is there any reason the united states shouldn't revert to a default foreign policy of isolationism?

oh for the days of simple reagan-esque belligerence

I think it's more about resources and markets than securing the homeland, as it were.

I think it's more about resources
ding ding ding!

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/e4/WoodrowWilsonVersailles.jpg

the right to be fat?

ding ding

or rather

http://cache.boston.com/bonzai-fba/Globe_Photo/2007/08/03/1186152966_5181.jpg

tha wiches daid

i think the afghanistan war was more or less a just one

sorry, i think i'm going to need this explained to me.

Well, there were these people who lived in Afghanistan and were allied to the Afghan government, and they carried out an attack on the USA. The Afghan government would not hand them over, so the USA invaded and overthrew the Afghan government.

the US govt had to keep its attacks on saudi super-quiet.

I often find it funny that the same people who moan about what the USA is doing often moan that the USA should actually be doing something else. mmm.

The Libertarians propose an essentially isolationist foreign policy - no overseas bases, no state aid to foreign governments, etc. But no one votes for them.

In the Afghanistan war the Afghani govt. asked the US to provide them evidence that their allies were responsible for the 911 attack. They consider it against their national honour to just hand over just anyone demanded of them by International bullies.

When the people who moan about what the USA is doing say things like, "If the attack on country A was for the stated reason X, then why was country B not attacked". They are usually trying to show the hollowness of the stated benevolent excuse (i.e liberate the Afghani people etc.) rather than advocating an attack on country B.

Also Isolationism should be the default policy of any country. It's interventionism that needs to be justified.

Well, there were these people who lived in Afghanistan and were allied to the Afghan government, and they carried out an attack on the USA. The Afghan government would not hand them over, so the USA invaded and overthrew the Afghan government

i can't tell if this is sarcasm or not. i live in hope, i guess.

um, basically, what heave ho said.

Wasn't Bush set on an neo-isolationist path until 9/11 happened and the neocons' agenda gained traction?

yeah, and i was going to take up jogging last january too, but it was too cold.

I've been pretty annoyed by this too. Here (France), people usually complain about the US doing this or that (and rightly so, most of the times). What I don't understand is that when the US don't do anything (former yougoslavia, darfour, rwanda...), it is also criticized...

Isn't the US and the UN being conflated in this argument?

Wasn't Bush set on an neo-isolationist path until 9/11 happened and the neocons' agenda gained traction?

Remind me when the Bush administration began to plan for an invasion of Iraq?

i've never heard anyone complain about the US not intervening in a conflict.

I have.

I'm not talking about his administration, Noodle Vague (Gee, I've just got that pun after all this time). I'm talking about him personally. As I understood it, he was resisting pressure from neocon advisers, preferring to wash his hands of the rest of the world, until 9/11 happened, posssibly God spoke to him and the rest is history.

If someone wants to tell me I've imagined reading that, or that it's a poorly evidenced analysis, fine. I'm no expert.

No I remember that too, but that stance lasted a matter of months and has been so drowned out by everything that followed that most people have forgotten.

From an Oct 2000 newspaper report:

Moderator Jim Lehrer, a television news anchor, took them on a tour of the Middle East and elsewhere. Bush suavely dropped correctly-pronounced names, got no facts wrong, and even delivered a mini-lecture on not indulging in "nation building" missions that started as policing operations.
Then he stressed how America should be "humble" in its foreign affairs. Uncle Sam should not risk appearing arrogant, he said - almost an admonition to Uncle Al, for whom condescending lectures are a frequent fault.

And a recent CS Monitor summary:

How have neoconservatives influenced US foreign policy?

Finding a kindred spirit in President Reagan, neocons greatly influenced US foreign policy in the 1980s.

But in the 1990s, neocon cries failed to spur much action. Outside of Reaganite think tanks and Israel's right-wing Likud Party, their calls for regime change in Iraq were deemed provocative and extremist by the political mainstream. With a few notable exceptions, such as President Bill Clinton's decision to launch isolated strikes at suspected terrorist targets in Afghanistan and Sudan in 1998, their talk of preemptive military action was largely dismissed as overkill.

Despite being muted by a president who called for restraint and humility in foreign affairs, neocons used the 1990s to hone their message and craft their blueprint for American power. Their forward thinking and long-time ties to Republican circles helped many neocons win key posts in the Bush administration.

The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 moved much of the Bush administration closer than ever to neoconservative foreign policy. Only days after 9/11, one of the top neoconservative think tanks in Washington, the Project for a New American Century, wrote an open letter to President Bush calling for regime change in Iraq. Before long, Bush, who campaigned in 2000 against nation building and excessive military intervention overseas, also began calling for regime change in Iraq. In a highly significant nod to neocon influence, Bush chose the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) as the venue for a key February 2003 speech in which he declared that a US victory in Iraq "could begin a new stage for Middle Eastern peace." AEI – the de facto headquarters for neconservative policy – had been calling for democratization of the Arab world for more than a decade.

Isn't the US and the UN being conflated in this argument?

-- Alba, Wednesday, October 31, 2007 1:17 PM (23 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

can't imagine why that might happen. i don't know why you're focussing on bush-the-guy, like he ever ran anything.

Calling for democratization of a region was actually pretty revolutionary, considering the policy of the time was to prop up whatever latin american dictators would support the US.

i don't know why you're focussing on bush-the-guy, like he ever ran anything.

I know he did/does, Enrique. My point (I'm not sure what else you thought it was) is that there was a disjunction between the views of a section of his staff and him personally at one point.

that's exactly what the neocons have been saying for 30 years: if we have pro-US leaders elected rather than installed, it'll look more pr0.

xpost

i doubt bush had thought enough about it to have an 'opposing view'.

Oh come off it.

yeah, if only i started jogging in january, i bet i'd sure looked ripped now. oh well.

anyway, boo US foreign invovlements in general.

i've never heard anyone complain about the US not intervening in a conflict.

Well, that's why I specified I'm talking about France ! We have a very weird attitude towards the US over here... Basically, whatever they do/don't do, it's wrong ! That's what I've always found irritating...

i've never heard anyone complain about the US not intervening in a conflict.

watch 'three kings', or the weird euro thing about how american should have gotten into ww1 and ww2 earlier. or currently over darfur!

RE: Darfur- again, i think someone pointed out that US and UN aren't same entity.

It's not just a straight either/or choice between US invasion/"regime change" and leaving the situation in somewhere like Darfur to exist.

three kings was just a movie made in the US that i saw once. it wasn't very good.

what if roosevelt hadn't died?

i've never heard anyone complain about the US not intervening in a conflict.

there has been a lot of criticism of the USA over their non-intervention during the Rwanda genocide. I think there is a gook called "A Problem From Hell" about this subject. While president, Clinton made sure his people only used the phrase "acts of genocide" rather than "genocide", as the latter would have required intervention under some international agreement the USA was signed up to.

i've never heard anybody specify the US above other nations (france, for instance) about not intervening in Rwanda.

should they have put the UN under pressure to go in? yes. should they have gone in on their own? probably not. can it be compared to invading Iraq?

not even close.

the UN can't "go in", it has to raise armies from member states, and then has to observe rules, which, as in yugoslavia in the mid-90s, often meands having to overlook mass murder. i'm not arguing for non-intervention -- i don't know enough about what was possible -- but the idea that boots on the ground would in itself have stopped genocide is overly simplistic, likewise the idea of a "UN" force.

and what i'm trying to point out is that it's better that a member-states raised army goes in under legitimate authority and witnesses these things than a US force invades and participates.

obviously it'd be great if the UN wasn't so furking toothless/gutless, but maybe it would have more teeth and more guts if powerful members such as the US/China/Russia/France weren't undercutting it for national gains at every juncture.

and what i'm trying to point out is that it's better that a member-states raised army goes in under legitimate authority and witnesses these things than a US force invades and participates.

(how legitimate the UN is another question but) seriously -- it's better to witness genocide than to 1) do nothing 2) try to do something? i don't see how a UN force intervening is different from a US force intervening tbh, and at least they wouldn't have had the obvious colonial interest of, say, france.

i've never heard anybody specify the US above other nations (france, for instance) about not intervening in Rwanda.

well read the book. With France they usually complain about their intervening in favour of the genocidaires.

seriously, though, would there be anything wrong if the united states ditched most of its unnecessary 400+ bases around the world and quit meddling in the affairs of other countries, EXCEPT through international institutions like the UN?

This has been G. Vidal's position for the last 3,000 years. Most early twentieth century isolationists were a species of Republican that became extinct post-Truman: William Borah, Robert Taft, Hoover.

Seriously, is this even possible? I don't know every ramification of signing NAFTA-like agreements, but certain multi-national trade agreements would seem a green light for the brayings of American plutocrats whenever a market's threatened by left wingers?

xpost to quitney

Yes UN forces witnesses genocide and were helpless to stop it in certain instances, but they were able to save a lot of lives by following their brief.

the whole point of an international peace-keeping organisation is that it isn't yosemite uncle sam. a US force on its own has no place in trying to police the world, because it would never do so without regard to its own interests, leading to exactly the situation we have where Iraq is a legitimate target but zimbabwe, for instance, isn't.

Iran and Syria will be legitimate targets next (on some pretext of safeguarding US security, no doubt), followed closely by any other anti-US states. The UN needs more than US military intelligence to invade a country, and it needs more than spurious evidence that there 'might' be a 'threat' based on biased reports. That's the difference in US invasion and UN intervention.

i've never heard anyone complain about the US not intervening in a conflict.

I think such calls have been quieted down by the complete debacle of Iraq (and a few arguable debacles in past cases), but they used to be much more common.

in a global economy, isolationism is kind of a fantasy. everyone/everything comes from and goes everywhere. debating the merits (heh) of "intervention" is one thing, but a wholesale dis-involvement in world affairs by a government sitting on the world's biggest economy doesn't make any sense

military isolation sounds a pretty good idea though. how bout, if you want an army that badly, you keep it. don't keep sending it round the world regularly just cos it's getting bored or rowdy at home.

how would you enforce that?

i mean, i love the "don't use your armed forces" rule, applied globally, it's genius and i'm amazed no-one ever thought of it before, but how do you make it happen?

If country isn't properly isolationist, we should invade them.

Google "military-industrial complex" and get back to me darragh

get a big country to suggest world peace at the next UN conference, and get another big country to second it. then if enough countries vote for it then we won't need any more armies.

i mean, it's not like i enjoy lokoing dumb and naive on these kind of discussions, but honestly what can you say?

yeah maybe the US proposed and russia seconded, that'd work.

get a big country to suggest world peace at the next UN conference, and get another big country to second it. then if enough countries vote for it then we won't need any more armies

that's what Wilson said.

someday ireland will invade wales to enact 'regime change' and free our celtic brothers. then i'll have to eat some humble pie.

obviously it'd be great if the UN wasn't so furking toothless/gutless, but maybe it would have more teeth and more guts if powerful members such as the US/China/Russia/France weren't undercutting it for national gains at every juncture.

Which countries aren't pursuing their own interests? How do you think the UN works? Are you sure you're not enjoying looking naive? Is this some kind of troll?

i've never heard anybody specify the US above other nations (france, for instance) about not intervening in Rwanda.

READ "SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL"! The U.S. and France are called out in that book for dragging their feet and doing thing (like changing the "language" in resolutions) so as to prevent the UN from getting in there in force until it was too late.

I will attempt to drop the phrase "braying American plutocrats" into casual conversaton as much as possible now that Alfred has inspired me.

in a global economy, isolationism is kind of a fantasy. everyone/everything comes from and goes everywhere. debating the merits (heh) of "intervention" is one thing, but a wholesale dis-involvement in world affairs by a government sitting on the world's biggest economy doesn't make any sense

this is the kind of "explanation" that economists love because it doesn't require actual human decisions (i.e., mckinley's decision to invade cuba, johnson's decision to bomb vietnam) to be considered.

1.) there's a difference between "dis-involvement in world affairs" and the kind of belligerent foreign policy the u.s. has almost exclusively dealt in since 1945.
2.) the united states didn't get involved in WWI, WW2, korea, or vietnam for economic reasons.
3.) the leaders of the u.s. are by and large not thoughtful caretakers of the american economy, but corrupt bastards concerned primarily with staying in power.

answering that depends on what we all mean by isolationism. if it's shorthand for "don't be a dik" it's kind of a distinction-free disussion: yes, don't be a dik. if it means no more foreign aid, radically reduced diplomatic presence everywhere, viewing most problems elsewhere as "internal matters" for other states, upping tariffs, reducing immigration to zero...

any real green outlook is necessarily anti-isolationist, too

xp

why did we get involved in WWI, if not for econ reasons? Being a good American, I've never read up on it (or asked my grandfather, who lied and joined the army when he was 15).

you can't easily untangle economic from other reasons. US kind of got into ww2 for semi-economic reasons, ie rivalry with japan.

morbs: read walter karp's "the politics of war." long story short: the progressive movement had terrified both parties sufficiently that they were willing to do just about anything to get the noisy masses to leave them alone. WWI - and its grim all-out war on political liberties at home - was the perfect solution.

of course, one could point to the fact that the rich universally supported the war (and that wealthy big-city papers had called for a tough stance on germany long before the zimmerman telegram) and claim that this proved that the country had gone to war for economic reasons. but that doesn't explain the sheer audacity and persistence of woodrow wilson's two-year struggle to drag the country into war. only political reasons, not economic ones, can explain that.

as karp puts it:

Given the depth and strength of antiwar sentiment, given the depth and strength of the venerable tradition of avoiding European entanglements, given that a frail "right to travel" - for which no American had the slightest wish to die - was to be 'Wilson's chief instrument of war provocation, the wonder is not that Wilson got his war, but that he even dared to seek it. It was to be the lasting misfortune of the American Republic that Woodrow Wilson had the courage to match his vainglory. That courage was in some respects, however, a bully's courage, for . . . Wilson’s war course would enjoy the support of most of the wielders of corrupt power and influence in America – most of the Republican oligarchy, most of the chieftains of the Democracy, most of the big-city party press, most of the financiers of Wall Street, most of the very rich. In truth, the struggle to drag America into the European war was to be a virtual civil war between the powerful, the privileged, and the rich – for twenty-five years the targets of Populist and progressive reformers – and the overwhelming mass of the American people. Without the support of the powerful and privileged Wilson would never have succeeded, but it was the President and the President alone who initiated the struggle.

gff: what you're describing is pat buchanan-style economic isolationism. it's not the same thing as non-interventionism, which doesn't require any of those things. there's a big difference between deciding not to bomb cambodia and closing your borders to immigrants.

xp

ok. I would probably classify fear of progressives in the teens as primarily economic, but anyway.

and the title of this thread is...

the trouble is, isolationism in a broad but vague sense still carries huge and easy-tappable emotional resonance in the electorate. cf Bush in 00 saying 'we don't do nation building' as code for 'no more murky balkans business' and kerry in 04 saying 'we shouldn't be opening firehouses in baghdad when we're closing them in ohio.' both statements are disgraceful, imo

um, why is kerry's remark disgraceful? he wasn't running for president of iraq.