In the new issue of World Affair’s Journal Scott McConnell, co-founder and editor-at-large of The American Conservative, pens an intriguing and provocative essay investigating the effects our increasingly multicultural society will have on the future of U.S. Foreign policy. In particular, he cites the growing influence of the Mexican-, Asian-, and Arab-American communities, as well as the unforseen and lasting effects of the 1965 Immigration Act in reshaping our “nation’s identity.” A new identity is emerging that is taking us away from the messianic and interventionist view our nation had adopted for the past 70 years:

… the backers of the 1965 act did not imagine huge demographic changes: there would be, they claimed, some modest increase in the number of Greek and Italian immigrants but not much else. The sheer inaccuracy of this prediction was already apparent by the early 1970s. The 1965 Act allowed entry of immigrants from any country, so long as they possessed certain job skills or family members living here or had been granted refugee status themselves.

The family reunification provision soon became the vital engine of immigrant selection. By the 1980s, it had greatly increased numbers of Asians and of Hispanics–the latter mostly from Mexico. The European population of the country was now in relative decline–from 87 percent in 1970 to 66 percent in 2008. If immigration continues at present rates (and barring a long-term economic collapse, it is likely to), by 2040, Hispanics will make up a quarter of the American population. If that does not guarantee a somewhat different foreign policy, there is also the prospect of a substantial expansion of America’s once miniscule Muslim and Arab populations. [Link]

The author summarizes that at the beginning of the 20th century America was “hyphenated nation” and that our multi-polar society had the effect of tempering our foreign policy ambitions, especially when contemplating entry into a conflict. Even at the beginning, our founding fathers, most notably Washington, believed that America had a special destiny and that we would eventually populate the entire continent and run our experiment of freedom and democracy free from the baggage of past conflicts in the old world. That isolationist view was later fortified by the fact that immigrants coming to the U.S. from different European communities, with competing viewpoints, served to some degree as a system of checks and balances in the 19th century. Pearl Harbor had the effect of sweeping away differences between the views of different European-American groups and helped forge what the author refers to as a “national identity” (“national white identity” might be more appropriate).

…America’s intra-European divisions began to melt away quickly after Pearl Harbor, as military service became the defining generational event for American men born between 1914 and 1924. The mixed army squad of WASP, Italian, German, Jew, and Irish became a standard plot device for the popular World War II novel and film. The Cold War generated a further compatibility between ethnicity and foreign policy. East European immigrants and refugees emerged to speak for the silenced populations of a newly Stalinized Eastern Europe. Suddenly, all the major European-American groups were in sync. Italian-Americans mobilized for mass letter-writing campaigns to their parents and grandparents warning of the dangers of voting Communist. Greek-Americans naturally supported the Marshall Plan. [Link]

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