Isolationism

August 17, 2020
Kupchan (The End of the American Era), a professor of international relations at Georgetown University, offers an erudite and evenhanded study of the isolationist impulse in American foreign policy. Beginning with President George Washington’s 1796 farewell address advising the nation to steer clear of foreign entanglements, the idea of maintaining American independence served the country well during its economic ascent, according to Kupchan. He links “isolationist logic” to the notion of American exceptionalism and explains how the subjugation of Native Americans and the seizure of lands from Mexico in the 19th century was seen not as expansionism, but as the fulfillment of America’s “messianic mission.” Despite U.S. involvement in WWI, isolationism only fell out of favor after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Kupchan writes, and the U.S. has since overextended itself in foreign wars and alliances, sowing discord at home and abroad. Talk of “America First” has reemerged in the Trump era, but Kupchan disagrees with those who want to pull the U.S. out of “major strategic positions around the world,” arguing instead for “selective engagement and judicious retrenchment.” He marshals a wealth of evidence to support his arguments and ranges confidently across more than 200 years of American history. Policy makers and foreign affairs scholars will want to take note.

August 1, 2020
Isolationism, long in the doghouse, gets a reprieve. Enshrined by George Washington's iconic farewell address, isolationism enjoyed a long and dignified history until the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. For the remainder of the 20th century, "isolationist" became a synonym for "simpleton." Then, seemingly overnight, "America First," the rallying cry of a disgraced 1930s anti-war movement, became a campaign slogan and helped elect the current president. Kupchan, professor of international affairs at Georgetown, writes that isolationism dominated American foreign relations until 1898, when the country dipped a toe in internationalism. President William McKinley's realistic version in the Spanish-American War was too much about projecting power. Woodrow Wilson's idealistic internationalism was too much about spreading freedom. However, unlike the unhappy post-mortem after 1918, Americans emerged from World War II with a surge of national confidence in what seemed like an ideal combination of both realism and idealism. Galvanized by anti-communism, both political parties embraced what Kupchan calls liberal internationalism: projecting power throughout the world but aiming at preserving democratic ideals. He maintains that, despite glitches, America performed tolerably at leading the "free world" until the Soviet Union collapsed in 1989, after which the U.S. lost its sense of proportion. What Kupchan terms "overreach" led to "188 military interventions, a four-fold increase over the Cold War era" that included multitrillion dollar debacles in Iraq and Afghanistan. Barack Obama's 2008 election introduced "liberal internationalism lite," which encouraged American allies to share the burden, but this failed to obtain bipartisan support. The author concludes that isolationism was growing well before the 2016 election. America can never withdraw to the solitude it enjoyed during the 19th century, but there's no denying that the modern version is a movement whose time has come. Histories of ideas are often boring, but Kupchan writes well and only occasionally falls into the academic mode, mostly when he delivers an opinion and then follows it with a quote from another scholar who backs him up. Astute political history.

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