Foreign Policy

NCFCA Lincoln Douglas, Resolved: That the [USA] ought to more highly value isolationism. As with all debate topics, definitions are key to framing the debate. Definitions for "isolationism" will be researched and debated. The discussion and linked articles provide a background for debating U.S. foreign policy and trade policy.

On this page:
• Founders & Foreign Policy
• Isolationism
• Ethics & Foreign Policy
• Terrorism

Founders & Foreign Policy

George Washington's addresses foreign policy

John Quincy Adams, "America does not go abroad searching for monsters to destroy (full text of this speech)

Grover Cleveland on Foreign Policy

Congress Shall Have the Power to Make War (Congress Shall Have the Power to Make War, April 5, 1999, Alexander Tabarrok, North County Times (Escondido, CA)

Mere "Isolationism": The Foreign Policy of the Old Right (The Freeman: Ideas on Liberty - February 2000)

Isolationism

Back to Top

Many resources found by going to www.oll.libertyfund.org, and typing in "isolationism"

From: Frank Chodorov, Fugitive Essays: Selected Writings of Frank Chodorov

paragraph 832:

The war, when we were finally drawn into it, was something of an adventure for most Americans. Three generations of Americans had come and gone since the country had experienced a full-fledged war; the Indian wars and a couple of “punitive” expeditions into Mexico and Central America were of interest only to the professional army, and the contest with Spain was in the nature of an opera bouffe. The war in Europe was the real thing, brought into every home by means of the draft and involving a new instrument of war, the bond. Woodrow Wilson glamorized the undertaking by dubbing it the “war to end all wars” and the “war to make the world safe for democracy”; the latter phrase had all the earmarks of “manifest destiny,” of the duty of imposing our brand of democracy on the benighted peoples of Europe, and thus appealed to our missionary zeal. Yet, the general feeling was that once we had licked the kaiser, we could return to our wonted ways, which, in sum, meant isolationism.

paragraph 833:

After the war, as usual, disillusionment set in. It was soon realized that the conquest of Germany did not mean the end of wars, but was probably the prelude to yet another one, and that our brand of democracy did not sit well with other peoples. The opposition in the Senate to Wilson’s League of Nations reflected the attitude of the people who had had enough of involvement in the tangled mess of European diplomacy and wanted out. For twenty years thereafter pacifism was the ruling passion of the country; in novels, on the stage, in magazine articles, and in college lecture halls the theme that war was inexcusable was repeated. The spirit of pacifism was reinforced by a resurgence of American isolationism, the feeling that nothing good could come to us from interfering in European internal matters, and that we would be better off minding our own business. It was this inbred isolationism which confronted Franklin Roosevelt when he set out to get us into World War II, and from which he was fortuitously delivered by Pearl Harbor.

paragraph 838

Isolationism is not a political policy, it is a natural attitude of a people. It is adjustment to the prevailing culture within a country, and a feeling of security within that adjustment. The traditions, the political and social institutions, and the moral values that obtain seem good, the people do not wish them to be disturbed by peoples with other backgrounds and, what is more, they do not feel any call to impose their own customs and values on strangers. This does not mean that they will not voluntarily borrow from other cultures or that they will surround themselves with parochial walls. Long before interventionism became a fixed policy of the government, American students went to Europe to complete their education and immigrants introduced their exotic foods to the American table. But these were voluntary adoptions, even as we welcomed German and Italian operas and applauded the British lecturers who came here to decry our lack of manners, We certainly enjoyed the bananas and coffee imported from Latin American countries, and, while we might deplore their habit of setting up dictatorships, we felt no obligation to inject ourselves into their political affairs; that was their business, not ours.

paragraph 840

When World War II got going in Europe and it became evident that Roosevelt was intent on getting us into it, a group of Americans organized the America First Committee for the purpose of arousing the native spirit of isolationism to the point of frustrating his intent. They were for keeping the nation neutral. For various reasons (particularly Pearl Harbor) their plan failed, even though at the beginning they gained the adherence of many Americans. One flaw in their program was a tendency toward protectionism; the anti-involvement became identified with “Buy American” slogans and with high tariffs; that is, with economic, rather than political, isolationism. Economic isolationism—tariffs, quotas, embargoes, and general governmental interference with international trade—is an irritant that can well lead to war, or political interventionism. To build a trade wall around a country is to invite reprisals, which in turn make for misunderstanding and mistrust. Besides, free trade carries with it an appreciation of the cultures of the trading countries, and a feeling of goodwill among the peoples engaged. Free trade is natural, protectionism is political.

From: Leonard P. Liggio, Literature of Liberty, January/March 1978, vol. 1, No. 1 Imperial Presidency

Back to Top

paragraph 835

Since 1941 Americans have abandoned their isolationism and trusted an imperial presidency to conduct U.S. foreign relations. Liberal governments stressing “strong executives” used this as a mandate for foreign interventionism and domestic antidemocratic practices. They soon found themselves at war with the basic instincts of the American public for peace. The liberals’ passion for political centralization and their search for a totally organized world to achieve stability and peace brewed a disastrous foreign policy. Abroad the result has been a “perpetual war for perpetual peace”; at home, a governmental system of executive royalism.

paragraph 839

The executive state grew deeply suspicious of mass, popular politics. Professional elites alone, rather than the people, were deemed expert to shape delicate foreign policy decisions. Public debate on key issues was forbidden. In fact, the American public has consistently shunned war or policies leading to war. Unifying the apparently inconsistent U.S. popular enthusiasm for neutrality and isolationism (during the 20s and 30s), and the internationalism following World War II, was the belief that, in context, both policies seemed the best ways to avoid war. Liberal theorists could not tolerate any public unwillingness to “pay any price” for the risky business of global interventionism by a centralized imperial presidency.

paragraph 82

In the best short essay yet published on the history and nature of isolationism, Manfred Jonas defines the position as “the avoidance of political and military commitments to or alliances with foreign powers, particularly those in Europe.”1 As Jonas notes in his own work, there is far more to the position of most isolationists than sheer withdrawal, or (to use the phrasing of one historian) acting like “that species of bird which, when threatened, simply goes on pecking the ground until danger passes—or it is slain.”2 So-called isolationists often sought to increase foreign trade, endorsed noncoercive forms of international organization, fostered cultural interchange, and supported relief and recovery. In fact, they might take pains to deny they were isolationists, preferring the name anti-interventionist, neutralist, or nationalist. In the decade before Pearl Harbor, they differed among themselves on a variety of issues, including a navy based upon battleships, retention of the Philippines and Guam, the desirability of peacetime conscription, and recognition of the Soviet Union. What they shared in common was unilateralism in foreign affairs, that is, in the sense of rejecting binding military commitments, and war.

paragraph 84

During the past twenty years, there has been a resurgence of scholarship on noninterventionism, and a complete annotated bibliography takes up a small monograph.3 In addition, historians have offered various explanations for this phenomenon, all of which interpretations have their limitations. Some argued that isolationism was rooted in such ethnic groups as German and Irish-Americans, although the great majority of isolationists came from Anglo-Saxon backgrounds.4 Others saw isolationism grounded in middle-western Populism, although it was later noted that the Mississippi Valley had long possessed a heritage of overseas expansion and imperialism.5 Still others asserted that isolationism was a form of ethnocentrism, with an insecure and xenophobic “in-group” projecting its fears and self-hatreds upon all “outsiders.” Driven by an “authoritarian personality,” the isolationists were striking out blindly at a world they never made.6 Yet such oversimplifying sociological and psychological explanations—as this essay will show—ignore those prominent isolationists very much linked to the major political and economic institutions. Certain researchers find the key lying in Republican political partisanship, but in the process neglect the large numbers of Democrats opposed to foreign commitments. Similarly, explanations based on small-town and agrarian roots can neglect those urban masses who felt similarly.

paragraph 86

Obviously all such comprehensive efforts at explanation are incomplete. This essay will repeatedly stress the complex variety of the noninterventionist leaders. What isolationists shared was neither a common region nor a common political party but a common stance, that is, a common posture towards the world. To explain this stance, and the varied reasonings behind it during World War II and Cold War debates, is the subject of this essay. We know that isolationism contains quite diverse elements, and that these attitudes could be shared by anarchists, mainline Republicans, Socialists, New Dealers, and progressives. Pacifists were another group allied to isolationists on many issues, and, in the crucial years 1939–1941, both Stalinists and Trotskyists were in their ranks.

paragraph 87

This essay concentrates upon those isolationists who feared that international commitments would end the American economic system as they knew it. War, so they believed, would inevitably bring into its wake a prohibitive national debt, massive labor monopolies, conscription of manpower and wealth, runaway inflation, unworkable price and wage controls—in short, a militarized society and a corporatist state. Not only would free enterprise, as such isolationists defined it, be destroyed beyond repair. The social order itself would break down. As the renowned aviator Charles A. Lindbergh commented, “God knows what will happen here before we finish it [World War II]—race riots, revolution, destruction.”7 In many ways, this brand of isolationism embodied the mainstream of the movement, since it dominated the Congress, was articulated in leading newspapers, and possessed the greatest numerical strength. It should be noted, however, that individuals of a very different domestic vision also held to an anti-interventionist stance, and some of these people too—such as Socialist leader Norman Thomas—will be considered.

Ethics & Foreign Policy

Back to Top

International Ethics by Henry Hazlitt,

Terrorism

Cato Study: Does U.S. Intervention Overseas Breed Terrorism? The Historical Record,