Is Isolation a Policy Option? – The American Spectator | USA News and PoliticsThe American Spectator

A short communication by Victor Davis Hanson — one of those telegraphic summaries of a controversial matter that works somewhat like television sound-bites — puts Donald Trump’s Middle East policy in clear perspective. It takes two or three minutes to read on a medium called “X”, worth the time.

Hanson points out that Donald Trump is not a 1930s “isolationist.” Rather, he is in the Jacksonian tradition, reluctant to go to war but, once aroused, fierce. This attitude, Walter Russell Mead explained some years ago, represents the normal American posture in foreign affairs, but it was replaced by containment in the post World War II years when nuclear weapons brought about a risk of mutual assured destruction, a way of saying victory in warfare was impossible, or meaningless.

The strategic doctrines that grew out of this conventional wisdom produced an almost textbook case of diminishing returns for U.S. engagement in global affairs. Observe in passing that such engagement was by no means novel, nor was it in contradiction with the Founders’ prudence. No entangling alliances, said they, no searching for dragons to destroy. Yet the early presidents kept their eyes on international affairs, alert to dangers and opportunities.

Hence the Louisiana Purchase, which depended on understanding Bonaparte’s strategic position on the Old Continent, or the expeditions to Barbary, which required understanding Mohammedan power in the western Mediterranean. President Jefferson was a serious student of Islam and also, which will confound today’s unlearned pundits, he sought a naval alliance with the same Bonaparte, as well as the King of England, to enable a “perpetual cruise” — containment by any other name — to assure tranquility in waters critical to American merchants.

History is not much helped by what-if’s, but here is one: Had the French and British agreed, who knows but that the histories of Africa, western Asia — Islam — and Europe itself would have been entirely different, without the endless wars which began around that time, hidden by the false peace of the Congress of Vienna.

Thomas Jefferson imagined “the Allies” a full century ahead of the ones who prevailed against Austro-German aggression in 1914. He was premature. The wars that for centuries marked relations between Anglo-Saxons and Frankish Gauls were not finished, but that Jefferson tried anyway illustrates the great Virginian’s ability to think through contradictions, personal and national, in search of an impossible, i.e. an American, dream.

No, isolationism when you consider it in historical light is not an American idea nor an American option. We are not Sweden or Switzerland or Botswana or (for a time) Japan or Nepal or Utah. And by the way I love Utah and I consider Senator Reed Smoot a misunderstood and maligned man, but that is for another day, another think.

The inescapable alternative to isolation is engagement. But in what form? This is what Charles de Gaulle would have called a vaste probleme, and one to which he knew, no more than his nearest American equivalent, George Kennan, there is no certain answer. Each in his way made containment, relying on deterrence and  respectful of national sovereignty, the key to defending the Free World until Ronald Reagan could state the clear purpose of it all: “We win, they lose.” But to get there required a steely cynicism that opened the way to abuses, or to put it more politely excessive confidence in both hard and soft power.

The least we can do is not dismiss sound policy choices because the sequels did not work out as expected.

Nobody can be sure when good intentions contain the seeds of their own subversion. Nations do not succeed and fail as much as muddle through difficult straits. Containment and limited war, in the situation that prevailed then — war in Korea, one-hundred Soviet divisions in central Europe, the Bomb — was prudent; bitter as it sounds in view of the sacrifices made in Korea and the cruelty of the Iron Curtain, it was not unreasonable to think they were the best available policies.

Their flaws were acknowledged. They were debated, though scarcely with the simplistic formulations of today. John Kennedy was a sceptic of the prevailing doctrines and put forth arguments against them. He was inclined, for example, to listen to those who advised keeping the war in Vietnam at a far more limited level than it was becoming during his thousand days. Yet he also recognized that the core requirements of containment, notably a big military establishment, were needed, as our enemies maintained aggressive postures and fomented violent conflicts.

In the crises in Europe and the near East, it is astonishing how ahistorical the debates sound, or perhaps they are all too historical if we recall that history teaches that its lessons are seldom applied.

Different Region, Same Policy

Nobody that I know of disputes that the “forever wars” that followed an attack on (and in) our country by agents of the most aggressive anti-Western faction in the Islamic world — Islam is a house with many factions — were mismanaged. This is a blight and a shame and an embarrassment, but it shows that even extremely capable societies can screw up.  Vietnam and Iraq too were mismanaged, until, in both cases, when they were better managed with victory in sight, it was too late, lost politically.  Well, de Gaulle would have said the same about Algeria.

It is altogether arguable that in both central Europe and the Near Orient, things might’a, could’a. Ukraine, with U.S. encouragement, made substantial concessions during the 1990s as the prison of nations was opened and the captive peoples sought to recover their lives. The Ukrainians made concessions to the Russians, in particular.  Maybe, by insisting on this point, we Americans could have persuaded V. Putin to cool it and leave it be, and diffused the territorial disputes that developed in the unsettled geopolitical environment out there. He does not strike one as a man willing to cool it, but he might have been persuaded to do so.

Old story. Same theme in the Near Orient. The Zionists — that dreaded word! — made concession offer after concession offer, from the earliest days, even when most of the region was still colonized by European powers. Israeli leaders, including Henrietta Szold and Moshe Dayan and Martin Buber — to give an idea of the socio-intellectual-political-military diversity of thought in Israel, and many others offered territorial, political, economic compromise, cooperation, friendship, common future.  Anyone in the other camp who said so much as I’ll-think-about-it, Anwar Sadat for example, or Abdullah of Jordan, not to mention hard working family men in Gaza, got, still gets … a bullet in the head.

In consequence of which, the Israelis, their backs to the sea, are forced to draft and put into practice policies unilaterally.  This is new for them, as they well know; previously they, including prime minister B. Netanyahu’s predecessors at the leadership of “right wing nationalist” governments,  always offered deals.

They much rather would prefer that to unilateral action. When you do things unilaterally (as we tended to do in Vietnam or in Iraq), whether due to hubris or exasperation or even political persuasion, you are prone to mistakes. And then you get all the blame. And people forget that the mistake was provoked by a normal reflex — somebody was trying to kill you, you had to defend yourself.

Trying to kill you, as the Commies and the fanatical-faction Islamists did and do, or your friends. Ukrainians or Vietnamese were not our friends, we scarcely knew them. But it was our lot to have their problems (being attacked) on our plate. Respect and love often did bloom in the course of helping them out; but that is another story.

You see why I consider the so-called debate over engagement or isolation brain dead, lacking reference to either American history or international affairs? We, as law-and-order Americans partial to negotiation and compromise in international affairs, must surely see that there come times when your adversary thinks of law-and-order only in terms of law for you but the orders are mine, up to and including killing you and destroying your order.

Is it a Jacksonian moment? Ponder carefully.

READ MORE from Roger Kaplan:

A Free Africa for Africans

Nations Negotiate For a Reason