Thomas L. Hughes, “The Twilight of Internationalism,” Foreign Policy, 61, Winter 1985-86.

(Summary by Harminder Bhullar)

 

The Main Point

           

Hughes sketches the flow of “American Internationalism” in the last century, focusing primarily on its decline and “reversal” to anti-internationalist attitudes in the latter half of the 20^th century. Hughes is the president of the Carnegie Endowment at the time and he reflects the endowments own promotion of liberal internationalist values, such as international law, trade, education and organization, in an attempt to influence mainstream American political culture. He argues that the internationalist ethos that the endowment was founded on and that embraced a generation of post WWII American leadership has well exhausted in today’s mainstream American political culture.

 

Summary

           

Four Reversals:

           

• International Law: The endowment encouraged ‘international law’ advocating judicial settlement of disputes in a “World Court,” which the U.S. finally joined in 1946. However, Hughes claims, “the rule of law is scoffed at in the current American national climate and lampooned by the president.” He makes note of President Ronald Reagan’s caution to a West Point graduating class not to place too much faith in “paper treaties.” The U. S. also formally rejected the 1982 Law of the Sea Treaty and two 1977 protocols to the 1949 Geneva Conventions on combatants and war victims (signed by 100 countries), “fearing that they may legitimate its national liberation movements.”

           

• International Organization: Hughes claims that the symbolic signals sent by the U.S. in its failure to join the League of Nations were contributing factors of World War II. Even though the American government did create and “handsomely finance” a similar international organization in the post war period (the United Nations), as U.S. – Soviet rivalry increased and as membership shifted in favor of the Third World, the U.S. withdrew or threatened to withdraw from many organizations within the United Nations, (such as the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, etc.), as the United Nations “became less and less politically useful to Washington, and more and more embarrassing.” 

           

• The Economics of Interdependency: Economic internationalism, increased international trade and investments along with the creation of international agreements and institutions such as GATT, IMF, and the World Bank, was thought to make the likelihood of war impossible because the consequences would be catastrophic economically.

“But economic internationalism is likewise in jeopardy. Today the Reagen administration, in a raggedy way, is defending free trade, while Democrats in high places are lighting the protectionist fires.”

This “partisan reversal of roles” is stimulated by an “exaggerated resentment” over U.S. trade deficits and pressure from an “embattled and retrenching American labor force.”

“Protectionism is growing even among the very business elite to whom its self-defeating aspects have traditionally been self-evident.”

In addition, the U.S. continues to selectively give billions of dollars in aid to Isreal and Egypt, “while reneging on its commitments to scores of other countries.”

 

• Leadership through Education and Emulation: The endowment set up training and exchange programs that encouraged and funded research, international relations clubs at universities, and many international-oriented organizations, i.e. Foreign Policy Association, the Interparliamentary Union. However, he argues, “the international mindset animates next to nothing these days in the mainstream of American political discourse.” He argues that many welcome U.S. repeated violations of international norms and boundaries, noting the U.S. use of military force to capture an Egyptian civilian airplane with Palestinian terrorists aboard in Italy.

“Whole leadership cadres in America are emerging whose internationalist chromosomes are missing. […] Law, economics, education, and politics were moving toward internationalism with an inexorable logic. Their role and the endowment’s was to help history along. […] And the American Century….was supposed to be the century of internationalist America, not its last hurrah.”

 

Hyphenated Internationalists:

 

“Internationalism was a thing to do, and everyone was doing it. Precisely why was not so clear […]”

• Post World War II international activity and “institution building” brought about varieties of internationalist experience, and as these varieties grew “their compatible coexistence began to strain credulity.” American policy was switching from ‘antifascism’ to ‘anticommunism.’ The result was a tradeoff of interests where the American Right was engaging on the security side and the American Left on the equity side of postwar U.S. internationalism. Tensions grew with the coexistence and perusal of exclusionist - inclusionist politics, polarizing and fragmenting governments, institutions, policies, and people. The “Compleat Internationalist” became mystical, making way for the “conditional internationalist.”

 

“The American political culture began to have serious trouble with the notion of contradictions, the management of which is what foreign policy is all about. Ultimately, a saturated, overloaded ‘world system’ became too much for Americans psychologically to handle, the necessary compromises began to fall apart, the old internationalism peaked, and postinternationalism set in.”

 

Semantics too played an important role in concealing political issues as ‘matters of patriotism.’ (The MX missile was dubbed the “Peacekeeper,” military pressures against Nicaragua “the president’s Central American peace policy, and “non-lethal” aid to insurgents “humanitarian aid.”)

 

The Theft of Optimism:

 

Hughes argues that the contraction of internationalism is ‘best symbolized’ by “the wholesale realignment of optimism and pessimism on the nationalist-internationalist spectrum,” Reagan ‘absorption’ of optimism with internationalist causes (what Hughes refers to as “shabby causes”).

“He (Reagen) is optimistic about his military build-up,….a successful arms race,…the huge deficit,…about covert military operations in Afghanistan, Angola, and Nicaragua.[…]This theft of optimism from the old internationalism to the new nationalism was easy because in the struggle for the big words, optimism was up for grabs.”

However, performance of the “pessimistic American internationalists” was becoming much less convincing. He states that “after all, they had a lot to be pessimistic about.”

Some of the issues that marked this internationalist retreat were as follows:

• A shift of internationalism from generating change (offense) to protection of existing institutions (defense).
• America no longer seen as the “disinterested internationalist / impartial mediator” as it leads the anticommunist struggle.
• Americans turning away from internationalism count its presumed costs in war and foreign assistance. However, they neglect the benefits of 40 years of unexampled peace and progress. Internationalism becomes associated with “interventionist debacles” like Vietnam and Lebanon.
• The United Nations and other existing international institutions are held responsible for deficiencies attributable to member governments, submerging genuine achievements.
• The shift to inwards domestic and local pursuits away from foreign policy claimed with it many who were once found in the ranks of the internationalist elite
• Mass media’s and policy makers’ use of semantics to turn what may have been noninternationalist into active anti-internationalist attitudes, to mention a few.

 

Conclusion:

 

Hughes concludes by stating that “American internationalism has fallen victim to resurgent nationalism and an inhospitable world environment full of disappointment, frustration, and defeat for things most Americans, at least temporarily, consider important.” He blames the Reagen administration for dismantling bipartisan achievements by its predecessors, and hypocrisy in removing the ‘uniqueness’ of American that Reagen claims means so much to him. The paradox, he says, is that America’s “internationalist instinct” is missing when it is need the most, but a “major cultural reversal” stands in the way of its retrieval.