President Trump confirmed a major foreign policy shift in dramatic fashion on Friday when he asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to leave the White House after a heated public argument that included both presidents and U.S. Vice President Vance. Zelensky was in Washington to sign a mineral deal with the U.S that was aborted, at least for the moment, after both Trump and Vance took exception to Zelensky’s criticism of the Trump administration’s position regarding negotiations with Russia.
The incident was cheered by Trump’s supporters and condemned by all the usual suspects among his detractors, expressing outrage and embarrassment that a foreign head of state would be treated this way. But the real question it raises is whether it will mark the beginning of Washington’s return to the foreign policy bequeathed by the man whose name it bears.
No American alive today has known firsthand any other foreign policy than the one the U.S. government maintained throughout the 20th century, which is active involvement, both military and by other means, in the affairs of foreign nations, especially in Europe. Washington’s worldwide standing army of over 200,000 troops deployed overseas has become a norm taken for granted, as has the so-called “special relationship” with the United Kingdom and the “alliance” with Israel (the U.S. has no formal treaty with that country).
But it wasn’t always this way. Most Americans would be surprised to learn that their country became rich and powerful enough to be capable of affecting global geopolitics with precisely the opposite foreign policy. More surprising still might be that 19th century U.S. foreign policy was launched with an incident eerily similar to Friday’s.
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Tom Mullen is the author of It’s the Fed, Stupid and Where Do Conservatives and Liberals Come From? And What Ever Happened to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness?
