Scarborough Shoal (left). An Afghan family in Kabul (right). Photos: CSIS/AMTI and BBC.com/Getty Images s many U.S. watchers know, Donald Trump's "America First" policy is just the latest iteration of a policy that, most likely, has been around since the country's founding. In reality, most countries have similar policies. The difference is, the bigger a country's footprint on the world stage, the greater the repercussion of its actions across the globe. Take the South China Sea incidents that occurred during Barrack Obama's administration as an example. When China illegally began creating artificial islands in the South China Sea in 2013, Obama could have easily stopped that entire CCP endeavor in its tracks. Instead, he and his administration did nothing. Despite alarms surely raised both inside and outside his government, an unspoken "America first" policy dictated that the South China Sea was simply too far away and too inconsequential for America to bother with. Even earlier, when China occupied the Scarborough Shoal, which lies inside Philippine waters, the Obama administration also did little else, other than appearing concerned—never mind that the Philippines was its former colony, an ally, and had a Mutual Defense Treaty with the United States. But again, because of "America first," Scarborough Shoal to Obama, was nothing but a bunch of rocks in some far-away sea. The heads of the United States Pacific Command (USPACOM), at the time, apparently felt the same way. In an article in Breaking Defense on September 19, 2012, Sydney J. Freedberg Jr. wrote that Gen. Herbert “Hawk” Carlisle, then Pacific Air Forces commander, while referring to Scarborough Shoal, told his audience at an Air Force conference, “would we really fight over that? Because it’s literally a rock in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.” The USPACOM deputy commander, at the time, Lt. Gen. Thomas Conant of the Marine Corps. speaking about America's defense treaties with countries in the Western Pacific, like the Philippines, also told attendees at a conference in Panama that “I’ve come to the thought that having an ambiguous policy at a strategic level isn’t bad — isn’t bad. Having an ambiguous policy gives you maneuver space.” To some Filipinos, his comment came suspiciously close to, finding a way to weasel out of America's treaty obligations. Today, nearly a decade since the Scarborough Shoal standoff, the American military must surely wish it had taken a more forceful stand against China. It could have easily put China in its place back then, but it didn't. So now, American warships and aircraft transverse the South China Sea with trepidation. U.S. allies such as Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea are threatened by China's increasingly powerful navy. Even Guam, a U.S. territory, is now within range of China's expansive military arsenal. As expected, "America first" had backfired. In April of this year, U.S. President Joe Biden suddenly announced he was pulling out the remaining 2,500 U.S. troops from Afghanistan by September. Biden's announcement took his NATO allies, and nearly everyone else, by surprise. Once again, it was "America first" at work. Sadly, the world is now seeing the repercussion of this highly misguided decision. The small military contingent, and their civilian contractors, it turns out, had kept the situation in Afghanistan from spinning out of control. Biden should have left those troops in place. With America leaving, the Afghan government and its 300,000-strong military quickly unraveled. Everything America built and fought for the last 20 years was lost in a matter of weeks. This was a debacle Biden singlehandedly inflicted on his own country. With Afghanistan now under the Taliban, most Afghans want desperately to flee. And an entire generation, of women and girls, that never experienced the harshness of Taliban rule, now faces the prospect of a lifetime of servitude and degradation. America's enemies, making the most of America's latest, and possibly biggest failure, are trumpeting it as proof that America is weak and unreliable. Obama's inaction nearly a decade ago and Biden's actions now, both have a common denominator: only the American point of view was considered. It was "America first." And in both cases, America ended up in a more precarious situation. Unless the United States takes the rest of the world into consideration and starts seeing things from a long-term, global perspective, it will continue losing friends and allies. In time, America could find itself alone, shunned by nations that once looked up to it. Being a leader is never easy. Being a great leader is significantly more difficult. If America wants to lead the world, it must be willing to take on the heavy burden that comes with it. As William Shakespeare so aptly noted: "heavy is the head the wears the crown." Published 8/23/2021