It's not terribly surprising that a new Pew Research Center poll shows roughly half of Americans say the United States should mind its own business and let other countries deal with problems on their own.
As the economy sputters and Congress debates the future of health care, the United States has its hands full. Fighting a war on two fronts is simply overload, to hear many Americans tell it.
But to bury our collective heads in the sand is hardly an answer, either. Now more than ever, the world's inhabitants are linked through trade, the exchange of information and security needs.
Whether it's nations and states sharing information to counter terrorism or providing one another medical surveillance reports to track influenza outbreaks across the globe, earthlings have a growing interdependence. Only dictators such as North Korea's Kim Jong Il believe that states are better when largely isolated from the rest of the world. The folly of that logic is borne out by the experiences of neighboring South Korea, which has become a major world economy, aided in large part by its democratic government.
Although the United States is enduring its worst economic conditions since the Great Depression, it is worth remembering that the economy is cyclical. Better times are in the offing. Moreover, the economy is global. The dollar stretches much farther these days thanks to global trade. Global trade provides a vast marketplace for American-made products. The world market places a high premium on American innovation.
Many environmental problems are global in nature. Polluting nations are not islands unto themselves. Pollution with origins in India and China, and that travels the jet stream, has contaminated America's national parks. It will take combined efforts to ensure this generation of children and their children inherit a healthy planet.
Americans who take exception to the United States acting as the world's policeman and peacemaker should remember that America bears "a special burden" in foreign affairs, as President Barack Obama reminded Americans in his recent address to the nation at the United States Military Academy at West Point.
"We have spilled American blood in many countries on multiple continents. We have spent our revenue to help others rebuild from rubble and develop their own economies. We have joined with others to develop an architecture of institutions — from the United Nations to NATO to the World Bank — that provide for the common security and prosperity of human beings.
"We have not always been thanked for these efforts, and we have at times made mistakes. But more than any other nation, the United States of America has underwritten global security for over six decades — a time that, for all its problems, has seen walls come down, and markets open, and billions lifted from poverty, unparalleled scientific progress and advancing frontiers of human liberty," Obama said.
The United States is not a conquering nation that claims others' lands or property. It does not seek to be an occupier. It is a nation that understands that cooperation, trade and the free exchange of ideas benefit all the world's inhabitants. The notion of going it alone in such a complex world is folly.