Meanwhile, America has run up a national debt larger than the entire U.S. economy. Its trade deficits are at record levels. Its borders are being overrun by migrants from all over the world. And its disposition to intervene, engage and fight for democracy has rarely been lower. This paragraph has been tacked onto the foot of Pat Buchanan's insightful analysis almost as an afterthought leaving the unguarded with the impression that our weakness is the exclusive result of our foreign military adventures rather than of our domestic and trade foolishness.
If one asks, which has had the more deleterious effect on America's position as superpower, foreign wars or our domestic spending and trade policies, the question might be close but the answer ultimately is we have weakened ourselves primarily by our spending and squandering at home and by our mindless trade policy abroad.
If we were to stop our international adventurism, if we were to refrain from engaging in Ukraine and elsewhere, we would still be hurtling toward the cliff edge. The problem is our economy but the solution is not simple isolationism. Yes, we must refrain from enervating foreign entanglements just as George Washington warned but we must engage when our national interests are really at stake. And we must be able to do so.
To be able to engage when critically necessary, we must have the economy providing the means. Cure the economy, because coming home alone won't save us.
Put that paragraph at the top of the article.
Yeah, I’d personally blame the trade bits far more than the military adventurism abroad (and in that case, other than the Gulf War, the only true military adventurism we actually engaged in was during the Clinton Years, especially with how CNN literally decided the missions we’d undertake, not to mention, ironically enough, the few instances that actually WOULD warrant an actual military mission like, I don’t know, assassinating Osama bin Laden often ended up aborted randomly by Clinton).
Of course, that said, I also think isolationism is NEVER the answer, and if anything would make our precarious situation even worse. We tried isolationism during the 1930s. Let me put it this way: The USSR despite America’s isolationism during that time [to such an extent that we literally withheld ANY funding to various European countries, including the Germans, causing Nazi Germany to be born as a result] came the closest to actually TURNING us into a proxy of the USSR, especially when most of the State Department, portions of the military, heck, FDR’s own Vice President at the time, Harry Dexter White, were full-blown commies. I also disagree slightly with Washington ultimately regarding foreign entanglements. Personally, I think we should have fought the Jacobins and stopped them, and also made sure we did it WITHOUT siding with the British. That would have gone a long way to actually ENSURING Communism never got a foothold in existence. Thanks to our inaction, not only did the French Revolution, DESPITE the Reign of Terror, Robespierre’s death and Napoleon, ultimately have good PR, it ended up inspiring Communism to be a gorier remake of the Reign of Terror, per Marx’s own admission repeatedly. In one sense, since we failed to actually do a thing to stop the Jacobins even when it became extremely apparent that they were NOT like the Minutemen, we are effectively responsible for Communism being born and widespread.