By John Isaacs and Matthew Reichert

Am I an isolationist if . . .

I support key international institutions such as the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank that facilitate international economic cooperation and engineer collective action?

I feel safer knowing that the bilateral New START treaty with Russia reduces the global threat of nuclear weapons, and I believe that the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty is a key element in containing the spread of nuclear weapons?

I back the Asian security alliances with Japan and South Korea?

I believe in free-trade agreements that assist American prosperity?

I deem the U.S.-China trade relationship essential to American and worldwide economic stability?

I strongly endorse the democratic movements in Egypt, Tunisia, Bahrain, Syria, Libya, and elsewhere?

I support a reset of relations with Russia to ensure cooperation on a number of issues?

I hope that the United States undergirds European Union efforts to solve the economic challenges of debt-laden countries such as Greece, Ireland, Italy, Spain and Portugal?

I back United States and international efforts to negotiate with Iran and North Korea to abandon their nuclear weapons programs?

I urgently endorse persistent American efforts to ensure a safe, secure Israel existing alongside a free and independent Palestine?

But . . .

I am unwilling to sacrifice American lives to spread freedom and engage in state-building in far away lands where American security is not clearly at stake.

The answer is a clear-cut no . . . but the neo-cons are manipulating the debate over U.S. troops in Afghanistan and around Libya.

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Iraq & Afghanistan, Isolationism, John McCain (all tags)

Senator John McCain (R-AZ) has appeared prominently in the news lately for a number of bellicose statements, including grave warnings to fellow Republicans over their reluctance to join him in advocating military force to defend American ideals around the globe.

Senator McCain has identified a dangerous “isolation strain” stemming from “the Pat Buchanan wing” of the Republican party – the same tendency, he claims, that during the 1930’s led the United States to stand idly by as Germany disregarded its Versailles treaty obligations and prepared to conquer Europe.

If the threats we face today are as overt and credible as the rise of Nazism in Germany, then the implications of the Republican “isolation strain” are truly dangerous to American security.

Of course, isolationism as an American ideology has historically been espoused by policymakers for widely varying reasons: from a continuation of President Washington’s warning against “entangling alliances,” to a rejection of Wilsonian idealism and the League of Nations at the end of World War I, to a repudiation of European balance-of-power politics, to outright xenophobia.

Senator McCain’s accusation recalls a harsh brand of isolationism wielded by public figures like Republican Senators Gerald P. Nye and Henry Cabot Lodge. This doctrine spurned not only military intervention on the side of Great Britain and France but also participation in international bodies and alliances with European nations It ignored an overt and credible German threat to the sovereignty of nations and the existence of an entire people. As a result, American foreign policy undermined the promise of collective security manifested in the League of Nations, and was one factor leading to the highly destructive Second World War where over 60 million people were killed.

Senator McCain’s comparison is problematic. The threats to American security posed by a military withdrawal from Libya or Afghanistan are neither overt nor credible.

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Iraq & Afghanistan, John McCain, Isolationism (all tags)