Internationalism Or Isolationalism: The Battle Resumes

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AAAintheBeltway

The first part of the last century saw spirted intellectual and political battles between two forces with diametrically opposing views of the proper role of America in the world. The isolationalists took their cue from the words of Washington and Jefferson, both of whom wanted nothing to do with the wars of the Old World.

“Peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations — entangling alliances with none, I deem [one of] the essential principles of our government, and consequently [one of] those which ought to shape its administration.” (Thomas Jefferson, 1st Inaugural Address ME 3:321. 1801.)

The internationalists scoffed at these views and regarded them as backward. FDR actively plotted to get America involved in WW II. For decades, the internationalists have held sway, although the national horror of vietnam marked kind of a low water mark for them.

Now we seem to be seeing another reassessment of our national priorities. The follies of the Bush/Obama middle east policy are on full display. Tea Party groups have undermined the militaristic/interventionalist bloc in the republican party.

A longtime isolationist has his say:

Last hurrah of the interventionists?

By: Patrick J. Buchanan
8/2/2013 10:12 AM

In what a Washington Post columnist describes as a rout of Rand Paul isolationism, the Senate just voted overwhelmingly to send another $1.5 billion in foreign aid to Egypt.

The House voted 400-20 to impose new sanctions on Iran’s oil exports, two days before Iran’s new president, elected on a pledge to re-engage the West on the nuclear issue, takes his oath.

Do these triumphs of AIPAC and the War Party, of neocons and liberal internationalists, tell us where we are going? Or are they the last hurrahs of the interventionists, as America’s long retreat proceeds apace.

If we take what Richard Nixon called “the long view,” the trend line seems unmistakable. Under President Obama, America has pulled all U.S. forces out of Iraq and has scheduled a full withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2014.

Despite his “red line” in Syria having allegedly been crossed, and the cawing of Hill hawks like Sens. Lindsey Graham and John McCain, Obama seems the very portrait of a reluctant warrior in Syria.

A large majority of Americans, too, want no part of that civil war.

On Iran, the Pentagon seems to concur with Obama, in opposition to a new Mideast war. And as Congress votes new sanctions on Iran and new billions for an Egyptian army that just arrested its elected government, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel is laying out scenarios for reducing the size, reach and power of the U.S. military.

“Without the controlling principle that the nation must maintain its objectives and its power in equilibrium, its purposes within its means, and its means equal to its purposes, its commitments related to its resources, and its resources adequate to its commitments, it is impossible to think at all about foreign affairs.” So wrote Walter Lippmann in 1943.

That is our situation today.

During World War II, we were united in defeating Germany and Japan. After the war, we became united on a new foreign policy — containment of communism and a Soviet Empire that had spread from the Elbe River to the Bering Sea. Through great sacrifices we ensured that our resources were adequate to our commitments.

Vietnam shattered the Cold War consensus.

Yet enough of it survived for Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush to lead the nation and the West to victory.

Bush I then set out to build his “New World Order.” He invaded Panama, drove Iraq out of Kuwait and put U.S. troops into Somalia. The country sent him packing.

After 9/11, Bush II invaded Afghanistan and Iraq and undertook to nation-build in both. The country removed his party from power in both houses of Congress in 2006 and from the presidency in 2008.

George W. was going to “end tyranny in our world.” Enough said.

Obama began the long retreat of American power that proceeds today despite a bellicosity on Capitol Hill redolent of the Cold War.

Today, as government at all levels consumes nearly 40 percent of gross domestic product, as the deficit is growing three times as fast as the GDP, as China continues to grow at four times the U.S. rate, we need to ask ourselves:

What should we fight for? Whom shall we defend? What can we afford in the way of national defense? What must we afford?

Consider America’s alliances, almost all of which date to a Cold War no American under 25 can even remember.

NATO was formed in 1949 to protect Western Europe from a Soviet Bloc and a Soviet Union that disappeared a generation ago.

U.S. treaties with Japan and the Philippines date to the 1950s, when Chairman Mao was exporting communist revolution. Should these treaties now require us to go to war with China to defend disputed islets and rocks in the East and South China Sea?

Our treaty with South Korea dates to a war against the North that ended in a truce 60 years ago. South Korea today has twice the population of the North and 40 times the GDP.

Must we still deploy a U.S. army on the Korean DMZ?

In 1977 we undertook to give $5 billion in annual foreign aid to Israel and Egypt. After 35 years, how long should the United States, whose middle class has not seen a rise in real income since 1977, borrow from China to pay Egyptians and Israelis $5 billion a year not to fight each other?

Through a mindless adherence to policies that date to a long-dead past, America is forfeiting her future.

Through our abandonment of economic patriotism and embrace of globalism, we have run up $10 trillion in trade deficits since Reagan. We have fought two trillion-dollar wars in 12 years.

Every year we go into world financial markets to borrow tens of billions for the International Monetary Fund, World Bank and foreign aid to send to regimes that routinely vote against the us in the United Nations.

Is Rand Paul really the one living in yesterday?

http://www.humanevents.com/2013/08/02/last-hurrah-of-the-interventionists/
 
If Obama would stop blocking that missile shield research so retaliation would be mute, we could confine our international diplomacy to the tip of an ICBM. :D
 
meanwhile the CIA is going onward with it's power balancing in the ME, mindless of what any politicians think. I'm just going to guess that we are arming all sides in the current struggles with a wink-wink/nod-nod relationship with China/Russia...

Is it just me or does anybody else get the feeling that the world has looked at the ME for a long time and decided that it has to all be sent back to the stone age? I'm getting the feeling like it's building up to something bigger than ever and centered in the ME. We could just quarantine it.. why not quarantine the whole ME and let Allah sort it out? Enforce the quarantine with some space-based lasers, somebody tries to cross the boundry and they are vaporized. We could check up on the ME about once every hundred years or so to let them know that we really care... with some drones...

China is energy-starved, they need Iran, just how desperately is anybody's guess. Russia could stay out of everything and be fine, they are one huge friggin country with tons of oil/gas but no, they have to arm Assad. The US is coming in on the side of Assad's enemies. Obama is pretending to be reluctant to do much of anything of course. If he is too eager to get involved he might lose peacenik votes.. He will be able to raise his popularity if he commands the armies however so he might rise to the occasion after stalling around long enough to appear reluctant..
 
America's foreign policy puts its citizens at risk. It is not possible to understand the foreign policy of the United States without understanding Corporate America and its alliance with government. U.S. armed forces fight to maintain the power, influence, and markets of America's corporations; not for freedom, not for democracy, and not for security of its people; yet few of the men and women serving in the armed forces understand this.

It is not difficult to entice young people to serve in the armed forces for "...war possesses an irresistible appeal for young soldiers caused by the thrill of a superhuman power to kill with impunity, and because of it, because of the naive confidence that no harm can come to them, they have at their fingertips a greater power than ever in their lives they will wield again, and they are like bloodthirsty gods united in the climactic comradeship of killing, and that is why they will never again be so happy." -- remark attributed to Gertrude Stein by James Lord at the end of World War II.
 
I'd like to have a military that simply defends America and her allies, but as long as there is a standing military there will be pols who want to use it for their own purposes. That will never change. Mccain will want to use it to get into every civil war in the world. Some liberals and conservatives will want to use it to join every so called UN peace keeping expedition and nation building exercise they can find anywhere and everywhere. Other liberals will want to use the military for meals on wheels.

We have an out of control gov't and a standing military. That means the military is going to be used for all the above purposes. Until it no longer can.
 
I hate to bring the same ol' topic into these conversations, but unfortunately, it's relevant and true.

You guys realize that the one funding all this crap is the Federal Reserve, don't you? If our Fed was reigned in, or better yet, replaced, there would be no currency to fund all this debt, and we'd never be able to afford it.

It's no accident that the purchasing power of the dollar has followed a trajectory of a crash when you overlay the military industrial complex spending of the past 80 years.
 
Foreign policy and political elites from both parties either sneered or cringed in embarrassment when Donald Trump criticized the fact that we didn't pay for the Iraq war and ensuing nation building with Iraq's massive oil reserves.

Historically, that was what happened. In fact, that was the main reason to take over a country. To loot it and enslave its inhabitants. Kind of like a corporate takeover.

Now, in the post-colonial world, it's regarded as unthinkable, at least for civilized western countries. As a result, there is little downside to defying us or even fighting us. Look at this POS Karzi in afghanistan. He orders us around like he's keeping us in power, not the reverse.

In elite circles, the wisdom and morality of intervening in some hellhole is inversely related to how important it is to us and what we'll get out of it. As a result, they were very proud of our war on Serbia during the Clinton administration. We had absolutely nothing to gain. In fact, the Serbs had been steadfast allies in WW II.
 
Quote from AAAintheBeltway:

Now, in the post-colonial world, it's regarded as unthinkable, at least for civilized western countries. As a result, there is little downside to defying us or even fighting us. Look at this POS Karzi in afghanistan. He orders us around like he's keeping us in power, not the reverse.

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Are you suggesting that the dems, when in power, are often submissive to our foreign partners and enemies (much as the republicans are submissive to the dems, even when they have power themselves)?
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If so, I agree.
 
Quote from Tsing Tao:

I hate to bring the same ol' topic into these conversations, but unfortunately, it's relevant and true.

You guys realize that the one funding all this crap is the Federal Reserve, don't you? If our Fed was reigned in, or better yet, replaced, there would be no currency to fund all this debt, and we'd never be able to afford it.

It's no accident that the purchasing power of the dollar has followed a trajectory of a crash when you overlay the military industrial complex spending of the past 80 years.
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I understand your point I think. By allowing expansion of the money supply through its bond buying program the Fed did enable greater spending by the government at lower borrowing costs. But they also forced down short term interest rates, and via operation twist and by buying agency securities they have pushed down long term rates as well. This rescued the housing/building sector. Before the crash that sector accounted for nearly 25% of the economy. So when it shut down there was a huge economic rupture. The Fed seems to have rather adeptly repaired this rupture. Of course it is not without longer term cost to all of us, some more than others. There is no free lunch.

But no matter whether we agree or disagree with Fed action, we should not expect the Fed to drive fiscal and social policy. Yes, if the government were starved for funds, as some advocate, drastic cuts in all sorts of government programs would occur. This is, however, the absolute worst way to bring about government reform.

I'll use a single example, but it illustrates the approach needed wherever government reform is necessary. If you have too many on food stamps and welfare, and we do, you can fix that problem by defunding food stamps and welfare, but you'll create an even worse problem. Instead, this type of problem must be solved indirectly over time by fixing public education, raising the minimum wage, and bringing down the cost of health care. Then the workforce will acquire a higher skill level, fewer will by forced into poverty by health costs, and there will be at the same time an increased incentive to work. One part of the solution reinforces the other. The eventual result will be fewer on food stamps and welfare and less taxpayer subsidy of low wage industries like Walmart and McDonalds.

You don't fix anything by just cutting spending. You must use carefully considered long range planning, indirect actions and reforms. Then the spending cuts can follow in steps as the reforms take affect.

If you prefer a tiny government, you must, unless you're willing to live among chaos, move to a tiny, homogeneous country, with well-behaved citizens.
 
Quote from piezoe:

I understand your point I think. By allowing expansion of the money supply through its bond buying program the Fed did enable greater spending by the government at lower borrowing costs. But they also forced down short term interest rates, and via operation twist and by buying agency securities they have pushed down long term rates as well. This rescued the housing/building sector. Before the crash that sector accounted for nearly 25% of the economy. So when it shut down there was a huge economic rupture. The Fed seems to have rather adeptly repaired this rupture. Of course it is not without longer term cost to all of us, some more than others. There is no free lunch.
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Through constant expansion of the money supply over the years, the Fed has financed the wars of the United States at the expense of it's currency. It's really that simple.
 
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