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American Exceptionalism and Hegemonism

The New Republic provides the latest proof that isolationist is a useless term: In the end, the current Republican incarnation of American exceptionalism is actually rather isolationist in spirit. It is a bid to place Americans on a different plane from the rest of the world, a confidence that we have nothing to learn from […]

The New Republic provides the latest proof that isolationist is a useless term:

In the end, the current Republican incarnation of American exceptionalism is actually rather isolationist in spirit. It is a bid to place Americans on a different plane from the rest of the world, a confidence that we have nothing to learn from others and that we can interact with them dismissively. It is ironic that Republicans, who have spent much of the past generation accusing Democrats of isolationism, have now arrived at a worldview that would, at some level, counsel Americans to shut themselves off from other countries.

There are no American isolationists, but even if there were some around it would be ridiculous to compare Mitt “American Century” Romney to them. Genuine isolationism would involve significant cultural, economic, and political disengagement from the world. Something that is “isolationist in spirit” wouldn’t treat global hegemony as America’s natural role. What contemporary Republican enthusiasts of American exceptionalism have in mind is to “lead” the rest of the world by remaining global hegemon and dictating to other states how they should behave. At the same time, they would like to affirm that America is the best and “greatest country in the history of the world,” and furthermore that this is something that cannot change, unless, of course, America is “transformed” into something that it was not meant to be. Their boilerplate hostility to all things European is a function of their nationalism, which drives them to attack “Europe” as the embodiment of the domestic policies here that they reject (never mind that many leading European governments have been following their recommendations on fiscal policy in recent years). They are nostalgic for a “unipolar moment” that didn’t exist the way they remember it, and they believe that anything resembling a multipolar world is a disaster for America. They are globalists who believe that America is the “indispensable nation,” and they assume that the world will fall apart without U.S. hegemony.

Not surprisingly, the editors of The New Republic don’t seem to disagree with most of this, and they go so far as to echo one of the more ridiculous arguments that Romney and Ryan have used in the past:

For all the ugliness of Romney’s rhetoric on the subject, he does get one thing about American power right. “America,” he said in his Citadel speech, “must lead the world, or someone else will. Without American leadership, without clarity of American purpose and resolve, the world becomes a far more dangerous place, and liberty and prosperity would surely be among the first casualties.” To be sure, he seems not to appreciate that a pledge to “never, ever apologize” is not really compatible with good leadership; nevertheless, he is correct that American leadership is vastly preferable to leadership by China or Russia [bold mine-DL], both of which are implacably opposed to the cause of freedom.

Invoking Chinese or Russian hegemony as the only alternatives to U.S. hegemony is nothing more than a scare tactic. Neither of these states is in any position to replace the U.S. as the world’s preeminent power now or in the foreseeable future. Fear that Chinese or Russian “leadership” will replace that of the U.S. is the ultimate strawman argument in support of an ideology of hegemonism that seems to specialize in creating them.

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