In the lexicon of Wilsonian internationalists and neoconservative interventionists, isolationism was a ghastly policy from the prehistoric era of American politics. Isolationists, they warn, wished to quarantine America from trade and diplomatic relations with the outside world. If isolationists had their way, America would look like a scene from Deliverance, a land of strange, hump-backed mountain people with dragging knuckles and odd numbers of chromosomes.
This is, of course, utter nonsense. This version of “isolationism” is a self-serving fabrication invented by interventionists to make minding our own business sound like an evil idea.
America’s Founders were very specific about the foreign policy paradigm they believed America should embrace. George Washington’s farewell address, in which he warned his countrymen against foreign entanglements, is the most obvious example. John Quincy Adams’ famous speech about America not “going forth in search of monsters to destroy” is another.
But America’s Founders were not ignorant xenophobes. They were erudite men with an intimate understanding of history, economics, and politics. Several of them, including Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, lived abroad, spoke several foreign languages, and made significant contributions to science and philosophy.
Even as they strove to create a new nation, our Founders consciously tried to avoid the mistakes of the Old World. Europe was, in their view, a bubbling cauldron of dynastic intrigue, war, and repression.
Being familiar with the history of militarism stretching back to the Roman Empire, the Founders also knew that standing armies and sprawling military-industrial complexes were incompatible with the survival of a free republic.
Far from being an evil, stultifying influence on our nation’s cultural development, “isolationism” (or, more accurately, “non-interventionism”) was the most successful foreign policy paradigm in American history.
For the first century of America’s existence, we followed the Founders’ sage advice and prospered because of it. Isolationism was accompanied by miraculous economic growth, the flowering of industry, and a positive balance of trade. During that time, the federal government was small, weak, and practiced strict fiscal discipline.
In the era of interventionism, on the other hand, the federal government has metastasized beyond the worst nightmares of our Founders. Mushrooming military budgets have spawned sky-high taxes, an avalanche of debt, and the curse of monetary inflation. Even worse, militarism has gone hand-in-hand with an erosion of our civil liberties as an increasingly paranoid national security bureaucracy has created ominous programs such as "Total Information Awareness" and "Extraordinary Rendition".
But a comparison of the two foreign policy paradigms really need go no further than a review of casualty statistics.
In the early days of the American Republic, the Napoleonic Wars were raging throughout Europe. Despite the geopolitical tumult, no prominent American leader encouraged our participation in what was deemed to be yet another of Europe’s seemingly interminable conflicts.
Thus, despite the chaos and death that were engulfing the Old World, America abstained and went about her business.
The European casualty statistics were grim:
French and allied: 400,000
Russia: 400,000
Prussia: 400,000
Austria: 200,000
Spain: 300,000
Britain: 200,000
The United States wisely avoided the war altogether. And even if we consider the War of 1812 to be part of the Napoleonic wars, our casualties were still mild by comparison (America lost only 2,260 soldiers in that conflict).
World War I marked a crucial turning point. In keeping with tradition, the American people were reluctant to become involved in another European war, especially one that had no real bearing on our national security. But for the first time, a scheming president and an increasingly messianic American political elite conspired with rapacious special interest groups and foreign governments to maneuver America into the conflict.
Woodrow Wilson, while campaigning on a platform of keeping America out of the war, duplicitously worked behind the scenes to secure our involvement.
Fortunately, the instinctive noninterventionism of the American people foiled his plots until April of 1917. By that time, the war had already been raging since August of 1914, and America had avoided nearly 2/3 of the entire debacle.
The net effect of American “isolationism” is evident in the statistics:
Total military deaths:
France: 1,400,000
Russia: 1,800,000
Germany: 2,000,000
Austria: 1,100,000
Britain: 885,000
America, by contrast, lost a “mere” 117,000 soldiers.
This story repeated itself in WW II. Once again, an interventionist president campaigned on a platform of peace. Once again, he duplicitously worked behind the scenes to secure American involvement. By the time Roosevelt had maneuvered the Japanese into attacking Pearl Harbor, America had sat out nearly 40% of the war (even more, if you consider the Japanese/Chinese conflict as the starting point).
Once again, the statistics tell the tale:
Total military deaths:
USSR: 10,700,000
China: 3,800,000
Japan: 2,100,000
Germany: 5,500,000
The United States, by comparison, lost 416,000 men in the war.
Thus, when the statistics from just these three wars are considered, it is no exaggeration to say that literally millions of American lives were saved by isolationist foreign policy.
To counter these arguments about the beneficial effects of isolationism, interventionists like speculate about how a more “timely” American intervention could have altered the course of various wars.
Admittedly, one could argue that more American casualties in various European conflicts would have been worth the beneficial effects of earlier American involvement, but such arguments are tenuous –and the historical speculation game can be played both ways.
For instance, what good could have come from American involvement in the Napoleonic Wars that would have justified hundreds of thousands of casualties? Is the world any worse off because we stayed out of that war altogether?
As for WW I, sound arguments have been made that even America’s limited involvement had tragic effects on the course of the war. Without the hope of impending American reinforcements, the Allies probably would have been forced negotiate a just peace with the Central Powers –meaning no vindictive Versailles Treaty, no German economic collapse, no Hitler (and probably no Stalin or Mao) and no WW II.
This conclusion is amplified by the bitter reality that WW I simply was none of America’s business. Most of Wilson’s arguments about “making the world safe for democracy” were pure twaddle. When Lenin published secret Allied treaties signed by the Tsarist government, it became readily apparent that all sides had ulterior motives in entering the war, motives that smacked more of territorial ambition and mercantilist trade policies than anything resembling political idealism.
With these facts in mind, it is no exaggeration to say that 117,000 unfortunate American soldiers died for nothing.
While WW II was more morally justifiable than WW I, America is often criticized by interventionists for avoiding the war until Pearl Harbor forced our hand. But such arguments invite deeper analysis. If America had entered the European theater when Britain and France declared war on Germany (in 1939), how would things have changed? We could not have reinforced France in time to stave off its collapse, nor could we have saved Poland from the blitzkrieg.
In fact, the only thing about which we can be reasonably sure is that Hitler would not have invaded Russia while the American army was crossing the Atlantic to reinforce Britain. He only launched Operation Barbarossa when he had defeated France and bloodied the English, thus securing his Western flank. In the face of American action, he would have been forced to maintain his alliance with the Russia and keep his army in Western Europe.
Since the Russians are the ones who sustained enormous casualties while ultimately destroying the Nazi war machine, this turn of events would have meant that the UK and the USA would have had to launch a cross-channel invasion into the teeth of the entire German army.
Assuming that such a feat would have even been possible (something I highly doubt), the Anglo-American casualties would have been staggering… probably in the millions.
Thus, when the interventionists lecture Americans about the evils of 1930s isolationism, what they are really suggesting is that America should have taken millions of casualties instead of the Red Army.
Again, I fail to see how that would have made the world a better place.
Furthermore, in the aftermath of WW II – when interventionist foreign policy became the order of the day – what has been the net result?
By and large, America’s Globocop routine has been a disaster. Time and again, America has been dragged into absurd wars that were only tenuously linked to America’s security. Interventionism gave us a bloody stalemate in Korea, a horrific defeat in Vietnam, and a string of embarrassing clusterbungles in such diverse locations as Somalia, Haiti, and Iraq.
All the while, our national debt has skyrocketed, our civil liberties have been trampled, and our reputation around the world has been wrecked.
In light of these failures, the time has come to dust off the sage advice of our Founders, to discard the failed policy of world empire and to embrace the quintessentially American policy of noninterventionism.
Some establishment ideologues will undoubtedly accuse us of “isolationism,” but too much is at stake for us to be deterred by mere name-calling. We must embrace the slur and rise above it.
To paraphrase Patrick Henry: If this be isolationism, then let us make the most of it.
Steven LaTulippe was an officer in the United States Air Force for 13 years. He currently practices medicine in Ohio.
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Unlike many libertarians and paleoconservatives, I happen to agree with the neocons on one point. Specifically, I really do believe the world is experiencing what some have called “World War IV.”
The point on which I vigorously disagree concerns America’s role in this conflict.
The Islamic world is in the midst of a civilizational crisis. This crisis has its genesis in the revealed nature of the Muslim religion and was described most succinctly by Pope Benedict XVI during his annual academic confab at Castle Gandolfo (the papal summer residence in Italy).
The pope noted that the Koran, unlike the Bible, is considered by Muslims to be the literal word of God. Whereas Christians believe the Bible was written by fallible humans under divine inspiration, Muslims believe that the Koran was dictated directly to Muhammad by the Angel Gabriel. The Koran’s words are thus not Muhammad’s – who functioned more or less as a stenographer – but are rather the verbatim words of the Almighty himself.
To further complicate matters, while ruling the early Muslim community, Muhammad handed down numerous judicial decisions concerning criminal and civil disputes. These decisions have survived the intervening centuries and form the basis of Islamic law.
As a result, much of Islamic culture is frozen in a 7th Century worldview that it can neither reject nor reform. After all, how could the very words of God be subjected to critical analysis? Who could overturn one of Muhammad’s verdicts?
With the world around Dar-al Islam changing rapidly, Islamic culture, as currently constituted, lacks the flexibility to change with it. This conundrum (and the numerous conflicts it has spawned) will be the central geopolitical challenge of the 21st Century.
In his now-infamous book The Clash of Civilizations, Samuel Huntington predicted that the 21st Century’s will not be defined by ideological conflicts, but will rather be plagued by warfare among the world’s major cultural zones. In particular, he noted that Islamic civilization is clashing with every one of its neighbors.
A quick look at Huntington’s map is revealing:
Islam is locked in conflict with Hindu civilization in Kashmir, with Chinese civilization in Xingjian, and with Orthodox Slavic culture in the Caucuses and the Balkans. To its south, Islam is waging bitter wars with African civilization in a horizontal band across Africa from Nigeria to Somalia.
As for Western Civilization, in what was perhaps the single most incomprehensible policy decision in the history of Western governance (a distinction that covers quite a bit of territory) Europe permitted the mass immigration of impoverished Muslims during the decades after World War II. These immigrant populations, who probably can not be peacefully assimilated, now threaten to demographically overwhelm their host nations and embroil Europe in widespread civil unrest or outright warfare.
While this map casts doubts on the prospects for world peace, it also reveals the central irony of America’s “War on Terror”: The United States of America is the only major world power that is not forced by geography into a conflict with Dar-al Islam.
America does not border the Islamic world. It has a statistically insignificant Muslim population that is better assimilated than that of any other Western nation. America is bounded on its east and west by vast oceans and to the north and south by two militarily weak and predominantly Christian nations.
The irony resides, of course, in the fact that despite these blessings, America is the nation doing most of the fighting against radical Islam.
When analyzing the likely course of these civilizational struggles – and plotting a strategy for America to deal with them – one must also recognize another important fact: The ultimate outcome of Islam’s civilizational wars has already been determined. Radical Islam is not a viable paradigm upon which a modern society can be built. It is destined, like communism before it, to collapse from within. The trajectory of political Islam can already be seen in Iran, where it first came to power. As a governing system, the Islamic Republic has been discredited in the eyes of the masses and survives mostly by repression and manipulation. Economically and culturally, it is an utter failure.
Furthermore, radical Islam is not now, nor will it ever be, a civilizational threat to America. Nor will it conquer the world or overturn modern civilization. These goals are simply beyond its capacity.
When these two ideas are considered together (i.e. the lack of geopolitical conflict between America and Islam, and the inevitable collapse of Islam as a political ideology), America’s most prudent path becomes obvious: The United States should withdraw from the Middle East and declare itself a non-belligerent in Islam’s civilizational wars. In so doing, America can avoid the casualties and ruinous costs of wars which have nothing to do with our national survival.
Given the immediate proximity of numerous, ancient enemies (and the many bloody divisions that exist within the body of Dar-al Islam itself), the Muslim combatants will not long bother themselves with a non-threatening nation on the other side of the planet. America’s tragic involvement in these wars was wholly the product of our wrong-headed, interventionist foreign policy. When that provocation is removed, so will the cause for enmity.
While obviously beneficial to America, this strategy leaves open the issue of what will happen in the aftermath of our withdrawal.
In all probability, the civilizational struggles between Islam and its neighbors will progress along their natural trajectories. While one must use caution in predicting the future, the course of these conflicts is nevertheless becoming visible in vague outlines:
Islam vs. Hindu Civilization:
This conflict has been bogged down in a stalemate for decades and will probably remain so for quite some time. Despite the occasional terrorist attack in Kashmir, India is a powerful and rapidly growing nation that is outdistancing Pakistan by the hour. While the possibility of a conventional war (or even a nuclear one) cannot be entirely discounted, it is remote. More likely than not, this civilizational “cold war” will drag on indefinitely and will remain cold.
Islam vs Chinese Civilization:
This conflict is even more lopsided than the Hindu one. The Muslim population in Xingjian is minuscule compared to China’s, and the Chinese government is not known for subtlety when it feels threatened. Any significant Muslim uprising there would be an act of collective suicide.
Islam vs Orthodox Christendom:
In many ways, this is the most interesting of the civilizational clashes. Orthodoxy is crippled by falling populations and the dispiriting aftereffects of soulless communism. But despite these handicaps, there is a certain toughness and ruthlessness that persists in Orthodoxy (unlike the soft, materialistic culture of Western Europe). Orthodoxy is, after all, the civilization that gave the world leaders with names like “Ivan the Terrible” and “Vlad the Impaler.”
Russia, Orthodoxy’s leading nation, is currently trapped in a demographic nightmare. It is losing population because of its dismal birthrate and falling life expectancy. Russia also has a large and growing Muslim population that will, in the not-too-distant future, become the majority.
Long before this happens, I believe the situation will reach a crisis point. In this eventuality, I agree wholeheartedly with Spengler’s (the Asia Times columnist, not Oswald) incisive analysis:
“European Russia is dying, and Muslims will compose a majority of citizens of the Russian Federation by as early as 2040. But the successors of Imperial Russia, the Third Rome after the fall of Constantinople to Islam in 1453, refuse to slide without a struggle into the digestive tract of the House of Islam. Western Europe may go with a whimper rather than a bang as Muslim immigrants replace the shrinking local population, but the Russians have no such intention. Putin and his comrades will employ all the guile and violence at their command to delay the decline of European Russia. The Europeans are the emasculated remnant of a fallen civilization; for better or worse, the Russians still are real men.”
In addition to Russia’s drama, there are two additional fronts in this civilizational war. America’s interference in Bosnia and Kosovo froze each of those theaters in unstable ceasefires. Since the underlying issues remain unresolved, these wars will probably flare up again and progress to their natural conclusions.
Islam vs. Western European Civilization:
Sometime this century, Muslim immigrants will make up the majority of the population in most Western European nations. As far as I can tell, nothing like this has ever happened before. Never has a native population allowed itself to be peacefully displaced from its homeland by a neighboring people, especially one with which it has a long history of mutual hatred and warfare.
The peculiar thing about this impending crisis is that it is wholly of Europe’s doing. Their governments allowed the immigration wave to occur, and their own people voluntarily decided not to have children. It is as if sometime in the mid 20th Century, Europeans decided that their existence was no longer necessary or desirable.
Exactly how this plays out will be a fascinating thing to watch. It could end quietly, or with a bang, or anywhere in-between.
But either way, I believe that America should remain firmly on the sidelines. Whatever happens (and I believe that Europe’s demographic transition will be extremely violent – somewhere between a continent-sized Belfast and a continent-sized Srebrenica), America should not involve itself in another European war. Three times in the past century, American mothers have sent their sons across the ocean to intervene in a European war that was not of our creation. Our reward for those efforts is a still-imperiled Europe dotted with American graveyards. I admire European culture and civilization (it is the homeland of all of my ancestors), but the time has come for Europe to sink or swim. However it chooses to manage its impending demographic transition is entirely its own affair. The Europeans must regain their “will to permanence,” or take a final bow and exit from the stage of History.
Either way, enough is enough. America can do no more.
Conclusion
Despite many admirable traits I observed while living in the Middle East, the Islamic world is trapped in a profound civilizational crisis. This crisis has its roots in the peculiarities of the Muslim religion and is complicated by numerous economic and demographic factors. The major consequence of this crisis is the proliferation of violent clashes between Islam and neighboring civilizations.
The roughly triangular region between Londonistan, the Hindu-Kush, and central Africa will be the scene of a brutal, Hobbesian conflict that will take decades to play itself out and may ultimately claim the lives of millions of people. (And if Islam’s external wars were not enough, one can expect numerous internal ones as well – Turks vs Kurds, Sunnis vs Shiites, Arabs vs Persians, etc.). This conflict was not started by America, cannot be prevented by America, and will progress according to its own internal logic regardless of American action (or inaction). In truth, our interventions up to now have only served to make things demonstrably worse.
But even if America had the ability to effectively intervene in these conflicts, we will soon lack both the means and the motivation. Decades of reckless deficit spending and profligate monetary policy have brought America to the doorstep of economic disaster. We are facing a collapsing currency, runaway inflation, and economic stagnation.
Since the Islamic wars are not directly relevant to America’s national survival, and since radical Islam will not emerge victorious as a world-conquering ideology anyhow, America’s involvement in the Middle East is an intolerable and unnecessary distraction from our own serious domestic problems. The time has come for America to discard its disastrous interventionist foreign policy, to withdraw from the Middle East, and to expend our energies addressing our impending economic crisis.
I believe America’s adoption of this strategy is inevitable, since the American people will not accept the casualties and expenses of fighting absurd foreign wars while our economy enters a steep decline.
The only remaining question is how much blood and treasure we will expend in the meantime.
Steven LaTulippe was an officer in the United States Air Force for 13 years. He currently practices medicine in Ohio.
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