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Traditionally, the GOP has been the favorite of those concerned with safety and national security. The party of Ronald Reagan emphasized the need for strong engagement abroad, a willingness to project power when necessary, and a commitment to the free world. Yet the contours of the conservative movement have begun to change in recent years, calling into question the GOP’s credibility on the issue of security.
The growing support for a sort of soft isolationism is a problem. It is also fundamentally not conservative.
Prominent voices from the American right have been carrying the banner of soft isolationism for years, from Tucker Carlson and J.D. Vance to Senator Josh Hawley and former president Donald Trump. There is no standard definition of soft isolationism, but there are some generally shared attributes. The overarching concern is that America is overstretched, overcommitted, and in crisis at home — factors which, when combined, threaten to overwhelm the country.
Most of the soft isolationists do not want the US to completely abandon the world and turn inwards. They rather want a significant reassessment of America’s involvement in the world and a realignment of policy. It is a question of capacity: there are finite resources, and they would be better spent at home than defending distant lands. But it is also a question of necessity: why should America be the world’s policeman? Why should American lives be put at risk for countries that seem of little strategic import?
These concerns should not be brushed aside. The US does have serious problems at home. And politicians should take the utmost care when committing American servicemen and women to fight overseas. The lives of those who serve are precious, and should never be recklessly put in harm’s way. When they are deployed, mission creep and overextension must be assiduously avoided, a lesson learned the hard way in Iraq and Afghanistan. Put simply, foreign policy should be geared towards the protection and preservation of freedom at home.
The problem is that soft isolationism — despite its proponents’ good intentions — will endanger the homeland and increase the risks to American lives and freedom. If Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and China’s escalation over Taiwan have shown anything, it is that the world is both increasingly dangerous and increasingly hostile to freedom. As Americans, it can be tempting to tune out the problems of the world, as we are privileged to have non-threatening neighbors to the north and south, and no neighbors to the east and west. But we are still not safe from those who wish us harm.
Since the end of World War Two, the US has spearheaded a global system based on basic rules and the interconnection of peoples and economies. These rules — the inviolability of sovereign borders, self-determination and international rule of law — may not always be followed, but they are followed enough to make the system work. If they are abandoned, the world will return to its pre-1945 state, with borders determined by the strong, countries’ politics manipulated by foreign powers, and the rules themselves defined by the whims of the powerful.
This was a truly multipolar world in which there was no guarantor of stability. Germany could seize Austria and Czechoslovakia and Japan could ravage China with impunity, while Italy could snatch Ethiopia and the Soviet Union could invade its northern neighbor without serious consequences. The result? Untold lives, nations, peoples, and economies destroyed. And the devastation did not stop at the shores of the United States.
The post-war system is of a fundamentally different character. This system transformed Germany and Japan from brutal, imperialistic dictatorships into peace-loving, economically successful nations. It allowed the US dollar to become the global reserve currency, making it possible to sustain America’s current eye-watering levels of debt. It drove the US economy and the attendant rise in standards of living. From January to July 2022 alone, the US exported nearly $1.2 trillion worth of goods and imported over $1.9 trillion. The only thing keeping this system running — and the benefits flowing — is America’s global commitments.
What’s made the world different in the seventy-seven years since the end of World War Two is the existence of one major power that rejected the millennia-old system of the strong ruling the weak: the US. During the Cold War, the Soviet Union threatened to return the world to the old way of doing things, but the US was a strong enough force to prevent a complete backslide.
There was a time after the Cold War when it seemed the US could finally step back a bit, that the world could run itself. But the world cannot — and never could — run itself. Despite those who dream of some type of global governance, the international system is still based on raw power. This will never change. The United Nations, the poster child of global governance, has proven itself a periodically useful though more often inept and farcical institution that is susceptible to becoming the puppet of revisionist powers like China. Europe, full of countries ideologically similar to the US, has limited ability to project power abroad and even less willingness to do so. Far from being a leader, the Continent desperately needs one. It is the US that makes the system work. Indeed, without the US, there is no global system. The US alone is willing and able to use its raw power to prevent the world from being governed by raw power.
This vital nature means that what might for other nations be an inconsequential policy change is for the US a world-changing maneuver. For Germany, being stingy on aid to Ukraine is problematic, but certainly not existential. But if America breaks the flow of aid, it signals to its enemies that borders are no longer inviolable. Far from preventing future conflict or limiting involvement in major wars, the US pulling back incites malign actors to strike, raising the risks of American blood being shed.
For decades, the projection of strength abroad has been a distinctly conservative conviction. Conservatives have, in fact, provided the foundation of the global system by advocating for a strong military and forceful foreign policy. They know that a foreign policy based on pie-in-the-sky ideals is not only folly but can be dangerous. Because the progressive fantasy of world governance is just that — a fantasy — it has fallen to American conservatives to provide the glue to hold together the US-led system. Indeed, the American military is still living on the investments made by President Reagan in the 1980s, and some of the greatest successes of the global system (the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty, the coalition building of the First Gulf War, the effective management of the Soviet Union’s collapse) occurred under Republican leadership.
It might seem strange for conservatives to be at the vanguard of the post-war system, given that it was rather revolutionary, that it bucked thousands of years of traditional state interaction, and that many Republicans had been in the isolationist camp before 1941 (and some wanted to return to it after 1945). But conservatism properly understood requires a willingness to reform when the time demands it. As most on the American right accept, it is not conservative to sit back and say “stop” to every proposed change. To do so would be to stand athwart the natural change that defines this fallen world — nothing on this earth is permanent. If there was ever a time that demanded reform, it was after the untold suffering and destruction of the Second World War. American conservatives largely came to understand this.
It should be noted that much of this good conservative instinct remains. Most Republicans recognize the absurdity of the left’s belief that a deal with Iran will help to bring it into the community of nations. Most Republicans also continue to advocate for a powerful, well-equipped military.
All of this makes it even stranger that a small but growing number of conservatives are embracing soft isolationism. A return to this kind of foreign policy would, in fact, be participating in exactly what most conservatives bristle at progressives for: revolutionary change. Far from demanding drastic reform, today’s world emphatically demands continuity with the past.
America must walk and chew gum at the same time. It must lead the world while also tackling its own economic and social ills. It has done so successfully for over seven decades, and can do so today. It will not, however, be able to deal with anything at home if it cedes its presence abroad to revisionist authoritarian powers. If the global system is handed to the communists in Beijing, the theocrats in Tehran, and the butchers in the Kremlin, the US will suffer. America’s adversaries will shatter global stability and disrupt the financial and trading system upon which the US economy rests — then the real economic pain will hit. If the Covid-19 pandemic’s economic fallout looks bad, wait until China controls global trade. Its treatment of Australia and Lithuania indicates that Beijing’s adversaries would be under constant threat. The same holds true for Iran and Russia, both of which have proven their willingness to destabilize and destroy, and both of which would capitalize on an American pullback.
Ironically, in a world without America at its head, conservatism would suffer at home. Global instability is a recipe for economic and political unrest, which in turn typically serves as the spark for the very radical policies that conservatives loathe (think the government overreach of the Great Depression era). If conservatives really value domestic tranquility and economic success — and the votes of security moms — they would do well to abandon soft isolationism before it is too late.
