It’s hard to put a finger on when it started, though my slant towards America sitting out of major international conflicts and relief efforts started young. The earliest such memory I can recall occurred in the eighth grade; the year was 2004 and the United States was deeply entangled in both Iraq and Afghanistan. The United States had drawn ire from the global community for their dubious invasion of Iraq (psst…they were right). However, it seemed to be commonly accepted within the American public at the time that not only could the United States intervene wherever the hell it damn well pleased, but it ought to as well. The thinking at the time was because we could.
This line of thinking continued into my teenage years, I had offered the logic of If the UN dislikes American intervention so badly, we can just start sitting out, only to be met with laughter and ridicule. Even in the realm of natural disaster relief, the U.S was expected to be the first nation to jump in, regardless if the host nation wanted us there at all. Teenage-me didn’t understand why, and I still wasn’t accepting Because World SuperPower as a valid answer.
This trend peaked in my early twenties, as 2011 was quite the impactful year. President Obama was quick to greenlight bombings in Libya in an effort to topple Gaddafi. I sat in my American Law and Politics class in college as we discussed the airstrikes. I asked the professors why we should get involved, and maybe America should let another country deal with the problem. The professors scoffed and gave me the same old tired line of because WE are the SuperPower, as if taking a break for one minor international conflict means voiding the status of super power (hint: that’s not true). The United States further involved itself into disaster relief efforts in both Haiti and Japan during that same year.
Suddenly though, a shift occurred. Donald Trump was elected President. He ran on a platform of isolationism and won. Admittedly, I was not a supporter of Trump’s during his 2016 effort (to nobody’s surprise, I voted Libertarian) though it was refreshing to see a President proudly proclaim that the interests of the United States would come first on the international stage. America began to recede it’s influence from other nations. Radicalized-left pundits (eww…pundits) bemoaned America’s absence on the world stage in the context of giving costly handouts to build infrastructure in poorer nations. True to the predictions made by younger me, another nation stepped up; the TikTok puppet-masters started to fill the void with their hollow money. I say we let the Paper Tiger find out the hard way how permanently loyal these bought allies truly are. Additionally, Trump had every chance to invade Venezuela in 2019, yet chose not to entangle Americans in yet another oil war.
As unpopular as Trump was, the isolationism didn’t stop with him; not by a long shot. Trump was soundly defeated in the 2020 election and was replaced by Joe Biden. Many hailed the change of pace offered by Biden at first, though Biden has continued to carry the Trump torch of letting other countries solve their own goddamn problems. Biden honored a Trump-era agreement to pull out of Afghanistan, and to Biden’s credit, has stayed out of Afghanistan since leaving. The war in Ukraine has ground to a stalemate on many fronts after 18 months as the non-NATO state fights against the Russian’s. Early on, there were passionate pleas for the United States to intervene, however Biden showed true dedication (or a sociopathic lack of empathy? Pick one) by letting the non-due-paying Ukrainians handle the problem themselves. Halfway across the world, Haiti descends into chaos though the U.S. and France are sitting this one out. If Kenya and Jamaica want to throw money into a bottomless pit so badly and be called colonizers while they do it, then who are we to stop them from doing so?
Fortunately, the modern U.S. public is slowly starting to catch up to the wisdom of teenage-me; Americans are getting tired of interventions. The 2010’s saw a resurgence in anti-bullying sentiments along with the rise of the #MeToo movement. We as a nation were quick to preach that 75-IQ meatheads were not entitled to the math tutoring of their cognitive superiors, and we were equally quick to point out to unethical men that they were not entitled to sex from women. The previous decade also saw a rise in diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts, particularly in the realms of entertainment and business. A concerted social effort was made to not allow whites to crowd out or overpower minority voices. America should continue this trend to the world stage; by sitting on the sidelines, America is now respectfully empowering and emboldening leaders of minority-majority nations to solve their own fucking problems without the colonizing West. Disaster relief and Dictator-B-Gone UN task forces will be far more diverse and inclusive now that the United States has chosen to focus inwards.
The rest of the world is not entitled to the protection and prosperity of the United States.
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