Tag: Isolationism

Isolationism? Fascism?

In the days of Hillary and her pundits on the tube we were lead to believe that Trump was an isolationist……those incessant babbling from the pundits and what happened?

It’s nearly impossible to read major newspapers, magazines, or online publications in recent months without encountering a plethora of articles contending that the United States is turning inward and “going alone,” “abandoning Washington’s global leadership role” or “retreating from the world.” These trends supposedly herald the arrival of a new “isolationism.” The chief villain in all of these worrisome developments is, of course, Donald Trump. There is just one problem with such arguments; they are vastly overstated bordering on utterly absurd.

President Trump is not embracing his supposed inner isolationist. The policy changes that he has adopted regarding both security and international economic issues do not reflect a desire to decrease Washington’s global hegemonic status. Instead, they point to a more unilateral and militaristic approach, but one that still envisions a hyper-activist U.S. role.

https://nationalinterest.org/feature/where-trumps-alleged-isolationism-32996

I admit that I do not like many of Trump’s foreign policies but as an analyst I just do not see a lean toward isolationism……just another broken promise?

Then there are those that kept saying that the election of Trump and some of his policies were ushering in a time of fascism in the US……actually the calls for fascism were loudest in Europe from the pundits……what happened?

Were fascism to ascend again in Europe, international security would be menaced and the liberal international order be even more imperilled. However, Europe’s current far-right parties fail to meet the minimum fascist criteria.

Just as the taxonomy of European far-right parties is not settled, there is no unanimously agreed definition of 1930s fascism. Differences over generic fascism or a recognisable fascist ideology punctuate the scholarly literature.

Even the two fascist exemplars, Mussolini’s Italy and Nazi Germany, had important differences as well as similarities. However, the fascist movements that arose after 1918 and their shallow imitators—like Franco’s Spain and the Romanian Iron Guard—can be distinguished from today’s far-right movements.

https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2018/10/10/fascism_has_not_returned_113881.html

To be honest I could find fascism in the policies of Reagan and both Bush….just as those “people” on the Right want to find aspects of the Dems that they think smacks of socialism…..

These two stories were nothing more than sensationalism and speculation that drives the MSM these days….

Turn The Page!

An America First Foreign Policy

In the beginning of the 2016 election we had a new (well not so new) slogan for the voter to deal with…..America First.

Donald Trump promised to “make America Great Again”….which is something all Americans love to hear…the problem for me was I did not see how we were not already “great”.

“America First” was a promised during th1940’s to keep the US out of another European war……an isolationist position to be sure.

This is a good look at the America First promise…..it is from the Libertarian Future Of Freedom Foundation

In his inaugural address, Donald Trump stated, “From this day forward, a new vision will govern our land. From this day forward, it’s going to be only America first, America first.” Trump apparently first used his catchphrase in a March 2016 interview with the New York Times in the context of foreign policy. The interviewer suggested that Trump was taking something of an “‘America First’ kind of approach, a mistrust of many foreigners, both our adversaries and some of our Continue Reading

Source: An America First Foreign Policy – The Future of Freedom Foundation

I like the idea to staying out of all these minor wars but I also think the days of isolationism are long gone.

WE will have to wait a few more years to see just where Trump’s America First will take the country.

Isolationism: What’s It Good For?

During the run up to the election of 2016 there was a call for the US to revert back to a policy of isolationism…..

But first let’s look at isolationism as it pertains to foreign policy….

National policy of avoiding political or economic entanglements with other countries. Isolationism has been a recurrent theme in U.S. history. It was given expression in the Farewell Address of Pres. George Washington and in the early 19th-century Monroe Doctrine. The term is most often applied to the political atmosphere in the U.S. in the 1930s. The failure of Pres. Woodrow Wilson’s internationalism, liberal opposition to war as an instrument of policy, and the rigours of the Great Depression were among the reasons for Americans’ reluctance to concern themselves with the growth of fascism in Europe. The Johnson Act (1934) and the Neutrality acts (1935) effectively prevented economic or military aid to any country involved in the European disputes that were to escalate into World War II. U.S. isolationism encouraged the British in their policy of appeasement and contributed to French paralysis in the face of the growing threat posed by Nazi Germany.

(britannica.com)

But those days are long one.  The US cannot revert into isolationism….not in the global economy we have today….it is a myth…..

The American Conservative had a brilliant take on this issue……

For reasons unknown, and if revealed unlikely to be reassuring, my hometown newspaper, the Boston Globe, regularly provides space on its opinion page to the novelist Richard North Patterson. As a manufacturer of pulp fiction, Patterson has achieved spectacular success, churning out bestsellers with titles like The Devil’s Light and Loss of Innocence. If my own books sold a tenth as many copies, I’d retire to a baronial estate in Scotland and spend my remaining days fishing for trout, sipping single-malt whiskey, and reading potboilers by the likes of Richard North Patterson.

So as a spinner of fictional yarns, Patterson is a master of his craft. Unfortunately, when commenting on events of the day, that penchant for fiction persists.

Source: The Fiction of U.S. Isolationism | The American Conservative

The US cannot hide within its borders…..it must engage the world….but through the use of force is not the way to engage.  Diplomacy is a better weapon than a bomb.

Is “America First” Just Isolationism?

AS the day approaches for our new prez to take his place among our other leaders…..I would like to address a campaign slogan of Trump’s…….

This is an op-ed that I recently wrote for Ace News Room……

During his rise to glory I thought that one of is, Trump’s, slogans, “America First” sounded a lot like isolationism from you near past….. But first let me explain isolation…

Source: Is “America First” Just Isolationism? | Ace News Room

“America First”

Sorry but it is time for another history lesson…..(moans and groans all around)……..

One of the slogans employed by PEOTUS Trump…the other was “Make America Great Again”…..as a history nut I kept thinking that “America First” had been used before…I looked back to Reagan….close but no cigar.  There were many candidates that used some form of the idea/term….so I kept looking and reading.

My regulars know that I will sneak a historic perspective in my posts whenever I can….some shudder, others smile and even others appreciate my diligence.

Then when I was watching the History Channel and its new shows about Pearl Harbor I heard the magic words….”America First”!

Guess what?  It was an antiwar group that wanted to keep the US out of another war……

The America First Committee (AFC) was organized in September 1940 to oppose America`s potential intervention in World War II. Hitler`s invasion of Poland had precipitated war in September 1939. A year later, the only major military force resisting the Nazis was Britain. The smaller nations had been quickly overrun, France had capitulated, and the Soviet Union was using its nonagression pact with Germany to pursue its own interests in Finland and elsewhere. At the time, a majority of Americans felt that while the world would be a better place if Britain prevailed over Germany, they were not inclined to declare war and repeat the earlier experience of American soldiers fighting on European soil.

This reluctance had inspired Congress to pass neutrality acts in the late 1930`s which restricted the American government`s ability to support either party in the conflict, which in practice meant the Allies since the Axis powers were widely regarded with distaste. Roosevelt, who had been corresponding with Churchill for years before Churchill was even part of the Tory government, clearly identified American interests with the hope for British victory. Using tactics like the “bases for destroyers” deal, he attempted to maximize his support for the British while skirting if not actually violating the principle of neutrality.

After the attack on Pearl Harbor the attempt to avoid another war was pretty much dead in the water (NO pun intended)……

Your history lesson is done…..now you know something you did not know yesterday….that is call education.

Isolationist or Imperialist?

I will be posting this week on my favorite subject…..foreign policy……the new prez is an unknown quantity and his policies have not been given a fair judgment by the analysts…..

We have been listening to all sides on this debate….some claim that Trump will be an isolationist…..and others think he will continue the line of psuedo-imperialism……he has said so much in the days of the campaign that few know for sure what we are getting when it comes to foreign policy.

I have said several times….his appointments to DoD and State will be very telling in the direction he wants this country to travel…..

What comes next? Two foreign policy scenarios for a Trump presidency.

In the hit musical Hamilton, King George, newly estranged from the revolutionary American colonies, challenges his former subjects to justify their choice. “What comes next?” he asks, “You’ve been freed. Do you know how hard it is to lead? You’re on your own. Awesome, wow! Do you have a clue what happens now?”

We might well ask the same question.

The unexpected elevation of Donald Trump to the Presidency presents a failure for pollsters, a reorientation of American politics, and raises the fundamental question of what kind of policies a Trump administration is likely to pursue. On foreign policy, Trump’s statements throughout the campaign have been profoundly incoherent, ranging from more traditional hawkish Republican views on issues like the Iran deal, to more unorthodox, restrained views on Syria and other Middle Eastern conflicts, to his more conciliatory approach to Russia and truly bizarre fixation with Russian strongman Vladimir Putin.

Source: Isolationist or Imperialist? | Cato @ Liberty

Analysts such as myself are waiting for the hammer to drop…..his appointees will be that hammer and foreign policy will be the nail….the fave for SecState does not fill me with optimism….

Please NO excuses…..comment on the two types of foreign policy….our citizens will have to enforce whatever set of policies this new prez has eventually decided on as his……

Battle Of The NeoCon Stars……..

We once had the Battle of the Network Stars and now we have the Battle of the Neo Cons…….and the later is the most humorous of the two……we have Rand Paul, Rick Perry and the most delusional of the neo cons, Dick Cheney all attacking each other over something that none of them understands beyond…they are right and everyone else is wrong…..a great foreign policy, right?

Iraq is a pile of manure and everyone has a plan for dealing with the situation…..let’s start with the Liar in Chief, Dick Cheney……most semi-intelligent people now realize that Rumsfeld, Bush, Rice and Cheney lied their fool heads off just so we could go to war with Iraq and even though there is few that believe anything this toad has to say he is still allowed to be some sort of expert interviewed by the MSM………….and his talking points are all the same…..

Invading Iraq was prudent.

George W. Bush waged the war successfully.

Barack Obama is responsible for the chaos in Iraq today.

America needs to wage war in at least three countries and spend more on the military.

Either he is the most delusional person I have ever covered or is an arrogant prick that is NEVER wrong……..my money is on the later.

Now we look at the duel being waged between Gov. Perry and Sen. Paul on foreign policy…….

We’ve got a few years yet before 2016, but two potential GOP candidates are already taking shots at each other in dueling foreign policy pieces. Texas Gov. Rick Perry got the party started with a Washington Post op-ed, in which he attacked Sen. Rand Paul for being “curiously blind” to the national security threat posed by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. Paul, Perry argues in the piece, advocates doing “next to nothing” to confront the situation, whereas Perry would prefer to take action. That action, he writes, could include “intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance sharing” as well as airstrikes.

Paul took to Politico to offer a batch of what Slate calls “snappy insults” in return. If Paul is “blind” on ISIS, then Perry’s “new glasses haven’t altered his perception of the world, or allowed him to see it any more clearly,” Paul writes. He accuses Perry of getting his views so wrong that “I wonder if he’s even really read any of my policy papers.” The truth, he notes, is that the US is already involved in or considering the strategies Perry supports, and Paul has laid out a number of proposals himself. “If the governor continues to insist that these proposals mean I’m somehow ‘ignoring ISIS,’ I’ll make it my personal policy to ignore Rick Perry’s opinions.” Click for Perry’s piece, or for Paul’s piece.

The MSM sez that these two are practicing their foreign policy muscle ahead of the 2016 election…..to that I scoff!  neither of these men show me that they have any grip on the concept of international relations……it sounds like they are regurgitating talking points from the RNC.

Sorry, but unless you have a complete grasp on what the term “international relations” actually means then maybe they should shut the Hell up and go back to Obamacare lies……