Politicians in both parties dangle before the public the vision of an America freed from the burdens of leadership. What these politicians don’t say, perhaps because they don’t understand it themselves, is that the price of ending our engagement would far outweigh its costs.
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The U.S. Can’t Afford to End Its Global Leadership Role
Posted April 25th, 2016 at 3:00 pm (UTC-5)
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Navigating the Road Ahead
Posted February 24th, 2016 at 3:33 pm (UTC-5)
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It has become a campaign staple to trash President Barack Obama’s foreign policy initiatives from Iraq, Cuba to Russia. American presidential hopefuls have the luxury of hindsight without the responsibility of Syria, Afghanistan, China and many other global concerns resting on their shoulders. But by this time next year, someone else will be making the tough calls from the Oval Office. It’s ironic that Obama won his first term with a pledge to end the seemingly endless, and deeply unpopular, wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. And he did fulfill those promises. However, by the time these policies were in place, the world seemed to have moved on to new crises, including the emergence of Islamic State out of the ashes of Iraq and the violent turmoil in Syria. All of this—and—more awaits the next President of the United States.
The U.S. Steps Back from the World Stage, and the Consensus for Leadership Dissolves
As the United States withdraws from the world, in other words, the world grows messier and uglier — and that only confirms for many Americans that any involvement is foolish and futile. This feedback loop fuels the kind of isolationism we’ve seen this year from Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders.