Christopher Dickey: America Turns Inward ... U.S. Foreign Policy After November
[A distinguished journalist and author, Christopher Dickey currently serves as Newsweek's Paris bureau chief and Middle East regional editor.]
Americans have forgotten the rest of the world. Nothing could make that clearer than the candidates running for election to the U.S. Congress and the Senate right now. If you watch the campaign ads, listen to the debates or the candidates themselves, Afghanistan barely figures, Iraq is history, the Middle East peace process a yawn. Forget China. Forget Latin America. Russia is an old memory and Europe a fading idea. Some candidates have talking points dutifully memorized on these subjects, but many don’t. And why would they? When voters are asked about the most pressing problems facing the country, only 3 percent say Afghanistan; 60 percent say the economy and unemployment.
Even some politicians are appalled. “Has there been a serious exchange between any candidates—Tea Party, Republican, Vegetarian, Libertarian, Democrat—about what we should be doing with Iran?” asks Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina (who is not up for reelection this year). “Have you seen one commercial about whether our Afghan strategy is good or bad? We’re within days, literally, of a major shift in power in Washington,” Graham told an audience in the capital recently, “and you would never know that this nation is involved in two wars, and looming threats face us all that could change the course of humanity and mankind.” Graham seemed genuinely puzzled: “What I don’t understand is how in the world did this happen?”
In fact, what Americans have always wanted most from the rest of the world is, precisely, to forget about it. And for those abroad who may be profoundly affected by U.S. foreign policy—or the lack of it—this tendency to superpower insouciance may be as baffling as it is offensive and even dangerous. Yet this kind of apathy is deeply ingrained in a nation of immigrants who came to escape the conflicts and privations of their original homelands: Americans traditionally build their lives around the idea of the future, not the burdens of the past, and they don’t want to be distracted from their mission. Today it is vital to understand the American public’s deepening lack of interest in global affairs because it is that apathy, not activism, that is likely to guide—or constrain or confuse—the actions of the American government for the foreseeable future. Or, until, as Graham says, a “dramatic event” gets people’s attention...
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Americans have forgotten the rest of the world. Nothing could make that clearer than the candidates running for election to the U.S. Congress and the Senate right now. If you watch the campaign ads, listen to the debates or the candidates themselves, Afghanistan barely figures, Iraq is history, the Middle East peace process a yawn. Forget China. Forget Latin America. Russia is an old memory and Europe a fading idea. Some candidates have talking points dutifully memorized on these subjects, but many don’t. And why would they? When voters are asked about the most pressing problems facing the country, only 3 percent say Afghanistan; 60 percent say the economy and unemployment.
Even some politicians are appalled. “Has there been a serious exchange between any candidates—Tea Party, Republican, Vegetarian, Libertarian, Democrat—about what we should be doing with Iran?” asks Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina (who is not up for reelection this year). “Have you seen one commercial about whether our Afghan strategy is good or bad? We’re within days, literally, of a major shift in power in Washington,” Graham told an audience in the capital recently, “and you would never know that this nation is involved in two wars, and looming threats face us all that could change the course of humanity and mankind.” Graham seemed genuinely puzzled: “What I don’t understand is how in the world did this happen?”
In fact, what Americans have always wanted most from the rest of the world is, precisely, to forget about it. And for those abroad who may be profoundly affected by U.S. foreign policy—or the lack of it—this tendency to superpower insouciance may be as baffling as it is offensive and even dangerous. Yet this kind of apathy is deeply ingrained in a nation of immigrants who came to escape the conflicts and privations of their original homelands: Americans traditionally build their lives around the idea of the future, not the burdens of the past, and they don’t want to be distracted from their mission. Today it is vital to understand the American public’s deepening lack of interest in global affairs because it is that apathy, not activism, that is likely to guide—or constrain or confuse—the actions of the American government for the foreseeable future. Or, until, as Graham says, a “dramatic event” gets people’s attention...