America: Beware the Siren Song of Disengagement
08/14/14
Richard Fontaine, Michèle Flournoy
Global Governance, Grand Strategy, Foreign Policy, Politics, United States
America's global leadership may not be politically popular today. But it has hardly been more essential.
In authorizing airstrikes in Iraq,
President Obama faces a challenge: making the case for U.S. action to
an American population that is tired of energetic international
engagement. While cautioning that airstrikes may go on for months and
that any solution is “a long-term project,” he also took care to
acknowledge Americans’ worries about an ever-deeper military commitment
to Iraq. While a slight majority now appears to support airstrikes
against ISIS targets, there remains a pervasive weariness—among both
Democrats and Republicans—not only with Iraq, but with the world and its
many challenges.
Why,
Americans are increasingly asking, must it always fall to the United
States to spend energy, treasure and sometimes blood to right the
world’s wrongs and enforce international rules of the road? After more
than a decade of grinding wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, a financial
crisis coupled with high unemployment and deep deficits, the chaos and
instability brought about by the Arab Spring and other global events and
a sense that our allies have ridden free for too long, many Americans
are saying that enough is enough.
Their
leaders are as well. Responding to the demand signal—or lack
thereof—for international activism, it is today much more common to hear
American politicians criticize engagement—whether military, economic or
diplomatic—than encourage it. More often, many senators and
representatives do not express a view on international affairs at all,
believing that they were sent to Washington to deal with pocketbook and
social issues and not to take foreign-policy positions. Meanwhile,
President Obama has emphasized “nation building at home,” and foreign observers in Asia, Europe, the Middle East and elsewhere worry aloud that America is turning inward.
Read full articlehttp://nationalinterest.org/feature/america-beware-the-siren-song-disengagement-11078
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