Is a Rational American Foreign Policy Even Possible?

Geoffrey Wheatcroft

Security, United States

Time for a rethink.

“Eight years in Washington left me with considerable pessimism about the capability of the U.S. policy elites—Democrat as well as Republican—to carry out radical changes in policy if these required real civic courage and challenges to powerful domestic constituencies or dominant national myths.” Anatol Lieven wrote those words in The National Interest just as Barack Obama was about to be inaugurated.

Nearly eight years on, can anyone doubt that Lieven’s pessimism was justified, or claim that the international outlook for the United States is any rosier now than it was then?

If anything, Obama has done more to challenge constituencies and myths than might have been expected, certainly too much for the liking of his critics, and yet these past years can scarcely be called a success for him in foreign affairs. Might it not be time to ask whether it’s possible for the United States even to have a rational foreign policy?

Under Obama, the United States has suffered too many setbacks to count. A hoped-for “reset” with Russia has not come to pass, China is militarily as well as economically more aggressive than for years past. And the latest woe comes by way of my country. A needless and foolish referendum called by David Cameron produced a “Brexit" vote which ended his career, but which was also a grave blow to Washington.

One of the bleaker, if more amusing, ironies of this story is that the fanatical Europhobes on the right wing of the British Tory party who were so passionate for Brexit, are at the same time grovelingly devoted to the United States. They are even ready to subordinate the British national interest to American interest, as patently happened in Iraq. But they don't seem have noticed that the White House and State Department were praying for the British to vote Remain.

For many years now, British membership of the Common Market, then the European Community, then the European Union has been a central aim of American policy. If American leaders were interested in Great Britain, and if the so-called “special relationship” concerned them, it was because British support was sometimes useful in American military venture, but far more because British membership of the EU gave Washington a voice in Europe.