One night in June 1942, a German U-boat dropped four Nazi saboteurs on a Hamptons beach. They took a train to New York, where their leader, George John Dasch, informed the FBI about them. Four other Germans, who had landed in Ponte Vedra, Florida, wearing swimming trunks adorned with swastikas, were caught too. The US executed six of the saboteurs, but spared Dasch. He died in 1992 in Ludwigshafen, Germany, aged 89.
The story, recounted by author Christopher Klein, marks the largest incursion into the American mainland by a hostile state this past century. (Pearl Harbor happened 2,000 miles off the mainland, and the 9/11 attacks were perpetrated by a terrorist group.) In short, the US is almost impregnable. Hardly any event off its shores affects it. This creates the American paradox: the US remains the “indispensable nation” for defending vulnerable countries such as Ukraine, yet it can treat them as dispensable. The free world needs the US, but the US may not need the free world. That’s the horrible logic behind Donald Trump’s worldview. If, as president, he abandons Ukraine and other democracies, the US will probably be just fine.
The US’s stint as global policeman peaked with the D-Day landings. D-Day saved Europe, but it was arguably an act of American altruism. Had Hitler won in Europe, the US might have thrived in isolation. The US then built a global postwar architecture — the UN, Nato, international financial and trade institutions — that benefited the world more than it did Americans. Global trade only enhanced American prosperity a little. Even today, the US’s trade-to-GDP ratio is just 25 per cent. China, Russia and Japan are between 38 and 47 per cent, France and the UK about 70 per cent, and Germany at 100 per cent, calculates the World Bank.