Stephen Walt calls out the NYT for a sloppy lead sentence that drew me up short as well:
Americans are exhibiting an isolationist streak, with majorities across party lines decidedly opposed to American intervention in North Korea or Syria, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.
It’s isolationist not to want to get embroiled in a civil war in the Middle East between people we barely understand? It’s isolationist not to go to war with North Korea? Over to Walt:
Genuine isolationism means ending U.S. alliance commitments in Europe and Asia and telling our various Middle Eastern allies that they were going to have to defend themselves instead of relying on help from Uncle Sam. Genuine isolationism would eliminate the vast military forces that we buy and prepare for overseas intervention and focus instead on defending American soil. Real isolationists favor radical cuts to the defense budget (on the order of 50 percent or more) and would rely on nuclear deterrence and continental defense to preserve U.S. independence. And the most extreme isolationists would favor reducing foreign trade and immigration, getting out of the U.N. and other institutions, and trying to cut the United States off from the rest of the world.
The overwhelming majority of people who have doubts about the wisdom of deeper involvement in Syria — including yours truly — are not “isolationist.”
They are merely sensible people who recognize that we may not have vital interests there, that deeper involvement may not lead to a better outcome and could make things worse, and who believe that the last thing the United States needs to do is to get dragged into yet another nasty sectarian fight in the Arab/Islamic world. But many of these same skeptics still favor American engagement in key strategic areas, support maintaining a strong defense capability, and see some U.S. allies as assets rather than liabilities.
I’d put myself in that camp, right now, rather than the one Walt calls “isolationism”. But the logic of history in the decades since the end of the Cold War seems to me to point toward an eventually much reduced role in global policing for the U.S. – if only because we cannot afford it – and to prioritize the regions most important to us (see: Asia rather than the Middle East). Bear Braumoeller thinks the term has outlived its usefulness:
“Isolationist” is a term that, by virtue of its persistent imprecision, obscures more than it reveals. By blurring the line between a lack of desire for a certain kind of action and a lack of desire for any kind of action, it distorts our descriptions and skews our inferences. We are far better off utilizing a range of questions to determine, not whether the public is internationalist or isolationist in general, but rather, what costs they would be willing to bear to achieve a particular foreign policy objective and how easy or difficult they think it would be to achieve it.
Matt Duss likewise suspects the word has lost all meaning:
Yes, Senator Paul proposes a more restrained foreign policy than that favored by the American Enterprise Institute. But that’s like saying I favor a more restrained approach to music than Slayer. … Yes, Americans support downsizing our country’s role abroad from radical post-9/11 levels. But it’s dishonest to pretend there is no middle ground between “Let’s invade more countries” and “Let’s pull up the drawbridge.” Despite the warnings of hardline interventionists, the U.S. remains deeply engaged with the international community across a range of issues, and through a range of organizations – economic, humanitarian, cultural, and military.
The Dish 