Today’s calls for an American retreat from the global stage echo the isolationist daydreams of the 1930s—but “isolation is no better a strategy today than it was on the eve of World War II,” writes U.S. Senator Mitch McConnell in an essay in the forthcoming issue of Foreign Affairs. “In the face of linked threats even more potent than the Axis powers, a failure to uphold U.S. primacy would be even more catastrophically absurd than was the refusal to assume that responsibility 85 years ago.”
To prevent revanchist powers such as China, Iran, and Russia from gaining strength, the incoming Trump administration must invest in hard power, maintain U.S. commitments around the globe, and reject calls from within the Republican Party to “give up on American primacy,” McConnell writes. “America will not be made great again by those who simply want to manage its decline.”
|
