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In all fairness, I think RP is less a peacenik than he is an old fashioned isolationist, along the lines of Pat Buchanan.

This has a long and storied American history going way back.

Its first big impulse came with the Spanish American War and the Philippine Insurrection. The US quickly defeated Spain, and booted them out of the Philippines; but it then had to deal with the Muslim “Moro Pirates” in its swampy interior. A nasty, protracted and bloody occupation that taught the US a lot about unconventional warfare.

This gave rise to the Anti-Imperialist League, which lasted from 1898-1902, and at its peak claimed 30,000 members. Their big fear was that the US was following Europe’s failed footsteps in becoming a colonial power.

Then when World War I was ongoing, but the US was not yet involved, the anti-war isolationist movement wanted no part of “European wars” between royal houses, but after the US joined the war, using the excuse of “unrestricted submarine warfare”, the anti-war movement pretty much collapsed into something like Code Pink.

However, inspired by the Russian revolution, socialists of the IWW were eventually able to muster a coalition with the labor unions into a large block, which the US government then split up by getting the cooperation of union leader Samuel Gompers.

After the war, the socialists were still active, since socialist-communism didn’t yet have the horrific reputation it has today. And they were able to apply pressure to significantly downgrade the US military and ignore foreign nations and their strife.

But even with World War II, where opposition to the war was heavily suppressed, there is still an undercurrent with the attitude that “If foreigners want to kill other foreigners, let them. Not our problem.”