The Isolationist Case for America’s Cold War Measures

So, I have a question for my more isolationist readers: old, new, and first timers. (And yes, I am aware you exist — there is a high probability that you are a progressive or even some sort of national conservative who shakes their fist at the TV whenever news of American involvement abroad comes up, shouting “This is none of our business! Why are we involved in these foreign shenanigans!”) Let us agree, for the sake of argument, that the United States ought to only get involved in foreign conflicts for the purpose of self-defense. This means America — to the best of her ability, as a natural global superpower — should only be involved in foreign affairs if, and only if, it is directly attacked, threatened, or its sovereignty is violated by some kind of hostile alien force. (Alien in this case meaning foreign). Excluding conspiracy theorists like Alex Jones, I imagine most isolationists would concur with America’s involvement in World War II, at least in the abstract: the Japanese Empire bombed Pearl Harbor, which was seen as a declaration of war, and therefore we were justified in going in and kicking ass. You could bring up FDR’s oil embargo, sure, but one should keep in mind that an oil embargo is simply one country refusing to trade oil with another, and encouraging other countries to avoid trade with that country as well, which is actually completely in line with free trade. In the end, most isolationists would have been on board with waging war against Japan after the country effectively declared war on us.

So, let us dive into a queer alternative history scenario. It is the 1960s and 70s — the era of disco, purple shades, and white guys sporting afros. America decided to pursue the “old school” route of not giving a fuck about foreign affairs after World War II. Instead, going the route of George Washington’s recommendations, it avoids foreign entanglements, so there is no NATO, no SEATO, no backing of anti-communist proxies, no nothing. At most — since, virtually every quote-unquote “isolationist” administration in American history, including Woodrow Wilson’s, upheld the Monroe Doctrine — there might be an unheard of installment of a banana republic or some long-forgotten military occupation in South America or the Caribbean every so often. (Most Americans do not even know they militarily occupied Haiti for nearly two decades in the early 20th century.) Now, I refer to Michael Lind’s Vietnam: The Necessary War for this. But during the 60s and 70s, you had the following:

• North Vietnam, an ally of the Soviet Union, attempting to reunify with their Southern counterpart.
• Sukarno, who is considered a national hero in Indonesia today, was a key ally of the Soviet Union. Suharto — a genocidal brute and CIA sweetheart — tries but fails to overthrow Sukarno.
• India was an important ally of the Soviet Union as well. (And without American military aid, I doubt they would have been able to resist Indian aggression so well.)
• Despite the Sino-Soviet Split which began in 1961, the two countries could be best described as frenemies. Nixon and Kissinger capitalized on the Split in the 70s, but since this is an isolationist America; so, this never would have happened.
• Cambodia is ruled by a corrupt monarchy. Given that in our timeline Vietnam invaded them to stabilize the region, I could easily see a scenario where they do the same to install a communist puppet state in the late 70s. And without American and Chinese protest.
• This actually happened after the Fall of Saigon in the 70s: countries like Japan, France, and other American “allies”, out of desperation, pursued détente with the Soviet Union.
• While a few conservative countries like Spain and Portugal may resist cooperating with the Soviet Union, with enough diplomatic and economic pressures they may fall in line.

So, for all intents and purposes, the Soviet Union exerts hegemonic control from the Mondego River in Portugal all the way to the Kapuas River in Indonesia. An actual Eurasian empire. Even in the areas I did not mention, proletarian revolutions — whether they be Christian socialists or Marxist-Leninists — would have likely drastically increased in number; they would have been emboldened by the successes of similar efforts globally and it is almost guaranteed the ideologically driven Kremlin would have given them the greenlight (with guns, ammunition, and maybe even food for those pesky, inevitable famines to boot!).

So, if you are an isolationist reading all this, you might ask “Wait, why does this matter to me? I can still start a family. I can get a job. I can go to school without the fear my son will die in some endless war. And we have roads full of potholes and rural areas without Wi-Fi right here, right now! So if we have bigger fish to fry at home, why does it matter if the Soviet Union supposedly has so much control over the world?” Well, my solipsistic friend, I would like to introduce you to a British scholar named Sir Halford John Mackinder. He formulated what we call the “Heartland Theory.”

In his magnum opus The Geographical Pivot of History, which you can find a brief summary of here, he basically argues that Eastern Europe and Central Asia constituted “the Heartland.” If a single country were to dominate the Heartland — this mass of land with an abundance of natural resources, arable land, diverse ecosystems, and a direct link to the Pacific Ocean (and all that implies) — it would essentially control the World Island, which includes Western Europe, Asia, Africa, and (according to the German Conservative Revolutionaries who agreed with Mackinder’s analysis), the Americas. In other words: It would achieve world domination. Although some scholars have pedantically criticized this theory for underestimating the importance of railroads, airplanes, and other technological advances which blur the line between “sea power” and “land power,” great thinkers like Aleksandr Dugin continue to use it because it is fundamentally axiomatic, even in a 21st century context. Think of it this way: let us go back to the described hypothetical where the Soviet Union dominates Western Europe all the way to Indochina (and then some). The communist regime would have unparalleled access to:

• Some of the globe’s largest and most prolific coal-producing regions, including Kazakhstan, a unified Korea under the Kim dynasty, and Japan, which are all significant contributors to the global coal market.
• The planet’s principal and most influential oil and natural gas producers, such as Iran, Kuwait, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia, which collectively dominate the energy sector.
• The extensive and diverse iron ore deposits and valuable ores found in China, India, Iran, Kazakhstan, and Korea, providing crucial raw materials for industrial processes.
• The Pacific Ocean’s boundless marine biodiversity and fertile arable land, ensuring comprehensive and self-sufficient autarky in food production and distribution, crucial for sustaining a large population.
• Well over a billion diligent and industrious individuals, contributing a massive and hard working labor force as well as a thriving intelligentsia.
• Valuable cash crops such as tea, rubber, palm oil, coconuts, and sugar cane, facilitating dominance in global markets through the strategic management of food surpluses.
• Nations that are exceptionally well-suited for large-scale and highly productive industrial activities, enhancing economic and manufacturing capabilities.
• Uranium sources from France and Spain, offering critical materials for nuclear energy and defense.
• Titanium, molybdenum, and vanadium resources from Norway and Finland, essential for advanced technological and industrial applications.
• The most heavily industrialized and technologically sophisticated countries on Earth, even by mid-20th century standards, represent the pinnacle of industrial and technological development.

Cold War-era politics in the mid-1970s (source)

Michael Lind also brought up in his book that the Soviet economy relied heavily on trade with allies and the economic exploitation of satellite states. In fact, it was Reagan’s rollback of communism in the 80s which helped accelerate the collapse of the Soviet economy. If we are to take Lind at his word with the above facts, it is safe to say the Kremlin would have been able to maintain its shitty economic model for a long time and probably would have avoided balkanization and Shock Therapy in the 1990s.

So, how would American sovereignty be threatened in this situation? Well, for one, even if we tried to uphold the Monroe Doctrine, I have my doubts America could maintain dominance in that continent under this predicament. The Soviet Union did support leftists in South America throughout the Cold War. (Often taking advantage of America’s reluctance to do what is necessary to ensure the survival of puppet states, such as banana republics.) It would have had more than enough resources to keep trying until they won. This means America would be surrounded by enemies. Even Canada would be untrustworthy. No matter how much maple syrup they manufacture and hockey games they win, they would still be dependent on Britain, and Britain in this scenario would have likely folded to Soviet influence. Especially as Labour, the social-democratic party, was still in charge of the British government in the 1960s and 70s. Meaning that Canada might as well be a Soviet proxy. I almost forgot Greenland, which is also rich in natural resources. I find it implausible the Soviets would have missed out on building new mines there once the opportunity was available. At this point, the entire world is basically against you. Can you really have any meaningful sovereignty in this situation? Or do you have to bend over for every single country like a desperate hooker in the hopes of getting breadcrumbs? And do you really think the Soviet Union would have not used its global domination to eventually force the country to embrace some variety of socialism?

My dear reader, you might take your country’s sovereignty for granted. But doing so is to your own detriment. If America lost its sovereignty, you, your friends, your family, and other loved ones would have no safety. The interests of your country would be bound to the interests of another nation. Everything you say and do — everything you work for — is for the benefit of some foreign entity. Imagine the constant state of feeling violated and humiliated living under colonization many Africans must have felt during the era of European colonialism. That would be the reality for you under this realistic scenario. Furthermore, you simply would not be safe. With or without nuclear weapons, the Soviet Union would very much have the means to pressure us into submission through a combination of both hard power (tanks, missiles, and guns) and soft power (control over trade routes and other diplomatic tools). And they did invade disobedient puppets before. You would be a slave.

Now, I know what you are thinking: “We could just become self-sufficient! We do not need anybody else in the world to be free! Once we focus inwardly on ourselves, we can resist any threat to our sovereignty.” I sympathize with this view. In fact, I do believe we should be self-sufficient — or autarkic, if you will — in several key industries; this would include, though certainly not limited to, biopharmaceuticals, military technology, and semiconductor manufacturing. But I am sorry, but total autarky is a fantasy. Even if we did aim for it after World War II, the Soviet Union would have enough geopolitical power to give us the middle finger. Why do you think that we choose to import oil and natural gas and not produce it ourselves, despite having the means to do so? Because it is wildly inefficient to handle it on our own. The production costs associated with complete autarky in this area would be astronomically high, leading to runaway inflation. And without the means to keep our cars up and running, we are boned. It is simply more efficient to trade with other oil-rich nations like Saudi Arabia. I will not get into comparative advantage or how much America benefits from “working with” the Third World, as I have written about it in the past. All I can say is: true American autarky — at least the kind necessary for the United States to remain a fully sovereign nation in the face of a globe dominated by Soviet allies and puppet states — is about as likely as living in a pacifist utopia dominated by unicorns.

This is a lot to take in, I imagine, because I might have just destroyed your entire worldview. But I want you to think of a hypothetical situation.

Imagine you were a lover of machine guns. (Hell, some of you likely are.) One day, across the street, a loud house party suddenly goes awry; a crazy maniac, wielding an AK-47, takes control of the situation, holding everyone hostage. Paranoid about you being the reincarnation of his abusive mother, he decides to take shots at you and your God-loving family. And he has plenty of magazines. If you do not grab your stockpile and fire back, you and your family might perish. But once things go silent and the police arrive an hour later, you realize you have more than just the maniac’s blood on your hands: There was collateral. A bunch of teenagers who just wanted to smoke weed at a dance party succumbed to your bullet wounds. More people died from you defending yourself than would have died had you, your spouse, and children “taken one for the team.” But if you think about it for just a few minutes, you realize what you did was completely in self-defense and your actions were not only proportionate, it was justified to keep yourself and your loved ones alive and healthy.

So, when you look at some of America’s “morally questionable” actions — like the CIA’s role in overthrowing Mosadegh in Iran, helping Suharto eradicate the presence of communists in Indonesia, backing Pakistan’s war against India in 1971, supporting right-wing terrorist organizations in Italy during the Years of Lead, bombing Cambodia back into the Stone Age, spending years defending the corrupt Catholic government in South Vietnam, and almost entering a nuclear war over the fate of the Korean peninsula — I want you to remember that hypothetical. Because, objectively, the triumph of the Soviet Union that would have happened had America “minded its own business” would have spelled the end of American sovereignty. The Soviet Union would be just as much of a threat to you and your family as that maniac shooter. It might be difficult to apprehend since these issues happen an ocean apart from us. But if defending yourself against the maniac shooter was justified, virtually every thing America did to thwart Soviet interests in Eurasia was also justified: It was all self-defense. Now, this may be an uncomfortable realization for you. But I hope you are now more open to a foreign policy that actively prioritizes American interests, and not isolationism for isolationism’s sake.

And if you disagree, I have to ask: Are you an isolationist because you care about your fellow Americans, or are you an isolationist because you have ulterior motives?