The anti-Americans think they were right all along

J.D. Vance isn't exactly helping

I feel seen. Reels – Instagram’s short-form video platform which feeds millennials content that went viral on TikTok three weeks earlier – delivered me a doozy. Amidst the usual milieu of Beagle content and London Underground facts, I watched a satirical clip about travelling with ‘that one negative friend’. It went like this:

Normal person: “What a great beach day!”

That one negative friend: “Yeah, but now we’re all sandy and you look really sunburned.”

Normal person: “This view is amazing!”

That one negative friend: “I don’t know, I mean, it’s just the ocean. Plus, this pool is way too cold.”

Reader, I am that negative friend (and have instructed my lawyers to send a cease and desist letter). But when it comes to international relations since 1945, I am much closer to being that person breathing in the sea air and ordering my third Piña Colada replete with cocktail umbrella. What I mean to say is, I think the US-led, rules-based order has, on balance, been a marvellous thing.

It is hard to overstate just how powerful America was in the aftermath of World War II. Europe and Japan lay in ruins while fellow victorious ally, the Soviet Union, suffered some 27 million casualties. In contrast, the US mainland was untouched by fighting, the nation accounted for around 28% of global GDP and was the world’s sole nuclear power.

Yet despite this unprecedented position, America chose the path of what political scientist G. John Ikenberry termed “strategic restraint”. That is, it pursued not immediate short term gains, but instead built up multilateral institutions to promote global stability.

The problem, of course, is that Donald Trump thinks this was a disaster and that the US has been duped by friend and foe alike. In no particular order, the US president resents Nato, China, Canada, Mexico, Ukraine, the World Health Organisation, the World Trade Organisation, the United Nations and the European Union. And to be clear, this is not an exhaustive list. Consequently, Trump is launching trade wars, disengaging from international organisations and generally throwing American weight around.

Traditional US allies are naturally horrified. As a result of recent events, favourability towards the US has plunged in Britain, a trend that has been mirrored across Western Europe, as polling by YouGov makes clear.

But there are also those in the West, long hostile to US power, who are now gleefully saying, “I told you so”. Whether or not the US attempts to enforce a bad peace on Ukraine, which leaves it vulnerable to further Russian aggression, or if Trump himself attempts to seize sovereign territory, some anti-Americans have used this moment to argue that the US was always like this. That it is just another imperial power (though this strand of politics rarely ascribes the same criticisms to actual imperialist powers such as Russia.)

This belief is not only ahistorical, but also deeply pernicious. By attempting to rewrite the past, it seeks to extinguish the hope that the future could be different. That there is no alternative to what is taking shape today. That once widely-held, bipartisan American ideals of freedom, support for liberal democracy and a tide of economic prosperity that can lift all boats, was never real.

To some extent, I have often been struck by the relative absence of anti-Americanism in Britain and the West. The US is the most powerful nation in history – and across multiple dimensions: economically, militarily, culturally, through its alliances, its energy abundance and so on.

In fact, the demand for US power only ever seems to grow. Ukraine wants to join Nato, Saudi Arabia is seeking a defence treaty, the UK is theoretically hoping to secure a trade deal. This must drive the anti-Americans nuts! Meanwhile, when the Houthis attack shipping lanes or the global banking system collapses, all eyes turn to Washington, not Beijing or New Delhi, for action.

I do not take a Pollyannaish view of American history. The US may be the longest-standing democracy in the world, but it has only been a multi-racial democracy since the 1960s. It does not purely act out of altruism on the world stage, from support for authoritarians during the Cold War to the excesses of the War on Terror. But nor do I support revisionism.

At home and abroad, America is turning to a dark place. Some will say it was always like this. Don’t believe them.

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