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Gulf of Mexico, Panama Canal, Greenland: Symptoms of an offensive isolationism?
Donald Trump took office and in his speech he only spoke about the world beyond his borders, mentioning the Panama Canal and the renamed Gulf of Mexico. Days before, he returned to his old wish from 6 years ago: to buy Greenland. Territories that are exponents of the US dream of territorial expansion seem to shine to overshadow the discursive void about the rest of the world.
Amid wars in West Asia and Europe, and economic and political competition with China, it seems that making America great again is a way to compensate for its refusal or inability to operate beyond its own shadow. Not that the American shadow is small—it is half the world, at least in what is called the Western Hemisphere. But the dilemma of whether to isolate itself in the hemisphere or intervene on other continents has guided U.S. foreign policy for nearly 200 years.
Perhaps this is going too far. It was not yet on Monroe's radar to act overseas to ensure any kind of global balance. The task was still in the hands of the English, the true guarantors of the doctrine he enunciated. What was at stake was the possibility of making the continent an area free from the intervention of any extracontinental power.
Monroe's plan only really became possible – without the British guarantor – at the turn of the century, after the increase in steam navigation, the consolidation of a robust naval force and control over what Mahan called the American Mediterranean – the Caribbean Sea. The Spanish-American War gave the US colonies and footholds in the Pacific and the Caribbean. The separation of Panama and the European handover to open the Canal under exclusive US control opened the most coveted route of the century. The response to the blockade of Venezuela in 1902 was a demonstration that the European powers should put aside the cannons when coming to collect debts – or not even worry about it anymore, because from then on the debt would be in dollars.
The success of the United States in expanding while ignoring conflicts in the Old World has earned a name that combines historical interpretation and political prognosis: isolationism. History tells of the advantage of the United States' position in distancing itself from European conflicts and using overseas rivalries to its own advantage. This was the case with the Seven Years' War, which preceded U.S. independence. Then with the Napoleonic Wars, when the United States expanded its territory, acquiring Louisiana. Later, it directly confronted the declining Spanish empire to strengthen its position in the hemisphere. And finally, in World War I, when it rose above the ruins of Europe as an industrial park and global financial center.
With each war in Europe, the United States found itself stronger. And on the eve of World War II, the general impression was that there was a new round of American strengthening in the face of the carnage of others. Tertius gaudens is the Latin expression for “the third party who laughs,” or who benefits, from the fight between two parties.
It was then that the clash arose between those who stuck to historical isolationism and those who pointed to a new path, interventionism. The quarrel between the two positions is very well documented by the American geopolitician Nicholas Spykman, a defender of interventionism.
The central argument of interventionism was that the US should intervene directly in the “balance of power” in Europe and Asia, to prevent the unification of the continents by dominant forces – Germany and Japan – that would prevail over the other competitors on their continents. Geography played its part in the dispute. A polar projection map was disseminated to demonstrate that the isolation of the US was not so safe, since Europe was right around the corner, especially with the advent of the new air war.
The question was: should the US enter the war or not? Although it did not necessarily express an ideological divide, the personalities most lenient with the rise of Nazism tended towards isolationism, after all, Germany represented a blockade to the communist danger in Europe. The interventionist camp was endorsed by the more left-wing strata – after all, fighting in Europe would mean confronting Nazi-fascism.
The interventionist argument won and prevailed from then on. Throughout the Cold War, through the unipolar 1990s, the war on terror and the recent rise of China, there was little doubt among Americans about the need to establish their presence in the world, whether in their own backyard or in their antipodes. Not that American foreign policy was resolved. The question became: what to do in the world? Space competition, humanitarian interventions, wars on terror, prevention against emerging powers, sponsorship of regime change, punitive sanctions, empire of military bases and the entire known repertoire of direct and indirect presence of American global power.
Behind the doubts, there was one certainty: the United States was the strongest military power in the world, with capabilities that made it unbeatable in any dispute. This certainty was expressed in a broad horizon of action for the United States. What is surprising in the United States’ inauguration speech is the shortening of the horizon, combined with the reinforcement of an ostentatious position that emphasizes domination rather than leadership. But Donald Trump’s threatening eyes are not turned against potential enemies that are a match for American power, namely Russia and China. It is the Western allies that now seem to be facing a new big stick – an image that recovers a rising moment for the United States, but which today may be the expression of its declining phase.
This is not just another version of the “myth of American collapse,” as Fiori called it 15 years ago, when the financial crisis fueled the idea of an inexorable decline that had been announced – and refuted – for at least five decades. The hypothesis here is just another way of interpreting the histrionic American aggressiveness demonstrated by Donald Trump at the beginning of his term. Perhaps people talk about Greenland to avoid talking about Ukraine, the Gulf of Mexico to avoid talking about the Persian Gulf, or the Panama Canal to avoid talking about the Eurasian integration promoted by China. Among the little devils whispering in the ear of the new leader of the American empire, could the little devil of isolationism finally be speaking louder than the one of interventionism?
In the pre-World War II period, geographer SW Boggs attempted to map out the exact area of what would be the Western Hemisphere, where the Monroe Doctrine prevailed, and included Greenland in “America for Americans.” What was at stake at the time was to more securely demarcate the separation between Europe and America. Today, Greenland’s dominance could have other meanings: competition in the Arctic, access to drinking water, or a show of territorial expansion as a demonstration of strength? We will soon see whether this is mere bravado, as it was in 2019, or some consistent project.
The Panama Canal, in turn, has seen its relative importance in world trade decline. The world’s main ports are now in Asia, and alternative trade routes are emerging in the face of operational difficulties with the Canal – including due to water shortages related to climate change. If just over a century ago it was necessary to split Colombia to ensure control of Panama, it would not be difficult now to reclaim the Panamanian “creature” in favor of its “creator”. However, the economic significance of this act of triumph of imperial will would be much less today than the control and construction of the Canal in 1914.
The new name given to the Gulf of Mexico may have only symbolic effects, but it perhaps expresses the projection of a new American attitude towards exploiting the oil and gas resources that are in its own backyard – which also signals what may happen in another important place in this regard, which is Venezuela. The rhetoric is based on an offensive against Latin American migrants that will have a direct effect on Mexico and its Central American neighbors. Migration and oil may be issues that directly imply American involvement in the entire Mediterranean – which includes Colombia and Venezuela, since Mahan.
By explicitly seeking to redefine borders and to use force over law in territorial expansion, Donald Trump seems to be behaving like Putin and Netanyahu – and legitimizing their modus operandi. It is not that US ambitions for power around the world are anything new. But historically, since the Spanish-American War, US expansion has not been achieved through territorial acquisitions, but through the combination of dominance in trade, finance, technology and military capacity – including the “empire of bases”. Territories and borders were, for the United States in the 20th and early 21st centuries, much more something to freely cross – that of others – than to retain.
Offensive isolationism seems like a contradiction, but it is a way of expressing a double movement. Isolationism, because it recovers the pre-World War II sense of a line of defense marked by the concept of the Western Hemisphere, where the United States exercised exclusive (non-territorial) dominance. Offensive, because this movement takes place by suppressing from its allies, within its sphere of influence, the balance necessary to stay ahead – or in the running – in the global competition.
Spykman's book, cited above, spent half of its pages discussing the dilemma of isolationism vs. interventionism in the face of the global balance of power, but the other half was dedicated to the dispute over South America, which was important from an interventionist perspective – and would be even more so from an isolationist perspective. Let us wait for the chapters that concern us more directly to be updated.
*Licio Caetano do Rego Monteiro is a professor at the Geography Department of UFRJ.
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