The Washington-based Republican Party has reverted to isolationist tendencies that are harmful to U.S. national security. This variant of isolationism is very different than the kind the Grand Old Party practiced during the years between the First and Second World War, but it has the same practical effect of distancing the United States from its international partners. Back in the 1920s and 1930s, senior figures in the Republican Party sought to keep the United States away from Europe’s troubles by opposing military preparedness measures. Now, many Republican Senators and Representatives are all for beefing up defense spending and inserting U.S. forces into trouble spots – while eschewing the value of diplomacy. This instinct has been highlighted on the Iran deal. Military options and diplomacy are both needed for hard cases. Favoring the former while disparaging the latter constitutes a new form of isolationism, creating growing distances between Washington and most of America’s friends and allies who value diplomatic settlements over kinetic options.
Skepticism with foreign engagement has a long and distinguished pedigree, dating back to George Washington’s 1796 Farewell Address, which still resonates strongly today regarding U.S. ties to Israel. Washington warned that,
“a passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils. Sympathy for the favorite nation, facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where no real common interest exists, and infusing into one the enmities of the other, betrays the former into a participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter without adequate inducement or justification. It leads also to concessions to the favorite nation of privileges denied to others, which is apt doubly to injure the nation making the concessions by unnecessarily parting with what ought to have been retained, and by exciting jealousy, ill will, and a deposition to retaliate in the parties from whom equal privileges are withheld.”
Washington’s advice against entangling alliances made some sense for a new Republic 220 years ago, although his successors found foreign help as useful as General Washington did when dealing with more powerful states. Once the United States became a world power at the turn of the next century, isolationism ceased to serve U.S. national-security interests. But this was a hard sell after the carnage of the First World War as Germany and Japan prepared for war in the 1930s.
In 1940, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt recruited two internationally-minded Republicans – Henry L. Stimson and Frank Knox – to serve as his Secretaries of War and the Navy. Part of their job descriptions was to help persuade Republicans on Capitol Hill to slough off their isolationist tendencies and to prepare the country for the likelihood of war in Europe and the Pacific. A crucial test came in 1941, with the need to renew the 1940 Selective Training and Service Act. The original Act limited tours of duty for new recruits to twelve months. The Congress also prohibited draftees from serving outside of the Western Hemisphere, with the exception of U.S. possessions abroad.
Geoffrey Wilson of Ploughshares helped me with research on how FDR and his allies on Capitol Hill barely won the battle to extend the draft by a single vote in the House of Representatives. Capitol Hill was then a bulwark of Republican isolationism, led by Senators Robert A. Taft of Ohio, Gerald Nye of North Dakota, and Hiram Johnson of California. Republican isolationists drew strength from some Democrats, religious and labor leaders, and Progressives who wanted to remain focused on domestic needs.
In Congressional debate over extending the draft, one of the arguments used by Senator Taft and others was that forced enlistment was “anti-democratic:”
“I deny that it has anything to do with democracy… It is far more typical of totalitarian nations than of democratic nations. The theory behind it leads directly to totalitarianism. It is absolutely opposed to the principles of individual liberty which have always been considered a part of American democracy… In this moment of excitement and hysteria, do not break down the fundamental principles of the American Republic. Do not overestimate the emergency and sink all the principles we love in the slough of totalitarian defense.”
On August 12th, less than four months before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the U.S. House of Representatives voted to extend the draft. The tally was 210-209 when House Speaker Sam Rayburn banged his gavel to end the voting before latecomers and vote-switchers could reverse this result.
After the Second World War, isolationism was defeated as soundly as Germany and Japan. Republicans joined Democrats in building institutions for U.S. international engagement. When the Cold War descended on a divided Europe, the formation of purposefully entangling alliances received bipartisan support. The advent of the Bomb also prompted more domestic cohesion than division. Agreements with “the Communist menace” to contain nuclear testing and the arms race also began with bipartisan support. Only eight Republicans voted against the 1963 Limited Test Ban Treaty negotiated in the Kennedy administration; only one Conservative Republican Senator voted against the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.
Beginning in the 1970s, this bipartisan coalition frayed badly. The Clinton Administration’s efforts to secure the Senate’s consent to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty were rejected. The ABM Treaty lasted three decades before the George W. Bush Administration announced U.S. withdrawal. Arms reduction treaties gained bipartisan support during the Reagan and Bush Administrations, but these lopsided votes reflected the Soviet Union’s decline and dissolution. Republican disaffection returned when Vladimir Putin moved to regain lost ground. A national consensus following the 9/11 attacks on U.S. soil was quickly dissipated, unlike the domestic response to Pearl Harbor. The end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union made it easier for the United States to intervene in Afghanistan and Iraq; when these wars proved unworthy of the immense sacrifices made, domestic divisions grew. Most Republicans on Capitol Hill believed that better outcomes could be secured with greater investments in the use of force, while most Democrats became wary of risking even more U.S. blood and treasure. Meanwhile, redistricting, gerrymandering, and unlimited campaign cash produced a record number of one-party districts and record levels of partisanship.
Foreign and national security policy is hamstrung by partisanship, which is why President Obama has opted for executive agreements and other workarounds, like the Iran deal. His successors will, too. Conventional wisdom holds that a Republican President will return the GOP back to its moorings of diplomatic engagement and deal-making, but I have my doubts. Not one Republican Senator was ready to support the Iran deal and majorities of the Republican caucus in the House and Senate are implacably opposed to agreements that constrain U.S. nuclear capabilities. A future Republican President will therefore be beholden to Democratic support – if he or she wants to negotiate agreements with bad actors and can recruit senior officials who are so inclined. This won’t be easy: Those waiting in line for Cabinet positions and to become under- and assistant secretaries in a future Republican administration have built their careers fighting U.S. deal-making. There is no Paul Nitze, Brent Scowcroft, or George Shultz waiting in the wings.
The Washington D.C.-based Republican Party has lost its way, just as it did in the 1920s and 1930s. Most, but not all, Republicans on Capitol Hill are instinctively against diplomatic engagement in hard cases, and are inclined to rely on military force to improve outcomes. Without the preference for diplomacy over force, U.S. leadership is not sustainable. An unbalanced approach that denigrates deal-making separates the United States from almost all of its friends and allies – just like the old-fashioned kind of isolationism Republicans practiced between the First and Second World Wars.