It seems to me that Suzanne Nossel's post tries to maintain more or less the same dichotomy Bush was promoting in his speech -- either you're on board with the "muscular Wilsonian"/neoconservative mission to transform the world, or you're an "isolationist."

So I ask -- where would they put Brent Scowcroft, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Richard Haass, Stephen Walt, etc.?  What about people who want to maintain our involvement in the world in terms of protecting our security and economic interests, but don't think we need to get overly involved in trying to dictate to other countries how they're governed internally?  Bush and Nossel both try to avoid having to debate the 'realist' position, and argue against the strawman of "isolationism."

As far as I'm concerned, this is just one more indication of the major divisions within both of the major political parties on foreign policy.

Hmm... I agree... it was needless to say that we have a pretty "tendentious" definition on our hands.

Seems to me that it's classic Rovian tactics.  Disingenuous, of course, designed to cloud, duh.

It's a strawman argument to any serious observer, but it highlights a subtle tension between elements of the opposition that:

1)  In utter disgust, are calling for immediate withdrawal.  A group that is overcome with anger -  naive and pacifist, reliant on emotion and slogan (Cindy Sheehan types?); and

2)  More strategically-minded, measured, pragmatic dissenters who understand that, while the premise of the war and the execution of the policy are fundamentally flawed and a true threat to our republic, hold short of passionate calls for immediate withdrawal, and seek less tangible but no less genuine means of defining and achieving success.  (people that despise the Bush Iraq policy but are genuinely embarassed by Sheehan?)

By using this  WWII-era perjorative, a negative association can be subtly attributed among the less-nuanced citizenry.  See Poppy's Saddam/Munich analogies.

The President and his advisers know that any dissent that begins with a history lesson will go nowhere.

That may be one approach, but remember that the media don't exactly look to input from "leftist viewers" for programming cues. 
They look primarily to the corporate underwriters.

Those corporate underwriters are reactive to the consumer base.  To the extent that this consumer base responds to the systematic disaggregation of this dishonest political tactic, a reframing of the "debate" can be established and real change among the expectations of the electorate (which is yet again only a fraction of the consumer base) can be effected.

This is the challenge, and it....is.....HUGE.

I think Matt is being a bit disingenuous, actually. If you spend any time at all in the lefty blogosphere, you know that there is a strong strain of what you might call "non-interventionism". This holds that basically the whole idea of American leadership, by which we try to influence other countries in how they behave, either directly or indirectly, is illegitimate. It's none of our business what other governments do, and we are wrong to try to change other countries' attitudes or behavior, especially if it involves the military. You hear this all the time.




Obviously, this is hardly the dominant view within the Democratic Party, or even within liberalism, although it is gaining rapidly, from what I can tell. So in that sense, it is something of a strawman for Bush to be holding it up as some great immediate danger. But there are plenty of people out there who think the defense of the United States should be limited to just protecting our immediate borders and that foreign military intervention of any kind is morally wrong. Perhaps this is not "isolationism" in the inter-war sense, but it's a dangerous trend nonetheless.

Brad, you're last sentence is the key one.  While the non-interventionist strain you describe is certainly real, non-interventionism is just not isolationism.  As I am sure you are aware, the same non-interventionist lefties you describe typically defend, along with their opposition to US military interventions, greater US involvement and cooperation with international institutions, a stronger effort to influence the economic practices of other countries via fair trade legislation, more open cultural exchanges with other countries and other staples of an activist left foreign policy.

The non-intervention of the right might be closer to the isolationism you seek.  It is represented these days by the right-libertarians at antiwar.com, for example - Justin Raimondo and his allies.  But it is important to note that many non-interventionists of the right are firmly attached to a free trade and free enterprise economic model which tends to lead them to support wide-open commercial exchanges with other countries.

The closest thing we have to isolationists these days are people like Pat Buchanan, who advocate less military intervention, restriction of immigration and greater economic protectionism at the same time.  But even someone like Buchanan is only an "isolationist by contrast".  One finds that while he supports moves in the direction of less US involvement with other countries, he is by no means advocating anything close to "isolation" from them.

So I think Matt's point stands.  By raising the bogey of isolationism to characterize his opponents, Bush is seeking to criticize them on the cheap by describing them as something they are not, and by pretending to struggle against a domestic demon that doesn't truly exist.  Bush would like to avoid enagagement with critics of his aggressive style of interventionism, by getting the public to fear the "isolation" his fictitious opponents would visit upon us.

Well, he's trying to label anyone who is oppossed to his nation-building program for the Middle East as an isolationist. But this strategy seems dumb, because a significant minority in his party and many independents actually support isolationism.

If you listened to the speech--he spent by far the most time telling us what he wants to do for Middle Eastern and other developing countries. He spent a ton of time on how important it is for us to build democracies in all sorts of places like Zimbabwe and Burma and he talked a ton about rebuilding Iraq.

But he barely mentioned rebuilding New Orleans. It's almost like he thinks he's the President of the Middle East--and could care less about Middle America or the Middle Class. All the domestic programs were an after-thought, a laundry list of unfunded programs which have been talked about endlessly before. Nothing new. Nothing serious. Nothing for us Americans. If Bush's agenda goes through all our hard-earned tax dollars will flow to the citizens of other countries and our own needs will remain unmet. If wanting to restore some balance to that equation is isolationism, then count me an isolationist.

Just a note to all the Democrats here. In starting to argue about whether or not we're isolationist, we are in some way accepting the President's premise and therefore (once again) allowing him to set the terms of the debate. A better strategy would be to ignore what he said and say something better ourselves. By arguing about isolationism, you're only giving legitimacy to an idiotic statement.

Why not focus on the lack of interest in domestic policy? He spent most of the time talking about what he was going to do to rebuild the middle east. What about middle America? What about the middle class?

in a typical mis-use of the language, bush meant to talk about the dangers of "unilateralism..." right...? RIGHT...?

currently being in sofia, bulgaria, i'm so glad i didn't bother to wake up at 4 a.m. to listen to this bullshit... i heard the news clip this morning where he said this and it was all i could do to keep from tossing my cookies... the "dangers of isolationism," my ass... george w. bush has isolated the u.s. more consistently and effectively than any other president in memory... how...? unilateralism... so what about the "dangers of unilateralism...?" huh...?? HUH...??? a kevin kline quote from the movie comedy classic, "a fish called wanda," comes to mind... A-S-S-H-O-O-O-O-LE...!!!

Visit my blog: And, yes, I DO take it personally 

Matt--Isolationationism is a real danger. Simply put, it means wanting to withdraw from America's global security commitments and hegemonic role. E.g. isolationists would try to wall off the US from the Middle East, pull back from the commitment to taiwan, and not intervene in the balkans and elsewhere. They would not take risks to promote democracy or to stop proliferation (instead we would rely on deterrence) 
It is running rampant in the Democratic Party base, as one can see from the comments in this site and other blogs. It is often the reason why there is a tension between the comments section and the American Abroad experts, which mirrors the gulf between the Dem foreign policy establishment (largely internationalist) and the base. Intellectually, its champions are the off shore balancers like walt, mearsheimer, and pape. 
In the republican party isolationism is supressed now but could make a real comeback when bush goes. As someone in this thread already pointed out, Bush himself was sort of a neo isolationist in 2000.
I took Bush's emphasis on this not as a sign that he was creating a straw man but that he is genuinely worrried about an isolationist turn. I think he's correct in his concern. 

The mention of Pat Buchannan as an isolationist highlights that there are many isolationists at the CAFE on the Left.  It is true few call themselves isolationists.  However, they oppose globalization, the use of American force apparently under virtually any circumstances and they tend to see the world's problems through the lens of America's guilt.

What is fascinating is that very few Democratic officeholders hold view anything like this and that a fair amount of Republicans would like to wall off the United States from all those "evil" others.  

This is yet another case of Democrats needed to stand-up and fight back not just because what Bush says is baloney but because they do have some to their Left who are isolationists as Bush has them to his populist Right.

I think some people are confusing "isolationism" with "Before we try to install a secular, moderate-to-liberal government in some other country, let's try one here, first." I'd much rather deal with the problems in our own backyard before we charge to the other side of town. That said, I think the definition of isolationism that Bush leans towards is "If you don't agree with the thinktanks about how we need to attack (fill in the blank), you're an isolationist!"

Let's try to sort this out Gary Z.  When you say you are a left libertarian, as opposed to a right libertarian, what does that mean to you?

Isolationationism is a real danger. Simply put, it means wanting to withdraw from America's global security commitments and hegemonic role.

Again Architect, this is an attempt by defenders of the staus quo to define away the alternatives by pushing them into a box where they don't belong.  These same people you mention who advocate US military withdrawl from various spots in the world, and an end to US hegemony, also typically advocate some or all of the following:

inreased funding for AIDS treatment in Africa;

increased funding for global poverty relief and community development;

fair trade legislation that marshals the vast US economic power as a consumer of world goods to promote progressive labor and environmental policies abroad;

mutilateral negotion of global environmental compacts such as the Kyoto protocols, and US ratification of, and commitment to such compacts;

reform of global financial institutions to put more money in the hands of ordinary people at the grass roots, and less in the hands of corrupt rulers, financial barons and wealthy capitalists;

strengthening the institutions of international law, and a stronger US commitment to abide by international law;

increased funding for UN human rights and relief organizations;

an increased emphasis on US participation in UN mediation and peacekeeping operations, and away from unilateral US intervention;

dropping some of the post-9/11 security barriers that have made it increasingly difficult for foreigners to come to the US and study;

increased funding in the US for the study of foreign languages;

increased funding for cultural exchanges between the United States and other countries;

a realignment of US engagements in Latin America toward left-leaning governments and away from right-leaning governments;

and many other policies of these kinds.  These are not isolationist policies in any reasonable sense of the term.  They all advocate various kinds of engagement abroad, and several of them advocate forms of intervention aimed at modifying the policies of other countries.

But what seems to rankle the America Abroad types is that the thrust of this alternative foreign policy is, as you point out, away from US military interventions, and US hegemony.  The alternative left wing foreign policy also tends to oppose aggressive imposition of US political and economic institutions abroad.  That is because the left has traditionally been highly skeptical of US laissez faire economic institutions - viewing them as institutions of the right - and tends to view the procedural institutions of US government as lacking in real democratic content in the absence of a more egalitarian distribution of economic power.

The America Abroad folks tend to represent the neoliberal strain of recent Democratic thought, and are very comfortable with US-style capitalism, and much more comfortable with the use of armed force to spread the US system.  They typically support the  massive military expenditures and mobiilizations that are required to accomplish this task.

The general tendency of the leftist alternative is for the US to be less of a hegemon, and more of an equal partner in the world.   That is the left's conception of global democracy.  When the neoliberals talk about spreading democracy, what they seem to have in mind is a system in which each individual country possesses a US-style liberal, capitalist democracy, but in which the gloabl order itself is highly inegalitarian, with a dominant US hegemon at the top, assisted perhaps by a round table of states in a Council of Democracies, who lord it over all of the other countries in the world and remake them in the Council's image.

There is certainly a real debate here between the Democratic left, and the neoliberals who believe that progress depends on the perpetuation of US hegemony.  But this is a debate about two different manners of engagement, not a debate between those who favor engagement and isolationists who want to disengage for the world.

Good points Brad. A few more to add as grist for the mill--more in the spirit of getting us to a consensus than in arguing:

Intellectually, I think most liberals have been comfortable with the idea of using force to stop clear aggression and/or gross violations of human rights. (I think most liberals, for instance, still accept that fighting the Nazis was good--and even might accuse the US of having been too slow in recognizing and responding to Nazi atrocities.)

In practice, though, you are right that the pacifist streak of the left has dominated since Vietnam. Or maybe even more accurately, the suspicious streak has dominated--with many liberals automatically (and sometimes unfairly) distrusting the US government anytime it advocates force.

Some on the left have been very vocal in supporting indigenous revolutionary groups. This seems to confirm my conception that it's not so much the use of force that liberals object to, but the use of force by the US government. (This again is the result of an often, but not always, misplaced distrust of the US government's motives.)

Some of the resistance to the use of force on the left is purely partisan. The left trusts Democrats more than Republicans to use force the "right" way, and so the left tends to have a knee-jerk reaction against Republican-led uses of force.

Currently, it's hard to say whether the pacifist tendencies of the left are growing stronger. As I see it, it's more suspicion of Bush that's causing the negativity (as well as real opposition to the use of force in Iraq). Certainly, many liberals on this site and elsewhere have been making arguments for using force in certain situations and trying to more clearly define when the use of force is appropriate. So there seems to be a tendency at least on some parts of the left to more freely acknowledge the need to use force in some situations. This is countered, however, by the knee-jerk desire to oppose Bush.