Isolationism, a minority view

Both of America’s major parties are committed to American military globalism and interventionism.

The same is true of the broad political factions, the liberals and the conservatives, who support and seek to control the major parties.

Though the ostensible need has passed with the end of the Cold War, they are all committed to our continued participation in NATO and the UN, partly though by no means entirely because they are in the pockets of the military-industrial complex and they are in the hands of an extensive and powerful Zionist lobby.

Both parties want to keep up our bases in Europe, in the Mediterranean, in the Middle East, in Africa, in the Far East, in the Pacific, in Central and South Asia, and wherever they are to be found.

Indeed, they aim to expand our commitments and base construction into many new areas.

They are committed to militarily challenging and intimidating into obedience both Russia and China, both of which have given up Communism and neither of which would be a threat to America or American interests were we not committed to threatening and coercing both of them.

And they - all right, mostly the conservatives within the Republican Party - have exaggerated the real, dangerous, and deplorable phenomenon of Islamism, though primarily limited to nations with Muslim majorities or significant Muslim minorities, into a global bogey.

I am among the isolationist minority opposed to all of this.

I would prefer the US renounce all those foreign commitments and withdraw all our forces to North America north of the equator.

I would prefer the US give up its expensive, dangerous, and unnecessary habit of insisting on being “the indispensable nation” and meddling in everything, everywhere in the world.

I disbelieve claims our vital interests require any of this, much less all of it.

I disbelieve any moral claims that we are obliged to maintain any or all of these commitments and continue our pattern of global meddling.

And that includes such claims about our costly, dangerous, and foolish diplomatic, military, and economic commitment to Israel.

And I disbelieve the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq were either of them a necessary or useful response to the attacks of 9/11.

Likewise, I disbelieve the US had anything at stake sufficient to cover the costs of our participation in the two world wars.

And I disbelieve the world was actually a better place in some overall, net fashion than it would have been had we skipped them.

Neither do I believe that our actions pursuant to the Cold War were necessary or useful with regard to our own interests, nor even that the world was a better place as a result of those actions.

I believe, on the contrary, the American “rise to globalism” has been a costly waste in blood and money we would have done better to skip, beginning with the Spanish-American War if not the annexation of Hawaii.

Here, too, I am a skeptic among believers.