The New Isolationism: the Same Old Mistake : Warning to U.S. by British ambassador is worth heeding

The new British ambassador to the United States delivered his views on new isolationist tendencies, and it is a feather in the cap of the World Affairs Council of Los Angeles that this enlightened speech was given here--in an American city rightly noted for its internationalism and ethnic diversity. It was an address of wisdom--a warning from a representative of a most reliable ally--that America, the last superpower, in starting to look inward may be looking for trouble.

“The reason we have been able to win the Cold War without NATO forces having been required to fire a shot,” Ambassador Robin Renwick said Monday night, “can be explained in just four words--the North Atlantic Alliance. That we have reached this point is due to the courage and foresight of the great men of the 1940s--Roosevelt, Marshall, Acheson, Churchill--and to all their successors.”

In a scarcely veiled reference to some contemporary politicians, Renwick continued: “It is worth pausing to reflect on what the situation in Europe would be today if Sens. (Robert) Taft and (Joseph) McCarthy had got their way and ‘brought the boys home.’ It was a slogan that had quite some appeal at the time and which, ignoring all the lessons of history, some are looking to revive today. . . . For now again, as with Taft and McCarthy, we hear new voices suggesting that the U.S. should, somehow, withdraw from world affairs, remove its troops from Europe and the Pacific, and ‘look after its own.’ ”

Certainly Patrick Buchanan, who is running against President Bush for Republican votes in next month’s New Hampshire primary, would be thought guilty of preaching what Sir Robin does not want the West to practice. But it is not just hyperbole-packing Pat, the caustic conservative commentator now inching up the polls on his overheated “America First” oratory. The whole post-Cold War American atmosphere is pregnant with uncertainty and is ripe for political exploitation, as evidenced by how easily protectionist sentiment across the land is now being fanned.

Ambassador Renwick minced no words: “Of course we do not object to your putting America first. We certainly intend, I can assure you, to put Britain first. But unlike those who have turned the term ‘America First’ into one of the most stupid and dangerous slogans in modern American history, we do not believe that we can do it alone--and nor can you. You do not have the option, any more than we in Europe do, of stopping the world and getting off.”

These are sensible words of advice from a time-tested ally with which we have gone together to war more than once--and then enjoyed the peace. That is now what we ought to be doing: enjoying the Cold War’s end, focusing on the issues of world trade and re-evaluating sensibly our military commitments overseas.

But the economy is bad right now; and in Tokyo the President, heretofore supreme in foreign relations, was seen to stumble badly. Thus the moment has arrived for the long-knifed demagogues and their simplistic and self-defeating remedies for all that might ail us.

Do not be taken in, America. All the easy answers are the wrong ones. And the best answers require patience and wisdom . . . and the willingness to listen carefully to what some of America’s true friends have to say.