In his chapter Jussi Hanhimäki revisits an old question which still resonates in American policy debates: Is the United States (US) still the predominant, or “indispensable” as it was called, unilateral superpower in the world? The concept of being “indispensable” in the world community has preoccupied American politics and policy thinkers since the end of the Cold War. The new challenges of the twenty-first century have prompted a re-examination of the concept within domestic political debates, including the possibility that the US might need to be “fixed” in order to meet new global trials. The changing global political landscape also raises concerns about the position of the US within the international order – another preoccupation that has a lot of mileage in American domestic politics. However, as the author argues in this chapter, US foreign policy will adapt to twenty-first-century needs and actually does not need to make dramatic adjustments in the near term because its major interests and goals remain unchanged.

Indeed, the US has been “fixing” itself from within in a process to which external perspective and foreign policy are integrally tied. For instance, historically speaking, it has rarely hurt an American president to be criticised by foreign counterparts; the more solid they appear to hold their ground against criticism and to put “America first”, and the more popular they tend to be, as evidenced in recent times. Since the Cold War, when the US and the Soviet Union competed for superiority (witness events such as the “Sputnik moment” when the Soviet Union was the first to launch a satellite into orbit or the supposedly “missile gap”), the panic of lagging behind has been closely tied to the concern that some external power out there might take pre-eminence over the US. That fear persists today, the difference being that the outside entity – the Soviet Union, the European Union, Japan or China – has changed over time. It is rather curious that this phenomenon keeps repeating itself, and can perhaps be explained if understood as creative moments of reinvigorating and reinventing American engagement with the world. Such moments give policymakers the leeway to revise budgets, taxes, trade tariffs, and so on – as long as the debate continues, they remain politically productive.

During Bill Clinton’s presidential tenure in the 1990s, after the First Gulf War there were no major military challenges to the US, and military interventions took the form of limited wars for “humanitarian” action, for example in the Balkans, Somalia and Haiti. On the whole, safeguarding American interests did not need large-scale military intervention as a tool of foreign policy.

This changed in the George W. Bush era. Seeking to break apart from Clinton, President Bush first advocated a “humble” foreign policy and promised limited interventions in other people’s wars. The heavily muscular response to the attacks of 11 September 2001, fuelled by the demand for “revenge” which justified the war in Afghanistan, breached the promise. “The Bush administration acted unilaterally for the most part, alienating most of its allies while projecting its awesome military power to Afghanistan and Iraq”, writes Jussi Hanhimäki. The response was probably also an opportunity to demonstrate the extensive and dormant military resources and capabilities that America had in the backburner, beside opening up the possibility to engage in a project that would make America “invulnerable again”. This relates to the US illusion of invulnerability to external aggression, especially on its own soil, which 9/11 was the first to puncture since Pearl Harbour in 1941 and, prior to that, the War of 1812 against the United Kingdom. 

The author finds great continuity in Bush’s successor, Barack Obama, who decried the war in Iraq but considered the conflict in Afghanistan fair game. Pulling out of Iraq was much more complicated and messier than what had been thought and promised during the elections. The new form of drone warfare, used not only in Afghanistan but also in Pakistan and elsewhere, led Obama to remark that lesser American lives would be lost compared to the Vietnam situation, showing thus the disregard for other life losses inherent to drone warfare doctrine. Obama was much more reluctant to use force in Syria and Libya, and when he did, it was with the mind to reduce American casualties. Since WWII Americans have had various commitments across the world, which signals that these places somehow “matter” to America. However, pulling directly out of any intervention sphere becomes problematic, strategically, politically and for foreign policy, especially when it is seen as a diminished capability, and is often interpreted as a change in policy.

Compared to this period, Obama’s successor Donald Trump’s exaggerated rhetoric and outlandish threats may have given him some leverage in negotiations, since the possibility of realising the threat or calling his bluff remains. President Trump has not yet been tested with a new major foreign military threat, so it remains to be seen how he would face such a challenge.

Full citation of the chapter:
Hanhimäki, Jussi. “The Foreign Policy of the United States: Indispensable No More?” In Europe and America: The End of the Transatlantic Relationship?, edited by Federiga Bindi, 239–68. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2019.

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By Aditya Kiran Kakati, doctor in International History and Anthropology and Sociology; edited by Nathalie Tanner, Research Office.
Banner image: excerpt from an picture by Stocksnapper/Shutterstock.com.