But Trump’s doings and undoings are more than merely a reaction to the triumphalism of the period, including the notion that we had reached the “end of history.” The objections extend back to the basic elements of the post–World War II liberal order itself. Though this order was largely American in origin and a product of the unprecedented global dominance of the United States across all measures of power in the aftermath of World War II, for many it has become a euphemism for a system that allowed our allies a free ride on our defense dollar and the entrenchment of trade rules that allowed foreign countries to place barriers to entry on American-made products while the United States opened itself up to a flood of imports grounded in cheap labor abroad. Even after the Cold War, the United States maintained a disproportionate security burden, while NATO allies shirked defense commitments to boost their domestic welfare programs. American-led interventions in Kuwait and the former Yugoslavia went off smoothly in the earliest post–Cold War years, but the failures in Iraq and Afghanistan created a crisis of confidence and fueled debates about American military presence abroad.
Read the rest of the essay by Tod Lindberg and Corban Teague in Commentary magazine.
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