孤立主義不是一個肮髒的詞
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/09/virtue-isolationism/616499/
美國人已經與他們外交政策傳統中的一個關鍵因素失去了聯係。
通過 Charles A. Kupchan 2020 年 9 月 27 日
孤立主義曾經為美國的崛起掃清了道路，使國家富強安定。 然而，今天，開國元勳反對糾纏聯盟的告誡聲名狼藉，孤立主義者這個詞本身也成了一種侮辱。 由於國家在海外的野心沒有受到限製，美國的大戰略已經成為過度擴張的犧牲品，並在政治上資不抵債。 這個國家現在麵臨著看似無窮無盡的一係列外國糾葛、中東長達 20 年的錯誤戰爭，以及一場大流行病正在造成自大蕭條以來從未經曆過的經濟崩潰。 美國需要重新發現孤立主義的曆史並吸取教訓，縮小其在國外的足跡，並使其對外承諾與其手段和目的相一致。
長期以來，美國人一直認為他們的民主實驗是非凡的，這迫使他們將自由傳播到全球各地。 甚至在這個國家誕生之前，熱情地倡導脫離英國獨立的托馬斯·潘恩 (Thomas Paine) 就勸告美國殖民者“我們有能力重新開始世界”。 但是在這個國家的大部分曆史中，大多數美國人都設想隻能通過他們榜樣的力量來改變世界。 他們不想將其戰略範圍擴展到北美以外。 從建國到 1898 年的美西戰爭，美國人將其海外野心的範圍限製在國際商業上。 他們堅定不移地在北美擴張——踐踏美洲原住民，發起幾次試圖奪取加拿大的失敗嚐試，在一場從 1846 年到 1848 年的戰爭中奪取了墨西哥的大片土地，並於 1867 年從俄羅斯手中購買了阿拉斯加——但沒有進一步推進 比太平洋沿岸。
美國人沒有管理世界，而是逃離了它。 他們堅持喬治·華盛頓總統在其 1796 年的告別演說中提出的治國之道：“我們對外國的重要行為準則是擴大我們的商業關係，盡可能減少與他們的政治聯係。 ”
尤其是在南北戰爭之後，這種對國內發展的關注幫助美國經濟起飛，這得益於對運河、港口、公路和鐵路的投資，而不是對戰艦和殖民地的投資。 從 1865 年到 1898 年，煤炭產量增加了 800%，鐵路裏程增加了 567%。 到 1880 年代中期，美國已經超過英國成為世界領先的製成品和鋼鐵生產國。 美國海軍有時會捍衛美國商人的利益，但與此同時，無論哪個政黨執政，這個國家都在遏製地緣政治野心。 這是美國崛起的故事。
當然，孤立主義也有陰暗麵。 1930年代，美國四處逃竄，法西斯主義和軍國主義橫掃歐亞，後果不堪設想。 如果國家重蹈覆轍，輕率地、本能地逃離當今世界，將是一個嚴重的錯誤。 但美國人已經過度糾正了他們在兩次世界大戰期間的消極態度，轉向了相反的極端，造成了長期的過度擴張，並增加了突然和破壞性地從戰略過度中撤退的風險。
美國人需要重拾建國者留下的經久不衰的智慧，即遠離國外的麻煩往往是最好的治國之道。 重新發現孤立主義的戰略優勢——同時牢記其缺點——為美國人提供了在做太多和做得太少之間找到中間立場的最大希望。
1941 年 12 月 7 日，即日本襲擊珍珠港的那一天，孤立主義成為一個肮髒的詞。 並且有充分的理由。 由於未能對抗軸心國，美國在 1930 年代追求一種自欺欺人且弄巧成拙的戰略豁免權，當之無愧地給孤立主義留下了今天的壞名聲。 正如參議員阿瑟·範登堡 (Arthur Vandenberg) 以前是堅定的孤立主義者，他在日軍空襲後的日記中寫道，“那一天結束了任何現實主義者的孤立主義。”
許多外交政策機構的成員繼續使用孤立主義作為對付任何膽敢質疑美國作為全球監護人角色的人的綽號。 外交官和學者們都嘲笑唐納德特朗普總統是非美國人，因為他質疑美國在海外結盟的價值，並竭力從中東撤軍。 去年 10 月，眾議院以 354 票讚成、60 票反對的票數通過了一項譴責特朗普從敘利亞北部撤軍決定的決議，這是一個罕見的兩黨禮讓時刻，對特朗普進行了嚴厲的譴責。 已故參議員約翰麥凱恩稱參議員蘭德保羅和其他少數敢於呼籲美國擺脫外國承諾的政客為“怪鳥”。
對孤立主義戰略邏輯的籠統譴責不僅扭曲了美國曆史，而且對美國人造成了嚴重傷害。 這個國家不能也不應該回到 19 世紀的半球孤立狀態。 經濟相互依存和全球化威脅——例如洲際導彈、跨國恐怖主義、流行病、氣候變化和網絡攻擊——意味著毗鄰的海洋不再像過去那樣受到保護。 但是，這個國家迫切需要在全麵了解曆史教訓的指導下，就如何負責任地縮減其對外糾葛展開坦誠和公開的對話。
美國無休止的戰爭並沒有得到選民的歡迎。 巴拉克奧巴馬總統明白這一點，試圖通過呼籲“關注國內的國家建設”來讓美軍走出中東泥潭並競選連任。 該地區不會放手； 奧巴馬最終將美軍留在阿富汗以幫助平息混亂，並派遣軍隊前往伊拉克和敘利亞打擊伊斯蘭國。 （從 2014 年到 2017 年，我在奧巴馬政府的國家安全委員會任職。）
特朗普隨後繼承了公眾對國家在中東的努力非常厭倦。 事實上，2019 年的一項民意調查顯示，多數美國人希望該國在世界上的作用縮小或完全消失。 大流行隻是加強了這種向內的轉變。 2020 年 7 月的一項調查顯示，四分之三的公眾希望美軍撤離阿富汗和伊拉克。 難怪特朗普一直忙於從該地區撤出美軍。 “我競選是為了讓我們的士兵回家，這就是我正在做的事情，”他在下令美國從敘利亞北部撤軍時解釋說。
向內轉向的勢頭在兩黨都有，而不僅僅是特朗普的支持者。 2020 年民主黨綱領呼籲“翻開過去 20 年在中東的大規模軍事部署和無休止戰爭的一頁”，並聲稱美國“不應將政權更迭強加於其他國家”。 自由事業的慷慨捐助者喬治·索羅斯和保守派慈善家查爾斯·科赫最近聯手建立了一個新的華盛頓智囊團——昆西責任治國研究所——“促進使美國外交政策遠離無休止戰爭的想法。 ” 他們以前國務卿兼總統約翰·昆西·亞當斯 (John Quincy Adams) 的名字命名該研究所，他在 1821 年宣布美國“不走出國門，去尋找要摧毀的怪物”。 就連外交精英中的少數持牌成員也開始背離國際主義共識，甚至呼籲美國從歐亞和中東撤軍。 外交政策機構的喉舌《外交事務》(Foreign Affairs) 的封麵最近刊登了標題“美國回家吧？”
美國領導人普遍未能應對這些政治壓力，這有可能將危險的過度擴張變成更危險的擴張不足——這正是 1930 年代發生的事情。 事實上，美國目前的困境令人擔憂地模仿了促使該國在兩次世界大戰之間迷惑性撤退的情況。 公眾感覺到戰略過度擴張，就像國家在美西戰爭中獲得海外財產並隨後不久加入第一次世界大戰之後所做的那樣。 在 COVID-19 的傳播造成的巨大經濟困難中，美國人希望在阿肯色州而不是阿富汗進行投資，這與上世紀 30 年代發生的內向轉變相呼應。 保護主義和單邊主義再次盛行，推動了同樣單打獨鬥的美國外交，這在兩次世界大戰之間的民主國家之間造成了團結的混亂。 反自由主義和民族主義正在歐洲和亞洲蔓延，就像美國在二戰前背棄世界時一樣。
在這些政治條件下，美國的撤退即將到來。 尚不清楚的是，裁員是有意為之還是默認發生。 一個有計劃的、有節奏的、有衡量的設計缺陷是更可取的。 這一結果將需要恢複孤立主義，並就不糾纏的好處和代價進行仔細和深思熟慮的全國辯論。 不進行這場辯論可能會導致危險的撤退，而不是按順序進行的明智的撤退。
美國人度過了他們最初的幾十年，使自己擺脫了英國、法國和西班牙的帝國設計。 在 1812 年戰爭中與英國對峙之後，他們在很大程度上取得了成功，並且在 19 世紀餘下的時間裏，他們將勢力範圍擴大到整個歐洲大陸。 與此同時，歐洲列強紛紛撤出西半球。
隨著聯盟的擴大，美國人也經常考慮是否要占領北美以外的領土。 海地、聖多明各、古巴、維爾京群島、拉丁美洲的各個部分和夏威夷都是潛在的收購目標。 盡管如此，在美西戰爭之前，行政部門、國會或兩者的結合還是一個接一個地否決了這樣的提案。
長期以來，美國人回避大國糾纏和海外領土，因為他們認為，要保持他們在政治和經濟自由方麵的獨特實驗，就需要遠離國家海岸以外的危險和腐敗影響。 保護這個國家的特殊性需要地緣政治的超然，而不是今天等同於美國例外論的全球野心。
開國元勳們樂於接受孤立主義，這在很大程度上取決於國家的地理優勢——東部和西部毗鄰海洋，北部和南部毗鄰相對友好的鄰國。 正如華盛頓在他的告別演說中所肯定的那樣，該國享有“超然而遙遠的境地……為什麽要放棄這種特殊情況的優勢呢？ 為什麽要放棄自己的立場而站在外國的立場上呢？ 保護性海洋將阻止掠奪性力量進入，而非洲大陸的資源和不斷增長的人口將創造財富。 美國經濟從一開始就依賴於國際貿易，這凸顯了避免有可能中斷海運貿易的外國糾紛的必要性。 “與所有國家建立和平、貿易和真誠的友誼，不與任何國家結成聯盟，”托馬斯·傑斐遜堅持道。 值得注意的是，盡管開國元勳試圖擴大對外貿易，但他們幾乎不是自由貿易者，這讓該國走上了一條長期依賴關稅來增加收入和保護製造業的道路。
單邊主義和隨之而來的行動自由強化了這些孤立主義傾向。 從英國獨立意味著：國家獲得了對外交關係行為做出自己決定的能力。 正如華盛頓在 1796 年寫給亞曆山大·漢密爾頓的信中所說，“如果外國勢力告訴我們……我們應該做什麽，不應該做什麽，我們還有待尋求的獨立。” 華盛頓的孤立主義和單邊主義本能強烈到足以產生赤裸裸的不忠行為，促使他違背美國在 1778 年為扭轉革命戰爭的局勢而勉強達成的與法國的防務協定。 當法國和英國在 1793 年再次開戰時，華盛頓拒絕援助該國的盟友，而是宣布中立並背棄這個使美國能夠建立獨立的國家。 盡管開國元勳普遍同意該國不應代表法國參戰，但並非所有人都對華盛頓的中立宣言感到滿意。 詹姆斯·麥迪遜 (James Madison) 稱此舉為“可恥的背信棄義”，傑斐遜很快辭去國務卿一職，部分原因是法國受到的待遇不佳。 直到第二次世界大戰之後——150 多年後——美國才再次締結正式聯盟。
孤立主義不僅是為了推進美國的物質野心，也是為了推進其作為“被選中的”國家的救世主使命。 正如赫爾曼·梅爾維爾 (Herman Melville) 簡潔地抓住了這個國家對例外主義呼喚的感覺，“我們美國人是特殊的、被選中的人——我們時代的以色列； 我們承載著世界自由的方舟。” 為了履行其作為救世主國家的角色，美國不得不放棄舊世界的地緣政治，追求一種以法律和理性為指導的治國之道，而不是帝國主義的野心。 許多虔誠的新英格蘭人走得更遠，擁護和平主義。 美國和平協會 (American Peace Society) 成立於 1828 年，和平主義者的聲音將有助於孤立主義在未來幾十年內幾乎鎖定該國的政治。
外國野心不僅有可能迫使美國按照現實政治規則行事，而且還需要常備軍和過於強大的聯邦當局，從而危及國內自由。 華盛頓在他的告別演說中警告說，“雜草叢生的軍事機構”“特別敵視共和自由”。 其他創始人擔心，卷入大國政治會從生產性投資中吸走資金並導致高稅收，這兩者都會對經濟增長和繁榮造成壓力，並危及國家的商業崛起。
孤立主義還旨在防止美國以白人為主的人口被稀釋，從而進一步加強其所選擇地位的種族成分。 用公理會牧師賀拉斯·布什內爾 (Horace Bushnell) 的話來說，“在世界上所有的居民中……一個精選的血統，撒克遜人，從這個英國家庭中，最高貴的血統被選為我們國家的人民。” 美國對待黑人、美洲原住民和拉丁美洲居民的方式與其建國宣言“人人生而平等”幾乎不一致。 但是例外論者隻把這個國家的特殊性歸因於它的白人移民。 其他人被認為不適合成為美國實驗的正式成員。 美國將隨著白人定居者的推進而向西擴張，但天定命運不得不止步於水邊，以免該國最終將非白人納入政治體。
盡管傑斐遜在 1801 年設想這個年輕的國家最終會橫跨整個大陸，但他警告不要允許“在那個表麵上留下汙點或混合物”。 1826 年，當約翰·昆西·亞當斯總統想派遣一個小型美國代表團參加在巴拿馬舉行的外交聚會時，國會發起了反對，這在很大程度上是出於偏執。 代表約翰·倫道夫 (John Randolph) 對美國代表“在非洲本土人、他們的美國後裔、混血兒、印第安人和混血兒旁邊工作，在如此雜亂無章的混合體中沒有任何冒犯或醜聞”的想法感到反感。 在國會拒絕尤利西斯·格蘭特總統於 1870 年吞並聖多明各的努力時，眾議員約翰·富蘭克林·法恩斯沃思對將“來自西非各地的印第安人、野蠻人和黑人”融入國家人口的前景感到畏縮。 這種種族主義態度一再導致將聯盟擴大到加勒比海、拉丁美洲和太平洋地區的提議落空。 從 1880 年代開始，對稀釋國家公民的恐懼導致對移民的限製收緊。
美國可能相信它注定要拯救世界，但它必須通過榜樣的力量來做到這一點，而不是通過冒險的十字軍東征。 它一次又一次地錯過了向北美以外地區擴張的機會，甚至拒絕暫時幹預國外以支持共和事業，包括在自己的後院。 1823 年，當詹姆斯·門羅 (James Monroe) 總統警告歐洲人不要在西半球建立新的帝國野心時，他隻是空談而已。 直到19世紀末，美國才準備支持門羅主義的西半球霸權主張。
開國元勳發起國家的孤立主義路線成功地實現了其目標。 到 19 世紀末，美國已經建立了一個穩定繁榮的共和國，以白人為主的定居者居住並馴服了從一個海岸到另一個海岸的廣闊土地。 歐洲列強尚未完全撤離周邊地區，但它們不再威脅已經確立了西半球霸主地位的美國。 除了南北戰爭期間，美國陸軍和海軍仍然規模小且便宜； 到 1880 年代末，該國的經濟體是世界上最大的經濟體之一，但海軍排名第 17 位。 美國在崛起的同時小心翼翼地避免卷入可能損害其國內外安全、繁榮和自由的聯盟或大國競爭。
事實上，華盛頓不糾纏的“偉大規則”非常奏效，以至於美國人至少暫時發現了外國野心的誘惑。 在 1890 年代，美國建立了一支戰艦艦隊，以響應越來越多的國家要求其繁榮與相稱的地緣政治影響力相匹配的呼聲。 曆史學家弗雷德裏克·傑克遜·特納 (Frederick Jackson Turner) 推廣了關閉西部邊境會危及美國實驗的觀點，他認為“邊境個人主義從一開始就促進了民主”。 西奧多·羅斯福 (Theodore Roosevelt) 和海軍上將阿爾弗雷德·塞耶·馬漢 (Alfred Thayer Mahan) 等人與他一起堅持認為，隻有將昭昭天命帶到國外，美國才能保持其政治和經濟活力。
但是美國人對涉外事務的熱情並不容易。 這將需要幾次錯誤的開始，再過四個十年才能堅持下去。 當擴張主義者第一次提出他們的理由時，孤立主義者拚命反擊。 1890 年本傑明·哈裏森總統首次向國會提議國家獲得一支戰艦艦隊，隨之而來的是一場抗議風暴。 參議員約翰麥克弗森辯稱，這艘戰艦是“這個國家根本沒有用的一類艦船”，並稱建造計劃是“我見過的最瘋狂的奢侈計劃”。 參議員約瑟夫·多爾夫堅稱，“一支偉大的海軍更有可能帶領我們與外國開戰，而不是維護和平。” 但最終，地緣政治野心的誘惑占了上風。 1890 年的海軍法案批準了美國的前三艘戰列艦，隨後還有更多。 孤立主義的共識正在破裂。
1898 年，美國開始使用其新的戰爭工具，不僅放棄了非糾纏，而且擁抱了它早已宣誓放棄的帝國主義。 為回應西班牙對古巴叛亂分子的血腥鎮壓，總統威廉·麥金萊聲稱他的行為是“為了人類的事業”，發動了一場將西班牙驅逐出美國鄰國的戰爭。 美國海軍在加勒比海和太平洋輕而易舉地擊敗了西班牙艦隊，並繼續奪取了對古巴、波多黎各、夏威夷、菲律賓、關島、薩摩亞和威克群島的控製權。 麥金萊稱吞並夏威夷是“天定的命運”，並將對菲律賓的軍事占領描述為“神聖的事業”，並解釋說“我們別無他法，隻能把他們全部拿下，教育菲律賓人，提升 並使他們文明化和基督教化。”
許多美國人不買賬——尤其是在菲律賓爆發了血腥的叛亂，奪走了大約 4,000 名美國士兵和數十萬菲律賓人的生命之後。 美國人以為他們是在接受例外主義的召喚而上路，但他們已成為另一個帝國霸主。 1898 年夏天成立的反帝國主義聯盟幫助策劃了一場強大的政治反彈。 美國保住了新的海外領地，在南鄰維持著脅迫的方式，繼續建造戰列艦。 但它逐漸被半球孤立所吸引，恢複了主要關注商業而非地緣政治野心的外交政策——在威廉·霍華德·塔夫脫擔任總統期間被稱為美元外交。
隨著國家對麥金萊的現實主義國際主義感到厭惡，伍德羅威爾遜轉向理想主義品牌的治國方略，這將與美國的例外主義使命保持一致而不是矛盾。 他最初避開第一次世界大戰，稱這是一場“我們與它無關”的衝突，並將美國的角色限製在“公正的調解”。 1917 年德國潛艇開始擊沉美國船隻後，威爾遜改變了路線，要求國會批準該國參戰。 盡管如此，他繼續宣誓放棄現實主義的野心：“我們沒有自私的目的可以服務。 我們不渴望征服，不渴望統治……我們的動機不是報複，也不是國家實力的勝利主張，而隻是捍衛權利和人權。” 德國戰敗後，威爾遜試圖引導美國加入國際聯盟，這是他建立和平、民主的戰後秩序的心血結晶。 當他走遍全國為他提議的國家協調中設想的共同防禦義務建立政治支持時，他預見到“美國希望和曆史的頂點”，並斷言“美國擁有實現她的命運和拯救美國的無限特權 世界。”
但威爾遜在意識形態和政治上都過火了。 他崇高的理想主義與壕溝戰的現實不符，參議院最終拒絕批準該國加入國際聯盟，寧願保持單邊主義的自主權。 威爾遜不會放棄，將 1920 年的總統選舉設想為對他和他的民主黨同僚提出的新國際主義的全國公投。 共和黨候選人、參議員沃倫·哈丁上鉤了，他在接受提名時宣稱，“我們支持[喬治]華盛頓的政策，並且……反對總統提出的國際主義和與外國的永久聯盟。” 他在美國曆史上最不平衡的選舉之一中擊敗了民主黨候選人詹姆斯考克斯，為兩次世界大戰期間的美國優先孤立主義掃清了道路。
直到日本偷襲珍珠港，美國人才終於克服了對外國糾纏的厭惡。 在國家參加第二次世界大戰後，富蘭克林羅斯福總統有效地融合了麥金萊的現實主義和威爾遜的理想主義，催生了自由國際主義。 通過將國家的優勢力量融入國際夥伴關係並成為民主的鬥士而不僅僅是榜樣，美國能夠同時確保其利益並傳播其價值觀。 保護和促進民主和資本主義將立即確保國家安全並推進其救贖使命。 第二次世界大戰結束時，華盛頓監督了多邊機構、軍事協定和設施以及開放市場的全球網絡的建設，開啟了美式和平時代。
羅斯福塑造了美國在世界上的參與品牌，這種參與在政治上是可持續的，因為它建立在現實主義和理想主義的基礎之上。 美國人喜歡他們從這種利益和理想的結合中得到的東西，為蘇聯的物質和意識形態遏製奠定了基礎。 根據 1950 年指導美國冷戰戰略的文件 NSC-68，美國麵臨的主要威脅來自不可避免的權力現實：“克裏姆林宮控製地區的任何實質性進一步擴張都會增加可能性 無法組建足以對抗克裏姆林宮的更強大的聯盟。 正是在這種背景下，這個共和國及其公民在他們的力量優勢中處於最深的危險之中。” 但這還不足以“檢查克裏姆林宮的設計”。 根據 NSC-68，美國還有責任“以符合自由和民主原則的方式實現秩序和正義”。
這種現實主義和理想主義的結合得到了兩黨的穩定支持，確保了自由國際主義在冷戰之後長期存在。 蘇聯的解體和國家日益加劇的兩極分化確實削弱了其國內基礎，但共和黨人和民主黨人都繼續支持美國在海外的積極參與——尤其是在 9 月 11 日的襲擊之後。 在孤立主義長期存在之後，自由國際主義從 1941 年一直持續到巴拉克奧巴馬總統任期。
“從今天開始，”唐納德特朗普在 2017 年的就職演說中宣稱，“一個新的願景將統治我們的土地。 從今天起，將隻有美國優先。 美國優先。” 在他上任的第一分鍾，特朗普將自由國際主義換成了兩次世界大戰期間的孤立主義口頭禪。 從那以後，他一直在吹捧不糾纏、不幹涉和單邊主義的優點。
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Isolationism: A History of America's Efforts to Shield Itself from the World.
Charles A. Kupchan: The decline of the West
Juliette Kayyem: Trump turns the U.S. into an outcast
Thomas Wright: The return to great-power rivalry was inevitable
Read: How the Great War shaped the world
America Fails the Civilization Test
Isolationism Is Not a Dirty Word
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/09/virtue-isolationism/616499/
Americans have lost touch with a crucial strain of their foreign-policy tradition.
Isolationism once cleared the way for America's ascent, making the country prosperous, powerful, and secure. Today, however, the Founders’ admonition against entangling alliances has fallen into disrepute, and the word isolationist itself has become an insult. In the absence of constraints on the nation’s ambition abroad, American grand strategy has fallen prey to overstretch and grown politically insolvent. The nation now confronts a seemingly unlimited array of foreign entanglements, two decades of errant war in the Middle East, and a pandemic that is causing an economic debacle of a sort not experienced since the Great Depression. The United States needs to rediscover the history of isolationism and apply its lessons, shrinking its footprint abroad and bringing its foreign commitments back into line with its means and purposes.
Americans have long deemed their democratic experiment to be exceptional, obliging them to spread liberty to all quarters of the globe. Even before the country’s birth, the passionate advocate of independence from Great Britain, Thomas Paine, counseled American colonists that “we have it in our power, to begin the world all over again.” But for much of the nation’s history, most Americans envisaged changing the world only by the power of their example; they wanted nothing to do with extending their strategic reach beyond North America. From the nation’s founding until the Spanish-American War of 1898, Americans restricted the scope of their overseas ambition to international commerce. They steadfastly expanded across North America—trampling on Native Americans, launching several failed attempts to grab hold of Canada, seizing a sizable chunk of Mexico in a war that ran from 1846 to 1848, and purchasing Alaska from Russia in 1867—but pushed no farther than the Pacific coast.
Instead of running the world, Americans ran away from it. They stuck to the brand of statecraft laid out by President George Washington in his 1796 farewell address: “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.”
Especially after the Civil War, this focus on domestic development helped the American economy take off, boosted by investment in canals, ports, roads, and railways—rather than battleships and colonies. Between 1865 and 1898, coal production rose by 800 percent and railway track mileage by 567 percent. By the middle of the 1880s, the United States had surpassed Britain as the world’s leading producer of manufactured goods and steel. The U.S. Navy on occasion defended the interests of U.S. traders, but all the while, the country, regardless of which party was in power, kept geopolitical ambition at bay. This is the story of America’s rise to greatness.
Isolationism, of course, has also had a dark side. During the 1930s, the United States ran for cover while fascism and militarism swept across Europe and Asia—with disastrous results. It would be a grave error for the country to repeat that mistake and rashly and instinctively flee from today’s world. But Americans have overcorrected for their interwar-era passivity and swung to the opposite extreme, producing chronic overreach and raising the risk of an abrupt and disruptive retreat from strategic excess.
Americans need to reclaim the enduring wisdom laid down by the Founders that standing apart from trouble abroad often constitutes the best statecraft. Rediscovering isolationism’s strategic advantages—while at the same time keeping in mind its downsides—offers Americans the best hope of finding the middle ground between doing too much and doing too little.
Isolationism became a dirty word on December 7, 1941, the day Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. And with good reason. By failing to stand up to the Axis powers, the United States during the 1930s pursued a deluded and self-defeating quest for strategic immunity, deservedly giving isolationism the bad name it has today. As Senator Arthur Vandenberg, formerly a staunch isolationist, wrote in his diary after the Japanese raid, “That day ended isolationism for any realist.”
Many members of the foreign-policy establishment continue to deploy isolationist as an epithet against anyone who dares question America’s role as global guardian. Diplomats and scholars alike have pilloried President Donald Trump as un-American for questioning the value of the nation’s alliances abroad and straining to withdraw U.S. troops from the Middle East. The House last October—in a rare moment of bipartisan comity—dealt Trump a stinging rebuke, passing by a vote of 354–60 a resolution condemning his decision to pull U.S. troops from northern Syria. The late Senator John McCain dubbed Senator Rand Paul and the few other politicians daring to call on the United States to shed foreign commitments “wacko birds.”
Blanket condemnation of the strategic logic of isolationism not only distorts U.S. history but also does Americans a grave disservice. The country cannot and should not return to the hemispheric isolation of the 19th century. Economic interdependence and globalized threats—such as intercontinental missiles, transnational terrorism, pandemics, climate change, and cyberattacks—mean that adjoining oceans are less protective than they used to be. But the nation desperately needs a frank and open conversation, guided by a full account of the lessons of history, about how to responsibly scale back its foreign entanglements.
America’s endless wars have not gone over well with the electorate. President Barack Obama understood that, trying to get U.S. troops out of Middle East quagmires and running for reelection by calling for a “focus on nation-building here at home.” The region would not let go; Obama ended up keeping U.S. forces in Afghanistan to help quell the chaos and sent troops to Iraq and Syria to fight the Islamic State. (From 2014 to 2017, I served on the National Security Council in the Obama White House.)
Trump then inherited a public more than weary of the nation’s exertions in the Middle East. Indeed, a poll from 2019 revealed that a plurality of Americans want the country’s role in the world to shrink or end altogether. The pandemic has only strengthened this inward turn. A survey from July 2020 indicated that three-quarters of the public wants U.S. troops to leave Afghanistan and Iraq. No wonder Trump has been busy extracting U.S. forces from the region. “I campaigned on bringing our soldiers back home, and that’s what I am doing,” he explained as he ordered the U.S. withdrawal from Syria’s north.
The inward turn is gaining momentum on both sides of the aisle, not just among Trump’s base. The 2020 Democratic platform calls for “turning the page on two decades of large-scale military deployments and open-ended wars in the Middle East” and asserts that the United States “should not impose regime change on other countries.” George Soros, a generous benefactor of liberal causes, and Charles Koch, a conservative philanthropist, recently teamed up to establish a new Washington think tank—the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft—which “promotes ideas that move U.S. foreign policy away from endless war.” They named the institute after former Secretary of State and President John Quincy Adams, who in 1821 declared that the United States “goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy.” Even a handful of card-carrying members of the foreign-policy elite have begun to defect from the internationalist consensus, going so far as to call for U.S. withdrawal from Europe and Asia as well as the Middle East. The cover of Foreign Affairs, the mouthpiece of the foreign-policy establishment, was recently emblazoned with the headline “Come Home, America?”
The general failure of U.S. leaders to respond to these political pressures risks turning dangerous overreach into even more dangerous underreach—exactly what happened in the 1930s. Indeed, America’s current predicament worryingly mimics the conditions that prompted the nation’s deluded interwar retreat. The public senses strategic overstretch, just as it did after the nation’s acquisition of overseas possessions in the Spanish-American War and its entry into World War I soon thereafter. Amid the extraordinary economic hardship spawned by the spread of COVID-19, Americans want investment in Arkansas, not in Afghanistan, paralleling the inward turn that occurred during the ’30s. Protectionism and unilateralism are again in vogue, pushing forward the same go-it-alone U.S. diplomacy that made a hash of solidarity among the interwar democracies. And illiberalism and nationalism are on the march in Europe and Asia, just as they were when the United States turned its back on the world prior to its entry into World War II.
Under these political conditions, an American pullback is coming. What remains unclear is whether retrenchment occurs by design or by default. A planned, paced, and measured drawback by design is far preferable. That outcome will require the rehabilitation of isolationism and a careful and thoughtful national debate over the benefits as well as the costs of nonentanglement. Failure to have that debate risks producing a perilous retreat rather than the judicious pullback that is in order.
As the union enlarged, Americans also regularly considered whether to take hold of territory beyond North America. Haiti, Santo Domingo, Cuba, the Virgin Islands, various pieces of Latin America, and Hawaii were among the targets of potential acquisition. Nonetheless, up until the Spanish-American War, the executive branch, Congress, or a combination of the two swatted down one such proposal after another.
Americans long shunned great-power entanglement and overseas territories because they believed that preserving their unique experiment in political and economic liberty required standing aloof from the perils and corrupting influences that lay beyond the nation’s shores. Guarding the country’s exceptional character required geopolitical detachment, not the global ambition that is today equated with American exceptionalism.
The Founders’ ready embrace of isolationism rested in no small part on the nation’s geographic good fortune—flanking oceans to its east and west and relatively benign neighbors to its north and south. As Washington affirmed in his farewell address, the country enjoyed a “detached and distant situation … Why forgo the advantages of so peculiar a situation? Why quit our own to stand upon foreign ground?” Protective oceans would keep predatory powers at bay while the continent’s resources and growing population would generate wealth. The American economy was dependent on international trade from the get-go, underscoring the need to avoid foreign entanglements that risked interrupting seaborne commerce. “Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none,” insisted Thomas Jefferson. Notably, even though the Founders sought to expand foreign commerce, they were hardly free traders, setting the country on a course that long relied on tariffs to raise revenue and protect manufacturing.
Unilateralism and the freedom of action that would accompany it reinforced these isolationist inclinations. Independence from Britain meant just that: The nation gained the ability to make its own decisions about the conduct of foreign relations. As Washington wrote to Alexander Hamilton in 1796, “If we are to be told by a foreign Power … what we shall do, and what we shall not do, we have Independence yet to seek.” Washington’s isolationist and unilateralist instincts were strong enough to produce a bald act of infidelity, prompting him to renege on the defense pact with France that the U.S. had reluctantly concluded in 1778 to turn the tide in the Revolutionary War. When France and Britain again went to war in 1793, Washington refused to come to the aid of the nation’s ally, instead proclaiming neutrality and turning his back on the country that had enabled the United States to establish independence. Although the Founders were in general agreement that the country should not enter the war on France’s behalf, not all of them were pleased with Washington’s declaration of neutrality. James Madison called the move “ignominious perfidy,” and Jefferson soon resigned as secretary of state in part due to the shabby treatment of France. It would not be until after World War II—more than 150 years later—that the United States would again conclude a formal alliance.
Isolationism was to further not only America’s material ambitions but also its messianic mission as the “chosen” nation. As Herman Melville succinctly captured the nation’s sense of its exceptionalist calling, “We Americans are the peculiar, chosen people—the Israel of our time; we bear the ark of the liberties of the world.” To fulfill its role as redeemer nation, America had to renounce the geopolitics of the Old World, pursuing a brand of statecraft guided by law and reason instead of imperial ambition. A good many religious New Englanders went further and embraced pacifism. The American Peace Society was founded in 1828, and pacifist voices would contribute to isolationism’s virtual lock on the country’s politics for decades to come.
Foreign ambition risked not only forcing the United States to play by the rules of realpolitik but also imperiling domestic liberty by requiring standing armies and too-powerful federal authorities. Washington warned in his farewell address that “overgrown military establishments” are “particularly hostile to republican liberty.” Other Founders feared that entanglement in great-power politics would siphon funds from productive investment and lead to high taxation, both of which would weigh on growth and prosperity and imperil the nation’s commercial ascent.
Isolationism was also intended to prevent the dilution of America’s predominantly white population, thereby furthering the racial component of its chosen status. In the words of Horace Bushnell, a Congregational minister, “out of all the inhabitants of the world … a select stock, the Saxon, and out of this the British family, the noblest of stock was chosen to people our country.” America’s treatment of its Black, Native American, and Latin American inhabitants was hardly consistent with its founding claim that “all men are created equal.” But the exceptionalist narrative attributed the nation’s special character only to its white immigrants; others were deemed unfit to be full members of the American experiment. The United States was to expand westward in step with the advance of its white settlers, but Manifest Destiny had to stop at water’s edge lest the country end up incorporating nonwhites into the body politic.
Indeed, Washington’s “great rule” of nonentanglement worked so well that Americans, at least temporarily, discovered the allure of foreign ambition. Over the course of the 1890s, the United States built a battleship fleet, responding to growing calls for the nation to match its prosperity with proportionate geopolitical heft. The historian Frederick Jackson Turner popularized the notion that the closing of the western frontier would jeopardize the American experiment, arguing that “frontier individualism has from the beginning promoted democracy.” He was joined by the likes of Theodore Roosevelt and Admiral Alfred Thayer Mahan in insisting that only by taking Manifest Destiny abroad could the United States maintain its political and economic dynamism.
In 1898, the United States put its new tools of warfare to use, not only abandoning nonentanglement but also embracing the imperial drive it had long sworn off. In response to a blood-soaked Spanish crackdown on insurgents in Cuba, President William McKinley, claiming that he was acting “in the cause of humanity,” launched a war to expel Spain from America’s neighborhood. The U.S. Navy handily defeated the Spanish fleet in the Caribbean and Pacific, and proceeded to wrest control of Cuba, Puerto Rico, Hawaii, the Philippines, Guam, Samoa, and the Wake Islands. McKinley called the annexation of Hawaii “manifest destiny” and portrayed the military occupation of the Philippines as a “holy cause,” explaining that “there was nothing left for us to do but to take them all, and to educate the Filipinos, and uplift and civilize and Christianize them.”
But Wilson overreached both ideologically and politically. His lofty idealism did not wear well against the realities of trench warfare, and the Senate ultimately refused to approve the nation’s entry into the League of Nations, preferring to preserve the autonomy of unilateralism. Wilson would not give up, envisaging the presidential election of 1920 as a national referendum on the new internationalism that he and his fellow Democrats had put on offer. The Republican candidate, Senator Warren Harding, took the bait, proclaiming as he accepted the nomination, “We stand for the policies of [George] Washington and … against the internationalism and the permanent alliance with foreign nations proposed by the President.” He prevailed against the Democratic nominee, James Cox, in one of the most lopsided elections in American history, clearing the way for the America First isolationism of the interwar era.
Not until the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor did Americans finally overcome their aversion to foreign entanglement. After the nation’s entry into World War II, President Franklin Roosevelt effectively melded McKinley’s realism and Wilson’s idealism, giving birth to liberal internationalism. By embedding the nation’s preponderant power in international partnerships and becoming a crusader for democracy and not just an exemplar, the United States was able to simultaneously secure its interests and spread its values. The protection and promotion of democracy and capitalism would at once keep the nation safe and advance its redemptive mission. At the close of World War II, Washington oversaw the construction of the global network of multilateral institutions, military pacts and installations, and open markets that launched the era of Pax Americana.
This synthesis of realism and idealism enjoyed steady bipartisan support, ensuring that liberal internationalism long outlasted the Cold War. The demise of the Soviet Union and the nation’s growing polarization did weaken its domestic foundations, but Republicans and Democrats alike continued to support robust U.S. engagement abroad—especially following the September 11 attacks. After isolationism’s long run, liberal internationalism endured from 1941 through the presidency of Barack Obama.
Much of the foreign-policy establishment has been up in arms as a result, dismissing Trump’s statecraft as the work of a know-nothing who has orchestrated only a temporary, even if destructive, detour from the nation’s global calling. Conventional wisdom holds that America will return to the liberal internationalist fold as soon as he leaves office.
But this interpretation misses the mark; the nation’s current predicament may well lend itself to the stubborn isolationism of the interwar years as opposed to the zealous internationalism that came after World War II. As after World War I, Americans are again confronted with a toxic combination of strategic overreach and economic crisis. The nation’s pullback from the world during the 1920s and ’30s offers sobering lessons for today. Indeed, Americans need to keep that history close at hand in order to avoid repeating the costly mistakes of that era.
After they rejected both McKinley’s realist internationalism and Wilson’s idealist alternative, Americans clamored to return to the isolationism that had come before. During the 1920s, the country reclaimed dollar diplomacy, seeking economic influence outside the Western Hemisphere but shunning strategic responsibility. Anti-immigrant sentiment surged; Congress passed legislation in 1924 that not only excluded Asians but also decreased by 90 percent the inflow of Jews and Catholics from eastern and southern Europe. The Great Depression then prompted a complete economic and geopolitical withdrawal. Herbert Hoover and Franklin Roosevelt went it alone on trade and finance, ending solidarity with fellow democracies and tanking the global economy. Some 1 million persons of Mexican heritage—many of them U.S. citizens—were deported to Mexico.
Roosevelt is remembered as a great wartime leader and the president who finally forged a sustainable brand of U.S. internationalism, but he was anchored in the isolationist mainstream throughout the 1930s. As fascism and militarism began to sweep Europe and Asia, he oversaw the tightening of neutrality laws that effectively severed commercial contact with belligerents in an attempt to cordon off the nation from any risk of war. Even after he began to worry, in early 1939, that the potential fall of Britain and Nazi control of Europe would enable the Axis powers to threaten the Western Hemisphere, he moved cautiously and incrementally. Following the German invasion of Poland in September of that year, FDR convinced Congress to permit the victims of Nazi aggression to purchase American weaponry, but only if they paid cash and transported the materiel on their own ships. Americans were not permitted to put themselves in harm’s way, ensuring no repeat of the turn of events that had drawn the country into World War I. German and Japanese expansion continued apace.
In 1941, FDR stepped up assistance to countries resisting the Axis powers, but his exertions were in the service of defending hemispheric isolation, not joining the fight against fascism. Confronted with the America First Committee, which helped convince some 80 percent of the public that the country should stay out of the war, Roosevelt rallied support for his “aid-short-of-war” policy by assuring Americans that sending armaments was the best way to keep foreign trouble at bay. As he put it in one of his signature fireside chats, Americans had to send arms to those fighting the Axis “so that we and our children will be saved the agony and suffering of war which others have had to endure … There is no demand for sending an American Expeditionary Force outside our own borders. There is no intention by any member of your Government to send such a force. You can, therefore, nail any talk about sending armies to Europe as deliberate untruth.”
FDR kept his word until he had no choice but to join the fight; ultimately, Japan brought the war to the United States. Some 80 million people, including more than 400,000 Americans, perished in World War II, the deadliest war in history. If the 19th century was isolationism’s finest hour, the interwar era was surely its darkest and most deluded.
The conditions that led to this misguided run for cover are making a comeback. Even though the United States prevailed in the Spanish-American War and World War I, Americans recoiled from both conflicts, preferring to return to the strategic detachment that had preceded them. Today, Americans are acutely aware of the nation’s overreach in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria. These conflicts have killed or wounded tens of thousands of U.S. personnel, cost some $6 trillion, and left behind little good. Flanking oceans do not provide the natural security that they once did. But the United States is still far from Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and Africa, and the prospect of immunity from the dangers of foreign entanglement still has an intrinsic appeal. Trump’s questioning of the value of alliances and his pledges to end the era in which “our politicians seem more interested in defending the borders of foreign countries than their own” have found ready audiences. The nation’s enviable location will always sustain the isolationist temptation.
Most Americans still believe in the nation’s exceptionalist calling but have come to regret playing the role of crusader rather than exemplar. The end of the Cold War was supposed to have cleared the way for the “end of history” and the completion of America’s messianic mission. American forays into the Middle East were to have advanced the cause; President George W. Bush pledged that a “liberated Iraq can show the power of freedom to transform that vital region.”
Nothing of the sort has happened. Illiberalism is on the march worldwide, backed by a rising China and a pugnacious Russia. The recent targets of U.S. interventions are anything but stable democracies. The public now puts “promoting democratic values and institutions around the world” near the bottom of its list of foreign priorities. Trump has pledged that the country is “getting out of the nation-building business” and that “we do not seek to impose our way of life on anyone.” As during the 1930s, the United States is seeking to cordon itself off from, rather than transform, a world that is not breaking its way.
In the minds of many Americans, though, the economic costs of foreign entanglement have outstripped even the negative impact on liberty. Trump has explicitly linked globalization to the plight of American workers. To redress what he calls “this American carnage,” Trump has pursued a “nationalist” rather than “globalist” agenda, bringing back tariffs to protect the manufacturing sector and keeping out foreign workers. Bad times for the working class have, in the meantime, revived pacifist inclinations among progressives. During the Democratic presidential primaries, Bernie Sanders insisted that “it is time to invest in the working families of this country and not a bloated military budget.” For Elizabeth Warren, writing in The Atlantic, advancing national security means “promoting prosperity and lessening inequality” instead of launching “yet another unnecessary, costly, and counterproductive war.”
Finally, racism and anti-immigrant sentiment are once again feeding the nation’s isolationist impulses. Trump’s efforts to build a wall on the border with Mexico and radically cut back on immigration have been about not only protecting jobs but also making America white again. Amid the Black Lives Matter protests, he has only doubled down, touting himself as the guardian of the nation’s “great heritage” against “those who want us to be ashamed of who we are.” Trump’s America First agenda has deftly melded identity politics with economic protectionism and strategic pullback.
Trump is a symptom, more than a cause, of the nation’s inward turn. He is tapping into popular discontent over the nation’s foreign policy: its strategic excesses in the Middle East, counterproductive efforts to promote democracy, protection of allies that do not do enough to protect themselves, and pursuit of trade deals that have disadvantaged American workers. A recent poll by the Center for American Progress—a left-leaning think tank—revealed that liberal internationalists represent only 18 percent of the public, while a majority of the country favors either America First or global disengagement. Younger voters are much less supportive of a traditional internationalist agenda than their elders, meaning that this inward turn is likely to deepen in the years ahead.
Isolationism is making a comeback because U.S. statecraft has become divorced from popular will. A strategic adjustment that puts the nation’s purposes back into equilibrium with its means is inevitable. The paramount question is whether that adjustment takes the form of a judicious pullback or a more dangerous retreat.
America’s isolationist past should not be its future. Global interdependence makes it both unfeasible and unwise for the United States to return to being a North American or hemispheric redoubt. With U.S. forces still scattered around the world at hundreds of overseas bases, a precipitous strategic retreat hardly seems in the offing. But that may be exactly what lies in store unless the United States gets ahead of the curve and crafts a strategy of judicious retrenchment by design.
Isolationism is the default setting for the United States; the ambitious internationalism of the past eight decades is the exception. A yearning for geopolitical detachment has from the outset imbued the American creed and been part and parcel of the American experience. The allure of nonentanglement reemerges even when the internationalists deem it to be extinguished for good. When the likes of McKinley, Mahan, and Roosevelt launched the Spanish-American War, they had no idea that their actions would trigger a potent backlash and a quick retreat to dollar diplomacy. When Wilson entered World War I with the overwhelming support of Congress, little did he know that U.S. participation in the Great War would set the stage for the dogged isolationism of the interwar era.
Isolationist pressures are again building—and will only strengthen as the pandemic continues to wreak havoc on the global economy. Trump has been channeling those pressures, but without competence. He is right to head for the exits in Syria, Afghanistan, and Iraq, but he has done so without a coherent strategy, leaving behind chaos and ceding ground to adversaries. His recent decision to downsize the U.S. presence in Germany blindsided not only NATO allies but also his own Pentagon.
This is exactly how pullback should not happen. Instead, the winner of the November election needs to launch the nation on a searching debate about how to craft a grand strategy that aims to do less while still doing enough. Rather than taking cheap shots at each other, the die-hard internationalists and the Come Home crowd should be discussing what a responsible and well-paced retrenchment should look like.
The starting point for this debate should be recognition that isolationism, no less than internationalism, has both strategic upsides and strategic downsides. Isolationism succeeded in enhancing America’s security and prosperity during the 19th century and helped the nation resist the imperial temptation after 1898, but led it into dangerous delusion during the interwar years. Liberal internationalism was an effective and sustainable grand strategy during the Cold War, but the nation’s internationalist calling has since gone awry, producing pronounced strategic excess.
A judicious retrenchment should entail shedding U.S. entanglements in the periphery, not in the strategic heartlands of Europe and Asia. America’s main misstep since the end of the Cold War has been unnecessary embroilment in wars of choice in the Middle East. In contrast, pulling back from Eurasia in the face of Russian and Chinese threats constitutes precisely the kind of rash overcorrection that the United States must avoid. The nation learned that the hard way when it failed to confront Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan.
Obstinate unilateralism is a nonstarter in today’s world. Managing international trade and finance, combatting climate change, shutting down terrorist networks, preventing nuclear proliferation, overseeing cybersecurity, addressing global pandemics—these urgent challenges all necessitate broad international cooperation. Moreover, as the United States retreats from its role as global policeman, it will want like-minded partners to help fill the gap; the necessary partnerships become stronger only through diplomacy and teamwork. Since the Senate can be a tough customer when it comes to ratifying treaties—as Woodrow Wilson found out to his chagrin—informal pacts and coalitions of the willing need to be the new staples of U.S. diplomacy.
An increasingly illiberal world desperately needs the United States to again anchor democratic ideals; the progressive flow of history may end if America is no longer interested in or capable of tipping the scales in the right direction. The top priority, however, must be getting the nation’s political and economic house in order rather than going abroad in search of monsters to destroy. The U.S. cannot serve as a model for the world unless its republican institutions earn their keep.
Working to spread democracy through advocacy and example rather than more intrusive means will help the United States find the middle ground between isolation and overreach. This middle course will require that Americans become comfortable operating in the world as it is, not as they would like it to be. For much of its history, the nation cordoned itself off from a world that it feared would spoil the American experiment. Beginning with World War II, it sought to run the world and recast the globe in its own image. Moving forward, Americans will need to engage in a messy and imperfect world while resisting the temptation either to recoil from it or to remake it. The United States needs to step back, without stepping away.
