What about Isolationism?

In the 2000 election George W. Bush campaigned on a platform of "no nation-building." That sounds a tad isolationist. His opponent, Al Gore, was thought to be an internationalist. Following in the footsteps of his former governing partner who had committed the US to Kosovo and brokering an Israeli-Palestinian deal, voters were left with the impression that Gore would continue this policy and maybe extend it. Bush on the other hand was going to stay home! Of course, we've spent the bulk of his tenure at war (and little nation-building is happening in either Iraq or Afghanistan).

The question is: is isolationism a left-right issue? In an interesting essay Jonah Goldberg writes in the LA Times today about the rights and wrongs of isolationism. In fact he suggests that the better term is "non-interventionism." While liberals currently seem to be the non-interventionists that obviously hasn't always been the case.

The reality is, no matter your politics, an increasingly globalised world makes isolationism increasingly difficult to sustain or justify. As a person of faith, I'm even less able to justify isolationism. The question is, how do we express our involvement in the affairs of others.

In his concluding paragraph he writes, I think, in support of a now "mortally wounded" interventionism. But by whatever name you call it, don't call it isolationism:

Now, I think the non-interventionists in both parties have been mostly wrong since the '30s, though few can deny the wisdom (and vagueness) in Obama's call for more "modesty" about regime change in the future. Foreign policy arguments always depend on a lot of context. If Iraq was a "cakewalk," non-interventionism would have been discredited for a generation. Now
interventionism has been mortally wounded. But one thing stays the same: Whatever position conservatives hold is evil, while the liberal view is wise and just. But don't you dare call it isolationist.

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