Strangely enough, both the Trump-Putin national-socialist right and the Clinton-Sanders socialist-nationalist Left argue that we could return to something like those golden postwar years if only we would stop getting took on military spending.

They have not consulted the actual budget numbers, because this is, in the end, not about budget numbers. It is about resentment. It is easier for the United Autoworkers to blame sweaty Mexicans and rapacious corporations for the decline of Michigan’s assembly lines than it is to place the blame where it belongs, which is partly on themselves. There are a fair number of self-proclaimed rugged individualists who look with envy upon the cushy European welfare states and ask why it is that they themselves cannot be similarly coddled. They, too, will find someone to blame, and will find a way to tell a story in which they are the heroes or the victims or both. To blame foreigners is natural, and thus so is the desire of these so-called nationalists to retreat from the world.

Whether it is even possible for the United States to become a very large Switzerland is something that even Helvetiaphiles such as myself must doubt. Would it be desirable? The history of the 20th century – and, to some extent, the histories of the 19th century and the 21st century so far – suggests that it would not.

The world is a big, messy place, and the United States is the big, messy, indispensible country right in the middle of it. We cannot retreat from the affairs of the world any more than the sea can retreat from the seabed. Our leadership may be understood as a privilege or as a burden – it is both – but the fact is that when there is real trouble, nobody says: “Dear God, somebody call the Swiss!” The idea that what’s wrong with our economy at the moment is a national failure to nickel-and-dime Shinzo Abe over the price of a kilo of rice in Yokohama is not only absurd, it is beneath us.