More Jacksonian, Not Isolationist

[Kathianne]

McCain and Lindsay get it wrong, no surprise there. A much better view of where conservatives are and most libertarians for that matter:

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2011/06/20/gop_isolationist_no_just_more_jacksonian.html


June 20, 2011
GOP Isolationist? No, Just More Jacksonian
By Colin Dueck

The Republican presidential candidates' debate last week raised questions as to where the GOP is headed on foreign policy issues. When asked about pressing international matters such as Libya and Afghanistan, the candidates offered a range of answers striking in their variety. Of course, Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) can always be counted upon to call for American strategic disengagement globally. But other candidates such as former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) also voiced noted skepticism regarding current U.S. military interventions overseas. Romney suggested that the United States cannot fight "a war of independence for another nation," and offered a rather mixed statement on American efforts in Afghanistan. Bachmann, for her part, laid out a ringing condemnation of the current U.S. intervention in Libya. Former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman, though absent that night, has said similar things about both Libya and Afghanistan in recent weeks. Of the leading candidates onstage in the debate, only former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty offered a clear defense of existing U.S. military engagements overseas. To be sure, the format was hardly one to allow for lengthy position statements, but what was said did raise a lot of eyebrows. The New York Times went so far as to declare that the debate indicated a "renewed streak of isolationism" within the GOP. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) raised similar concerns on Sunday morning about "an isolationist strain in the Republican Party."

There is no doubt that the rise of the tea party movement, the sweeping nature of President Obama's health care reforms, and the shift in focus to domestic economic issues over the last couple of years has led to a change of emphasis for most Republicans. The GOP is now focused, energized, and united around principles of fiscal and economic conservatism, in opposition to Obama. Naturally this can have a certain spillover effect when it comes to foreign policy. But this hardly makes today's Republicans "isolationist."

The word isolationist is usually used pejoratively, but if it is going to have any sort of practical utility, it ought to mean something specific. Here is a stab at one such definition. Some politicians, journalists, and foreign policy analysts in the United States -- past and present -- have called for the dismantling of most of America's strategic commitments, alliances and bases in Europe, East Asia, and the Middle East. That is a position which might reasonably be called isolationist. Ron Paul embraces that position. There is no indication that any of the other Republican candidates do.

If a desire to disengage quickly from Afghanistan is an indication of isolationism, then it is mainly Democrats and not Republicans who suffer from it. Just last month, the House of Representatives considered a measure to force the rapid withdrawal of U.S. forces from the Afghan conflict. The measure was defeated by only nine votes. Press coverage focused on the fact that some 26 GOP House members voted for rapid American withdrawal -- again, characterized as an indication of growing Republican isolationism. As usual, the real story was elsewhere, in the mass defection of virtually all Democratic House members from their own president's policy. The numbers show that roughly ninety percent of House Republicans voted to stick it out in Afghanistan, while over ninety percent of House Democrats voted to bring the troops home right away. Public opinion polls are less polarized by party but show similar tendencies. A Pew Research Center poll released last week shows 60 percent of Republicans committed to keeping U.S. troops in Afghanistan until the situation in that country stabilizes. Among Democrats, that number is 36 percent. The same might be said on issues of trade: whatever international leadership Obama provides is with the support of Republicans, more than Democrats...

[revelarts]

isolationism
–noun
the policy or doctrine of isolating one's country from the affairs of other nations by declining to enter into alliances, foreign economic commitments, international agreements, etc., seeking to devote the entire efforts of one's country to its own advancement and remain at peace by avoiding foreign entanglements and responsibilities.

Origin:
1920–25, Americanism ; isolation + -ism
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Cultural Dictionary
isolationism definition

The doctrine that a nation should stay out of the disputes and affairs of other nations. The United States practiced a policy of isolationism until World War I and did not pursue an active international policy until after World War II. ( See “ entangling alliances with none.”)


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Peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations; entangling alliances with none.
Thomas Jefferson

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To avoid entangling alliances has been a maxim of our policy ever since the days of Washington, and its wisdom no one will attempt to dispute.
James Buchanan

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Close alliances with despots are never safe for free states.
Demosthenes

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...While, then, every part of our country thus feels an immediate and particular interest in union, all the parts combined cannot fail to find in the united mass of means and efforts greater strength, greater resource, proportionably greater security from external danger, a less frequent interruption of their peace by foreign nations; and, what is of inestimable value, they must derive from union an exemption from those broils and wars between themselves, which so frequently afflict neighboring countries not tied together by the same governments, which their own rival ships alone would be sufficient to produce, but which opposite foreign alliances, attachments, and intrigues would stimulate and embitter. Hence, likewise, they will avoid the necessity of those overgrown military establishments which, under any form of government, are inauspicious to liberty, and which are to be regarded as particularly hostile to republican liberty. In this sense it is that your union ought to be considered as a main prop of your liberty, and that the love of the one ought to endear to you the preservation of the other.
George Washington farewell Address

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Crises there will continue to be. In meeting them, whether foreign or domestic, great or small, there is a recurring temptation to feel that some spectacular and costly action could become the miraculous solution to all current difficulties. A huge increase in newer elements of our defenses; development of unrealistic programs to cure every ill in agriculture; a dramatic expansion in basic and applied research -- these and many other possibilities, each possibly promising in itself, may be suggested as the only way to the road we wish to travel.

But each proposal must be weighed in the light of a broader consideration: the need to maintain balance in and among national programs, balance between the private and the public economy, balance between the cost and hoped for advantages, balance between the clearly necessary and the comfortably desirable, balance between our essential requirements as a nation and the duties imposed by the nation upon the individual, balance between actions of the moment and the national welfare of the future. Good judgment seeks balance and progress. Lack of it eventually finds imbalance and frustration. The record of many decades stands as proof that our people and their Government have, in the main, understood these truths and have responded to them well, in the face of threat and stress.
Eisenhower's farewell address

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