Internationalists vs. Isolationists

American  Thinker 

There are two competing conservative views of foreign relationships: internationalist and isolationist.

The internationalists, often called neo-cons, see foreign involvement as vital for a robust economy and protection from foreign threats.  Foreign trade significantly boosts our economy.  Recognizing and challenging nations hostile to our interests is essential for national security.

There is a good argument that foreign relations are a large part of why America became “Great.”  “Greatness” is won not by hunkering down in Fortress America and ignoring the rest of the world.

Isolationist conservatives see foreign “entanglements” as wasteful spending and unjustified interventionism.  They oppose a global military presence as useless and costly.  They embrace mottoes like America First, America Only, and Not Our War.

I relate to both views.  I’m a patriotic nationalist and a law-and-order hermit.  I want to take down those who dare to mess with America.  I also want a quiet private life, especially now, with the varieties of crazy our confused nation has produced.  But I’m more than ready to control the crazies for the good of my neighbors and our nation.

The MAGA movement needs to draw strength from all its factions.  Both isolationism and internationalism had a role in making America great.  Both are needed to effectively guide the world’s most powerful nation.

There are lots of situations where it’s best not to mess with other nations’ problems.  That saves us money, diversions, and blood.

There are also situations where it is crucial that America aids an ally, or thwarts an obvious enemy’s aggressions.

The Vietnam Example

Our Vietnam intervention demonstrates the difficulty of choosing wisely.  Our leaders aided our ally France in retaining control of Vietnam to thwart communist expansion.  Dominoes knocking each other down was this view’s meme.  We spent lots of time, money, and blood on an eventual failure.

The point here is that we chose poorly.  Vietnam has a long history of being fearful of China.  China actually invaded Vietnam shortly after we abandoned Vietnam.  Vietnam’s veteran army sent them packing.

Today, Vietnam wants good relations with the USA because its expansionist communist Chinese neighbor is much more dangerous than profitable trade with capitalist America on the other side of the Pacific Ocean.

In hindsight, the USA should have let France lose Indochina as a colony.  We could then have dealt with Ho Chi Minh similarly to how we dealt with Marshal Tito in Yugoslavia.

Vietnam and Yugoslavia were communist, but they knew that China and Russia wanted to control them as virtual colonies.  Vietnam’s fears could have produced a prickly but workable relationship.

The Iraq War Example

Prominent neo-con V.P. Cheney wanted to invade Iraq after the 9-11 Muslim attack.  The neo-cons invented “weapons of mass destruction” as an excuse to invade Iraq, instead of focusing on the extremist Saudi Arabian Muslim Wahhabists who produced the 9-11 terrorists.

Cheney diverted America’s anger to target Iraq’s nasty leader for our revenge because Iraq had lots of oil and Saudi Arabia was seen as an ally.  Remember Bush helping prominent Saudi nationals leave the USA for their protection, without the FBI interviewing them.

Before the our invasion, Cheney held meetings with U.S. petroleum leaders to divide up post-war control over Iraq’s oil fields.  George Bush (whom Molly Ivins brilliantly labeled “Shrub”) was an easily convinced oil industry fan, and the best sock puppet President ever - kinda like Biden, but likable and not senile.

The wars that followed cost $4+ trillion, plus casualties — lucrative for oil companies but public debt for taxpayers.  The resultant revival of a (justifiable) anti-war movement destabilized our society, leading directly to eight years of Obama’s liberal rule sabotaging America.

The point of these examples is that neo-cons are good at rallying America for wars but are often not good in choosing, or prudently limiting, such efforts.

I’ve made neo-cons look like loony war-mongers who should never be trusted with foreign policy.  We will now examine the dangers of giving neo-isolationists control of America’s foreign policy.

World Wars I & II

This is the deep past for most Americans, but not for me.  My dad was born in 1900 and enlisted in the military before WWI ended.  I was born before the end of WWII and grew up inhaling that history.

Briefly, there was a strong American isolationist movement during WWI.  This delayed our entry into that conflict.  Britain and France thus suffered larger manpower losses and economic disruptions that they never fully recovered from after the war.

They were so weakened that they were in denial about the danger of Nazis and Fascists seizing control of Germany, Italy, and other European nations.  Britain and France would have been stronger future allies if the U.S. had entered WWI 12–18 months earlier.

Britain’s war trauma was so severe that it delayed, almost fatally, rearming for WWII.  As an example, when Neville Chamberlain pronounced “peace for our time” when he agreed in 1938 to let Hitler take the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia, Britain had only six squadrons of fighter aircraft.  Only one squadron, 20 Spitfires, was operational.  The five Hurricane squadrons had machine gun problems.  Chamberlain was later derided, but he knew that Britain was then too weak to go to war.

France had built an in-depth border defense called the Maginot line to defend against WWI-style warfare.  Foolishly, the line did not extend along the Belgian border, which is, of course, where the Nazis’ mechanized Blitzkrieg made its breakthrough to quickly conquer France.

So Europe suffered extra years under savagely brutal Nazi rule because fearful isolationists hoped Hitler really didn’t mean a damn thing he’d written in Mein Kampf.  The blood of millions of Jews and tens of millions of others is on their leader’s heads.

America’s conservative isolationists were so politically active that they delayed our entry into WWII until Japan’s Pearl Harbor attack.  After the U.S. declared war on Japan, Hitler foolishly declared war on the U.S.  It is entirely possible that without Hitler’s declaration of war, the U.S. isolationists might have further delayed our declaration of war on Germany.  This could have resulted in Germany defeating Russia and perhaps Britain.

As it was, our delay made the war last long enough for Stalin’s armies to conquer much of Eastern Europe.  This made our subsequent Cold War with communist Russia a more dangerous challenge.

The point is that isolationism and internationalism are both useful viewpoints for a political movement that wants to Make America Great Again.  Both views can also end up harming our nation.

Hopefully, Trump’s recently revealed  national security policy turns out to be an effective blend of isolationism and internationalism.  Trump hopes Europe, particularly Britain, France, and Germany, can do without U.S. support and get far more conservative governments that will build a military and challenge Putin’s mad dream of Russia regaining territory formerly controlled by the Soviet Union.  I think the odds are against this outcome, given the deep progressive malaise that grips non-immigrant Europeans. 

(Side note: Ending U.S. aid and forcing a bad peace treaty upon Ukraine effectively throws Ukraine under the Russian bus.  This wastes what is now Europe’s most effective and innovative ground army.  It probably results in Russia’s near-term complete reconquest of Ukraine.  That is a demoralizing poor start toward Europe being able to resist Russian aggression.)

Other MAGA factions are also vitally necessary, like the Evangelical faction’s numbers and moral values and the brilliant technocrats who keep America ahead with valuable innovations.  Even the RINOs are useful at this stage of MAGA’s development.  Trump could do nothing in Congress without their votes.

MAGA’s difficulty is that the core of each faction sees itself as having the most important principles that should guide our whole movement.  This is human nature.  But it bedevils anyone who hopes to keep MAGA together as a political force that can keep the liberals’ national suicide cults out of power.

I do believe Trump is wrong in sucking up to Putin and threatening Ukraine into a suicidal peace treaty.  That does not stop me from supporting his healing domestic policies.

You could not get me to endure what President Trump must put up with many times each day.  No wonder he sometimes says provocative and contradictory things.  I think it’s partly spontaneous irritation and partly clever tactics.