The United States, as a strong and growing young country, broke out of its isolationist tendencies in the First World War, coming to the aid of allies in Europe and providing the push that ended its horrors.
Stung by the violence and death of so many in World War I, many Americans sought to once again retreat from the world and messy conflicts in Europe. In the 1930s, the America First Committee and its rallying cry — most prominently voiced by Charles Lindbergh — embraced isolationism and organized hundreds of thousands to resist the U.S. becoming involved in a second looming European war while voicing sympathy and even admiration for Adolf Hitler and the emerging Nazi Party in Germany.
But as the U.S. watched Germany’s vice tighten around Great Britain and then was stunned by the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, President Franklin Roosevelt nudged and then rallied America once again to step into the fray with all its force.
Roosevelt tapped Gen. George Marshall to direct the war effort. He then turned to Gen. Dwight Eisenhower to organize the great Allied invasion when its time came. Together they managed, not without some frustration and difficulty, the cat-herding of Allied nations and their leaders seeking to liberate Europe from fascism and its concomitant genocide.
After this war, the U.S. did not go home but stayed engaged. The Marshall Plan rebuilt economies ravaged by war and proved to residents of shattered European cities and villages that democracy delivers. More than just lifting the boot of fascism, the U.S.-led capitalist and democratic system delivered much more in the way of economic opportunity as well as freedom of thought and expression than the alternative communist model on offer to Europeans by the Soviets — which many at the time found attractive.
The U.S. did not make demands on war-weary countries. In fact, the Marshall Plan was offered to all, including the Soviets! (Who refused.) More than noble charity, this investment paid off in spades for the U.S. It delivered for the U.S. a family of eager partners in protecting our own national security. It built up fast-growing economies that both served and were sold to by U.S. businesses expanding across the globe, bringing unprecedented prosperity to all sides. The U.S. first organized the United Nations, and then the great NATO alliance, a partnership that kept the peace in Europe — until Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
It also made America in the eyes of the world the “shining city on a hill,” first pictured by Puritan John Winthrop and later echoed by President Ronald Reagan when facing down the Soviet Union during the Cold War. The U.S. became a nation with tremendous moral authority and soft power in the world, to match its unprecedented economic and military might.
Through these efforts, the U.S. came to be the undisputed leader of the world’s family of nations, committed to fundamental values upon which our country and our alliances were built: democracy, freedom, self-determination and protection of civil rights.
Now, as current U.S. leadership questions the benefits of an alliance with Europe, slaps on tariffs and attempts to bully friend and foe alike and expresses surprising admiration and solidarity with neo-Nazis in Europe and dictators such as Vladimir Putin, the U.S. risks losing its role as the leader of the free world. And its moral authority — already compromised by ill-considered escapades such as the invasion of Iraq. With President Donald Trump’s insane trade war, America stands to lose its access to global markets and eager customers for its businesses and farmers, and lose well-paying jobs at home.
This looks like the opposite of the Marshall Plan, when the U.S. helped the world bake an ever-growing economic pie, which delivered to America a giant slice. Today’s “America First” agenda and accompanying tariffs and transactional diplomacy will inevitably lead to the U.S. enjoying a bigger piece but of a shriveled global economic pie.
But most damaging to the U.S. and its place in the world is our current leaders’ apparent embrace of a “values-free” foreign policy — a “might makes right” approach. Attending the now-infamous Munich Security Conference, I was impressed by the articulateness of Finland’s former prime minister, Sanna Marin. She noted that the so-called rules-based order created by the Allies after World War II was more one of shared values than “rules,” the values giving rise to freedom of expression, freedom to work and travel as you want, and the protection of human and civil rights, including women’s rights.
Trump’s America First is an abdication of American leadership in the world. The U.S. should again join leaders in the European Union, the United Kingdom and others in the Americas, Africa and Asia who share these values to lead the international coalition that stands up to the authoritarian axis — and successfully contains it— just as they did, with U.S. help, during the Cold War.
Fortunately, there are more leaders who believe strongly in an international order built on and informed by freedom, transparency, self-determination and rule of law than there are might-makes-right authoritarians. Now is the time for these nations to unite in common purpose.
A truly great nation would lead them, not join the other side.
John Austin is a nonresident senior fellow with the Brookings Institution and the former president of the Michigan State Board of Education.
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