Mitch McConnell: We Cannot Repeat the Mistakes of the 1930s
nytimes.com> Some vocal corners of the American right are trying to resurrect the discredited brand of prewar isolationism and deny the basic value of the alliance system that has kept the postwar peace.
By “some on the right “ you mean your presidential candidate and most of your party.
Not to mention most liberals until five minutes ago. If you had told me twenty years ago that supposed democrats were agreeing with Mitch McConnell and acting out Team America World Police, I wouldn’t have believed you. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0372588/.
> Not to mention most liberals until five minutes ago.
Some fringe leftists are isolationists, to be sure. Liberals? No.
The mainstream liberal position back when I was a Democrat is that America’s policing of the world was a bad thing. The movie “Team America: World Police” reflected the sentiment of Jon Stewart watching younger Democrats. Stanning for NATO and “our allies” was for evil neocons like Bush and Cheney.
"policing of the world" is already politically fraught. The classic leftist argument is that America entered unjust foreign wars for political points / foreign resources / dick waving.
Leftists don’t think we entered Vietnam or Korea for resources. And when I was a mainstream young liberal in the 1990s and early oughts, the complaint was about why we have “military bases around the world.” That wasn’t because we thought those were for extracting resources.
> Leftists don’t think we entered Vietnam or Korea for resources.
Disagree, again: Back in the day, many leftists — especially the radical ones, who not infrequently were Communists or sympathizers — proclaimed loudly that Pax Americana and its small wars were facets of an allegedly-rapacious capitalist-colonialist imperialism, extracting resources from the poor and redistributing them upward to the wealthy, and suppressing popular revolutionary movements that professed to want to even things out.
(I recently re-read David Halberstam's magisterial The Best and the Brightest about the origins of U.S. involvement in Vietnam, including backing the French efforts to stay as the colonial power after liberation from Japanese occupation. Highly recommended.)
> And when I was a mainstream young liberal in the 1990s and early oughts
It's not your fault you missed the 1960s and 70s.
Perhaps he's hoping for something extra from the defense contractor lobby or that America should return to policies neocolonial Monroe Doctrine with CIA coups, but this time claim Africa, and get ourself involved in more wars.
Going neocon agro W-style won't improve America's geopolitical status. Maybe he's having trouble coming to terms with China rivaling America's economic power and military projection that vaguely resembles what America did, albeit more flagrantly aggressively.
Fun fact: Mitch McConnell was born in 1942
Peace? What are you, some kind of Nazi?
This is fallacious neocon reasoning. Countries are always looking to expand their borders, for many reasons. Few of them are Nazi Germany. What Russia is doing now is much closer to what Bismarck did in unifying Germany or Garibaldi did in unifying Italy. Or what Iraq tried to do with Kuwait.
Would it have been justified for Europe to intervene militarily when the US wrested California and Texas from Mexico? Maybe or maybe not, but it certainly wasn’t the first step in the US taking over the world.
No, it’s nothing like German or Italian unification. That’s ahistorical nonsense.
In both of those cases there had been decades of nation wide, protests, insurrections and guerilla movements in favor of creating a sovereign nation to prevent domination by foreign powers, Austria in the case of Italy and France in the wake of napoleon for the minor German states.
In Ukraine there has been a decades of nation wide protests insurrections and guerrilla movements in favor of creating a sovereign Ukrainian nation so that they will no longer be dominated by Russia.
Putin is not garibaldi, he is not unifying a people who have shown they want to be part of some wider national project, he is an imperialist.
You think Germans and Italians all wanted to be part of a single nation? Bismarck and Garibaldi marched with armies. So did the U.S. You think Mexicans wanted to be part of the U.S.?
Putin obviously has expansionist aims. But regional expansionism is widespread, and rarely something countries on the other side of the world need to be involved with. Kuwait certainly didn’t want to be part of Iraq, but that wasn’t any of our business either. Same for South Korea and south Vietnam.
As long as we're talking about fallacious rhetoric, you set the bar at a country having to "be" Nazi Germany, instead of just having similar expansionist goals.
You avoid mentioning NATO and the reasons Putin views it as a threat, probably because it would undercut your claim that there are no worthwhile parallels to WWII here.
My point is that “Nazi germany” is a small subset of “expansionism” and the latter is widespread and mostly none of our business. Borders shift. It’s not America’s job to police whatever borders happened to exist at some arbitrary point in time all over the world.
> [expansionism] is widespread and mostly none of our business.
I know you understand how alliances work, so I'm really fascinated that thus far you appear to be studiously avoiding mention of the most consequential alliance in history, one which happens to have significant bearing on US involvement in the war in Ukraine.
“Alliance” is just code for “Team America: World Police.” If everyone is our “ally” then we are just the world’s border police. Our real allies are the UK, Canada, France, Germany, and Japan. None of those countries are endangered by Putin. They were also not endangered by Iraq invading Kuwait, communists taking over Vietnam or Korea, whatever happened in the Balkans in the 1990s, and all those events that led to mistaken wars over the last 70 years.
Our "real" allies don't include NATO signatories? Germany isn't threatened by Russia?
Absolutely hilarious and ahistorical. Anyone playing the silly rhetorical games you're playing isn't trying to convince anyone with reasoned arguments.
Most NATO members are not real allies. Turkey or Greece or Slovenia could fall into the ocean and it wouldn’t materially Americans. NATO had a purpose once, but it’s just become a vehicle other countries to outsource their defense to the U.S.
You want to talk about history? How about: for 70 years American interventionism has resulted in an unbroken streak of mistaken wars that have sapped America’s wealth. Thats where your definition of “ally” has gotten us.
> Most NATO members are not real allies. ... [F]or 70 years American interventionism has resulted in an unbroken streak of mistaken wars ....
If only we had a Star Trek TOS "Guardian of Forever" time portal to show us what wars were avoided by what you call American "interventionism."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_City_on_the_Edge_of_Foreve...
Hey we won the Persian Gulf War. Even if we didn’t pay the tab.
Hah. "My" definition. Okay. That you don't see the purpose of NATO today, or the importance of smaller member states to the overall alliance, is reason enough to call it a day.