All I remember about Fortress America where that partisans could be surprisingly effective for a bunch of backwoods mountain folk armed with hunting rifles.
In seriousness, we would have a lot less need for international action and military intervention if it weren’t for a short-sighted energy policy which has made the US economically and strategically dependant upon foreign energy reserves. The current policy of fracking our way to energy independence is scarcely better in the overall scheme, and is not ultimately sustainable, which will likely lead back to the need to negotiate/enforce/annex resources on foreign soil for future needs.
The offshoring of both light manufacturing and technology jobs has been a net positive for the US as a whole (at least, from a purely fiscal standpoint); textile and other cheaply manufactured goods produced in Asia and South America has made those goods available at price points that are by every standard cheaper than ever before, and despite the exploitation of workers in developing nations has led to positive cash flow through those countries. (The belated social consciousness that such workers should be treated humanely and paid a reasonable wage follows on, if much too slowly.) Similarly, the offshoring of high tech manufacturing in certain areas has reduced the price point of those goods to accessibility as well as brought the intellectual capacity of other nations into innovation and improvement; and of course many of these nations send their best and brightest students to the US for higher education, some of which remain and contribute to innovation and financial value here.
Genuine isolationism is not in the cards despite what advocates may claim; we gain too much value and have too great a reliance to literally close off borders, shun would be immigrants, and aver from making trade agreements. Every decade or so there is a new wave of American anti-immigration sentiment and this has probably occurred since the Second Supply of the Jamestown colony. Not a bit of it has stopped people from around the world seeking to immigrate to the US for the opportunties and freedoms that we enjoy, and the only way to reverse that would be to serve as a model and impetus for other nations around the world to develop the same mores of social liberty, freedom from religious prosecution, and economic prosperity (even at the reduced that that they exist here today).
So what? It’s not a straight dollars and cents issue. The issue is capability and the ability to influence the events you want to influence, where you want to do it.
U.S. ability to influence events thousands of miles away where it’s allies and potential adversaries are takes 'x" amount of money. It doesn’t matter if that is 2 times or 3 times or 100 times more than some combination of others. The cost to maintain that ability is what it is. And if an advisory is now spending more vis-à-vis the U.S., that capability isn’t what it once was. The American people and her allies have to decide if the cost to buy that previous balance is worth the cost. It might not be.
But it’s silly - and potentially dangerous - to think that the balance of power hasn’t changed while China and Russia are spending more on their military while the U.S. (and her allies) are spending less.
Which is equally deceiving. None of those other countries have the global commitments that the US has…nor can any of them project force on a global level. Comparing any of them to the US is comparing apples to orangutans. You can see that China, even to expand it’s military to attempt to project force further REGIONALLY has upped it’s military spending to nearly $200 billion and it continues to rise. Assuming it continues at it’s current pace (a huge assumption that I personally don’t think will happen before the CCP melts down) they will overtake the US in raw spending within a decade or so. They still won’t have the military we do, but they will be spending as much or more than we do.
As to the OP:
I actually used to be more an isolationist in my own political thinking. It seems attractive. It’s utterly stupid, however.
Except the US relies on trade absolutely. We would have to accept a much lower standard of living and technology if we isolated ourselves from the rest of the world. Isolating ourselves militarily (i.e. relying on ‘international leadership’ such as the likes of Russia or China…the EU of course relies on US, so that’s not going to happen) would mean we are completely dependent on them to protect our interests for us. That’s a really short sighted and stupid attitude.
Except they don’t.
They do seem to be gaining support. Gods help us (and the rest of the world) if they ever gain a majority in the US and we actually put them into place.
Yeah, pretty much. We implemented strict trade tariffs, which were mirrored by other countries wrt us, we basically stepped back from international politics and allowed other nations to take the lead. We did have a military to protect OUR interests, though it was woefully underfunded for what it’s actual mission was (which we’d have again if folks of the mindset in your OP got their way), but we didn’t realize that our own interests interweave with other interests, and we can’t just pick and choose what to protect since it’s all interconnected.
The result of this is we had no real way to influence events taking place in either Europe or Asia except what we could exert vertically on our own behalf (i.e. our oil embargo of Japan for it’s invasion of China and SEA, or some small effects in Europe), and had to essentially sit back and watch events unfold. The result, of course, is that we got dragged into a much wider conflict…and one we had no choice but to get dragged into. Today, it would be worse really, since many of our vital strategic interests come from material or trade outside of the US.
The better question is, is modern interventionism viable? Since 9/11 we’ve overthrown the governments of 3 countries and conducted major operations in several others, and what do we have to show for it? We’ve killed hundreds of thousands of civilians, squandered trillions, alienated our allies and empowered several of our geopolitical rivals. Even worse, these adventures have drained resources and attention from other urgent issues where we have more of an opportunity to actually do actual good, like climate change, social reform and medical research. The returns on our military investments have not justified these sacrifices and we cannot afford to take on more of these commitments. That’s not to say we should completely disengage from world politics, but we need to learn lessons from history and start treating military engagement as a last resort, not as a miracle product we can deploy whenever we see something upsetting on the news.
Well, as the leadership of many countries is currently demonstrating, there’s quite a space between pulling up the drawbridge and blowing the fuck out of peoples in the developing world on bullshit pretexts.
The USA seems able to muster a whole lot of support for the latter, and some for the former.
I find these ideas bizarre. Asking for trade treaties that protect worker rights, so that workers aren’t competing internationally to offer the cheapest wages and most dangerous working conditions, is asking to put other countries equal to the United States. Compare that to asking for trade treaties that primarily benefit the United States citizens at the expense of citizens abroad, and I’d call the latter treaties the America First treaties.
A military approach that removes the US ability to project force unilaterally is similarly the opposite of an America First approach.
The OP would tar me with the accusation that I share a lot in common with Trump, but that’s completely absurd. Trump wants to wall up borders and renegotiate treaties to improve the living standard in the US. I want to take down borders and renegotiate treaties to improve the living standard of folks abroad. Our aims are very different, and although the most superficial readings of our methods (change borders, renegotiate trade agreements) makes them look similar, the slightest elaboration shows that we would approach our different goals in different ways.
What were the ‘bullshit pretexts’ for our interventions in Afghanistan and Libya? I can see how Iraq was pretty much a bullshit pretext but you seem to be implying that every US intervention since 9/11 (which was what the poster you were responding to was saying) has been bullshit.
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The OP would tar me with the accusation that I share a lot in common with Trump, but that’s completely absurd. Trump wants to wall up borders and renegotiate treaties to improve the living standard in the US. I want to take down borders and renegotiate treaties to improve the living standard of folks abroad. Our aims are very different, and although the most superficial readings of our methods (change borders, renegotiate trade agreements) makes them look similar, the slightest elaboration shows that we would approach our different goals in different ways.
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That sounds great and all, but from a practical perspective what would you do wrt to, say, China? As president you could certainly negotiate trade restrictions against China, I suppose, but they would seriously hurt the US. You wouldn’t be able to force China to treat their workers any better or have any meaningful impact on the CCPs policies wrt their workers, regardless. Other countries would be equally unimpressed with your noble goals of making their workers safer, since it would erode their abilities to be competitive.
I do agree with you that Trump is an idiot, and you have nothing in common with his bizarre propositions.
Did the USA invade Pakistan to kill ObL? No, that would have been stupid. You take years if nec to ID your target/s, and then you do what you have to do cleanly.
The USA didn’t care about what the Taliban before, it doesn’t now. Bush just invaded an extra country because the USA demanded … something.
Your objections are totally fair, and I find the debate between rights-promoting treaties (in order to improve economies) and economy-promoting treaties (in order to improve rights) one of the more complex and interesting debates of the modern world. While I have tentative positions, I’m not 100% convinced of my positions, mainly because I’m nowhere near enough of an economist to evaluate the competing claims.
I do feel comfortable, however, that the OP’s conflation of my views with Trump’s is inaccurate.
No, the US invaded Afghanistan because Al Qaeda had bases for C&C, troops, training and logistics in Afghanistan and the Taliban refused to remove those bases and turn over the AQ leadership to us (including ObL). We didn’t care about the Taliban before because they were mostly under our radar, but they choose to ally themselves with AQ and basically allow them not only to use their country as a safe haven and base but also into key positions in their government.
So…I’m not seeing the reasons for our invasion of Afghanistan being bullshit. Now, if all you are saying is that the way we did it (especially the part where we relied on local troops early on, which when they tossed a cease fire at us as we closed in on AQ in Tora Bora, allowing ObL and AQ to basically escape to Pakistan) was bullshit, then I’d agree. But then, we ARE talking about Bush et al, who weren’t noted for their ability to do much of anything right. I wouldn’t trust those guys to pour piss out of a boot if the instructions were on the heel.
Well, I don’t know about that – the phrase America First dates from a time the U.S. had a smaller army than Poland’s and referred to a movement determined to keep it that way, and today’s paleoconservative America First Party is very anti-interventionist, military-isolationist, and anti-MIC.
Fair enough–I’m using the phrase in a literal sense, not a branded sense. It seems to me that a foreign policy strategy dependent on America’s maintenance of overwhelming military force when compared to any other nation is by definition an approach that relies on America First–first in military strength, first nation among all nations on earth.
If the US downgrades our military strength but remains involved in world affairs on the level of a Sweden or a Canada, that’s neither isolationist nor militaristic.
Compartmentalizing one war or another in the context of an ongoing, decades-long Islamic politico-terrorist splinter-group resurgence seems rather disingenuous.
Well, not entirely true – the America First Committee was founded in 1940, by which time Poland had no army at all, having been conquered by Germany. I was thinking of a passage in William Manchester’s The Glory and the Dream where he notes that the U.S. had a smaller army than Poland’s in 1942, at the time of the Bonus Army. But I think it is true that the AFC was continuous with a very old American populist political tradition that regards a “large standing army” as dangerous to liberty at home. (That’s really why the 2nd Amendment was included in the BoR, BTW – to make sure enough men would be armed and ready for militia service (which in those days involved bringing your own weapons to the muster) that reliance on a professional army would be unnecessary.)
