepared to serve its ideological, strategic and economic interests.

However, we now live in substantially different, post-Cold War times when multi-polarity and not bipolarity is the chief characteristic of the world power system. The US is under no compulsion to counter-balance the power and influence world wide of an ideological arch rival such as the Soviet Union. Instead of the two international power blocs led by it and the Soviet Union in Cold War times, the US has to now contend with a multiplicity of powers that are in competition with it and among themselves for global economic and strategic influence. Chief among the latter is China.

Tense although the present times may be, considering that the world is multi-polar in nature, there is no danger of wars on the scale of the two World Wars breaking out. The Trump administration has made it plain that it does not intend to prove a staunch ally of the US' former partners of the West. It is not burdened with any 'ideological luggage' from the past. Instead, the US has made it clear that it intends 'to go it alone', seeking to protect, in the main, what it sees as its national interests. Hence the slogan 'America First'.

Accordingly, the US could seriously consider disengaging from the world, if its interests are well served by such a policy stance. It could well afford to do this currently because it remains the world's number one military, economic and political power.

The confidence deriving from the consciousness of its prime power status is such that the US could even afford to be dismissive of China's undoubted power. The current US-China trade war is proof of this. But there is some 'method' in this seeming 'madness'. This is because the Trump administration sees, very correctly, that the basis of international power is today, primarily, economic and not military in nature. The primacy of economic power renders 'hot' wars superfluous although the US would need to constantly look over it shoulders at states such as China, Russia and Iran which would resist falling easily in line with it.

Besides, the US is forging close relations with India with a view to counter-balancing China's influence and power in the South and South-east Asian regions. It already enjoys close ally status with the number one powers of the Far East such as Japan and South Korea besides establishing progressively close economic links with the up and coming economic powers of ASEAN, such as Vietnam and the Philippines. Through its breaking of ice with North Korea, the US is further bolstering its influence in the Eastern theatre which was at one-time a stronghold of Russia and China.

Accordingly, the US could afford to play a hands-off role in the world's trouble spots. The fact that it need not conduct any proxy wars of the Cold War kind in the global South any more makes an isolationist policy very amenable to the US currently.

However, as pointed out in this column frequently, civilians are dying in mind-numbing numbers in the war zones of the South, including Syria, the Middle East and Afghanistan. What could be done to alleviate human suffering in these regions of war is the moot issue. The Trump administration ought to be reminded by the more humanistic sections of the US that it could not continue to turn a blind eye on these hapless humans. Its standing as a civilizing influence could very well be at stake.