Dream Bigger Than American Greatness

Think Civilizationally, Act Nationally

Map of the world’s civilizations per Samuel Huntington. Note that Greenland and Canada are the same color as America. Source: Wikimedia Commons

”Make America Great Again” is a refreshingly modest goal. After all, in his 2005 Second Inaugural Address, George W. Bush declared it “the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world.” Two decades later, tyranny remains unended in our world. Rather, per Freedom House, global freedom has been steadily declining, while Iraq and Afghanistan—Bush’s trillion-dollar case studies in liberal terraforming—are both ranked "not free.” Better then, to act locally and set territorially delimited objectives instead of seeking to immanentize the end of history. But Donald Trump’s bellicose rhetoric about annexing Greenland, the Panama Canal, and Canada shows that his ambitions are, ironically enough, too modest. His now-delayed tariffs on Canada and Mexico—which are in violation of the trade deal he himself signed—further demonstrate a grandiose small-mindedness.¹ America is a nation, but also the leader of a civilization. It’s not enough, then, to make America great again by gobbling up land and bullying neighbors. America needs to make the West great again to secure its own national glory. And the West cannot be great again if it turns on itself.

By the West, I mean the inheritors of a tradition stretching back to Greece and Judea, classical thought and the Bible, which was mediated and spread to Europe by Rome, and to America (and elsewhere) by Europe. Per Joseph Henrich, the West was also shaped by the marriage and family policies of the Catholic Church, which prohibited cousin marriage and polygyny, thus ultimately (and inadvertently) diminishing kinship networks in favor of individual autonomy and neutral institutions. Consequently, we may speak of particularly (though not exclusively) Western values like personal freedom, the rule of law, equal rights, and rational inquiry. These values can assume pathological forms. For example, individualism divorced from community has led to an epidemic of loneliness. A narrow focus on equality, absent an understanding of ingrained human differences, contributed to the catastrophe of 20th-century Communism and endangers human freedom today. Yet, on the whole, the West has been a net positive in the world, a civilizational wellspring of unparalleled human flourishing.

America First Among Equals

But the West’s success also engenders hubris. Bush’s failed crusade for democracy was followed by Barack Obama’s alternately toothless (warning of non-existent “red lines” in Syria) and brainless (intervening in Libya after “victory” in Iraq) human-rights myopia. By contrast, “America First,” insofar as it is a reaction to foreign adventurism and universalist overreach, is a healthy first principle. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither was the Western world it helped bequeath. Likewise, Western values cannot be imposed overnight by superior airpower or liberal rhetoric. Countervailing traditions of tribalism, religious fanaticism, cousin marriage, and paternalism have much deeper and wider roots. Fortunately, making the world safe for democracy doesn’t require spreading democracy around the world. It requires making peace with autocratic but friendly regimes when the alternative is worse. As then–Secretary of State John Quincy Adams extolled in 1821, America “goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own.” Outside of the West, the choice isn’t usually between authoritarianism and liberal democracy. It’s between authoritarianism and totalitarianism (eg, Communism, Islamism) or authoritarianism and chaos (as in Somalia and Libya). It’s realism, not hypocrisy, to accept that Western values are not one-size-fits-all.

But when “America First” becomes “America Only,” it turns from realism into fantasy: not the universalist fantasy of democracy for all, but a narcissistic fantasy of national self-sufficiency. After all, even when operating at peak greatness, America required allies to defeat the Axis in World War II and the Soviets in the Cold War. Today, as Charles Kupchan writes, “Having fellow democracies by Washington’s side will only increase Trump’s leverage as he negotiates with Russia, China, and other adversaries. In contrast, if Trump gives allies cause to question America’s commitment to collective defense, they will pursue other options, leaving the United States isolated and vulnerable.” China, India, and Russia increasingly define themselves not as nation-states, but as civilization-states, organized around a unique, transnational (but not universal) culture. America is not a civilization-state, because the West extends too far beyond its borders. But since Europe’s self-destruction via two world wars, America has been the West’s natural leader. China and India both have populations of around 1.4 billion, whereas America’s population is a mere 335 million. But combine the populations of Western countries, and the total surpasses a billion. As a man who brags about his crowd sizes, Trump should appreciate a big number.

The West Is Bigger Than Greenland

The United States of the West is obviously an impossibility, and that’s a good thing. The West’s fragmentation has historically been a strength, contributing to a healthy competition between nations while the ostensibly more advanced Chinese remained stagnant. But as the above allusion to World War I and II indicates, healthy competition can degenerate into pathological fratricide. Trump’s talk of bullying friendly countries into giving up territory (and, in Canada’s case, sovereignty) obviously doesn’t descend to that level. But punitive tariffs demonstrate a short-sighted and ultimately self-destructive attitude that turns allies into enemies. Denmark and Canada (and, to a lesser extent, Panama and Mexico²) are already in America’s column, regardless of lines on a map. Should other Western countries contribute more to their own defense and make NATO less of an American protection scheme? Should they reclaim their own cultural heritage, instead of substituting vapid multiculturalism for national identity? Yes, by all means, revitalize the West, as Trump himself previously espoused. In 1959, Dwight Eisenhower declared that NATO’s goal was to “protect the spiritual foundations of Western civilization against every kind of ruthless aggression.” A rejuvenation of the Western alliance, and of its spiritual foundations, would make America stronger than it could ever be on its own. After all, as great as nations can be, civilizations are greater.

Sure, America would be gargantuan if it included Canada and Greenland. But if that expansion is attained through force, or the threat of force, then the West—as a geopolitically cohesive unit—would shrink in turn. Trump called Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine “genius,” but it was really an act of desperation. Putin’s war reflects a failure to keep Ukraine within the Russkiy mir (“Russian world”) by peaceful means. That’s because the majority of Ukrainians, regardless of Russian threats, want to join the West. By contrast, countries aren’t exactly clamoring to become vassals of Russia.³ Certainly, if Trump annexed Canada, he wouldn’t have Putin’s excuse that Canadians are trying to escape America’s sphere of influence. Canadians, despite some parasitic grumblings, rather enjoy their pride of place in the Amerika mir. The only reason countries would want to leave the Western alliance is if its leader abandoned them first. That’s why, per Chinese analyst Yan Xuetong, China’s leaders don’t fear a Trump presidency. Rather, they predict that “Trump’s dubious commitment to U.S. allies will encourage other countries to hedge their bets, building ties with Beijing to offset the unpredictability of Washington.” By threatening and alienating America’s partners, Trump is playing into China’s hands. True, Greenland and Canada are large in size. But the West, when united behind America, is a civilizational force of epic proportions.

1. Trump has also threatened tariffs on the European Union.

2. Unlike Canada and Denmark, Panama and Mexico are not treaty allies of the United States. Nevertheless, per the 1977 treaty that gave Panama control of the canal, America has the right to use force if its neutrality is threatened (which is not currently the case). More significantly, Mexico is America’s top trading partner and has resisted Chinese inroads into Latin America. Per the Trump-brokered USMCA, Mexico is also barred from signing a free-trade agreement with a “non-market country” (ie, Communist China). However, Trump’s tariffs would augur the end of USMCA.

3. As Thomas de Waal writes, “The full-scale invasion of Ukraine marked the end of three decades of softer Russian post-Soviet integration projects . . . One reason why Putin resorted to mass violence is because his integration projects to create a Russia-centered belt of states had not worked out as planned.” Even Armenia, which has traditionally benefited from Russian protection, has been abandoned to Azerbaijani aggression and is now looking westward.