Feb 5, 2005
The Nonsense of "Isolationism" vs. "Internationalism"
It is with some frustration and despair that that I read the terminology of"isolationism" introduced b y RJ Rummel and accepted by some libertarians. It is understandable that imperialists would seek to perpetuate the"internationalist" vs."isolationist" dichotomy, placing themselves in the position of righteous internationalists. If I recall correctly, Rudy Rummel was peddling this same nonsense in Reason magazine almost a quarter century ago.
William Appleman Williams, one thought, swept this nonsense away in The Tragedy of American Diplomacy. There were at least four positions revealed in the debate in 1919, and which remain with us today. Despite all of the blather today about Wilsonian idealism, pro and con, he was nothing of the sort. He was an advocate of a League of the"have" powers running the world, a kind of shared imperialism. His illness simply left the door open wider for the British and the French to meddle in the Middle East.
HC Lodge was not an isolationist, but a unilateral imperialist. His posture reveals the silliness of using term isolationist to describe any of the positions in these debates.
Neither does it make any sense to describe the now forgotten man of American diplomacy, Sen. William E. Borah, as an isolationist in the same boat with Lodge. He was a hero to the Chinese even as the British slaughtered them in the Shanghai riots in 1925, defended the Nicaraguan Revolution, Mexico, and the Cuban Revolution of 1933 even as FDR smashed it. Borah's speeches were carried in Spanish all over Latin America on the radio, not FDR's.
I believe it an unchallengeable truth that Borah was the most highly regarded American of the 20th century among those in the third world for his anti-imperialist, anti-interventionist views. Attempting to create a situation where others might be able to carry out their own battle for liberty against imperialism, is not isolationism, but in the tradition of the American Revolution as Tom Paine saw it.
William Appleman Williams, one thought, swept this nonsense away in The Tragedy of American Diplomacy. There were at least four positions revealed in the debate in 1919, and which remain with us today. Despite all of the blather today about Wilsonian idealism, pro and con, he was nothing of the sort. He was an advocate of a League of the"have" powers running the world, a kind of shared imperialism. His illness simply left the door open wider for the British and the French to meddle in the Middle East.
HC Lodge was not an isolationist, but a unilateral imperialist. His posture reveals the silliness of using term isolationist to describe any of the positions in these debates.
Neither does it make any sense to describe the now forgotten man of American diplomacy, Sen. William E. Borah, as an isolationist in the same boat with Lodge. He was a hero to the Chinese even as the British slaughtered them in the Shanghai riots in 1925, defended the Nicaraguan Revolution, Mexico, and the Cuban Revolution of 1933 even as FDR smashed it. Borah's speeches were carried in Spanish all over Latin America on the radio, not FDR's.
I believe it an unchallengeable truth that Borah was the most highly regarded American of the 20th century among those in the third world for his anti-imperialist, anti-interventionist views. Attempting to create a situation where others might be able to carry out their own battle for liberty against imperialism, is not isolationism, but in the tradition of the American Revolution as Tom Paine saw it.