A new American exceptionalism? More likely, a recurrent American delusion: to be self-sufficient. Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster, Mr. Trump’s national security adviser, and Gary Cohn, director of the National Economic Council, wrote in The Wall Street Journal that “the world is not a ‘global community’ but an arena where nations, nongovernmental actors and businesses engage and compete for advantage.” Really? How do you think America and Europe — together — defeated Nazism and Communism? How they developed and created wealth for their citizens? Helping each other or “competing for advantage in an arena”?
.. “The United States of America, from time to time, forgets good old Europe and falls in love with new parts of the world,” I said. “It was Japan in the 1980s, Russia in the 1990s, China in 2000s.