Isolationism

3 Key excerpts on "Isolationism"

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  eBook - ePub

  Cornell Studies in Security Affairs

  • Robert J. Art(Author)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Cornell University Press

    (Publisher)

  4 Isolationism does not totally rule out the use of force; it is not morally indifferent to political events abroad; it does not seek national economic self-sufficiency (autarky). Isolationism can be compatible with sustained political engagement abroad, extensive economic intercourse with other nations, and even, on occasion, the multilateral use of force. What Isolationism entails is the sparest possible use of military power to shape the international environment, based on the belief that most of what happens outside of America’s borders poses no military threat to the country; the belief that America’s military power, short of war, can accomplish little to shape that environment; and the belief that it is not worth the costs and risks of waging war to do so. Isolationism is a “stand back” strategy rather than a preventive strategy.

  To the question of how the United States should utilize its military power, Isolationism responds that the United States should undertake no binding peacetime commitments to come to the assistance of another nation with military aid, that it should use force only to protect the nation’s vital interests, and that it should adhere to a very narrow definition of what interests are “vital.” A pure isolationist strategy, consequently, would prescribe that the United States should discard all standing political commitments to use military power; avoid peacetime military alliances; disband all overseas bases; bring all the troops stationed abroad home; preserve complete freedom of action to determine when, where, how, in concert with whom, and against whom the United States will use its military power; reject all ambitious attempts to shape the larger international environment through the peacetime time use of military power; and go to war only for the most compelling reasons, which essentially means only to defend the nation and its citizens from attack. The heart of Isolationism was well captured in 1952 by Senator Robert A. Taft, one of America’s most influential isolationists, who continued to espouse Isolationism well after the United States had adopted containment:

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  Isolationist States in an Interdependent World

  • Helga Turku(Author)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Chapter 2Isolationism in International Relations Theory

  Introduction

  To make sense of Isolationism in international relations we need to understand the international state system. The term system for the purposes of this study posits that an integrated set of concepts, principles, preferences and behaviors take place within an overarching interactive context. Relationships develop between dependent and independent variables in a systemic setting. Through dynamic interaction among states the international system of states allows for change. The state system provides the working context within which Isolationism transpires. The state system context provides a backdrop for comprehending Isolationism; in thought and practice, Isolationism does not and cannot occur in a vacuum. Thus, on a general level, it is necessary to provide an explanation of individual state behavior within the larger state system. How a state chooses to define and implement its domestic and foreign policies is directly affected by systemic principles and a systemic context that encapsulates all states. This chapter will, therefore, provide a general and selective overview of the current literature on the state system in a political sense and in terms of economic evolution, and expound upon Isolationism as it manifests itself in the modern state system. More specifically, this chapter will examine four types of Isolationism, and will introduce a model to conceptualize varieties of Isolationism.

  The Modern State

  As far as the discipline of international relations is concerned, it is generally agreed upon that the modern state and the state system date back (formally) to what is known as the Peace of Westphalia (1648).1 Ordering concepts such as balance of power, anarchy, legality, reason and logic, military capacity as a measurement of power and the very notion of a legal-rational state trace back to the history and the agreements of Westphalia. In the tradition of international relations, it is this specific Peace that formalized, legitimized, institutionalized, and codified notions of states and sovereignty.2 The Peace of Westphalia also formalized the principle of balance of power as a mechanism to prevent the consolidation of power within the purview of a single state.3 The balance of power principle would, in theory, prevent one state from initiating war and overtaking other states due to the formation of alliances, blocs, and strategic partnerships designed to check the power of any single state that accumulated too much power.4 This treaty acknowledged the right of the state to exercise its own will within its territory and over its subject populations, especially regarding the most important issue of the time, that is, religion, thus freeing states from previous justifications for external interferences in other states’ internal affairs.5 States agreed to end their support of international religious conflicts; this had the effect of altering the power-equilibrium between competing secular and religious actors in favor of the state. By limiting religious influence over its domestic affairs, the state was better able to control and supervise its population.6

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  No Higher Law

  American Foreign Policy and the Western Hemisphere since 1776

  • Brian Loveman(Author)
  • 2010(Publication Date)
  • The University of North Carolina Press

    (Publisher)

  It is not merely a curiosity or a semantic dispute over how best to characterize the United States’ foreign policy. Professional historians, political scientists, policy analysts, and popular writers insist on the reality of America’s isolationist past despite significant revisionist scholarship since at least the 1950s. Thus, historian Dexter Perkins, who spent much of his life writing about American policy toward Latin America, told readers in 1962 that during the first period of American foreign policy, before 1898, the country evolved “an isolationist viewpoint regarding Europe.” 5 In 1966, political scientist Leroy Rieselbach wrote in a study on Congress and foreign policy that “Isolationism has been a force in American politics since the founding of the nation.” 6 Historian Howard Jones’s widely used textbook on American foreign relations notes in passing that “the war with Spain [in 1898] also furthered the decline of American Isolationism.” In 2006, the author of a major study of American foreign policy and strategy declared that “when, toward the end of the nineteenth century, a united Germany proved to be too powerful to be restrained by its European neighbors without American help, America’s first strategy of Isolationism became obsolete.” 7 And a well-known policy analyst reminded readers in 2007: “Isolationism, recall, was America’s response to the wrangling world and remained so throughout much of the nation’s history …. The isolationist instinct lives in America.” 8 The persistence of the idea that America had a tradition of Isolationism reflects crucial aspects of American national identity. Americans have been taught to think, and like to think, that the country did not meddle in the affairs of other nations, that in its dealings with other peoples the United States has been magnanimous, that, unlike other great powers, the United States has usually followed the moral high ground and resorted to force only in self-defense

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