America's chance to engage with the world

'Come home, America' said US presidential candidate George McGovern during the Vietnam war, while suffering a bad defeat at the hands of Richard Nixon. But these are the words President-elect Barack Obama should be uttering today, if he wants to live up to his credo, as enunciated in his books. The Republicans - and some Democrats - will try to tear him apart for this, tarring him with the brush of isolationism.

But it is not isolationism. If handled with perception and commitment for the long haul, it is engagement with the world and its problems. It is merely a different way of going about the cause of greater political order and more individual freedom.

It can be characterised as a policy of substituting the carrot for the stick, but this is to simplify it. The carrot should be offered but, with it, a reciprocal sense of self-discipline and a commitment by the opponent to measure progress against the Charter of the United Nations and the resolutions of the Security Council, for when the council agrees, it represents a formidable consensus of world opinion.

This kind of engagement has a long American tradition going back to 1916 with president Woodrow Wilson's aim to create a League of Nations.

We can go even further back, to the time of Theodore Roosevelt. He successfully mediated the Russo-Japanese war, for which he received the Nobel Peace Prize. It was he, in fact, not Wilson, who was the first president to propose a league of nations. He called it the 'World League for the Peace of Righteousness', a title which would have him laughed out of court in today's cynical world.

'Coming home to America' means getting out of Iraq, probably Afghanistan too, and not getting into Iran. But it also means stressing to antagonists the good that America can do with private investment, aid and the development of a common security whereby both sides' right to individual political postures is recognised - as long as they are non-threatening to others. In return for peace, America can offer recognition and security.

It also means being more serious about the role of the UN and trying to recreate the benign veto-free period of former president George Bush and the Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev. It means adopting again a policy, never followed up on, of president Bill Clinton to offer peacekeeping troops to the UN that could operate under the command of UN generals.

Nato should be dismantled; US soldiers and nuclear missiles should be withdrawn from European soil. Likewise, most American troops in Asia should come home. No Asian ally faces an overwhelming threat and what dangers they face they can handle themselves.

One could go on with examples. Wars on distant continents will only threaten American security if the US travels overseas to join in.

An Obama foreign policy cast on these lines would show the US public that reconciliation is cheaper and more effective than confrontation.

Jonathan Power is a London-based journalist