On Isolationism
A reader with the ballistic yet devotional name of Guns and Rosaries pens a thoughtful objection to the column entitled ‘Color Coding the Enemy‘. He writes:
I would like to call into question the classification of “isolationists” as the enemy. I think the commitments to maintaining the USA’s global military and trade hegemony have enriched and empowered the very same globalists who are our enemies under the blue-helmet category. The enslavement of most of Asia and the impoverishment of the American blue-collar worker would not have happened were it not for unrestricted global free trade, protected by this hegemony. This global hegemony has also paved the way for the woke types in the Establishment to attempt to spread their cultural rot all over.
I am not convinced that the wars we spent the past twenty years fighting were indeed in the service of defending our shores from radical Islam. If that happened at all, it was a side effect. Instead, I think those wars were fought on the pretense of going after terrorists, but with the actual objective of securing the flow of Middle Eastern energy and destabilizing any nation that was a military threat to Israel (in the case of Iraq and Syria), or of maintaining strategic bases on the frontier of China and central Russia (Afghanistan).
I also note that decades of low-intensity counter-insurgency have led to lots of steady funds for the military-industrial complex, extensive development of tools for a counter-insurgency war, and the creation of an effective society-wide panopticon at home. The police are militarizing. That’s not necessarily a good thing, especially considering who gives their orders right now.
On the other hand, anything that weakens the Establishment tactically, saps its resources, reduces its ability to come after Christians is a good thing. So actually, maybe I do want foreign wars, and lots of them, as long as nobody I care about has to go and fight in them, and as long as our Establishment doesn’t win. Every dollar they spend dropping JDAMs on desert villages is a dollar they’re not spending sending cops to make me get a shot.
My comment:
Your points are all well taken, but please regard the counterpoints.
You are conflating Isolationism, at least as that word is used in this column, with Globalism. Isolationism favors American withdrawal from overseas military commitments, pure and simple. Bring all troops home, void all treaties to defend soil not our own. Globalism favors using the American global hegemony to establish a New World Order run for the benefit of an international elite. These are not the same things.
The problem is that this American global hegemony is what prevents piracy on the high seas, allows for international trade, deters the ambitions of tyrants invading their neighbors, hinders the Jihad and the Communist International, and prevents wars in Europe, the Korean Peninsula, and the Sea of Japan.
No one wants to play World Policeman. But if American does not do it, no one will. That means unrest turns into brush wars, brush wars turn into national wars, national wars turn into global war.
The betrayal of the American workingman was not due to international trade, but to anti-American, that is, globalist, trade deals. In evidence of which, allow me to point to the Trump Administration, which enacted and enforced trade deals advantageous to America.
The enslavement of Asia was encouraged by the globalists, but this has nothing to do with Isolationism one way or the other. Isolationism would prevent American policy from boycotting or pressuring China to deter their slave labor.
Again, you are conflating and confusing two separate questions when you criticize endless American involvement in low intensity overseas counter insurgency, which you correctly state benefits the military industrial complex. While it is true Isolationism would cure this, it would be amputation to cure foot disease. The globalists in our military and CIA encouraged those wars in direct contravention of American interests overseas, and I will once again point to the Trump policy both of strengthening the military, killing the Islamic Caliphate, eliminating the jihadist threat at home, and bringing troops home.
Let me emphasize that. Under Bush and Obama, a Muslim mass-shooting, vehicular homicide, or suicide-bombing in the continental United States was a monthly occurrence in the national news. Under Trump, I can recall none. Not one.
No shoe bomber, no underwear bomber, no bombing of Boston marathons, no shootouts at Christmas office parties, no shootouts at nightclubs in Florida. It simply stopped. No one noticed, no one emphasized it.
The panopticon of police state policing to stop international terrorism would not stop if Isolationism were the order of the day. Indeed, in anything, Iran might well be emboldened to resume. Feeding Israel to the Jihad would not sooth their hatred of America, but a rational and non-provocative approach to the Middle East might. Again, I bring the Abraham Accords to your attention as a counter example.
As for your final point, overseas wars do not weaken the Establishment tactically or in any other way, if by the Establishment you mean the domestic Reds and Globalists. Such wars are their bread and butter.
The paradox is that a conservative policy is to have a strong military and not use it. That alone deters global war.
The Globalist policy is to have America have a weak military and use it all the time to maintain a permanent state of brush war. The Isolationist policy is to have a weak military and not use it. Both provoke global war.
The conservative policy deters war. The globalists and the isolationists provoke war.
Neville Chamberlain was not a friend of Hitler, but he ended up serving his interests, and precipitating the most preventable war in history.
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
