With 'America First,' Trump Challenges The World Constructed After World War II
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Let's explore the origins of the alliances President Trump has put under stress. The president has hammered U.S. allies over their defense spending and trade policies. He's pressuring a complex web of treaties and organizations, many established 70 years ago under a very different president. NPR national security correspondent Greg Myre reports on how they came about.
GREG MYRE, BYLINE: When World War II ended in 1945, President Harry Truman was a man in a hurry. Within months, he helped establish the United Nations to handle political disputes and the World Bank to deal with the shattered global economy. Truman turned to security in this landmark speech to Congress in 1947 warning about the threat of communism.
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HARRY TRUMAN: It must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation.
MYRE: Then came the Marshall Plan to aid Europe's rise from the ruins. It was soon followed by the NATO military alliance - all this in less than five years.
STEPHEN WALT: It was a remarkably creative period of American diplomacy. We hadn't done anything quite like that before.
MYRE: Stephen Walt is a professor of international relations at Harvard.
WALT: All of those institutions have remained intact ever since and have been a principal vehicle for American influence around the world.
MYRE: Truman's desire for this network of political, economic and military institutions flowed directly from his World War I experience as a young artillery captain. He survived the deadliest American battle of that war.
MIKE BREEN: One of his men later described it as fighting for two days in a cemetery of unburied dead.
MYRE: Mike Breen is president of the Truman Center in Washington.
BREEN: This was a man who clearly understood the price that is paid when international relations and international politics is approached as a zero-sum game. And so he clearly understood the idea of collective good, that it's a strategic victory when you can get a large number of countries each put something into a system that benefits them all.
MYRE: President Trump has a very different take. His business background guides his worldview, and he often sees alliances as financial burdens rather than assets. He says NATO members aren't paying their share, and he caught South Korea by surprise in announcing a halt to joint military exercises.
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PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: The amount of money that we spend on that is incredible.
MYRE: The U.S. does shell out billions to keep troops all around the world. But Truman believed this made the U.S. and the world more secure and prosperous. Again, Mike Breen.
BREEN: Is Truman were to look at the way alliances are being treated now by the United States - the cheap way in which we seem to devalue our friends and minimize their contributions - I think he'd be appalled.
MYRE: Truman then and Trump today share at least one common problem - North Korea. In 1950, Truman plunged the U.S. into war there. He fought as he preached. U.S. forces led a coalition of 16 nations under the umbrella of the United Nations. In Trump's attempt to shut down North Korea's nuclear program, he's emphasized his one-on-one summitry with Kim Jong Un. Stephen Walt supports Trump's choice to pursue diplomacy, but he also believes diplomacy is more effective with the full support of allies.
WALT: What Trump advertised as a doctrine of America First over time could turn into America alone.
MYRE: Or as Harry Truman put it in 1947...
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TRUMAN: If we falter in our leadership, we may endanger the peace of the world, and we shall surely endanger the welfare of this nation.
MYRE: Many of America's closest partners would still agree. Greg Myre, NPR News, Washington.
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