RoR: Forum

Was "isolationism" ever a positive proposal, rather than an accusation?

Back when the two oceans insulated the USA from Asia and Europe, it was easier to believe that we could not be invaded from there. Aircraft carriers and intercontinental missiles removed that protection. But at the level of principles - where you are thinking with this - the weapons do not change the arguments.

Gen. Billy Mitchell was court martialed because during the Washington Naval Treaty negotiations, he went public with his belief that conflict in the Pacific between the USA and Japan was only a matter of time. Was that insight or a self-fulfilling prophesy? Franklin D. Roosevelt was Assistant Secretary of the Navy for seven years, 1913-1920. He understood Mitchell's thesis.

We think of Hawaii as a state, like Ohio. But look at the globe. In the days of Mitchell and Roosevelt the United States had colonies in Asia and the Pacific. Alaska gave the USA another border with Japan. Just to say, what threatens your neighbor may not be clear to you ... or maybe our intentions were read very clearly, indeed. Immediately after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Time magazine speculated that the USA would launch a counter-strike on Japan from the Philippines. The Japanese had better intelligence, but they must have considered it. They could not have ignored it. Counterfactually, if the USA had not taken the islands from Spain in 1898, Japan might have in 1941, except as Franco was an ally of Germany which was an ally of Japan. So, we cannot know whether the USA must inevitably have gone to war against Japan were the USA itself not involved in Asia.

We could play the "What if" game in Europe, as well. Blocking Germany in the 1930s might not have prevented the wider war, only delayed it, or allowed Russia an earlier opportunity to seize its much smaller neighbors.

Similarly, there is no way to wind back the clock in the Middle East. The Jewish State in Trans-Jordan could probably continue its defensive posture, striking back when struck, receiving money from American public and private sources. But 241 Marines were killed in Beirut in 1983. Just as the USA waffled between Japan and China before World War II, the government in Washington pushed and pulled at Iraq and Iran, again with disasterous results. And here we are.

A deeper problem is found in the easy phrase that the American government should protect its citizens when other governments violate their rights. You have no right to eat pork in Saudi Arabia. It's that simple. And if you do and get caught, you probably cannot count on your 4th, 5th or 6th Amendment rights, either. Nor should you. For the American govenment to protect the rights of its citizens abroad is to police the world. Certainly, whenever any hapless tourist trips over their shoe laces, the consulates always do whatever they can to bring the idiots home safe. Apologies all around and an appropriate fine can assuage a lot insult. Short of that, though, where is the role of one national government to intervene in the laws of another state?

(Edited by Michael E. Marotta on 6/23, 6:26am)

Post 1

Thursday, June 23, 2011 - 8:42am

Michael wrote, "...what threatens your neighbor may not be clear to you ... or maybe our intentions were read very clearly, indeed."

That implies one of two things: Michael is either saying that we were planning on attacking Japan before Pearl Harbor and the Japanese detected our intentions and struck Pearl Harbor in defense, or, that Japan acted upon an irrational belief that we were going to attack them and therefore believed they were acting in self-defense.
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Michael wrote, "... we cannot know whether the USA must inevitably have gone to war against Japan were the USA itself not involved in Asia."

Why is that? Because in 1848 we acquired the Philippines... that was our involvement in Asia??? Maybe someone else can make sense of that reasoning. I doubt it. The post continues with a counterfactual historical fantasy for Germany and Russia in the 30's and then says something about Beiruit in 1983 and something about Iran and Iraq.
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What I can make out, in a very dim and vague fashion, is Michael intimating that self-defense isn't necessarily self-defense and everything might have been different anyway. I didn't find any of that helpful.
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Michael's post does address an important concern where he says, "A deeper problem is found in the easy phrase that the American government should protect its citizens when other governments violate their rights."

And he finishes his post by asking, "...where is the role of one national government to intervene in the laws of another state?"

Where does the attack of another nation on American citizens become an attack on America? What is the level of attack that is threatening enough to say that defense is required, and at a level that calls for a declaration of war? Where does jurisdiction come into play? These all become more complex when the enemy is a terrorist organization not tied to a particular nation.

Like Professor Machan, I hope this issue gets the debate it deserves.
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I wish there was another term, something other than "isolationism" since that term is linked to government actions to restrict private trade, to tariffs, not just to restricting military actions.

Post 2

Thursday, June 23, 2011 - 1:46pm

You and a friend are walking peacefully down one side of a street.

Across the street, a man is being robbed and beaten senseless by two others, who are also intent on raping the man's wife when they are finished robbing the couple.

Is it ever in your best interest to cross the street? You are not being molested on your side of the street.

You and your friend can cross the street and risk bodily harm in defending the victim.

Or, you can avert your eyes and scurry down the street. You can drive home quickly and call the police. They will arrive with their chalk, long after the fact, and dutifully fill out the reports.

By not risking intervention -- things are fine on your side of the street, after all, you avoid the risks and costs associated with conflict. But by conceding the street to thugs, do you and your friend pay a greater future price for your present lower cost inaction?

Is it ever in your rational self-interest to cross the street? In fact, would the tribe attempt to enforce a 'duty to rescue/Good Samaritan' law, and make it not only a moral obligation to cross the street, but a legal one as well? (In the US, this is mixed. Under some circumstances in some contexts, legally yes, under others no. But there is generally no 'duty to rescue' in the general case.)

Other than the obvious variation of legal acceptance of this principle from nation to nation, how is the ethical principle involved, if there is one, impacted if the street is an ocean?

A similar principle applies, if there is one, to tolerance of out of control political leaders. Do we pay a price over time by ignoring them, and just getting on with our lives? And so, are at future risk, such that there exists a rational interest in not tolerating even minor emperor wannabee transgressions of freedom?

Or, does their activist politics eventually come knocking on our doors in spite of our wishes to just peacefully live our lives? Does our years of ignoring the minor emperor wannabee transgressions eventually deliver to us a totally out of all control tribal governmental nightmare of epic proportions?

Suppose the man is being attacked by chemical weapons.
Suppose the man is being dragged out of his house and being murdered.
Suppose the man is being beaten and robbed.
Suppose the man is being starved to death.
Suppose the man has lost his job and is losing his home.
Suppose the man is sick and is dieing.
Suppose the man is old and is dieing of old age. (Of course, there is no disease called 'old age', and yet it kills us all eventually, if we're lucky. But we've instituted a tribal policy of fighting that fact, as a 'duty to rescue'... from old age. We call it Medicare.)

Our politics is attempting to formulate a single state solution in answer to the question of when the state can compel us all to act in the above instances. In the case of violence across the oceans, we have an all voluntary military that is state funded. In the case of individual health issues, we are trying to implement a mandatory state solution, a universal 'duty to rescue.'

We individually view those conditions differently, in terms of what, if any of them, justify compelled state action demanding the compelled combined resources of the state to fight.

I don't know who said it first, but, but these days for sure it is true: a man who says he is not interested in politics is like a drowning man not interested in water, and the increasingly out of all control tribal insanity will come pouring through your closed doors and onto your family, uninvited, like a flood.

I think our nature is such that we choose to avoid unnecessary minor conflict, even if it is at the risk of much greater future conflict. Because even if the greater future conflict is all but certain, it is not certain, and we can tell ourselves hopefully that greater future conflict can be avoided. This isn't a lament, it is an observation of human nature. It is what we do, and I think that makes periodic wide conflagrations -- revolution, upheaval, civil wars, strife -- inevitable and unavoidable. Given the hypothetical choice between lower certain cost today, and much greater but only hypothetical cost tomorrow, I think mankind is wired to almost always choose the only hypothetical greater cost tomorrow, and endlessly avoid the lower present cost. This is evident in our politics. It is evident in the current struggle in Congress, in which this nation's political leaders seem forever frozen and unable to ever do the right thing, except in glaring and rare occasions which themselves bring a general gnashing of teeth over this very concept.

We should enjoy the relative peace while we can, it can never last, and I think our time is coming. History isn't over, and this generation is no different than any other in terms of managing tribal political sensibilities.

(Edited by Fred Bartlett on 6/23, 1:54pm)

Post 3

Thursday, June 23, 2011 - 6:28pm

From Tibor's article:

It was, after all, George Washington himself who, in his farewell message, warned the country against getting entangled in foreign wars.

I always wondered about this. I think there was an understandable context for this when Washington said it since the U.S. faced possible war with France. But here's the excerpt:

"The great rule of conduct for us, in regard to foreign nations, is in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible. Europe has a set of primary interests, which to us have none, or a very remote relation. Hence she must be engaged in frequent controversies the causes of which are essentially foreign to our concerns. Hence, therefore, it must be unwise in us to implicate ourselves, by artificial ties, in the ordinary vicissitudes of her politics, or the ordinary combinations and collisions of her friendships or enmities."

I think Washington here is citing a reason for removing the U.S. from the entangling alliances of Europe (as Jefferson later described it) simply because the interests of monarchs and other European nations at that time were not of any interest to the U.S. "Europe has a set of primary interests, which to us have none, or a very remote relation." I think the idea here is not just that alliances per se are bad, but alliances that serve no interest to us that are bad.

But consider that the U.S. in order to gain independence actually did enter into an alliance with France, without which it would not have succeeded. The difference here was that this alliance was in the rational self-interests of the U.S. But what about from the perspective of France? They were, through their involvement with the American revolutionaries (remember Adams and Franklin lobbied King Louis XVI to help them), getting themselves involved in a foreign war, that ultimately resulted in an independent America and bankrupted the French monarchy. I always thought France got the raw end of the deal on that one :)

(Edited by John Armaos on 6/23, 6:31pm)

Post 4

Friday, June 24, 2011 - 8:46am