In 1945 the Japanese thought they might still win the war through sacrifice of their population by ten of their own to every American soldier who might invade. They were undone by a new technology, the atomic bomb.
All the suppositions, all the realities, all of the assumptions were instantly obliterated in a single blast. Today the world is confronted with the possibility not just of atomic attack but of hydrogen attack delivered by ICBM missiles from the other side of the world or from under the sea. Nearly as frightening, biological weapons could wipe out entire civilizations.
The Vikings, the Japanese, and, more recently, Islamicists were not amenable to negotiation or reason, they waged war according to their own lights. The isolation of the monks did not protect them, the insularity of the Japanese availed them nothing, appeasement of militant Islam is sure to fail. Isolationism simply does not work especially when a new technology or a new ideology transforms everything.
To support Donald Trump because he voices some libertarian views is to substitute wishful thinking for clear thinking. The odds are that Donald Trump could not even define libertarianism; his conception of foreign policy is inconsistent, incoherent, and ignorant.
