Counterpoint: Fine European whine won't bring back globalist U.S.

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It would seem that the editors of the Economist are joining the long line of wistful Europeans who wish America would stay engaged on the world stage under the same terms it's observed for the past 70 years ("America is breaking the global economy it built," Opinion Exchange, Jan. 15).

During those decades, the United States unilaterally maintained what will likely be viewed in the future as the greatest period of peaceful prosperity in human history. Hundreds and hundreds of millions of people have been pulled out of poverty. Trade, under the watchful eye of the U.S. Navy, flowed freely and became universal. Former enemies, like Japan and Germany, grew rich through exports. The only thing a country needed to do to fully enjoy this system was, well, to be our side during our Cold War with the Soviet Union.

But America's existential enemy collapsed three decades ago, and the most pressing reason for the global economic system, from America's viewpoint, had ended. Administrations of both parties have become increasingly isolationist in their economic policies. Biden is no different from Trump on this score, he is just quieter about it while actually implementing protectionist policies on a more formal level than Trump did.

Former Presidents Bill Clinton, the younger George Bush and Barack Obama were all, in the end, populists. This is not strange or somehow un-American. This country at its core has always been isolationist. There is no grand, patriotic sentiment for "an American Empire." We all learned early of George Washington's wise admonition: "avoid foreign entanglements." Being all about us suits us nicely. Fits like a glove.

This is not a trend I'm happy about. I'm a born and bred Republican internationalist by inclination. It's an old fight within the Republican Party, but there's no doubt which wing is ascendant today. It's the America-first isolationists.

We're not looking over our shoulders at the Soviets anymore, and China has exploited the global system for all of the wrong reasons. It's impossible now to justify losing American lives, as we have, to preserve oil flows to China. We remain the world's policeman. A single one of our supercarriers has more firepower than all but three of the air forces in the world. One of the great ironies is that China, which must import 80% of its energy and food, is singularly reliant on trade routes under the dominant protection of the U.S. Navy.

Only belatedly have the Europeans figured out what we were telling them about their needing to shore up their own defense spending, as well as the insanity of relying in the end on Russian energy, was absolutely right. So was the nascent policy of the Trump administration to make the United States the stable, global source of carbon energy while the world transitioned.

We're all wiser looking backward.

In the meantime, look to the next five to 10 years to double America's manufacturing base. A telling sign: the German petrochemical giant BASF, which already has a large footprint here, is literally disassembling plants and refineries in Germany with the intent for rebuilding them in Louisiana. The Italian petro-giant API has been doing the same now for several years.

We'll be fine in this country. But the years ahead may be rough in much of the rest of the world as we slowly keep pulling back from global commitments.