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Fareed Zakaria GPS
Fareed Zakaria Special Show: America First. Aired 11p-12a ET
Aired January 18, 2026 - 23:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[23:00:00]
FAREED ZAKARIA, CNN HOST: Thank you for watching this special hour on Iran. I'm Fareed Zakaria.
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FAREED ZAKARIA, CNN HOST (voice-over):On June 6, 1984 the 40th anniversary of D-Day President Ronald Reagan came to the cliffs of Normandy. He spoke of the heroism of a battalion of Army Rangers who had scaled those cliffs under enemy fire, among the millions who gave their lives to liberate Europe.
RONALD REAGAN, PRESIDENT, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: These are the boys of Pointe du Hoc. These are the men who took the cliffs. These are the champions who helped free a continent. These are the heroes who helped end a war.
ZAKARIA (voice-over): Reagan made a passionate plea to his fellow Americans that day, to give meaning to those heroes sacrifice by never turning their back on the world ever again.
REAGAN: We in America have learned bitter lessons from two world wars. It is better to be here, ready to protect the peace than to take blind shelter across the sea.
ZAKARIA (voice-over): America had been protecting the peace with powerful alliances for decades.
REAGAN: We've learned that isolationism never was and never will be an acceptable response to tyrannical governments with an expansionist intent.
ZAKARIA (voice-over): Reagan was expressing a hallowed American ideal, a bipartisan value shared by every president since World War II.
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: From this day forward, it's going to be only America First.
ZAKARIA (voice-over): Until recently. This is what today's Republican Party sounds like.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: My amendment would direct the President withdrawal from NATO.
ZOHRAN MAMDANI, MAYOR OF NEW YORK CITY: NATO has for decades, sucked on the teeth of the American taxpayer.
ZAKARIA (voice-over): This is how it talks about longtime allies.
TRUMP: In France. They have all sorts of problems. Germany is a disaster.
ZAKARIA (voice-over): And this is what it thinks about the world.
TRUMP: Americanism, not globalism, will be our credo. We've been talking about this for a long time. Thank you.
ZAKARIA (voice-over): As president, Donald Trump walked away from more international deals than any other President in American history.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This moment has been a long time coming.
ZAKARIA (voice-over): From the Iran nuclear deal.
TRUMP: The Iran deal is defective --
ZAKARIA (voice-over): To climate change.
TRUMP: I was elected to represent the citizens of Pittsburgh, not Paris.
ZAKARIA (voice-over): To trade.
TRUMP: We're going to keep out of the Trans Pacific partnership.
ZAKARIA (voice-over): And according to his own National Security Advisor, John Bolton.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The 12 nations undertake the common security.
ZAKARIA (voice-over): He threatened to pull out of the best deal America ever made.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They were sworn to stand together against aggression.
ZAKARIA (voice-over): The NATO alliance, it tore down a wall.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The red flag of the failed Soviet Union, at last came down --
ZAKARIA (voice-over): Defeated an empire.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Sea, land and air coordination.
ZAKARIA (voice-over): And still defends almost 1 billion people. From those hungry for conquest.
TRUMP: NATO is obsolete. It's old, it's fat, it's sloppy.
ZAKARIA (voice-over): How did we get here? The fact is, America has been here before. To understand we need to look back and tell the story of America First.
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FAREED ZAKARIA, CNN HOST (on camera): Welcome to a special hour on American isolationism. I'm Fareed Zakaria. When we first heard the campaign slogan America First in the 2016 campaign, it felt like a startling break from the past that came out of nowhere. But history often repeats itself, and when we look to the past, America First was said to be the nation's guiding principle for most of its existence.
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FAREED ZAKARIA, CNN HOST (voice over): The story begins with the founding fathers. George Washington, the nation's first President said famously in his farewell address, that America should steer clear of permanent alliances with other countries.
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BARBARA A. PERRY, CO-EDITOR, THE PRESIDENCY: George Washington not only said that we should avoid entangling alliances, but he referred to it as the great rule.
CHRISTOPHER MCKNIGHT NICHOLS, AUTHOR, PROMISE AND PERIL: That great rule of a kind of policy bed rock of neutrality was the touch point for American policymakers.
ZAKARIA (voice-over): Washington's warning made perfect sense for a young weak Republic and its fragile experiment in democracy. Alliances could lead to war, and war could lead to invasion, as well as dangerous division and even tyranny on the home front.
PERRY: The tyranny of a standing army and the kind of general who might be governing it.
ZAKARIA (voice-over): America's wisest course would be to enjoy the protection of its massive moats, the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. After all, the nation has a hemisphere to itself. Thomas Jefferson noted.
WILLIAM I. HITCHCOCK, AUTHOR, THE AGE OF ELSENHOWER: America is going to prosper by neutrality, by trade and by internal development.
ZAKARIA (voice-over): But while America steered clear of Europe, it expanded aggressively in its own backyard, building an empire at home, free from power politics abroad. It doubled its size with the Louisiana Purchase and captured much of the West in the Mexican War. That's not quite isolationism. Manifest Destiny was America's creed in its own hemisphere, a belief that God had ordained its conquest of a continent.
HITCHCOCK: The transplanting of indigenous peoples, seizing of their land, and what many people call a genocide against indigenous Americans.
(END VIDEO CLIP) ZAKARIA (on camera): Avoiding entanglements with the rest of the world, turned a weak Republic into a continental power house.
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FAREED ZAKARIA, CNN HOST (voice over): The United States was leading the world in manufacturing by the late 1800s. Immigrants seeking freedom and fortune flocked to its shores, and a nation now brimming with confidence, was becoming a great power. In 1913 --
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Wilson was nominated and easily defeated a split Republican ticket.
ZAKARIA (voice-over): Woodrow Wilson became President.
BARBARA A. PERRY, CO-EDITOR, THE PRESIDENCY: Woodrow Wilson is a complex character.
CHRISTOPHER MCKNIGHT NICHOLS, AUTHOR, PROMISE AND PERIL: He began with a declaration that he would stick to the core principles of Washington and Jefferson, that he had no intent to intervene abroad.
ZAKARIA (voice-over): Wilson's main focus was his historic domestic agenda, including massive labor reforms, antitrust measures and other progressive achievements. "It would be the irony of fate if my administration had to deal chiefly with foreign affairs, he said." Fate intervened with World War I. Wilson was determined to keep America out of the war, having witnessed the horrors of America's Civil War as a child. He won re-election on a promise of peace.
WILLIAM I. HITCHCOCK, AUTHOR, THE AGE OF ELSENHOWER: He runs for re- election in 1916 World War I has been going on for two years on the platform of he kept us out of the war.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: 1000s of tons of shipping are destroyed weekly.
ZAKARIA (voice-over): But then Germany ramped up its aggression with an all-out attack on American ships, sinking three of them.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Congress passes a resolution.
ZAKARIA (voice-over): An agonized President felt he had no choice but to go to war. Now in the conflict, Wilson went all in, vowing to win the war, and more importantly, win the peace. To create a system that would eliminate the death spiral of European conflicts.
NICHOLS: Woodrow Wilson is the pivotal figure, I would argue in American foreign policy thought.
ZAKARIA (voice-over): Wilson studied the causes of war and came up with Fourteen Points to eradicate it, including the League of Nations, which would mediate quarrels in a new civilized world.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Statesmen assembled to draw up the peace treaty.
ZAKARIA (voice-over): Germany agreed to peace based on Wilson's Fourteen Points.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: In December of 1918, Wilson sailed for France.
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ZAKARIA (voice-over): And he was hailed in Europe as a savior. His bold idea for a new world order was popular, but it proved ahead of its time.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The opposition --
ZAKARIA (voice-over): Back home, the league was met with stiff Republican resistance. So Wilson took his case directly to the American people, barnstorming the country. Without the league, there would be another world war Wilson warned. His impassioned defense seemed to be winning people over, but suddenly he was felled by a massive stroke, leaving his left side paralyzed. His wife kept it secret and quietly ran the country. The league went down to defeat, and an invalid Wilson finished his term, passing away just three years later. With Woodrow Wilson died, any hope of a lasting peace.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Another war not for me. This time America should keep out, and I know I will.
ZAKARIA (voice-over): Coming up.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We cannot win this war for England. That is why the America First committee has been formed.
ZAKARIA (voice-over): America turns inward like never before.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Ruthless aggression and conquest.
ZAKARIA (voice-over): And Woodrow Wilson's dark prophecy comes true.
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ZAKARIA (on camera): Before Donald Trump made America First a famous catch phrase, another larger than life celebrity made it popular in the early 1940s. The famed aviator Charles Lindbergh.
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FAREED ZAKARIA, CNN HOST (voice over): After piloting the first solo non-stop flight across the Atlantic.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The greatest start of all.
ZAKARIA (voice-over): Charles Lindbergh was an international sensation.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The most idolized man in the world.
ZAKARIA (voice-over): For Time magazine's first ever Man of the Year in 1928 he was the natural choice. He parlayed his fame into politics, becoming the spokesman for the largest anti-war organization in U.S. history, the America First Committee.
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It included people from all walks of life, from the architect Frank Lloyd Wright to Walt Disney.
JON MEACHAM, AUTHOR, FRANKLIN AND WINSTON: America First was the embodiment, the manifestation of this isolationist sentiment. And it was hugely important and popular.
ZAKARIA (voice-over): It was 1941 and World War II was raging. The Nazis had taken over most of Europe, but Americans wanted desperately to stay out of the war. 93% of them, according to one poll, the America First Committee grew to 800,000 members, and Charles Lindbergh was its champion.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We cannot win this war for England. That is why the America First Committee has been formed.
ZAKARIA (voice-over): His biggest opponent, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who knew that if Germany took over Europe, America could be next. It would take his most masterful political performance to ready a nation for war, a war that almost no one in America wanted to get involved with. After the First World War and over 100,000 dead Americans, the United States had returned to its isolationist roots with a vengeance.
MEACHAM: There was the sense that we should be fortress America.
ZAKARIA (voice-over): Republican presidents signed a strict immigration law and a massive tariff walling off the country from the rest of the world. Meanwhile, America's military was reduced dramatically.
WILLIAM I. HITCHCOCK, AUTHOR, THE AGE OF ELSENHOWER: America was very, very weak in a smaller army than Romania.
ZAKARIA (voice-over): Tariffs deepened the Great Depression in the 1930s which had left one in four Americans out of a job.
MEACHAM: It was an existential crisis. And into that moment came Franklin Roosevelt.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I, Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
ZAKARIA (voice-over): Roosevelt offered a new deal for the country.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This nation is asking for action and action now.
ZAKARIA (voice-over): A barrage of government programs to get folks working again, but to pass his ambitious domestic agenda and save the country. Roosevelt needed the many isolationists in Congress on his side. CHRISTOPHER MCKNIGHT NICHOLS, AUTHOR, PROMISE AND PERIL: The challenge for him is keeping them on board on the domestic policy side and not moving too fast on the foreign policy side.
ZAKARIA (voice-over): FDR followed Congress's lead on international matters, signing neutrality acts to prohibit arms sales to any warring country, friend or foe. Roosevelt sent a letter to Adolf Hitler asking him to respect the sovereignty of 31 countries. The Nazis response, hysterical laughter.
HITCHCOCK: The Nazis laughed at Roosevelt's gesture, just as they laughed at American power.
ZAKARIA (voice-over): Hitler knew America would do nothing to stop the great German war machine.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This country should heed the advice of its Vice President and avoid all foreign entanglements.
ZAKARIA (voice-over): Germany invaded Poland in September 1939.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This nation will remain a neutral nation.
ZAKARIA (voice-over): But FDR knew that staying neutral would threaten America's security before long.
NICHOLS: You see FDR slowly maneuvering the U.S. population and policy makers towards intervention in the war.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I ask this Congress for authority and for funds.
ZAKARIA (voice-over): Roosevelt convinced Congress to finally arm the embattled allies with an isolationist argument that they would like.
HITCHCOCK: The idea was, let's build weapons and sell them to Britain and France so they can do the fighting. And Roosevelt said that will keep America out of war.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Guns and munitions of all sorts pour into Britain.
ZAKARIA (voice-over): Slowly, FDR began winning over the wary American public.
HITCHCOCK: Americans start realizing that they're going to have to sacrifice if they want to protect democracy at home, as well as around the world. I think it's one of the great achievements of any U.S. President.
ZAKARIA (voice-over): But at the time, many accused FDR of warmongering and even demanded his impeachment.
MEACHAM: The struggle between interventionists in the late 1930s and isolationists dwarfed the divisions in the country during the Vietnam era. It was that ferocious.
[23:20:00] ZAKARIA (voice-over): Roosevelt faced a rebellion in his own cabinet. His Secretary of War, Harry Woodring, was a committed pacifist who ignored direct orders from the President that he thought could drag the United States into war. In June, 1940 allied forces were routed at Dunkin. Germany was rolling into Paris. Next on Hitler's list was London. Roosevelt ordered bombers for a desperate Britain, but Woodring refused.
BARBARA A. PERRY, CO-EDITOR, THE PRESIDENCY: FDR couldn't have an isolationist pacifist as your secretary of war.
ZAKARIA (voice-over): Woodring lost his job, but not his cause. He walked out of the White House and joined Charles Lindbergh's America First Committee. The committee would be remembered for the antisemites in its ranks, but its support ran well beyond just bigots. Gerald Ford, the poet Robert Frost, and the future Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart, were all associated with the group. Isolationism was so popular that it even threatened FDRs re-election in 1940 requiring a somewhat misleading campaign promise.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars.
PERRY: He had to know that wasn't true, but he knew he had to get re- elected, so he went ahead and said that --
ZAKARIA (voice-over): FDR won the election, but around 80% of Americans still remained opposed to entering the war. All of that would change in a single day.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: December 7, 1941 a date which will live in infamy.
ZAKARIA (voice-over): Japan's deadly attack on Pearl Harbor transformed America overnight.
NICHOLS: Americans rallied around the flag.
ZAKARIA (voice-over): Now, 97% of Americans supported going to war. The America First Committee disbanded. Isolationism in America was dead. Or was it even after World War II, the Republican Party was still thinking America First, until a war hero force, the party's about face. That story next.
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ZAKARIA (voice-over): 10s of millions dead, cities reduced to rubble, an entire continent in ruins. Europe after World War II was a hellscape, decimated by yet another great power conflict that had spiraled out of control. The United States had been drawn into it at a cost of nearly half a million American lives. Yet, even after the Second World II, there were many Republicans who still believed in America First, and that the nation's wises course was to turn inward. It took a World War II hero to inspire an about face in the party, General Dwight David Eisenhower. He believed that America's enormous sacrifices could not be allowed to have been made in vain. So he campaigned for a fledgling alliance called NATO and led Republicans away from isolationism for the rest of the 20th century. This is the little told story of how a general became a reluctant politician when the world and America needed him most.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So help me God.
ZAKARIA (voice-over): Before Eisenhower, there had been President Roosevelt, who laid the groundwork for the post war world. In 1943 he met with Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin, outlining his idea for an international organization with, "four policemen the United States, Britain, China, and the Soviet Union."
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We have learned that we cannot live alone at peace, that our own well-being is dependent on the well-being of other nations far away.
ZAKARIA (voice-over): Tragically, Roosevelt would not live to see his dream realized.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The flag flies at half-staff as a grief stricken nation mourns the death of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, President of the United States.
ZAKARIA (voice-over): Just weeks after his death, delegates from 50 nations finalized the charter for FDR's dream the United Nations.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The charter of a new world is born.
ZAKARIA (voice-over): The UN was just one prong of a new American led world order meant to ensure that there would never be a third world war.
HITCHCOCK: We accept the principle that American power in the world is a good thing. Isolationism is not the way to peace. Neutrality is not the way to peace. Building the structures of American power with democracies as allies, that's the way to build a peaceful world order.
ZAKARIA (voice-over): There was the Marshall Plan, America's multi- billion dollar program to rebuild Western Europe.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: American helped to supplement European self-help.
ZAKARIA (voice-over): the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank to promote peaceful global trade and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, or NATO, which would protect its member states from the Soviet Union.
NICHOLS: Undoubtedly, the institutions born out of World War II helped to prevent another major power conflict on the scale and scope of the Second World War. ZAKARIA (voice-over): Both Roosevelt and his successor, Harry Truman, were Democrats, and engagement with the world was their philosophy. On the Republican side, things were murkier.
HITCHCOCK: There remained what we sometimes call the Old Guard of Republicans who are very critical of this rapid expansion of America's world presence.
ZAKARIA (voice-over): Former President Herbert Hoover wanted to end U.S. military aid to Europe despite the growing Soviet threat. And then there was Ohio Senator Robert Taft, a front runner for the 1952 Republican presidential nomination. Taft was a vigorous opponent of the World Bank and the Marshall Plan. He also voted against NATO.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A soldier from Aberdeen, Kansas, USA.
ZAKARIA (voice-over): But there was another big name in the mix for the Republican nomination, General Dwight Eisenhower had a competing vision for America's place in the world. He had led the allied forces to victory as their supreme commander in Europe, exhausted from his years in uniform, Eisenhower fantasized about buying a ranch and retiring.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I intend to have nothing whatsoever to do with partisan politics.
ZAKARIA (voice-over): But then duty came calling again in the form of a request from President Truman. Would Eisenhower be willing to serve as NATO's first military commander?
HITCHCOCK: Truman needs somebody, some electric personality, to really sell the idea of a permanent alliance, which is something America had never done.
ZAKARIA (voice-over): The Soviets had taken over Eastern Europe and were trying to extend their control across the continent. Eisenhower took the NATO job.
DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER, PRESIDENT, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: An order announcing his assumption of command.
ZAKARIA (voice-over): He made a forceful case for the new alliance to the nation.
EISENHOWER: If we Americans seize the lead, we will preserve and be worthy of our own past. Our children will dwell in peace. They will dwell in freedom. They will read the history of this decade with tingling pride.
ZAKARIA (voice-over): But there was one man, Eisenhower, was especially eager to convince the Republican front runner for President, Robert Taft. Before the 1952 Republican primary, Eisenhower met with Taft and proposed a deal. He Eisenhower would withdraw publicly from consideration for the nomination on one condition that Taft endorse NATO. But Taft refused. HITCHCOCK: He says, I'm not doing it. I've been an isolationist all my life. I believe America should look inward, not outward. I would never say such a thing.
ZAKARIA (voice-over): Eisenhower had long been reluctant to enter the political fray, but with NATO on the line and public support for his candidacy catching fire, he felt he had no choice.
HITCHCOCK: If Taft became President, it would be a blow to everything he had done to win World War II, to build NATO. So he's persuaded that to defend internationalism, to defend this new American order, he must run for President.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Chicago becomes the focal point for the nation's eyes as the highest bitterest Republican convention in 40 years gets underway.
ZAKARIA (voice-over): A contested convention followed.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Senator Taft was fighting out a fierce battle against the newcomer.
ZAKARIA (voice-over): Taft was a formidable foe.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Now cheers by those who like Ike.
ZAKARIA (voice-over): But in the end, Eisenhower emerged victorious. Winning the nomination and then the presidency.
EISENHOWER: You have summoned me to lead a great crusade for freedom in America and freedom in the world.
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ZAKARIA (voice-over): Those words ushered in a new era.
NICHOLS: Eisenhower, running and winning, transformed the Republican Party.
ZAKARIA (voice-over): Republican presidents were now ready to take to the world stage in defense of the Western liberal order.
PERRY: Eisenhower should be given a tremendous amount of credit, because he really did smother in the Republican Party the isolationist movement for those many decades.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Mr. Gorbachev tear down this wall.
ZAKARIA (voice-over): In 1989 the Berlin Wall fell, and soon, so did the Soviet Union.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: In Moscow, the hammer and sickle is lowered for the last time.
ZAKARIA (voice-over): America had won the Cold War, but now it was at a crossroads. Would the United States continue to lead or turn inward again? Coming up how the party of Ronald Reagan became the party of Donald Trump?
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Patrick Buchanan right now being welcomed by a throng of supporters.
PATRICK BUCHANAN, AUTHOR AND FORMER WHITE HOUSE COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR: Did I not tell you we would make history.
ZAKARIA (voice-over): In 1992 a dark horse Republican ran for President on a then controversial slogan.
BUCHANAN: America First, America First, America First, America First.
ZAKARIA (voice-over): His name was Pat Buchanan, and he shocked the pundits with a surprisingly strong showing in the New Hampshire primary.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The President of United States.
ZAKARIA (voice-over): He scared the sitting president, George H. W. Bush. Buchanan would eventually fail, but he was the canary in the America First coal mine.
PATRICK JOSEPH BUCHANAN, AUTHOR AND FORMER WHITE HOUSE COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR: Maintain your sovereignty of your own country.
ZAKARIA (voice-over): Why did his America first message fall short then, and yet become a massive success years later.
This is the story. "We were with you, then we're with you now." Of how the party of Ronald Reagan.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So help me God.
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: So help me God.
ZAKARIA (voice-over): Became the party of Donald Trump.
TRUMP: From this day forward, it's going to be only America First. America First.
ZAKARIA (voice-over): Before Trump.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Looking out here, you can't tell a Republican from a Democrat or an Independent out here.
ZAKARIA (voice-over): There was pitch fork Pat Buchanan, a former staffer with President Nixon, turned conservative cable star.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Cross fire on the right Pat Buchanan.
ZAKARIA (voice-over): Buchanan, long had the pulse of the GOP space.
BUCHANAN: We've been together eight years now, and soon it'll be time for me to go.
ZAKARIA (voice-over): And with Reagan's departure and Communism's defeat.
RONALD REAGAN, PRESIDENT, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. I'm ready to roll. Good to see you again.
ZAKARIA (voice-over): Buchanan sensed an opportunity to revive the rights isolationist tradition. His rival for the soul of the GOP was Reagan's successor, George Herbert Walker Bush. Bush was the quintessential establishment Republican. Determined that America should continue to lead the world. After the fall of the Berlin Wall. He helped reunify Germany.
GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: Germany is united. Germany is free. Tonight, the battle has been joined.
ZAKARIA (voice-over): And he led an international coalition to kick Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait.
BUSH: The skies over Baghdad have been illuminated.
ZAKARIA (voice-over): That victory was swift and convincing.
BUSH: Kuwait is liberated.
ZAKARIA (voice-over): Bush declared a New World Order led by the USA.
BUSH: A new world order where diverse nations are drawn together in common cause.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The economy today.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The economy.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The economy.
ZAKARIA (voice-over): But across the nation, many Americans did not feel they were winning.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Unemployment is the highest in nearly a decade.
ZAKARIA (voice-over): The country was in a recession.
BUCHANAN: Let me tell you about Mr. Bush's New World Order.
ZAKARIA (voice-over): With the Cold War I people wanted to focus on problems at home. From his perch on cable television, Pat Buchanan took notice and pitch fort Pat seized his moment.
BUCHANAN: Declaring my candidacy for the Republican nomination for President of the United States.
ZAKARIA (voice-over): Reagan had spoken of America as a city on a hill. Buchanan saw a fortress in need of defense.
BUSH: The United States and Mexican governments.
ZAKARIA (voice-over): Buchanan blasted free trade deals.
BUCHANAN: The President ought to be tougher in protecting American jobs and American businesses and American industries.
ZAKARIA (voice-over): He wanted to stop paying for the defense of longtime allies.
BUCHANAN: The Germans and the Japanese have been free riding and free loading off the United States, and if I'm President, they're going to pay the full burden of their own defense.
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ZAKARIA (voice-over): He rejected international commitments. Demanded a border wall, and he summed it all up with one big slogan.
BUCHANAN: I believe in a foreign policy of America First.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Buchanan's America First stance translates into opposition to foreign aid, lower taxes, trade protectionism and immigration restrictions.
ZAKARIA (voice-over): To the shock of the political establishment, his message resonated.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Patrick Buchanan right now being welcomed by a throng of supporters.
ZAKARIA (voice-over): He earned nearly 40% of the vote in New Hampshire.
BUCHANAN: Did I not tell you we would make history.
ZAKARIA (voice-over): Bush would win the nomination easily.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Here we go.
ZAKARIA (voice-over): But Buchanan would eventually win the argument for the party's future.
BUCHANAN: My friends, we must take back our cities and take back our culture and take back our country.
ZAKARIA (voice-over): In 1996 Buchanan won the New Hampshire Primary.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: A Buchanan bombshell rocks, the Granite State --
ZAKARIA (voice-over): That was Pat Buchanan's high water mark, but his America First philosophy had an impact on the GOP.
BUSH: We will not be permanent peacekeepers, dividing warring parties.
ZAKARIA (voice-over): In 2000 during George W. Bush's presidential campaign, he said America should scale back its foreign commitments.
BUSH: I don't think our troops ought to be used for what's called nation building.
ZAKARIA (voice-over): Then suddenly, the world changed. After the attacks on September 11, Bush promised to eliminate terrorist threats around the world.
BUSH: The people who knock these buildings down will hear all of us soon. The United States military has begun strikes against Al Qaeda terrorist training camps.
ZAKARIA (voice-over): He invaded Afghanistan.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Coalition forces have begun striking selective targets.
ZAKARIA (voice-over): And then Iraq.
BUSH: All who live in tyranny and hopelessness, the United States will not ignore your oppression.
ZAKARIA (voice-over): A totally transformed Bush said he would spread freedom and democracy everywhere.
BUSH: When you stand for your liberty, we will stand with you.
ZAKARIA (voice-over): But the wars dragged on inconclusively, and 1000s of Americans were killed and wounded in far off places.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The U.S. banking system remains in deep trouble.
ZAKARIA (voice-over): Then in 2008 the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression shattered the economy. Once again, America's elites look like they had led the country astray. Along came the Tea Party, a hard right rebellion against those elites. Its big target was Bush's successor, Barack Obama, America's first Black President, but the wars and financial crisis had happened on Bush's watch.
BUSH: I'm going to sign it into law.
ZAKARIA (voice-over): A rage filled right wing base went after the Republican establishment as much as the Democrats. They believed that as the country navigated a globalizing world, they were being left behind. America First became an alluring refrain, and Donald Trump became the ideal messenger.
TRUMP: They're bringing drugs, they're bringing crime, they're rapists and some, I assume, are good people.
ZAKARIA (voice-over): Donald Trump has often been accused of having no real convictions.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Do you have an interest in political office at the national level?
TRUMP: Well, I'll tell you, Pat they treated me beautifully in New Hampshire.
ZAKARIA (voice-over): But he had been preaching his version of America First for decades.
TRUMP: I'd make our allies pay their fair share.
ZAKARIA (voice-over): Trump slap tariffs on trusted allies and tore up treaties.
TRUMP: The United States will withdraw --
REAGAN: A word about loyalty.
ZAKARIA (voice-over): The party of Reagan had been transformed into the party of Trump.
TRUMP: Witch hunt, witch hunt, scam, hoax.
ZAKARIA (voice-over): A party likely unrecognizable to the man who was once the right's greatest hero.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ZAKARIA (on camera): Coming up my thoughts on America First.
[23:50:00]
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
ZAKARIA (on camera): And now for some closing thoughts on America First. 1945 is a bright line in world history. The century before it was grim, World War II, World War I, the Boer War, the Balkan Wars, the Russo-Japanese war, the Sino-Russian war, the Spanish-American War, the Franco-Prussian war, and those are just the major conflicts.
Since 1945 there have been wars Korea, Vietnam, the Soviets and Americans in Afghanistan. But the number of them and the number of deaths in them have plummeted by more than 95% by Steven Pinker's 2011 estimate. Pinker also notes that successful territorial conquest declined to zero by the late 20th century, despite being the primary feature of war before 1945. This is why the Russian aggression against Ukraine is such a dangerous aberration.
There have been many civil wars, of course, but Pinker showed that these have been less bloody than the major wars of the past. The reduction of conflict is just one measure of the changes in the international system since 1945. Countries before 1945 were autarkic with largely closed economies, high tariffs, and for the great powers captive colonial markets.
[23:55:00]
Things worsened in the early 20th century as countries became more mercantilist and nationalist. That began to change after 1945 as the world economy became more open and interdependent, which led to huge rises in the average incomes and quality of life of people across the world.
Average tariffs declined from around 20% in the 1940s to under 5% on most trade in 2016. Trade increased from $63 billion in 1950 to almost 25 trillion in 2022, and these numbers don't capture the massive increase in global supply chains cross border investment and collaboration around the world. The result has been an almost fivefold increase in average income worldwide, since 1950 adjusting for inflation.
This did not all happen by accident. It happened because the world's leading nation, the United States, organized the world around a series of ideas that produced a very different international system than before, creating a watershed in international history. It chose to ask for no spoils for its victory. Instead, it financed the rebuilding of the defeated powers, Germany, Italy and Japan. It poured money into poor countries, helping them to eradicate many severe problems of health and nutrition.
Through the Bretton Woods institutions, it created a structure of international trade and collaboration that birthed the open world economy, and with its efforts to force Europe's colonial powers to end their imperial roles, it allowed for a new world of independent nations. I'm not being naive. America was often selective, hypocritical and wrong in doing these things. It still is.
It often made tragic errors in using force to punish what it regarded as bad regimes, from Vietnam to Iraq, but compared to past great powers, the United States' behavior and the world that it made stand in bright, shining light. This world would not have come into being had Germany won World War II. It would not have expanded massively after 1989 had the Soviet Union won the Cold War.
It was not all an act of altruism. America genuinely believed that a world of openness, order and liberty would be a more prosperous and secure world for all, especially the richest country of them all itself. The evidence bears this out. The United States has stayed the world's leading economic power since 1945. Average income in the United States in 1945 was about $16,000. Today it is about $58,000 both numbers adjusted for inflation.
Indeed, today, America dominates the world of technology and economics on a scale that is unprecedented. In 2008, the eurozone economy and the American economy were about the same size. Today, America is almost twice the size of the Eurozone, and yet, many Americans want to turn inward. It's understandable. We take the world that we built and in which we have thrived for granted. We've tired of the burdens of leadership. We listen to those who say that foreigners are ripping us off, that we could squeeze them and get a better deal, and that we should walk away and let them sort out their own mess. We are seduced once again by the siren call of America First. But once we walk away, the world we built will crumble. It is not naturally occurring and will not survive an American abandonment. No other power can fill our role.
It is the labor of many generations that have built up these institutions and order. It would be the work of a few years to let it all erode and collapse. Depending on how America acts over the next few years, we might be entering a new world, actually, one that is old and familiar, one marked by narrow nationalism, protectionism, insecurity and constant mass scale violence and war.
Thank you for watching this special hour on America First.
