Australian Prime Minister John Howard is evidently worried that the US has once again turned to isolationism and he has cautioned both the US and other nations to be wary.
In a toast at a state dinner in the White House in Washington last month, Howard said he had a single message for the US: "The world continues to need America, and the world will be a better place for the involvement and the commitment of the people of the United States of America in the years that lie ahead."
With a nod toward anti-US outbursts around the world, he said: "Those foolish enough to suggest that America should have a lesser role in the affairs of the world should pause and think whether they really mean what they say, because a world without a dedicated, involved America will be a lesser world, a less safe world, a more precarious world."
Moving to Chicago, Howard was even more pointed in remarks to the Council on Foreign Relations: "It is vital, for America's interests as much as those of the rest of the world, that America not retreat."
Addressing politicians who attack the US, the Australian leader said: "To the voices of anti-Americanism around the world, to those who shout `Yankee Go Home,' let me offer some quiet advice: Be careful what you wish for."
The consequences of a US slide into isolationism coupled with ignoring Howard's advice could be substantial. In the US elections in November, the war in Iraq is sure to be an issue. Will the debate go into the deeper question of whether the US should continue to have alliances and deploy forces abroad?
US relations with allies in Asia, not only Australia, may be affected. Political leaders and defense officials in Taiwan privately asked this correspondent a few weeks ago whether the US would keep its commitments to help repel a Chinese attack. Japanese expressed the same anxiety but with less concern.
The combination of US isolationism and virulent South Korean anti-Americanism could hasten the demise of the US alliance with Seoul and lead to a reduction of US forces in Korea and possibly their withdrawal.
Then there is the question of how a perception of US isolationism may affect negotiations with North Korea and Iran over nuclear weapons, possibly encouraging Pyongyang and Tehran to take tougher bargaining positions. China, with whom relations are often fragile, may be emboldened if Beijing believes that US engagement abroad is declining.
Much of the revival of what a diplomat from the Asia-Pacific region called a "recurring theme" in US history seems to have been caused by a US reaction to widespread anti-Americanism abroad. The Pew Research Center in Washington asserted last year: "Anti-Americanism is deeper and broader now than at any time in modern history."
At the same time, Pew researchers found that more Americans believed that the US "should mind its own business internationally and let other countries get along the best they can on their own."
The researchers found that 42 percent of Americans felt this way, up from 30 percent only three years earlier. US President George W. Bush has recognized the surge of isolationism and cautioned against it.
In his State of the Union message in January, he said: "In a complex and challenging time, the road of isolationism and protectionism may seem broad and inviting -- yet it ends in danger and decline."
Dick Morris, one-time adviser to former US president Bill Clinton and a shrewd political analyst, wrote in April that "Americans are again turning inward and rejecting involvement with the rest of the world."
In Front Page Magazine on the Internet, Morris said that frustration over the prolonged war in Iraq had generated among Americans "this feeling of wanting the rest of the world to go away."
US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld warned Asia-Pacific defense leaders gathered in Singapore early this month: "In past decades, some of the people in the United States have questioned whether America should be engaged in the world. We've had strains of isolationism in our country which we are all aware of."
Richard Halloran is a writer based in Hawaii.
US$18.278 billion is a simple dollar figure; one that’s illustrative of the first Trump administration’s defense commitment to Taiwan. But what does Donald Trump care for money? During President Trump’s first term, the US defense department approved gross sales of “defense articles and services” to Taiwan of over US$18 billion. In September, the US-Taiwan Business Council compared Trump’s figure to the other four presidential administrations since 1993: President Clinton approved a total of US$8.702 billion from 1993 through 2000. President George W. Bush approved US$15.614 billion in eight years. This total would have been significantly greater had Taiwan’s Kuomintang-controlled Legislative Yuan been cooperative. During
Former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) in recent days was the focus of the media due to his role in arranging a Chinese “student” group to visit Taiwan. While his team defends the visit as friendly, civilized and apolitical, the general impression is that it was a political stunt orchestrated as part of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) propaganda, as its members were mainly young communists or university graduates who speak of a future of a unified country. While Ma lived in Taiwan almost his entire life — except during his early childhood in Hong Kong and student years in the US —
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers on Monday unilaterally passed a preliminary review of proposed amendments to the Public Officers Election and Recall Act (公職人員選罷法) in just one minute, while Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislators, government officials and the media were locked out. The hasty and discourteous move — the doors of the Internal Administration Committee chamber were locked and sealed with plastic wrap before the preliminary review meeting began — was a great setback for Taiwan’s democracy. Without any legislative discussion or public witnesses, KMT Legislator Hsu Hsin-ying (徐欣瑩), the committee’s convener, began the meeting at 9am and announced passage of the
In response to a failure to understand the “good intentions” behind the use of the term “motherland,” a professor from China’s Fudan University recklessly claimed that Taiwan used to be a colony, so all it needs is a “good beating.” Such logic is risible. The Central Plains people in China were once colonized by the Mongolians, the Manchus and other foreign peoples — does that mean they also deserve a “good beating?” According to the professor, having been ruled by the Cheng Dynasty — named after its founder, Ming-loyalist Cheng Cheng-kung (鄭成功, also known as Koxinga) — as the Kingdom of Tungning,
RSS