Once again in America the face of isolationism has come to the forefront of our politics. Today as in the years following the First World War there is a push to have the United States government steer clear of what George Washington said in his farewell address, foreign entanglements. The last time the idea of isolationism came to the front of the body politic as a movement, the country was reeling from the pain of the slaughter of American boys in Europe. A war which a few Americans felt we hadn’t any part to play and felt that we as a country had expended too much blood and treasure in that war. There was a farm depression in the 1920s and an industrial depression in the 1930’s with unemployment reaching up to 25%. When Americans are hurting like this it is a normal reaction to want to recoil from the world stage, take care of our own instead of foreigners who can’t seem to take care of themselves. They become vehemently opposed to helping other nations with food, money, and war materials. Our resources for our people, they say. This prevalence of thought was common in Europe and America in the 1930s regarding the machinations of Adolf Hitler in Czechoslovakia. The British government under Chamberlin thought they could placate by allowing him to annex the Sudetenland and other Germanic cultural areas of Central Europe. The idea was to give him a piece of bread and spare him the loaf. It did not work. By giving Hitler what he wanted in his quest for a new German Reich, we only put off the inevitable, a costly and destructive world war that made us the policeman of the world. A mantle we wear uncomfortably, but wear nonetheless.
Today we are faced with the same exact political scenario. Instead of Hitler we have Valdimir Putin, a former KGB man who wants to bring the boards of the old Soviet Union to prove his worthiness to the Russian people. His authoritarian politics along with a failed incursion into Afghanistan, and his supreme corruption, and cultural suppression (think Pussy Riot), rubbed significant numbers of Russians to oppose him, especially the young. He then invaded Ossetia and started a war with the Ukraine by invading the Russian ethnic sections of this country just as Hitler did. The Ukrainian people have put up a valiant defense of their country with the help of the U.S. and NATO. Once again, the isolationists in this country have threatened to cut off funding to Ukraine leaving the Ukrainians in a bad spot. The isolationists in congress feel that the NATO alliance should step up and finance this war alone, but as we have seen in the past this is just a stop gap measure. Unless the United States can deliver money and arms along with an increased NATO Member spending Putin will not stop at the Ukraine, Poland will be his next target and so goes the repeat of history.
