Isolationism

Sen. William Borah, one of the leading Congressional isolationists of the 1930s

Rather than trying to review The American Age (1989) by Walter LaFeber in one post, I'm going to make shorter posts (on top of the two I've done already) to focus on particular points.

In this one, I'll refer to his good, brief description of the phenomenon of American "isolationism" in the 1930s:

Americans were sharply divided over how they should deal with this inflamed world. One group, the "isolationists," believed that the nation should maintain complete freedom of action. In the words of historian Wayne Cole, "Unilateralism and non-interventionism were central themes in the thinking of most of them." This group, however, did not want the United States to be entirely isolated. One of its leaders, Senator Borah, was willing to consider working with the Soviets in order to stop Japan. Indeed, many isolationists wanted to help China. They just opposed military involvements in Europe. They received support for their anti-European views in 1934—1935 when a congressional committee under Republican senator Gerald P. Nye from North Dakota investigated the causes of American involvement in World War I. The Nye committee concluded that bankers and arms exporters (the "Merchants of Death") had, for their own profit, pushed the country into the conflict. In truth, the explanation for that involvement was much more complicated. (Nye himself, for example, thought that the entire American system, not just a few "Merchants of Death," was at fault.) But the public liked to label J. P. Morgan and the arms traders as the villains. Americans vowed never again to allow the profiteers to take them into world war. Pacifist groups also determined not to be misled again as they felt they had been by Wilsonian ideals ("make the world safe for democracy") in 1914-1917. (my emphasis)

LaFeber gives the following description of "internationalism", the other main trend in foreign policy thought in Congress in the 1930s:

"Internationalists," on the other hand, assumed that new technology (such as the airplane, now flying regularly across the Atlantic and Pacific) had drawn the world together and that U.S. prosperity depended on orderly world markets. Americans consequently bore responsibility for cooperating in the maintenance of a stable world that was in their own selfish interest. Historian Robert Divine notes that most internationalists were old-stock Protestants, felt close to Great Britain, and believed that America had replaced Britain as the world's great power. They cared about Europe while "they took Latin America for granted and neglected the Orient."

His description does get a bit complicated, though, when he expands on it this way:

This group [the internationalists] included executives of the great multinational, capital-intensive corporations - IBM, General Electric, Eastman Kodak, Standard Oil. They wanted an open world and low tariffs. Some firms, led by du Pont, Standard Oil, General Motors, and Union Carbide, even worked closely - sometimes secretly and illegally - with Nazi German firms until the late 1930s, or in some cases, even to 1941. At one point, Ford and General Motors subsidiaries actually produced half of Hitler's tanks in the 1930s. (my emphasis)

In other words, large corporations with international operations provided significant support for the "internationalist" outlook. But that doesn't mean they were always 100% in agreement with the more Wilsonian internationalists who saw the need for active involvement by the United States in restraining German aggression in Europe. Some of them were happy to make profits helping Germany rearm.

The truth of it is, though, there was very little support in the United States for assertive American measures for any kind of collective security arrangements against Germany until after 1938, which saw Hitler's takover of Austria, the seizure of the Sudentenland portion of Czechoslovakia and the Kristalnacht riots directed against Jews and Jewish establishments in Germany. Congress passed Neutrality Acts in 1935 and 1936 to ban the shipment of arms to any belligerents in a war. After the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936, with Hitler and Mussolini backing Francisco Franco's military rebellion against the democratic Spanish Republican government, Congress "extended the 1936 Neutrality Act so the nation would not become involved in such civil wars as Spain's." (LaFeber)

The observation by Wayne Cole above ("Unilateralism and non-interventionism were central themes in the thinking of most of them") is important in understanding the continuities between prewar and postwar trends of isolationism and unilateralism. The "internationalist" viewpoint dominated US foreign policy from the end of the Second World War until the Cheney-Bush Presidency, though the "liberal internationalist" approach competed with the "realist" school of internationalism.

In his book American Empire: The Realities and Consequences of U.S. Diplomacy (2002), Andrew Bacevich points out how "isolationism" in more recent decades has been used as a bogeyman by both Democratic and Republican Presidents. Referring to the days of Old Man Bush's Presidency, he writes that Bush the Elder seemed to consider the looming threat of isolationism a far more serious problem for America in the post-Cold War world than others he warned of, including "narcotrafficking, terrorism, and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction". Bacevich writes of Old Man Bush's pitch against the dreaded isolationism:

No cause was more important than that of saving his fellow citizens from that error. Decrying the danger of isolationism became a frequent theme of the president's speeches. Bush denounced those who would "retreat into an isolationist cocoon." He railed against those "on the right and left [who] are working right now to breathe life into those old flat-Earth theories of protectionism, of isolationism." He even resorted to unvarnished demagoguery. At ceremonies marking the fiftieth anniversary of Pearl Harbor, the president declared that "isolationism flew escort for the very bombers that attacked our men 50 years ago," thereby finding the millions who before December 7, 1941, opposed U.S. entry into World War II guilty not simply of bad judgment but of treason. (my emphasis)

It wasn't the only instance of Bush's carelessly slinging around treason smears. Though his son Little George has far surpassed him on that practice.

Bacevich continues:

For Bush, the parallels between the end of the Cold War and the aftermath of the two world wars were self-evident. "As in 1919 and 1945, we face no enemy menacing our security," he remarked at Pearl Harbor. "And yet we stand here today on the site of a tragedy spawned by isolationism. And we must learn, and this time avoid, the dangers of today's isolationism and its economic accomplice, protectionism. To do otherwise, to believe that turning our backs on the world would improve our lot here at home, is to ignore the tragic lessons of the 20th century."

There were in fact few indications that the American people after the Cold War were inclined to "turn their backs on the world" - few, indeed, that they had ever done so throughout their history. But by reviving this shopworn refrain - and by portraying every foreign policy issue as a test of whether Americans would stay the course or shirk their duty to the world - Bush used isolationism as a calculated device for shoring up popular and congressional deference to the executive branch. Bill Clinton would do likewise. (my emphasis)

Bacevich's observation here is important. Isolationism as such plays a very limited role in American politics, and hasn't really since Sen. Robert Taft's losing rearguard action against the Truman Doctrine.

But the fact that isolationism of the type LaFeber describes in the 1930s plays a limited role doesn't mean that it's totally disappeared. Ron Paul's foreign policy ideas are classic Old Right isolationism. And those ideas do have some influence among antiwar activists, as someone browsing around at Antiwar.com would discover.

The real live heritage of 1930s isolationism, though, is in the unilateralism that the Cheney-Bush administration has made the core of US foreign policy. Unilateralism and narrow nationalism was the core of Old Right isolationism. It's also the core of neoconservatism and its less clean-shaven twin sibling, Cheney-Rumsfeld nationalism and militarism; there is a strand of continuity that runs through nuclear first-strike theories, which those nasty twins haven't yet given up. The same unilateralism is also the core of Ron Paul's preserved-in-formaldehyde brand of Old Right isolationism.

Tags: andrew bacevich, isolationism, ron paul, walter lafeber, wayne cole