The U.S. is big enough that we could do a lot with internal trade only. We could have quite a decent economy indeed.
We can’t get there from here without some very seriously losses, however. If it happened overnight, we’d collapse. The Great Depression would seem like Happy Days. If we had fifty years to plan on getting there (and if everyone agreed and participated – no obstructionist political parties) then, yeah, we could squeeze ourselves into the shoebox.
But…why? There’s a whole world of eager trading partners out there. Trade ya a cell phone for some coffee, whaddaya say?
XT, my point was that smaller countries with a less diverse base of natural resources in their borders rely on trade all the time. I picked two obscure African countries, but perhaps I should have referenced the Caribbean, Bermuda, the Baltic states, etc.
“But we rely on trade more than others!” is a bizarre justification for the USA. Everybody uses trade. Small countries rely on it more than big ones. [del]We[/del] Our beloved rulers have more power and pull than others, so we get more trade. That’s all.
US foreign policy is not driven exclusively by geopolitical interests that are economic, to do with trade. They are often political and sometimes that politics is more a matter of the political dynamics of the US spilling out onto the world stage rather than any well thought out geo-political strategy.
For example I could never see what geo political interest the US has in its support for Israel. The war in Iraq was also not much to do with trade or indeed security.
The war on drugs was also never made economic sense and was counter productive.
Such policies were driven by factions within the US, for the their own ends. Not much to do with promoting US geopolitical interests, quite the reverse.
It is worth looking at the various foreign policy doctrines that give an idea of the perception of US strategic interests and how priorities have changed over the years.
The Carter doctrine put the stake in the ground regarding the US interest in the Gulf. What sort of doctrine might Obama come up with? Keep on fracking until independent of Gulf Oil and Gas?