For some reason, isolation is seen as only `isolationism’: a total policy, an ideological hardening of sorts. Even highly intelligent commentators of realist leanings will write and speak as if we Americans can choose only between some sort of major involvement in international relationships or a permanent and total withdrawal. This hardly accounts for all possible policies.
Yet, I would, in fact, advocate a near total sort of isolation from international involvement by the American government for the purpose of taking stock, evaluating our true interests, evaluating our true diplomatic and military needs, and then starting to prepare for a fresh engagement with the rest of the world.
I’d be pretty sure that an honest, self-examination would reveal that we have few solid and trustworthy experts for most countries or peoples in the world—not every people in the world has their own country or is likely to have one any time soon. Nor do we have so many experts in the setting of strategy for the purpose of meeting national goals of security and prosperity and so on; our alleged experts seem mostly to specialize in meeting the needs of the oil and gas industry or the weapons producing industry or the financial industry.
By experts, I mean those who speak the relevant languages fluently—a thick accent, as with Kissinger, is allowable for non-infiltrators; those who know the history and the modern culture; those who have some in-depth understanding of the technology existing or likely to exist; those who know the geography including the situation regarding natural resources. It would seem to this outsider observer that American expertise in international matters now consists of knowing which countries are of interest to natural-resource extractors from the West and of being able to draw possible pipelines onto a topographical map before getting to work to overthrow dictators and elected heads of government without much distinction.
Even more dangerously, American foreign relations are held hostage to political campaigning needs. While we should realize that these campaigns are tied, by donations and in other ways, to oil-companies and weapons manufacturers and with ideologists who would see the reduction of entire regions of the earth to abject poverty and powerlessness before the American power-elite, we should also realize that American politicians are far from being without power, far from being mere puppets of other sorts of powerholders, though the intellectual and moral degradation of politicians and voters allows other sorts of powerholders to manipulate the policies of the American government to their own purposes.
We, the American people should call a timeout and send ourselves into a corner for some quiet meditation on the mess we’ve created around us. If we continue even a moderated intervention in foreign affairs, we will continue to pass money over to the true criminals in our midst and we will continue to destroy this country and to greatly restrict American involvement in international affairs when we, inevitably, find our country as one of several great powers or even as a second-rate power wondering if the Chinese or the Europeans will extract compensation from us or inflict vengeance upon us. We are in danger of becoming a state and a people who are both distrusted and hated.