Should America pull back and go alone?

The answer posed in the title of this essay has come from the current occupant of the United States' presidential residence, the White House. Donald Trump wants his country to pull back from the world in which it has been a dominant player since the end of the Second World War. Eighty years ago when Japan signed the surrender document, there was consensus among the Americans that isolationism, nationalism and authoritarianism lead to disaster. This consensus held for 80 years but Donald Trump, America's current president, decided that his country should go alone.

Naftali Bendavid wrote in a review of the world system post-Second World War, in an essay written for The Washington Post, "Eighty years ago, desperate to prevent another global cataclysm, world leaders built bulwarks that have defined the modern world. Leaders gathered in New Hampshire in 1944 to create an interconnected financial system and they met in San Francisco in 1945 to form the United Nations. NATO was born in 1949, and early version of the European Union a few years later. The philosophy: anything to bind countries together so they would not fight again."

The institutions established once the war was over could have been dominated by the United States which was the clear winner. But Washington chose to share power with other large global players. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) was to be headed by a European while the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) was to be led by an American. While the IMF did not change, the IBRD was transformed into what is now the World Bank Group. These institutions followed international law that granted equal voice to all countries that chose to become their members.

The United Nations created the Security Council in which there were five permanent members which could veto the resolutions that did not follow their national interests. One major change in the world was the departure of European colonial powers that conquered much of Asia and Africa. Decolonisation led to the creation of scores of independent nations that became members of the international institutions. The end of the Second World War was followed by the First Cold War that pitted what was then the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the USSR, against the United States. Once again, the United States was the winter while the USSR disintegrated into a cluster of independent states.

"How do you navigate a dangerous and complicated world?" asks Chuck Hagel, a former US senator and defense secretary. His answer: "You don't unravel a post-World War II world order that is based on institutions and rule of law and common interests. That is very dangerous. It is the biggest threat to the future of mankind."

The generation that remembers Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, the death camps and atrocities is largely gone. According to National World War II Museum in Washington, of the 16.4 million American veterans of World War II, only 45,418 – far less than one per cent – are still alive. And fewer Americans today believe that being engaged in the world is important for the US. In 2024, 56 per cent of Americans said the country should take an active part in world affairs – a near record low, according to a poll by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs.

When he launched the first campaign for the presidency in 2016, Donald Trump adopted "America First" as the slogan to cultivate groups of followers. This slogan was used by the isolationists who opposed America's entry into World War II. He embraced terms like "nationalist" which has long endured as authoritarianism and prejudice. According to the above cited polling by Chicago Council, for decades Republicans had been more favourable to America's foreign engagements but that changed around 2015 as Trump rose to prominence.

In the most recent poll, 68 per cent of Democrats said America should take an active role in world affairs, compared with 54 per cent of Republicans and 47 per cent of independents. In the 1910s, many Americans strongly opposed partnering the coalition that went to the fight that came to be called the First World War. They saw that conflict as between doddering European dynasties that were irrelevant to America's future. Twenty-five years later, charismatic figures like Charles Lindberg opposed the United States entering the Second World War. It was the unprovoked Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor that pulled the United States into the conflict. Once the US had joined the conflict, it put its formidable forces and resources to defeat the Germans and Italians in the east and Japanese in the west. The forces assembled by the alliance were led by the United States. The alliance was led by General Dwight Eisenhower who went on to become the United States president.

It is not just Trump's America that is pulling out from the world and focusing on domestic affairs. Even in Europe where many of the Second World War tragedies played out, once ironclad lessons drawn from the war are losing their force. Britain left the European Union in 2020, a step against post-war system of alliances. Major countries in European Union have seen the emergence of nationalist and anti-immigration parties that are gaining power and shedding their pariah states. These include Germany, France and Italy that were at the heart of the world wars.

America's current and growing isolationist tendencies could bring trouble across the globe. Once again it would be appropriate to quote from Chuck Hagel. He is troubled by what he sees as the American wish to turn its back towards the world. "We are indispensable leader of the world. For us to walk away from the indispensable leadership of the world is a catastrophe," he said in one of the many speeches he has given in recent years. "Nature abhors a vacuum. Something will fill the vacuum of leadership. If we give up what we've had over the past 80 years, we are not going to get it back."

China, under the leadership of President Xi Jinping, is working on several fronts to move into the vacuum being created by the United States and its president Donald Trump. China's rise was demonstrated by a grand parade to mark the 80th anniversary of the end of the Second World War.