Barack Obama is peddling a brand of isolationism that Americans haven’t heard from a major presidential contender in nearly a century – one that uses the daily struggles of hard-working Americans to generate a fear of international involvement.
The belief that the United States can catalyze positive change in the world has long motivated US foreign policy.
With this hopeful determination, America and its allies defeated Nazism, overcame Communism and now have undertaken the battle against global terrorism. Along the way, we’ve engaged in numerous humanitarian relief efforts, and promoted democracy and human rights worldwide.
Yet this policy of principled global citizenship is under attack – by a man who could well be our next president.
Speaking in Troy, Mich., on Monday, Sen. Obama declared that George Bush and John McCain – Obama’s speeches always pair those names together, no matter the issue – opted to “extend” the war on Iraq rather than “working to fix our economy.”
The “candidate of change” then listed what the funds spent on the war could buy in Michigan: “For what taxpayers here in Oakland County have spent in Iraq, you could be providing health care for nearly 900,000 people, or offering more than 200,000 college scholarships for Michigan students or hiring more than 30,000 elementary school teachers.”
Obama’s remarks beg two major questions.
First: Does the senator – who has now spent almost as much time campaigning for president as he has performing his Senate duties – understand the principle of budgets?
Health care and education are typically funded separately from national defense and foreign policy in congressional bills. To be sure, every outlay carries an opportunity cost to some extent – that is, the “cost” of not spending the money elsewhere.
Yet the absolutist terms in which the senator frames his guns-to-butter paradigm suggests an all-or-nothing view of funding for international efforts – with Obama decisively on the side of nothing.
Second: Why does Obama – whose last book was titled “The Audacity of Hope” – pitch an outlook that is so profoundly hopeless?
His remarks imply that Americans have reached the point of utter despair over the war in Iraq and our mounting economic challenges. Rather than offering inspiration, his recommendations reek of desperation.
He offers no solutions for bolstering recent progress in Iraq – other than to cut and run as soon as possible. (Of course, that’s consistent with his solution for the Iranian nuclear threat: kowtowing to the regime.)
Similarly, when it comes to helping working-class Americans facing looming hardships, Obama offers another quick fix, more federal funding – which is a nice way of telling his Michigan audience that relief is years away.
Bottom line: Barack Obama has charted a disturbing path toward US isolationism, in which a total retreat from foreign responsibilities is offered as the all-too-easy solution for domestic woes.
One can only hope that, come November, this charismatically packaged program of hopelessness is not the change that Americans have in mind.
Eric Trager is a PhD student in political science at the University of Pennsylvania. He was a 2006-’07 Islamic civilizations Fulbright scholar, based in Cairo.