Finally, an AMERICAN foreign policy?

We’ve just elected a man President who spent his entire campaign promising “change”. As I thought about that, it dawned on me that there is one aspect of American national policy that hasn’t been changed—or even looked at—for decades or, possibly, centuries.
It’s been assumed. Our foreign policy has been assumed and followed without question or evaluation ever since John Smith set out to explore the American coast to find a sea route to China. Even as an independent nation, we have just walked into it. Without evaluation, without thought. Especially since 1945.
Our current foreign policy was essentially made in London by British statesmen after the Napoleonic Wars—roughly from 1815 on. It hasn’t really changed since then. We have simply stepped into British shoes and followed their lead—especially after World War II.
British/American foreign policy has consisted of three major, unchanging objectives since the Congress of Vienna that recreated a post-Napoleonic World. One) Control of the oceans; two) opposition to Russian aggrandizement, and three, control of the China trade.
During the Nineteenth Century the Anglo-American conflict with Russia was characterized as a struggle between the British whale (navy) and the Russian elephant (army). Each was seen as dominant in its own area but, with few exceptions, neither was ever actually able to get at the other. Nor much changed in the last century.
In the 1940s this struggle between autocratic Russia (the Soviets) and democratic Britain/America was called the “Cold War”. But it was really no different than the Nineteenth Century struggle.
Throughout the Nineteenth Century version of the Cold War, British interests spread across the Asian land mass, facing Russia at every point. Britain backed the Muslim Turkish Empire (kept it in existence) that had been warring against Russia for centuries, as a way of holding the Russians in check from the Mediterranean to the border of Persia (Iran).
By 1907, Britain had effectively split Iran in two—with Britain controlling the oil-rich south and Russia having primary say in the northern third. In between was a quasi independent Iran that came under the rule of the British backed Pahlavi dynasty. When the Shah was overthrown in 1953, British MI6 and the CIA worked together to restore his rule—making Iran an anti-Russian state.
Coming out of Pakistan, part of the British Empire until 1947 and, after that, an American Cold War ally, the Anglo-Americans kept tabs on Russian/Soviet activities in Afghanistan—going back to the 1840s. (The Afghans got so annoyed with this game that they wiped out an entire British army back then.)
Then came the Pacific confrontation. The Russians chewed began chewing up pieces of China. Keeping China open to Western trade has been a cornerstone of Anglo-American foreign policy since before Jamestown was founded. Wherever the British navy went in the Nineteenth Century, an American gunboat—or just a freighter with a single cannon slung over the stern—went along.
Britain propped up an ailing Manchu dynasty (that would otherwise have collapsed 50 years earlier) as a block to foreign interests in China and keep her interests paramount. We stepped in subsequently and propped up an equally sick Kuomintang regime. The British lost their pet regime to Sun Yat-sen in 1911; we lost our pet to Mao in 1949. (Now the Chinese prop up our economy. Such is the irony of history.)
The Russian fleet at Vladivostok remained a threat until the Japanese sank it for us in 1904. In the meantime, the British squeezed Russia out of the San Francisco in 1841, and we ended the Russian-American company by buying Alaska and all Russian West coast interests in 1867.
(Think how differently the Twentieth Century Cold War might have gone if the Russians had had a major military presence in this hemisphere!)
When Britain’s power effectively collapsed at the end of World War II, we stepped into every foxhole abandoned by a Tommy. Our fleets ruled the Mediterranean, the South China Sea, the Indian Ocean. Different flag, same basic policy.
(Worth noting that the British collapse in the late 1940s was very much our doing. We made sure, by manipulation of the provisions of Lend Lease, that Britain accumulated no cash reserves during the War. When it was over, we stopped Lend Lease on a dime—leaving England with 12 million troops to feed, clothe, medicate and transport around the globe, without a six pence in the coffers. Their Empire, and their Cold War, was effectively over by 1948.)
Okay, we’ve inherited Britain’s foreign policy and much of the territory she controlled. Without thinking about it, we just carried on—taking up Kipling’s “White Man’s Burden”.
Maybe it’s time we put the burden down for a moment and thought about it. We’re not England. The Congress of Vienna was a long time ago. Maybe, just maybe, it is time for a change.
It will take us awhile to figure out just what that change should be. When you’ve been pointed in the same direction for 400 years, it’s hard to think of going any other way. So this won’t be easy. It may be as wrenching as the Civil Rights Movement or the Civil War—a whole new way of viewing the world.
But it would be change that REALLY would be change.