The Self-Interest in a Wise Internationalism : Withdrawing from the world would be self-defeating

Patrick J. Buchanan concedes that his quest for this year’s Republican presidential nomination is all but dead, but he continues to battle through selective state primaries anyway, his frank aim being to shape his party’s agenda for the 1996 election. Lately he has been stepping up his criticisms of foreign policy, not just that of the Bush Administration but essentially U.S. foreign policy for the last half-century or so, under both Democratic and Republican presidents. For those who pay attention and have an eye on history, the Buchanan rhetoric offers a bumpy ride down memory lane.

The world, as Buchanan sees it, seems to be filled largely with countries and institutions whose morals and purposes are those of the con artist. They are all waiting to fleece an America naive enough to venture beyond the security of its own shores. “They”--by which Buchanan means “the global parasites” of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, the United Nations and various unnamed “foreign powers” who benefit from American aid and friendship--are out to separate the United States not simply from its wealth but from its sovereignty. His solution: “It is time Americans took their country back.” Buchanan would seriously think about pulling the United States out of the United Nations, the World Bank and the IMF. And he would withdraw American troops from Europe and South Korea and assign them instead to sealing our southern border against immigrant hordes.

ECHOES OF U.S. PAST: “The battle for the future is on,” Buchanan told a meeting of the Daughters of the American Revolution the other day. Maybe, but his ideas for facing that future very much echo the past, especially the determined isolationism of the 1920s and ‘30s with its distrust of things foreign and its unfounded confidence that the United States could safely ignore the messy problems of the world beyond its shores. The isolationists argued that America could remain remote from foreign quarrels because it was separated from Europe and Asia by two great oceans. Buchanan’s contemporary proposal is for a continental missile defense system, as if the only threat to national security were incoming ICBMs.

What’s wrong with retreating into isolationism? Simply that it failed tragically before and certainly it would fail utterly again.

OUTLOOK FOR U.S. FUTURE: The point that Buchanan and those who cheer him resist accepting is that the United States has involved itself with the world not out of altruism but out of enlightened self-interest, for the benefit of the nation and its people. America is a trading country; the very size and diversity of its economy dictate that it must be in and of the world. That requires among other things participating in global trade agreements and having the means to keep trade routes open and secure.

America is a democracy. The greatest of the principles on which it is based seeks to protect the freedom of the individual while controlling the power of the state. Its national security is strengthened when other countries adopt and help defend democracy’s basic values, because democratic societies are the most reliable supporters of the international rule of law. Its security is threatened--and must be defended by military strength if need be--when those values are denied or attacked and the rule of law is scorned.

What’s interesting is not so much that Pat Buchanan continues to croon the anachronistic siren song of isolationism but that he is finding enough response to encourage him to go on, all the way to the 1996 campaign. Some might find this alarming. Others might properly see in it a timely challenge to re-examine and reaffirm those central tenets that have for so long guided the consensus that supports American foreign policy. Such an effort is never wasted.