17/11: Is Traditional American Political Isolationism a Viable Option Today?
Category: America and the World
Posted by: an okie gardener
Traditionally America followed a policy of Political Isolationism. We were active in the global economy with American ships sailing the oceans to trade, but refrained from political involvement abroad. Recently one of our frequent commentators, Tocqueville, gave us an important historic statement of this policy in the context of current political discussion.
Wilsonianism has run amuck in the GOP, which is a far cry from Bush's 2000 campaign for an end to peace-keeping and nation-building. The most thorough and persuasive critique of the Wilsonian strain in American history is Walter McDougall's "Promised Land, Crusader State." McDougall's guiding spirit is John Quincy Adams, who, by way of refuting the heretical doctrine of a crusader America, formulated once and for all the orthodox dogma of American Exceptionalism in his July Fourth address of 1821:
"America does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion only of her own. She will recommend the general cause by the countenance of her voice, and the benignant sympathy of her example. She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which assumed the colors and usurped the standards of freedom.... She might become the dictatress of the world. She would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit."
A Waco Farmer then added some context:
JQA speaks as James Monroe's secretary of state (according to Samuel Flagg Bemis, and others, the very best to ever hold that position). The context is the unraveling Spanish Empire in Latin America. The other component is Henry Clay, who, outside the administration, is calling upon the government of the USA to lend military assistance to the fledgling republics. Henry Clay, in fact, takes a Wilsonian position nearly 100 years prior to Wilson. And JQA is promoting a rock-ribbed realism that he inherited from his political hero, George Washington.
Question for discussion: In 2006/2007, should the United States follow the policy of George Washington as expressed by John Quincy Adams?
Wilsonianism has run amuck in the GOP, which is a far cry from Bush's 2000 campaign for an end to peace-keeping and nation-building. The most thorough and persuasive critique of the Wilsonian strain in American history is Walter McDougall's "Promised Land, Crusader State." McDougall's guiding spirit is John Quincy Adams, who, by way of refuting the heretical doctrine of a crusader America, formulated once and for all the orthodox dogma of American Exceptionalism in his July Fourth address of 1821:
"America does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion only of her own. She will recommend the general cause by the countenance of her voice, and the benignant sympathy of her example. She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which assumed the colors and usurped the standards of freedom.... She might become the dictatress of the world. She would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit."
A Waco Farmer then added some context:
JQA speaks as James Monroe's secretary of state (according to Samuel Flagg Bemis, and others, the very best to ever hold that position). The context is the unraveling Spanish Empire in Latin America. The other component is Henry Clay, who, outside the administration, is calling upon the government of the USA to lend military assistance to the fledgling republics. Henry Clay, in fact, takes a Wilsonian position nearly 100 years prior to Wilson. And JQA is promoting a rock-ribbed realism that he inherited from his political hero, George Washington.
Question for discussion: In 2006/2007, should the United States follow the policy of George Washington as expressed by John Quincy Adams?
Tocqueville wrote:
George W. Bush has firmly situated himself in this tradition, as in his 2003 pronouncement, "The human heart desires the same good things everywhere on earth." Welcome to Iraq. Whereas realism counsels great prudence in complex cultural situations, Wilsonianism rushes optimistically ahead. Not every country is Denmark. The fighting in Iraq has gone on for nearly four years, and the ultimate result of "democratization" in that fractured nation remains very much in doubt, as does the long-range influence of the Iraq invasion on conditions in the Middle East as a whole. In general, Wilsonianism is a snare and a delusion as a guide to policy, and far from conservative.
Practically everywhere we look around the world, U.S. foreign policy is in a shambles. Long-sought objectives – stability in Iraq, peace between Israelis and Palestinians, the demise of terrorist organizations such as Al Qaeda, Hamas and Hezbollah, the spread of democracy in the Middle East and the former Soviet Union, the end of the North Korean nuclear weapons program, the end of the Iranian nuclear program – seem less attainable today than they have in many years.
Surveying the wreckage, the American public is frustrated, and fearful. This is not isolationism; the belief that the United States can wall itself off from the rest of the world is roundly, and rightly, scorned by people across the ideological spectrum. Rather, these “mind our own business” sentiments reveal a keen appreciation that even the most powerful nation in the world needs to be more discerning about where, when and how it chooses to deal with challenges to U.S. security and threats to U.S. interests. And yet, even as dissatisfaction with the current course of U.S. foreign policy mounts, Americans are confused as to the available alternatives that would allow the United States to remain engaged in the world. They seem prepared to spend money, and put American troops in harm’s way, when vital U.S. interests are at stake, but they balk at paying those costs, and incurring those risks, when they are not.
The godfathers of realism, men like Hans Morgenthau, Reinhold Niebuhr and George Kennan, would have been hard pressed to explain the logic behind the Bush Doctrine. Those realists still alive have likewise tried, and failed. It should be possible to assemble an alternative to the Bush Doctrine, one that draws adherents from both the political left and the political right, and all points in between, and that cannot therefore be dismissed by one side or the other as a political ploy.
The following piece by Andrew Basevich is a useful start to help frame the dicussion:
http://fairuse.100webcustom...