The curious thing about this strain of American conservatism (to use the latter term very loosely) is that it seems to welcome American isolation. They don’t actually want friends and allies. These people enjoy their rage. It’s much more satisfying to complain about perfidious France and Germany for their failure to support the Iraq war than it would have been comforting to have had their support.

In other words, this is Sinn Fein America. Ourselves Alone. Besieged and enjoying it. ~Alex Massie

This reminds me of a conversation I had over four years ago. I was speaking to someone from Australia who taught here in the U.S. It was Election Day in 2004, so hopes on campus were high that Mr. Bush would soon be getting his comeuppance, and soon enough foreign policy came up in the conversation. The Australian referred to the “isolationism” of the administration, which I found odd, since this was one of Mr. Bush’s favorite pejorative labels for his critics (remember that old Gersonism, “proud tower of isolationism”?), but I soon understood his meaning. This is obviously not the so-called “isolation” of America First neutrality in which America seeks commerce and good relations with all states, which is much more like the opposite of “isolation,” but is instead the isolation cultivated by defenders of American exceptionalism and hegemony. It is the logical extension of the mentality that sees sieges, sanctions and refusal to engage “rogue” states as the essence of wisdom, and its track record is equally poor.

What Massie is describing is the “splendid isolation” school of imperial management, according to which all other powers should either acquiesce in imperial policy or else they are deemed as hostile to one degree or another. At least in Joseph Chamberlain’s time, Britain (briefly) pursued “splendid isolation” in the context of Great Power rivalry, so it was not entirely irrational. However, Britain then fairly quickly made the status quo-preserving deals that created the Entente, and would have been well-advised to make similar deals with rising powers. In the 2002-era anti-Europeanism or its more recent versions, the loyalty test has been applied to all states, both friend and foe, and failure to embrace every detail of the imperial project has been defined as an “increase in anti-Americanism” or as political regression and backsliding.

This brings me to Zakaria’s latest column, which he concludes with the following correct observation:

The problem with American foreign policy goes beyond George Bush. It includes a Washington establishment that has gotten comfortable with the exercise of American hegemony and treats compromise as treason and negotiations as appeasement. Other countries can have no legitimate interests of their own. The only way to deal with them is by issuing a series of maximalist demands. This is not foreign policy; it’s imperial policy [bold mine-DL]. And it isn’t likely to work in today’s world.

More than that, it is not only that compromise that has been treated as virtual treason, but that allied disagreement has been viewed in the same way. In this cracked view, allies are supposed to understand that alliance is not a mutual relationship, they are not really our equals and they are supposed to do what they are told. Having deliberately built up a military supremacy and discouraged every European effort to develop its own parallel defense force, Washington then complains about the lack of military contributions from Europe; Washington wants Europeans to be pacific wards under our protection and auxiliaries in our wars, but it cannot have both. The most annoying consequence of these contradictory expectations is that it provokes a feeling of outrage at European “ingratitude,” when the core of anti-Europeanism is its profound ingratitude toward the nations from whom we received almost our entire civilization. Here is something else to ponder: had Washington defined Cold War-era relations with NATO allies by their willingness to back us in Vietnam, this contradiction in the U.S.-Europe relationship would have been exposed a long time ago. At the end of the Cold War, I think many in Washington perceived western Europeans as something akin to our deputies in policing the world, and these people have been continuously disappointed to find that European states have their own interests that do not necessarily fit this role.

Allied interests do not interest the defenders of the splendid isolation approach. Pursuing their own interests, especially if it means cultivating good relations with large, powerful neighbors as Germany and Turkey have been doing with Russia, is seen as a move “away” from America and at some level basically corrupt and misguided. It is not enough that these allies toe the line on many of our policies toward their neighbors and throughout the world; they are expected to sabotage good relations with major trading partners to demonstrate their zeal for the cause, and if they fail to do so they are accused of acting out of venal interests (unlike, you know, the high-minded reasons for U.S. policy decisions). How many times did we hear whining about European “weakness” in response to the war in Georgia? As if Europeans should harm themselves to protest the consequences of an expansion policy that their most powerful governments opposed! Yet that is what Washington has tended to expect from our allies. In order to get the nuclear deal, for example, the Indians had to go a long way in harming their relationship with Iran, because it was not considered acceptable that India pursue its natural and logical strategic interests in building a partnership with Tehran to offset Pakistan.

If this loyalty test applies to our allies, how much more does it apply to other major powers and pariah states! Of course, there is a practical problem in possessing hegemony but acting as if it were direct empire: the disparity in power breeds the arrogance and condescension of a full-fledged imperial ruler, which is necessarily alienating to sovereign allies, and encourages Washington to expect the deference accorded to such a ruler, but all of this actually causes a net loss in Washington’s ability to project power and successfully carry out its policies.