It is always strange as a Brit celebrating American Independence Day in the United States when the event they are celebrating is when they kicked the British out of the country. When Americans bring it up I make a few bad jokes about how everyone would be better off if they were still a colony, but to be honest for most Americans 4 July is all about parades, beer, baseball and fireworks. Their independence from us is not at the forefront of the celebrations. There are no Mad King George versions of Guy Fawkes, or triumphant cries of ‘The British are coming’. But 4 July is as American a day as you can get (alongside Thanksgiving) and there is a strong sense of one nation, one purpose. To most outsiders, 4 July is the real America: brash, dazzling, imperial and united.
Except, of course, that that is not at all how America really is. In reality, it is a highly fractious, disjointed, disunited country. The US might aspire to be a melting pot, but all of the ingredients are still very much intact and unstirred. It is a commonwealth of disparate nations: some say there are two nations, north and south, Democrat or Republican, liberal or conservative. But in fact it is much more nuanced than that. In his 2011 epic, American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America, Colin Woodward argues lucidly that as northern America – including much of Mexico and most of Canada – was populated over the course of the last five centuries, 11 clearly distinct nations have developed. It is the differences between these nations – among them Yankees, the Deep South, the Left Coast, and New France – that explain not only the key developments in US history, including slavery, the civil war, and the age of America, but also best describe the polarised nature of US politics and society today, and predict a tumultuous future. If you are remotely interested in American politics (and the fact you are reading this column suggests you are!) then I would highly recommend seeking out the book. In the meantime, there is a great summary of some of the key arguments in the Washington Post.
World Cup
As if it was not bad enough that England got knocked out so early form the World Cup, watching the US as my ‘second’ team was almost as painful. There are a lot of misconceptions in the United Kingdom about US football: we think they use the wrong words and phrases (they use different ones from us, but American English is different from British English, so deal with it), that they cannot play (they escaped the Group of Death, and I would put money on them to beat England head-to-head), and that the US has no passion for the game (I can assure you that was not the case in the bars and parties where I watched their matches). The US team themselves were exciting to watch: they had a great goalie in Tim Howard, Clint Dempsey was on fire at times, and overall they played as a team rather than a collection of individuals, something that most of the last eight have done. They were undoubtedly lucky on a number of occasions, but they showed real fighting spirit coming back from when they were down or pulled back in all of their games, never more so than in the last 15 thrilling, but ultimately disappointing, minutes against Belgium. They reminded me of what England are meant to be like, but aren’t.
The West Point foreign policy
When Barack Obama gave his speech at West Point in early June setting out his new foreign policy (America has a duty to provide global leadership, but military intervention should be a last resort) he probably little suspected just how soon it would meet the sternest of tests. With the advance of the self-proclaimed Islamic State (formerly ISIS, formerly ISIL) in Iraq, the questions being posed of US world leadership are among the toughest Obama has faced in his over five years in office. Hawks in both parties want the US to intervene militarily against IS and are angry at what they perceive as the president’s indecisiveness, while isolationists believe he has already gone too far by sending a few hundred military advisers. But it seems that Obama might just be sticking with his West Point policy. He understands the almost crippling complexity of the situation: the adventures and misadventures of the Bush-Blair years have exposed decades or even centuries old scars between Sunni and Shia; with Iran and its proxies Syria and Lebanon on one side, and Saudi Arabia and the gulf states on the other, there is a civil war brewing in the Middle East which will likely rage for years. Russia has already lined up with the Shia. For the US to pick a side now – or at all – would be extremely dangerous; bombing Sunni militants in Iraq, even militants as vicious as IS, would simply increase the pace of radicalisation while leaving the US with no moral high ground to cling to in the years to come. Israel is already siding, or trying to side, with the Kurds as, unlike the US (and the UK), Israel has no need to maintain the pretence of a unified Iraq. To those in Washington who have open eyes, it seems highly unlikely that Iraq will exist in the future as a political entity. Obama, I think, knows all this. He knows that staying the US hand now will reap dividends in the long term, even though in the short and medium term it might appear as if he is weak. But by refusing to act in panic or in reaction to short-term considerations he is displaying the leadership which the world really needs.
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