Search Results

Donald Trump’s “America First” vision calls for total loyalty to the United States. It resonates with millions, but it does not convey respect or a spirit of accommodation toward many of the diverse communities that constitute America. Its intolerance must be combated by better, inclusive stories. Candidates include John Dewey’s view of America as a democratic project; Barack Obama’s story of America as a constitutional project of achieving greater unity without effacing diversity; and Abraham Lincoln’s vision of America as a project of pursuing the enjoyment of the basic rights in the Declaration of Independence for all people, of all colors, everywhere. No single story is perfect. Americans need to build coalitions among proponents of different inclusive stories to win power and guide desirable policies.

John T. Flynn was the testimony of the day. Flynn opened by introducing himself to the three hundred attendees as a journalist who primarily writes on economic and social issues. Flynn also worked as an associate editor for Collier’s and served as contributing editor for the New Republic in addition to being an author of several books. Senator Worth Clark inquired about relevant background for this investigation, but Flynn had nothing new to add. When McFarland asked Flynn’s purpose in testifying, Flynn stated his role as New York chairman of the America First Committee. Flynn and McFarland had a lively bout while trying to find out Flynn’s role in this investigation. McFarland pegged Flynn as a propagandist himself and argued circles around the journalist. Flynn outlined a long list of films he felt were propagandistic war mongering.

The years leading up to 1939 saw an influx of fascist organizations in Los Angeles. This made the Hollywood moguls ultra-sensitive to homegrown fascism as they began to fight back by funding an underground espionage network, led by attorney Leon Lewis. More public pushback came from the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League, made up of individuals from across the Popular Front. Pro-fascist support began to surface in the form of the Friends of New Germany, German-American Bund, and the Silver Shirt who each had factions in Los Angeles. As the conflict in Europe developed, so did anti-war sentiments in the United States (many were still miffed about our involvement in World War I). This period also saw the rise of anti-Semitic and isolationist voices ranging from Father Charles Coughlin to members of the America First movement.

This chapter examines President Donald Trump's decision to bomb Syrian airfields following the chemical weapons attack in Al Shayrat on April 4, 2017. Images of the attack — in which children were seen foaming at the mouth — temporarily caused a displacement of Trump's ‘America First’ vision to defend the ‘beautiful babies’. The chapter first gives a brief background of the developments in the Syrian crisis after the 2013 attack and provides an overview of Trump's ‘America First’ foreign policy. Then the discussion progresses to cover how Trump succumbed to the same inconsistencies as his predecessors. Emotional images of dead and dying Syrian children, following a chemical weapons attack in Northern Syria, led to a more principled interpretation of foreign policy interests. Furthermore, the chapter tackles Trump's quick return to the ‘America First’ platform — which culminated in a decision to abandon Kurdish allies in Northern Syria in 2019 despite an almost certain humanitarian tragedy in light of a Turkish offensive.

The chapter reviews briefly the past (Cold war realism and post-Cold war liberalism), present (“America First”) and the potential future (return of realism?) of US grand strategy. The chapter also overviews the book’s response to the two puzzles. A liberal power—such as the US—endorses realist strategies once it is engaged in a keen competition with peer great powers. This logic explains US realist behavior during the Cold War.

The Brexiteers presented a revived partnership with the United States as the cornerstone of Britain’s new Anglosphere-centered diplomacy. Without the United States, any Anglosphere project would lose meaning, and the future of Britain outside the European Union would be grim. But this chapter argues that the focus on the “special relationship” was based on a delusional national myth. Historically, the specialness, which discounted an enormous gap in terms of power and influence between the two countries, has been more keenly felt in London than in Washington. Since 1945, America’s absolute strength and Britain’s relative weakness has always determined a highly unbalanced relationship. In the eyes of Dean Acheson—Secretary of State in the Truman Administration—British rhetoric surrounding the “special” connection between the two countries reflected nothing more than the UK’s unwillingness to accept its post-imperial status: that of a simple transatlantic intermediary and Anglo-Saxon balancer in European affairs. It has been observed that, from 1945 onwards, the “special relationship” rapidly assumed the character of a “special dependancy”, with Britain being very much the junior partner. Currently, the difference in terms of power and influence between the two countries is as great as in the past—if not even greater, given Britain’s diminished influence in European affairs. On top of that, bridging the policy inconsistencies between “America First” (based on unilateralism and protectionism) and “Global Britain” (based on multilateralism and free markets) might represent an insurmountable obstacle.

This chapter examines the influence of Production Code censors and wartime conditions on the production of Saboteur. War with Germany freed moviemakers from the shackles of the Neutrality Act, so that the common enemy could be identified without fear of censorship. Censors instead focused on several class-conscious remarks inserted in the script by left-leaning author Dorothy Parker suggesting a disdain for the police and the upper classes. The film did well at the box office and less well with critics, but Hitchcock created a memorable finale on the Statue of Liberty and succeeded in his attempt to make a thriller warning the US of the dangers of internal sabotage and the pro-German leanings of the America First Party.

The end of the Cold War and the increasingly rapid pace of globalization transformed the transatlantic economic community. This chapter will trace some of the major economic developments of the past three decades, including the impact of regional integration, the Great Recession of 2007–2010, the uncertainties produced by Britain’s decision to leave the EU (Brexit) in 2016, and the Trump administration’s apparent tilt toward economic nationalism. Yet, the history of the transatlantic economic space is also one of deeper interconnectedness and continued accumulation of wealth. After three decades of post–Cold War transformation, the transatlantic economy remains the cockpit of the global economy, the largest and wealthiest market in the world. Indeed, the ultimate paradox of the transatlantic economic relationship may well be that closer economic integration and interdependence has produced more transatlantic competition and closer scrutiny over the other side’s trading practices and labor standards.

This chapter sketches President Donald Trump’s strategy of impulse and instinct and the counterstrategy of transnational legal process, which seeks to effectuate norm internalization into domestic legal systems through interaction–interpretation–internalization (the outside strategy) and engage–translate–leverage (the inside strategy). The outside and inside strategies work together in a complementary way to create an approach called “international law as smart power,” a better alternative to Trump’s counterproductive approach of disengage–black hole–no leverage. The counterstrategy functions like a game of “rope-a-dope,” whereby other players in the process can resist Trump’s initiatives, absorb punishment, parry where possible, and strategically counterpunch when Trump gets exhausted. In playing this game, law, policy, and politics impose separate but interrelated constraints on presidential overreaching.