Epoch Times - Why Isolationists and Interventionists Are Both Wrong

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Sept. 8, 2025 - Epoch Times

23:01

Why Isolationists and Interventionists Are Both Wrong | Yoram Hazony

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	The theory is that there's only two types of foreign policy, which the American media constantly reinforces.
	I don't think the administration buys that.
	Did American strategic missteps ultimately empower Tehran and Beijing?
	What do both isolationists and interventionists get wrong?
	And how is Trump defying these old foreign policy labels?
	In this episode, I sit down with political theorist and philosopher Yuram Hazzoni.
	He recently released a revised edition of his 2018 seminal work, The Virtue of Nationalism.
	He is also the founder of the NATCON Conference, which is meeting in Washington, D.C. early next week.
	The old American, British, European value of having independent nations was eliminated after World War II through this despicable maneuver of allowing Hitler to teach us political theory.
	And the result was fueling the move towards eliminating borders.
	This is American Thought Leaders, and I'm Jania Kellek.
	Yuram Hazoni, so good to have you back on American Thought Leaders.
	Good morning.
	My pleasure, Jan.
	So I really want to talk to you about Trump's foreign policy.
	After we saw the reactions to his actions in Iran, there's a kind of almost like a schism among his supporters.
	What happened, and what is Trump's foreign policy?
	Well, there's a lot of confusion about it, which stems from a very old misperception about foreign policy, which the American media constantly reinforces.
	The theory is that there's only two types of foreign policy.
	One of them is isolationist, which means the U.S. basically has no real significant interests in Europe, the Middle East, South Asia, wherever.
	And therefore, whenever there's trouble anywhere, the prescription is supposedly to stay out of it.
	So there's that.
	And then opposed to that is neoconservatism, the neocons, sometimes also called neoliberalism, confusingly.
	But whatever you call this, this theory, the liberal internationalist theory, is the one that says anytime anything happens anywhere, whether it's Ukraine or Iran or Taiwan or the Red Sea, anywhere, according to the liberal internationalist theory, the United States has primary responsibility for securing just about everything on Earth.
	And the problem with both of these theories is that they don't work.
	I mean, the neoconservative theory, that's the one that ended up miring the United States in interventions in an endless series of conflicts.
	Iraq, Afghanistan, but also Libya, Yemen, Syria, Egypt, the change of government, but also in Europe, Ukraine, Georgia, Serbia.
	Most of the public, at least the public that's supported Donald Trump and the Trump fans ticket and brought them to power, correctly sees these decades of American hyper-interventionism all over Europe and the Middle East and South Asia as a tragic mistake, an incredible waste of resources and human life and without that much to show for it.
	So if you have to choose between A hyperactive interventionist liberal internationalism.
	That's one choice.
	And the only alternative is the United States should do nothing and let the world just go along its course.
	And if the Chinese want to take over, fine.
	If that's the choice, there's an awful lot of people who are going to choose the second one because we've already done the first one.
	I don't think that President Trump or any of the principal members of his team, Vice President Vance, Secretary of State Rubio, and the top 20 people beyond them, I don't think that they see the world through the lens of that dichotomy.
	Even though the media, both the mainstream liberal media and also a lot of the media on the right, constantly talk in terms of that dichotomy, I don't think the administration buys that.
	And in fact, there has been, by this point, a tradition of how to talk about Trump's foreign policy.
	In 2019, Mike Anton, who was in the first administration and is now an important figure in the State Department, he coined a phrase, the Trump doctrine.
	And I think that his description was accurate.
	I recently commented on it in an essay that I wrote on the subject.
	The Trump doctrine, roughly, begins with the assessment that the United States has to prioritize in thinking about foreign policy.
	It can't be everywhere.
	It can't invest its resources in every arena at all times, and especially just cognitively.
	The president and the administration cannot focus on all things simultaneously.
	And so there's one security challenge which no other country on earth can deal with other than the United States, and that's China.
	So the Trump doctrine begins by recognizing that China is the primary concern for Americans.
	And it goes from there to saying, well, so what should we do?
	Should we just ignore the rest of the world?
	Or is there an alternative?
	And the alternative that's been developed under this Trump doctrine is to seek regional allies, independent countries, that can be empowered to secure themselves, to defend themselves, and secure their regions.
	In that way, if the United States allies with such powers, then the U.S. doesn't have to be taking primary responsibility for the security of Europe.
	So let's say, if countries like Britain and Poland would shift from being effectively protectorates of the United States, they would dramatically increase their investment,
	both financially and culturally, in remilitarization, re-establishing themselves as powers that can be relied upon to take primary responsibility for a crisis like Ukraine, then the United States would not have to be directly involved in it.
	So that is what we see Trump doing in the Middle East, where his theory is that you can create a security architecture, an alliance built on an alliance between Israel's military abilities and technological abilities, ally that,
	marry that to the wealth and the prestige of the Gulf states.
	And between them, they can create an alliance system that's capable of taking care of Iran, that's capable of taking care of the Red Sea, that's capable of taking care of security issues in general, so that the United States doesn't have to do it.
	So that is the Trump doctrine.
	And it is a third alternative to liberal internationalism and isolationism.
	But among Trump's supporters, there are at least some who are expecting non-involvement in the world entirely.
	Like we just shouldn't be there, meaning why is Trump trying to build an alliance system in Europe that can defend Europe?
	Why is he trying to build an alliance system in the Middle East or in South Asia that can secure those regions?
	He should just ignore them.
	And it's been a pretty wild debate.
	The concept of peace through strength, I think, some people just view as militarism.
	Yeah, I'm not sure exactly what the word militarism means.
	I mean, people use it different.
	Well, you're going to, you know, you saw during the time when the Iran strikes were planned and so forth, this is World War III because the military action is being taken.
	We're starting a new war.
	It's World War III.
	Right.
	I think the camp that's being called isolationist, and they themselves are now calling themselves restrainers, which is also not accurate.
	I actually think that the most accurate term is pacifist.
	The question of whether the use of military power is something to be avoided at all times, at all costs, that leads you into the old pacifism discussion.
	And those of your viewers who are a little bit older, like me, remember what the anti-war movement was during the 1970s and 1980s.
	It's the anti-war movement.
	It was a pacifist movement.
	It was associated with the Democratic Party.
	I mean, it really, really began with, you know, George McGovern and the Vietnam War.
	But by the time that, you know, that Reagan and Thatcher are around, the Vietnam War is long gone.
	And the issue was whether the United States should be challenging the Soviet Union.
	And the debate was between liberal pacifists who made all the same exact arguments, you know, that somebody like, you know, Dave Smith just is a liberal pacifist.
	He just is George McGovern.
	If you're a pacifist, your intuition is to say, you know, what's the point of having any war since every time there's military action, you're always killing innocent people.
	So there's this kind of implication that the use of military force is prima facie always wrong.
	Because, you know, it's okay as long as you don't harm anybody, but you always harm somebody who didn't deserve to be harmed.
	That old argument in which the Reagan administration and Thatcher and her people and Pope John Paul II, there was this strong leadership that supported confrontation with the Soviet Union, which was not primarily direct military confrontation, but it did involve a dramatic military buildup.
	It involved destabilizing technologies like the Strategic Defense Initiative.
	It involved a willingness to risk war in order to deter and ultimately defeat the Soviet Union.
	And, you know, that's something I think that President Trump remembers those years, you know, just like we do, just like the older audience does.
	And I think he sees it as a model.
	President Reagan succeeded in defeating America's greatest foes without war because of the fact that he was, the slogan, peace through strength, which was attached to let's make America great again.
	Both of those slogans were Reagan slogans.
	And they, that policy worked.
	It succeeded in defeating the enemy, eliminating a horrific threat to America, but without going and invading, you know, a dozen foreign countries.
	I mean, the largest thing that Reagan directly invaded was Grenada.
	You know, it was a two-week operation.
	That's what the Trump administration looks like right now.
	It is not, you know, anti-war in the sense, in the pacifist sense.
	They're willing to fight when necessary.
	But the goal is to minimize the direct reliance on force and to maximize the reliance on deterrence and diplomacy.
	And deterrence and diplomacy means constructing, constructing alliances that are capable of, that are strong enough to deter America's rivals and enemies.
	Yoram, we're going to take a quick break right now.
	And folks, we're going to be right back.
	And we're back with Yoram Hazoni, author of The Virtue of Nationalism.
	This idea of imperialism, right, is often conflated with the idea of nationalism.
	But you would argue they're, you know, completely different things.
	Yes, I think nationalism and imperialism are actually opposite things.
	Nationalism is a, it's a theory of political order.
	It's a theory that says that the world is governed best when there are many independent nations.
	And they'll do things their way.
	And they'll try to improve their lives according to their lights.
	That, that's nationalism.
	That view is the opposite of imperialism, which is a view that says, no, peace and prosperity will come to the world when there's a global governance, when, when, when there's a single elite with a single set of principles and values.
	And those are imposed by soft power, if necessary, by war on as much of the globe as possible.
	When my book, The Virtue of Nationalism, when it was published in 2018, people were telling us that, you know, Trump and Brexit, that these are, you know, it's some kind of mental illness.
	It's, it's a throwback to barbarism or, you know, that Trump doesn't believe anything.
	He doesn't stand for anything.
	So now it's seven years later.
	The second edition of the book has come out.
	And I'm grateful to my, my publisher for, for allowing this expanded and updated edition of the book.
	Now we know that, that the first edition of the book was correct.
	There, there actually is a political theory of nationalism.
	And there is a, a, a history, you know, going, going all the way back to the Bible, a history of nationalism in, in the West that has contributed a great deal of, of, of positive things.
	And, and, and, and it's the opposite of imperialism.
	And why, why do people, you know, confuse them?
	It's actually pretty simple.
	Adolf Hitler wrote a book called Mein Kampf, which I don't recommend to your readers.
	I don't suggest people read it, but if they did read it, what they would see is that Hitler's worldview is, is what, what you could call a biological imperialism.
	Um, there, there, he, he, he's concerned with, uh, with races as the fundamental building block of politics, the different races competing with one another.
	And, uh, and, uh, the goal is for, you know, the, the highest race, the, the, the master race to become Lord of the earth.
	This is, that, that's a quote from Mein Kampf, Lord of the earth and mistress of the globe.
	That, that's his theory.
	Does that theory leave any room for, for nationalism, for a world of independent nations?
	No.
	He writes about independent nations.
	And he says this is, this is a, an, an effete corruption of politics is to, to, to, to have nations recognizing one another and allowing one another to be independent.
	He has no interest in that at all.
	So what's the shtick here?
	The shtick is that, that Hitler thought that it would be convenient to take the word nationalism, which had meant a world of independent nations and to, to, to, I guess today people say to appropriate it.
	So he appropriated the word nationalism for himself.
	Instead of saying, I'm a biological imperialist, which he was, he says, no, I'm a nationalist.
	The content is biological imperialism, but the word is nationalism.
	After World War II, there, there, there was this, a cultural revolution in, in, in, in America that replaced the old, you know, Protestant Christian America with, with, with liberalism.
	Like eventually they invented the term liberal democracy, the, the, the, the liberals allowed the Nazis to take over the word nationalism.
	You can say allowed, maybe they did it on purpose, whatever.
	The, the, the result was post-World War II liberal and, uh, liberal and Marxist writers pounced on this opportunity to say, look, nationalism is, you know, it's, it's, it's the ultimate evil.
	It's the devil itself because Hitler used that word.
	And the, the result was fueling the move towards eliminating borders.
	And so, you know, there was the, the, the, Hitler was blamed for the nation state.
	You know, like the people, people didn't say, uh, George Washington and John Adams and, and Alexander Hamilton, those are nationalists.
	They, they, they, they, they declared the independence of, uh, of an American nation.
	They united the disparate tribes, the 13 colonies, and, and, uh, built them up as a, a new independent national state.
	And instead of saying, wow, look, that's a, that's a good thing.
	We should want that for other peoples, you know, like, like, uh, Greek independence and Polish independence and, and Indian independence and the independence of the Jews.
	I mean, that, that was like the old nationalism is, is allow peoples to be free, the freedom of nations.
	And instead, after World War II, um, the word nationalism was, um, pushed into use by the 1960s, by intellectuals, liberal and Marxist, and turned into a synonym for, uh, for Nazism.
	So then the argument turns into, well, we're going to, you know, we're going to go ahead and start eliminating all the borders, uh, among nations and having global governance.
	Um, there was, um, there was a bit of that in the 1960s through the 1980s, but it really gets off the ground in 1990 when they finally got rid of Thatcher and Reagan, who were both nationalists.
	And, uh, uh, and then said, that's it.
	Like, the moment's come.
	European Union, we're, we're, we're, we're going to erase all the borders.
	One, uh, new world order.
	George H.W. Bush called it the new world order, where there's only going to be one law for all nations.
	And anybody who opposed it is like a Nazi.
	You say you want nationals, you want independent nations, so you're some kind of Nazi.
	Now, that was never true.
	It was never fair.
	It's, if, if, if it's possible to, uh, speak about a, um, a exploitation of, uh, a redefined word for the sake of evil ends, that's what happened.
	It's that the old, uh, um, American, British, you know, uh, European value of having independent nations, um, was eliminated after World War II through this, um, despicable maneuver of allowing Hitler to teach us political theory.
	Hmm, I mean, that's fascinating.
	Also, this redefinition of words, convenient redefinition of words to mean sometimes the exact opposite of, of, of, of what they originally meant without the populace realizing that, that, that has happened.
	It seems to be like a common Marxist and neo-Marxist, uh, ploy.
	It turns out if you can get everybody to use the new definition, you can change what everybody's thinking.
	I, I mean, you know, today it's not such a, uh, you know, a brilliant new insight.
	You know, Orwell was, you know, famous for, for describing this in, in 1984, the, the, the way that new speak, it changes the way people are able to think because you can only think using the words you have.
	Um, um, not being able to use the word nationalism is a particularly striking example because if you think about it, let's say that your view is the old view.
	You support a world of independent nations.
	You think that's the best political order.
	So if you can't use the word nationalism because nationalism means Nazism, uh, then what word would you use to describe that?
	You can't use patriotism because the word patriotism only means, you know, I love my country.
	Nationalism is a theory of political order.
	And if you don't have the word nationalism, then you, you don't have any way of describing it.
	Well, Yoram Hazoni, such a pleasure to have had you on again.
	Thanks for having me.

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