Walls or Bridges?
What Will Make America Great in the 21st Century?
By Antony Blinken. A Dutch translation of this essay was published in Nexus 77.
What I seek to convey is the historic truth that the United States as a nation has at all times maintained opposition – clear, definite opposition – to any attempt to lock us behind an ancient wall while the procession of civilization went past.
— Franklin D. Roosevelt (1941)
A defining division has emerged in America that separates us from each other and leads to two very different visions for the future. This division does not fall neatly along established lines – Democrat against Republican, liberal versus conservative, left against right. Rather, the split is between those who believe that the best way to contend with the powerful forces of global change is a strong defense – to hunker down, protect and disconnect – and those who argue that an open, connected America and world in which people, goods, capital and ideas move about freely and securely, and in which we work to shape the forces of change to our advantage, remains our greatest source of strength. It is a division, in short, between a future of walls and a future of bridges.
As an American diplomat, I have seen this debate cut as powerfully across communities abroad as it has at home, especially in Europe. Three trends have converged into a perfect storm.
First, the pace and scope of global change — fueled by technology, the unbridled flow of information and the erosion of borders — feeds a sense of chaos, confusion and growing vulnerability among large numbers of people.
Second, the uneven distribution of progress, exacerbated by the 2008 financial crisis, adds anger, fear and resentment to the mix.
Third, power has been shifting among, below, and beyond nation-states, requiring governments to be more accountable to a new cast of actors, from the mayors of megacities to corporate chieftains to super-empowered groups and individuals. Governing, cooperating, and exercising geopolitical influence is becoming more difficult, even for the United States, because so many more players with disparate interests can veto outcomes. As a result, it’s harder for traditional decision-makers — leaders, states and international organizations — to get things done and deliver the results people expect, fueling a crisis of confidence in our leaders and institutions.
In this combustible environment, the momentum in our political discourse is with those who would build walls, not bridges. The wall-builders appeal to Americans concerned that refugees pose a threat to their physical security and immigrants to their identity; that free trade and innovation kill jobs; and that America’s global engagement — through alliances and international institutions or sending our soldiers to fight in far-flung places — is more of a burden than a benefit, embroiling us in the problems of others, weighing us down with free riders and wasting resources better spent at home.
The Trump administration has tapped directly into these understandable fears to break with seven decades of bipartisan, American-led internationalism and the values upon which it was founded. A relentless focus on economic nationalism, sovereignty, and identity is being translated into practical policies that would wall off free trade, immigration, and globalization, turn America away from a leadership role in international alliances and multilateral institutions, and downplay the spread of liberal values. The open, connected, rules-based world for which America did so much to shape it, and in which the peace, progress, and security of other nations directly benefit our own, is being jettisoned in favor of a Hobbesian, zero-sum vision of ruthless competition in which America’s mission is to ‘win’ and protect ‘our’ cultural identity as a white, Christian nation.
The administration finds soulmates in the populist, nationalist political movements that have gained strength in Europe, playing on people’s fear of change or frustration at being left behind. Both the administration and these movements insist that the best way to protect their citizens is to build walls, not bridges.
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We’ve been here before. After World War I, America came home. We rejected the opportunity to help preserve the peace through participation in the League of Nations. Faced with a mounting economic crisis, we became protectionist. Concerned with new waves of immigrants, we battened down the hatches. Confronted with the rise of dictators in Europe, we turned isolationist. We know what followed: a worldwide depression, a new global conflagration, and genocide.
After World War II, a new choice presented itself to America’s leaders. We could repeat the mistake of the post-World War I period and retreat behind our borders. We could use our now unrivaled power to impose our will on others. Or, we could do what we did: lead the way in writing the rules, shaping the norms and building the institutions of a new world order. After the carnage of two world wars, America’s main purpose was to encourage countries to resolve their differences peacefully and grow their economies more equitably, and to provide the means and incentives to do so.
This path might have seemed counter-intuitive. After all, by binding ourselves to the same rules and norms as others, we voluntarily constrained our own power. But by giving other countries a voice and a vote in the conduct of world affairs, we prevented what typically happens when one country becomes preeminent: the banding together of other countries to check its rise. By investing in their security, success and stability (through the Marshall Plan, international financial institutions, military alliances, and the United Nations) we advanced our own with new markets for our products, new allies to deter aggression and new partners to meet global challenges. We changed the basic equation of international relations from zero sum to win-win.
This Free World Order often fell short of its ideals. Half the world refused or was not allowed to join in. It took decades to strip away the last vestiges of colonialism, and even longer to end apartheid. Civil wars and proxy conflicts continued. Especially in Southeast Asia and Latin America, a fixation on containing communism led American policy astray.
But it got the big picture right. It prevented a new global conflagration and, despite the hair trigger tension of the Cold War, nuclear annihilation. It allowed countries to lift hundreds of millions of people out of poverty, building a global middle class. It channeled national energies toward peaceful competition instead of violent confrontation. It encouraged new forms of cooperation to contend with increasingly complex challenges. It helped produce a world in which, in the aggregate, people were healthier, wealthier, wiser, more secure and more tolerant than at any other time in human history.
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If the past seems to be on the side of the bridge-builders, so it would appear are the present and the future.
Here in America, if we try to wall ourselves off from the world, the resulting absence of American engagement would only leave our citizens worse off. It would deny us the partnerships we need to confront challenges that are beyond the capacity of any one nation to address or of any wall to stop: epidemics that cut across frontiers, hackers that leap firewalls, terrorists that form global networks, aggressors that ignore borders, oceans that rise and a planet that warms.
Nor is the world self-organizing. If the United States does not assert leadership in shaping and channeling the currents of change, other countries or actors will – and probably not in ways that advantage us. Or the result will be a vacuum filled by malevolent forces like violent extremists.
Going forward, America will continue to benefit from an open, connected world where people, goods, information and ideas move about freely and securely, through institutions and norms we shape. But this world will not happen on its own, it will require American leadership, animated by enlightened self-interest.
Our workers and companies will need American global economic leadership to level playing fields for our products, to reach the 95 percent of the world’s consumers who live beyond our borders and to set high standards for the protection of labor, the environment, and intellectual property.
Our soldiers and diplomats will depend on maintaining our unrivaled network of alliances to deter costly conflicts and make us more effective when we have to fight.
Our citizens will benefit from American engagement in international institutions that help keep the peace, prevent the proliferation of weapons and the spread of disease, protect the environment, defend human rights, and develop new rules for new realms — from cyberspace to outer space.
Our communities and businesses will draw energy and vitality by the inclusion of new Americans through a secure and welcoming immigration system. Here, it is instructive to remind ourselves that new immigrants pick our crops, clean our homes, serve our food, nurse our sick and doctor the underserved. At the high end of the economic spectrum, 40 percent of Fortune 500 companies were founded by immigrants or theirs children, while 50 percent of Silicon Valley start-ups were the idea of a new arrival to our shores.
And our children will find opportunity in America’s continued global leadership in innovation, science, and technology.
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The last time the United States erected a wall around itself, in between the two world wars, President Roosevelt set about to dismantle it, brick by brick. Eleven months before Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, in his Four Freedoms address, Roosevelt provided the American people a rationale for abandoning isolationism. He argued that our own democracy and the freedoms it guaranteed were at risk: ‘The future and safety of our country and of our democracy are overwhelmingly involved in events far beyond our borders.’ And he looked to a world founded on four essential human freedoms – of speech and religion, and from want and fear – that could only be guaranteed by an engaged America.
Roosevelt laid the foundation for an open, connected America in an open, connected world. Now, the failure to convince of its benefits and address its downsides, and the fears and frustrations of those left out or left behind, risks a fatal crisis of legitimacy for the world that America built.
As we build new economic ties – through trade, automation, digitization – how do we ensure that creative disruption does not become destruction of people’s livelihoods and sense of self? As we form new cultural connections – through migration and the adoption of universal norms – how do we preserve traditional values and identities? As we bridge physical borders – accelerating even more the free movement of people, products, ideas and information – how do we simultaneously secure them and our sense of personal safety? As we increase cooperation and coordination among nations – through alliances and international institutions and shared rules – how do we hold onto a sense of national sovereignty?
At the heart of these challenges lies one of the most powerful human yearnings: for dignity. It informs who we are as individuals, what we are as a nation and where we go as a community of nations. It is an article of faith among democrats that free societies best promote and defend human dignity. The right to think, believe, worship (or not), assemble as we choose – until it infringes on another’s freedom – is the bedrock of that conviction. But the deficit of economic and cultural dignity, from losing one’s job or one’s sense of identity, opens the door to nationalism and populism and their false promises to restore it. The striving for national dignity, through the values we live, the influence we wield and the goals we pursue, drives our engagement with the world.
Just as capitalism was saved by the progressive era and then the New Deal, and freedom was preserved by overcoming America’s reluctance to enter World War II, American-led internationalism needs to overcome this dignity deficit – by better explaining its virtues, defending its achievements, and amending its deficits — if it is to survive and the future is to be shaped not by walls, but by bridges.