Joe Biden’s administration is abandoning the “America First” principle on which Donald Trump built his policy
Inside the country, this slogan is not unreasonably viewed as fascist, outside the US as a claim by Americans to civilizational exceptionalism. But what does abandoning it really mean for the White House and the world?
Jake Sullivan, assistant to the US president for national security, announced the rejection of the ‘America first’ principle. This step is kind of symbolic for the US administration: America First is Donald Trump’s second most famous campaign slogan after Make America Great Again, and Joe Biden’s team set out to uproot the entire legacy of the previous president, the “fascist” and “enfant terrible”.
But at the same time, it is a symbolic move, ideologically aligned and not good for America’s geopolitical adversaries, no matter how much it seems to be a revision of Americans’ belief in their own exceptionalism – something we particularly dislike about them.
This is not about Trump or the fascism with which the slogan “America first” is usually associated. It has been used by presidents as different as the Republican Warren Garding – a rather mindless moth, drunkard and a philanderer who died of a heart attack in his third year as president – and the Democrat Woodrow Wilson – one of the most intelligent White House masters in history and the only one with a doctorate.
For both he signalled non-participation in European affairs, neutrality and isolationism, but not national isolationism but, adjusted by the Monroe Doctrine, continental isolationism: the Americans reserved the right to control the entire New World and forbade the Old World to interfere in its affairs.
In Wilson’s case, America First was still the rationale for refusing to enter the First World War. He was re-elected for a second term as “the man who kept the country out of war” but still entered it only a month after being sworn in again – in order to “end all wars as quickly as possible”. The consequence was a significant increase in the international influence of the United States – the formerly isolationist state was on its way to becoming a global superpower.
Before Theodore Roosevelt went to see the Panama Canal in 1906, no other US presidents had visited at all.
However, to a much greater extent than with Harding and Wilson, the slogan “America First” is associated with the committee of the same name that emerged in September 1940. Its aim was the same as Wilson’s in his first term – to prevent the United States from being drawn into the world slaughter at all costs. The only thing was that this political attitude was no longer coming from above but from below – the covenanters were students who had no desire to fight on the fronts somewhere in Europe.
In a very short time the Committee became a really popular and mass organization – 800 thousand people were members and paid their dues. It was believed that they were expressing the will of the majority of Americans.
To recall a few individuals who were in one way or another associated with the Committee – through participation in its work, sponsorship or public support. The future presidents John F. Kennedy and Gerald Ford – then still students. Charles Lindbergh, the national star and heroic pilot who singlehandedly flew across the Atlantic. Brigadier General Robert Wood, who fought in two wars and made a fortune as a civilian. This is Lillian Gish, the silent film legend. Frank Lloyd Wright, considered by many to be the greatest architect of the United States. This is Robert McCormick, owner of the influential Chicago Tribune. This is Laura Ingalls, an aviator who has won several championships in both the women’s and general leagues. This is Potter Stewart – a future judge of the all-powerful Supreme Court, a significant reformer of criminal law and author of the famous “know it when I see it” definition of pornography in American jurisprudence.
All in all, it was a powerful force with no need for money and a patriotic stance. The committee voluntarily dissolved itself three days after Japan attacked Pearl Harbour. The Committee never argued with the need to counter the ‘yellow menace’, it was the European front which frightened them, but now, given the allied commitments within Hitler’s ‘Axis’, it seemed inevitable. On the last day of the Committee, Germany and Italy themselves declared war on the United States.
Despite the formal failure of the Committee in terms of its objectives, American conservatives still hold it in high esteem. World War II finally transformed the United States into a global superpower, but the later entry into that war, in their opinion, shifted some of the burden to the Europeans and, after June 1941, to the Communists. Some conservatives, like Patrick Buchanan, talk about it sympathetically, others with anti-Soviet triumph.
However, the “America First” concept had an image problem among liberals
Most ideologists and activists were guided by quite rational arguments about the hardships and challenges of war, which would not only lead to many deaths and casualties, but also put American democracy at risk, since authoritarian regimes are more effective in wartime. But there were also those who openly sympathised with Germany – because of their own anti-Semitism among other things.
Frank Lloyd Wright, for example, was not anti-Semitic and his works include synagogue buildings. But people like the industrialist Henry Ford, the cartoonist Walt Disney, or the investor Benjamin Friedman clearly were, especially the latter, even though he himself was a converted Catholic priest.
The aforementioned Lindbergh was sympathetic to European Jews, but at the same time attributed all publications in favour of fighting Nazism to “Jewish money”. And his colleague, the heroic aviator Ingalls, was not at all shy about zigging. She called the landing in Normandy a “bloody orgy” and an “unholy war” waged against “the saviour of the western world” (i.e. Hitler).
Incidentally, soon after the war began she was denounced as an unregistered foreign agent: a German diplomat was paying Ingalls to “collaborate”.
Unsurprisingly, the “anti-Semitic” faction could not agree to the dissolution of the Committee. Already in 1943, a party with the same name and an openly racist ideology appeared. It wanted to nominate Lindbergh as a candidate for president in 1944, but he prudently declined and the priest Gerald Smith with Nazi views, that is, socialist and nationalist at the same time, became the candidate. As a result, he received only 1,781 votes – there was no trace of the former popularity of the America First brand, Americans finally decided on their priorities and forged a common victory together with other nations of the anti-Hitler alliance.
When Trump pulled that brand out of the closet and dusted it off, he certainly didn’t mean Nazism or anti-Semitism, no matter what the Democrat Party propaganda machine claimed. Rather, he simply liked the slogan – in and of itself – but there was a certain isolationist strain to it nonetheless. The new president was demanding a revision of old commitments to allies – for the sake of austerity, and a winding down of foreign operations – also for the sake of austerity, and because the idea of abandoning wars was again shared by the overwhelming majority of Americans.
Trump has indeed not started a single war (the US has not had a president like him for half a century) and has begun to wind down his military presence around the world, from Syria to Germany. Biden, who replaced him, formally went even further – he announced a complete and final end to the era of invasions in other countries (which Trump did not do, by the way, because he allowed for “useful” wars), but he gave up the America First principle. And this, despite all the ambiguous associations associated with this slogan, is more bad news for Russia than good.
Trump’s Democratic critics, who, by virtue of their more nuanced profile, did not point the finger directly at Hitler, initially pointed out that in today’s world, the “America First” principle predetermines America’s loneliness. From the perspective of Biden’s team, one must sometimes sacrifice one’s interests in favour of allies, but with roughly the same purpose as Trump’s – to maintain US global dominance as the richest and most powerful country in the western world.
That is, what appears to be a rejection of selfishness and elitism is in fact an endorsement of globalism, whereby the US empire is kept afloat by supranational institutions and geopolitical blocs.
From the Russian perspective, the first consequences of Biden’s “perestroika” are rather positive. For example, for the sake of healing differences with Berlin, the U.S. waived sanctions against the operator of Nord Stream 2, and its desire to drag Australia into an anti-China alliance led to a spat with France, Moscow’s traditional partner in Western Europe.
But going forward, this means Washington’s betting on strengthening NATO, the IMF, the WTO and the EU, on increasing the role of supranational elites and on trying to play a team game against its declared enemies (above all China and Russia). Something that even the original “America First” Committee, which wanted to build its own happiness in isolation, not to depend on the outside world and not to impose its will on it, could not have dreamt of.
Dmitry Bavyrin, VZGLYAD