Posted on 08/22/2015 11:35:28 AM PDT by Kaslin
Americans do well with moderation. It is in our national DNA. It is also a by-product of the freedom of expression and allowing different perspectives in the public forum.
In foreign policy, non-interventionism is the moderate stance, and it has served Americans well in her four hundred or so years.
As British subjects, American colonists were compelled to fight for the British crown, until they felt compelled to defend themselves against the king’s army. After centuries of European conflicts dragging Americans into war, national independence yielded a non-interventionist foreign policy for the infant nation. George Washington advised in his farewell address to avoid longterm alliances with foreign powers and maintain neutrality, referring to the on-going battle between England and France and its effects on the political climate in America.
John Quincy Adams crafted the Monroe Doctrine in response to Europoean threat in the Western hemisphere, establishing an assertive U.S. national defense policy by drawing a metaphorical line in the sand along the Prime Meridian. In response to the 1848 nationalistic revolutions in Europe, President Millard Fillmore expressed the prevailing American view that the U.S. must grant to other nations what it wanted for itself, the right to establish “that form of government which it may deem conducive to the happiness and prosperity of it own citizens.”
For 122 years, America remained primarily a non-interventionist country, teetering between isolation and intervention, but striking a balance, as Americans are wont to do. U.S. foreign policy shifted to intervention with the 1898 Spanish-American War, signaling the U.S.’s foray into imperialism, albeit limited compared to her European cousins and rising economic rivals in Asia.
As European cycles of conflict culminated into the outbreak of the Great War in 1914, America and her piddling military force maintained a policy of neutrality, with calls for isolationism, until entering the world war in 1917 for the sake of world democracy and Woodrow Wilson’s “war to end all wars” -- an ironic propaganda slogan if ever there was one. World War I’s near destruction of Western culture snapped the U.S. back into its non-intervention stance and calls for isolation, until the next world war, that is.
Geographical buffers protected the U.S. from imperialistic communism and fascism in Europe and Asia until Japan shattered them, and America’s psyche, at Pearl Harbor in 1941. The unprepared U.S. was propelled into another world war seven times more destructive and forever changing her role in the world. After nearly a year of building the neglected armed forces, the U.S. emerged as a leading military and economic power in World War II and thereafter, rivaling the Soviet Union in international relations and influence.
Henceforth, non-interventionism became increasingly difficult to defend. Containment theory relied on disciminate intervention. In the bi-polar geopolitical system, the U.S.A. and the U.S.S.R. maintained a functional but scary balance girded by mutual nuclear threat.
The futility of military intervention in Vietnam revived a non-interventionist spirit, but also yielded a depleted and demoralized military under President Jimmy Carter.
The 1979 Iranian revolution rearranged the pieces on the chess board of ancient rivalries little understood by most nations outside the region. The volatility of the Middle East required a consistant U.S. policy of non-intervention: counter Soviet influence, seek alliances with moderate Arab leaders, and reduce the influence of radical Islam. President Ronald Reagan’s foreign policy of “peace through strength” also required rebuilding the military and diplomatic services.
Twenty-four years later, the Soviet Union no longer exists, but the fallout of their intervention in the Middle East is playing out in Iran, Iraq, and Afghanistan. In its absence, various tyrannies have risen and taken hold. Since the end of the Cold War and with the rise of Radical Islamic terrorism, American foreign policy has struggled to find its anchoring principle: When does national defense justify intervention into the affairs of other sovereign states? President George Bush effectively applied a functional principle for the 1992 Gulf War: When one power invades the sovereignty of another and threatens the stability of the region and beyond, similar to the Containment theory against Soviet expansion. The international force of Western and Arab powers reinforced the validity of the intervention.
Radical Islam continued to foster anti-American passions in underground terrorist groups in Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan, most notably led by wealthy Saudi Osama bin Laden. Out of a false, sacred loyalty, Radical Islam cannot criticize and hold accountable their own failed leaders, so they must redirect their anger. Radical Islam blames America rather than their own inept, tyrannical leaders, for what they perceive as infidelity to Allah.
When Al Quaeda achieved ultimate infamy with their attacks on September 11, 2001, President George W. Bush retaliated immediately with a bombing campaign and invasion of Afghanistan, quickly breaking the Taliban’s hold on power, and pushing Al Quaeda into seclusion in the mountains. His controversial decision to invade Iraq in 2003 diverted needed resources from Afghanistan and changed mid-game the goal and strategy of U.S. foreign policy from non-intervention to intervention. President Bush prematurely declared victory in May 2003 and shifted policy from a military mission to state-building and reconstruction, an extreme shift at a great cost to Americans and consequently enlongating both wars.
Justified or not, the invasion of Iraq has proved that interventionist policy is risky and most difficult to execute effectively without a clearly defined goal and strategy, particularly an exit strategy. After almost fourteen years fighting in Afghanistan and twelve years in Iraq, President Barack Obama has no clear strategy to bring either to an end. Haphazard timetables and undisciplined foreign policy keeps the U.S. in a quagmire, fighting the longest war in her history.
The Obama administration’s intervention in Libya under Secretary of State Hillary Clinton created more chaos. Talk of intervening in Syria’s civil war lacks a clear definition of America’s interests in taking action, leading war-weary Americans increasingly to advocate a non-interventionist policy. Perpetual war does not work in the best interests of the U.S.
The rapid rise of the Islamic State (I.S.I.S.) since 2011 presents the world with yet another new, international chess board, with their taking over eastern parts of Syria and western sections of Iraq, a consequence of the U.S.’s unclear exit strategy. Meanwhile, billions of dollars worth of U.S. military equipment sits rusting in the Afghan dessert. One billion dollars worth of U.S. military equipment is now in the hands of I.S.I.S. as they terrorize and capture more territory, controlling the city Raqqa in Syria and Mosul, Iraq.
Echoing Fillmore in 1848, moderate Sen. Rand Paul states, “I don’t see war as just a chess game . . . We’ll topple this government and replace it with American-style democracy. We should only go to war to defend ourselves and our interests.” The Obama administration has failed to define America’s interests abroad, and weakens international relations with When we do go to war, we should equip, support, and prepare our soldiers, seamen, and flyers with the best the U.S. produces and halt foreign aid to countries that work against us.
The U.S. needs a foreign policy that protects American interests, yet, allows other sovereign states to find their own style of government that suits their own citizens, which explicitly would prohibit decapitations and live burnings. Before the U.S. intervenes, moderate Islamic states should lead the way with their own interventionist policies follow the example of the Kurds and put their own “boots on the ground.”
I don’t know about non intervention but I could sure stand a lot less intervention and a lot smarter intervention.
I agree with you on that
I cannot recommend to your notice measures for the fulfillment of our duties to the rest of the world without again pressing upon you the necessity of placing ourselves in a condition of complete defense and of exacting from them the fulfillment of their duties toward us.What has happened since WWII is not “intervention” of any sort. The liberals now make the US military fight wars while sapping their ability to win.
The United States ought not to indulge a persuasion that, contrary to the order of human events, they will forever keep at a distance those painful appeals to arms with which the history of every other nation abounds.
There is a rank due to the United States among nations which will be withheld, if not absolutely lost, by the reputation of weakness.
If we desire to avoid insult, we must be able to repel it. If we desire to secure peace, one of the most powerful instruments of our rising prosperity, it must be known that we are at all times ready for war.
— George Washington, 1793
Now that we don’t have the two mighty oceans as our primary defense, and it appears the options of dealing with our enemies are narrowed down on whether or not the battlefield will be on American soil - or theirs, I think sticking to a non-intervention policy will invite catastrophe.
The biggest problem is in identifying the enemy - and who does the identifying. We have a POTUS who is very confused about identifying the enemy.
Pick a fight a with us, and we annihilate you.
Otherwise, your problems are YOUR problems.
All of our interventions since Serbia (and maybe before that) have turned into crap. To many times we intervened ON THE WRONG SIDE.
You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations. …Quite the turn of phrases that sound like they came directly from the god of this world.
On Easter, I do reflect on the fact that as a Christian, I’m supposed to love, and I have to say that sometimes when I listen to less-than-loving expressions by Christians, I get concerned. …
Smarter, quick, brutal and totally destructive intervention works for me. Get in, destroy, take the booty, get out, and leave an example to what will happen to the next bad actor. And none if this rebuilding crap.
Since when?
I love seemingly erudite articles that refer to “radical Islam”, as if there is any other kind.
I stopped reading when the idiot said that noninterventionism has served America pretty well in the last four hundred years.
Country is less than 250 years old. It also has very few periods of not being involved in interventionism. We fought major wars every thirty years on average in this country. So much for noninterventionism.
America has been interventionist for only a century, since Woodrow Wilson revealed the blessings of messianic democracy for all, whether you want it or not. Have we learned anything from the catastrophe we unleashed in the middle east. I doubt it. The national religion of American exceptionalism blinds most of us.
The US twice invaded Canada and attempted to partition it, but Quebeckers wouldn't revolt against Britain and the imperial troops fought too well against the poorly-led US militia levies, so the American expeditions failed.
The US engaged in a "foreign war" in 1846-48 that netted us the Mexican Cession, aka California and the Southwest.
The US embraced fashionable European-style imperialism and simultaneously disencumbered the Spanish Empire of Puerto Rico, Cuba, and the Philippines, later reversing policy on all three at different times and terms.
And Woodrow Wilson engrossed us in the Great War.
What "non-interventionism"?
We've always been there, d/o where our interests and our friends' countries lie.
Bump!
The catastrophe was a victory up until the jug eared Marxist decided that we should evacuate from Iraq, but not Germany or Korea.
in 2012 the Last year of our occupation in Iraq Exactly ONE soldier died from combat. In 2010 it was 60 and 2011 it was 54. More active military personal died from car crashes stateside than combat in Iraq during the last three years of the war.
Now weather we like it or not, we most certainly will have to go back in at some point to retake the areas now occupied by ISIS. This time we will probably have to take on Iran as well since our withdrawal has upset the balance of power in the area and allowed Iran to all but openly occupy Eastern Iraq.
Once again Democrats have had the uncanny ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
Any overseas military action (and even defense of homeland, IMHO) will be automatically constrained, and those who choose to undertake it better be willing to ride it through to the end, no matter how much bitching there is.
If not, better off not even getting involved.
We intervened by attacking France in the Dominican Republic in 1898 (Quasi War)
the Barberry Cost in 1801-05(Pirates/Tripolian War)
From 1805-12 we had a series of conflicts with Spanish Mexico in the Gulf of Mexico and Florida.
1812-1815 We declared War on England in the war of 1812. England burned DC (The last time anything productive to the common good of the nation ever occurred there)
From 1815 - 1829 we fought a series of campaigns against Spain and pirates trough out the Caribbean and the Second Barberry War in Tripoli and even landed in Greece in pursuit of Pirates.
From 1830 -39 we raided the Falkland Islands. Sumatra in Indonesia, Buenos Aries Argentina and even sent forces into Peru in defense of our interests in Lima & Cailla during an attempted revolution.
We sent ships to Canada on Navy Island in support of a failed attempt at a Canadian Independence movement. We went so far as to attack a British steamer.
1840’s We had incursions in Fiji, the McCean Island, the Gilbert Islands, Samoa, Mexico AGAIN on Monterrey Island, CA, China over trade disputes in Canton China. And the Biggie, the Mexican American War to round out the decade.
Following our own Civil War we did more adventuring with the over through of the Kingdom of Hawaii, the Spanish American War, the Phillipean-American War rounded out our non interventionist 19th Century and started our non interventionist 20th century .
Our Country has been intervening in our interests in foreign lands almost yearly, including a major hot war for either protectionist activities or conquest every couple decades since we left the British Empire.
We have never been non interventionist and have always been interested in World trade and World events because of it. This inevitably leads to conflict with other World and regional powers.,
Serbia turned into crap as well, Bosnia is now a major launchpad for training Jihadists in Europe.
We were on the wrong side in Serbia; I figured that out while it was going on.
At the very least, we owed Serbia for their efforts in WWII. We should have written ‘em a blank check - “Do what you think you need to, and here is a line of credit for whatever you need. Make good use of it, ‘cause it is only gonna happen ONCE.”
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