Epoch Times - Why Isolationists and Interventionists Are Both Wrong

All Episodes

Previous Next

Sept. 8, 2025 - Epoch Times

23:05

Why Isolationists and Interventionists Are Both Wrong | Yoram Hazony

Large

Audio Only |

Scroll

Time	Text
	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 Yorim Hazoni.
	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 Janny Kelleck.
	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, the there's a lot of confusion about it, which stems from a very old um misperception about foreign policy, which which the American media constantly reinforces.
	The theory is that there's only two types of foreign policy.
	One of them is, you know, isolationist, which means the U.S. basically has no in no real significant interests in Europe, the Middle East, South Asia, wherever, uh, and and therefore whenever there's trouble anywhere, the the uh uh the prescription is supposedly to stay out of it.
	So there's that, and then opposed to that is ne neoconservatism, the neocons, uh sometimes also called neoliberalism confusingly.
	But uh whatever you call this, this theory, the liberal internationalist theory, is the one that says anytime anything happens anywhere, you know, whether whether it's Ukraine or Iran or uh Taiwan or the Red Sea, anywhere, according to the liberal internationalist theory, the United States has primary responsibility for securing you know just about everything on Earth.
	And um the the problem with both of these theories is that they don't work.
	I mean, the the the uh neoconservative theory, that's the one that ended up miring the United States in interventions in an endless series of uh of conflicts.
	Uh Iraq, Afghanistan, uh, but also Libya, Yemen, uh Syria, uh Egypt, the change of government, but also in Europe, Ukraine, Georgia, Serbia, most of the public,
	at least the public that's uh supported Donald Trump uh and and uh the Trump fans ticket and brought them to power uh is correctly sees these uh decades of American hyper-interventionism all over uh Europe and the Middle East and and South Asia as uh as a tragic mistake, uh uh uh uh uh uh an incredible waste of of resources and human life and and without that much to show for it.
	So if you have to choose between a uh uh uh a a hyperactive interventionist um uh liberal internationalism, that's one choice.
	And the only alternative is the United States should do nothing and let the world, you know, 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 I I don't think that that uh President Trump or any of the principal members of his team, Vice President Vance, Secretary of State Rubio, and the the 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 at the 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 is begins with the with the assessment that the United States has to prioritize in 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 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's the primary concern for Americans.
	And it goes from there to saying, well, so what should we do?
	Should we uh just ignore the rest of the world?
	Um or is there an alternative?
	And the alternative that's been developed under this Trump doctrine is to uh to seek regional allies, uh independent countries that can be empowered to secure themselves, to defend themselves and secure their regions in that way,
	uh if the United States allies with such powers, then the U.S. doesn't have to be taking primary responsibility for uh for the security of of Europe.
	So let's say if countries like uh Britain and Poland uh would shift from being effectively protectorates of the United States, they would uh increase dramatically increase their investment both financially and culturally uh in in a uh in remilitz remilitarization,
	re uh uh re-establishing themselves as as powers that can be uh relied upon to take primary responsibility for for a crisis like Ukraine, then the United States would not have to be directly involved in it.
	Um so th that is what we see uh Trump doing uh in the Middle East, where his theory is uh that you can create a security architecture, uh an alliance built on an alliance between Israel's um military abilities and technological abilities,
	uh, marry that to uh the wealth and the prestige of the Gulf states, and between them they can they can um uh create a a uh uh 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 of uh security issues in general, so that the United States doesn't have to do it.
	So that that is the Trump doctrine, and it is a third alternative to uh to um liberal internationalism and isolationism.
	But uh among Trump's uh supporters, there are uh at least at least some who are expecting uh non-involvement in the world entirely, like uh you know, like we just shouldn't be there, meaning um w wh why is Trump trying to build an uh alliance system uh in uh in in in Europe that can defend Europe?
	Why is he trying to build an alliance system in in the Middle East or in South Asia that can secure those regions, he should just ignore them and uh it's been uh a pretty wild debate.
	The the concept of peace through strength, I think some people just view as militarism.
	Yeah, I'm I'm I I'm not sure exactly what the word militarism means.
	I mean people use it different different ways.
	Trevor Burrus Well you're going to you know you you keep you you you saw during the uh uh the time when the Iran strikes were planned and so forth this is World War III because the military action is being taken and 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 uh 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.
	The anti-war movement, it was a pacifist movement.
	It was associated with the Democratic Party.
	I mean, it really began with 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.
	the debate was between um liberal pacifists who made all the same exact arguments you know that somebody like you know d 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 so th there's this kind of um n implication that the use of military force is prima facie always wrong because you know it's it's okay as long as you don't harm anybody, but you always harm somebody who who didn't deserve to be harmed.
	And 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, 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.
	And those both of those slogans were Reagan slogans.
	And and they that policy worked.
	It succeeded in defeating the enemy, eliminating the enemy.
	a horrific tr threat to to America but without in going and invading you know a dozen foreign countries.
	I mean the the the largest thing that Reagan directly invaded was Grenada.
	You know it was a two-week operation.
	That's what that's what the Trump administration looks like right now.
	It is not anti-war 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 alliances 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.
	you we're back with Yoram Hazzoni, author of The Virtue of Nationalism.
	This idea of imperialism, right, is often conflated with the idea of nationalism.
	And but you would argue they're you know completely completely different things.
	Yes I think I think nationalism and imperialism are are actually opposite things nationalism is a it's a theory of political order.
	It's a 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 global governance, when when when there's a a single um 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 were telling us that Trump and Brexit that these are you know it it's it's some kind of mental illness it's it's a a a throwback to barbarism or or it you know that the 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 publisher for allowing this expanded and updated edition of the book.
	Now we know that the first edition of the book was correct.
	There actually is a political theory of nationalism, and there is a history, going all the way back to the Bible, a history of nationalism in the West.
	that has contributed a great deal of of of positive things and um and it's the opposite of imperialism.
	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 what you could call a biological imperialism.
	He's concerned with races as the fundamental building block of politics, the different races competing with one another.
	And the goal is for the highest race, the master race, to become lord of the earth.
	That's a quote from Mein Kampf.
	Lord of the earth and mistress of the globe.
	That's his theory.
	Does that theory leave any room for nationalism, for a world of independent nations?
	No.
	He writes about independent nations.
	And he says this is an effete corruption of politics is to, to to for to have nations recognizing one another and allowing one another to be independent he has no interest that in that at all so what's the stick 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 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 uh there there was this uh a cultural revolution uh in in in in America that replaced the old you know Protestant Christian America uh with with uh with uh liberalism like eventually they invented the term liberal democracy the the The liberals allowed the Nazis to take over the word nationalism.
	You could say aloud, maybe they did it on purpose.
	Whatever.
	The result was post-World War II, liberal and liberal and Marxist writers pounced on this opportunity to say, look, nationalism is, you know, 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.
	In other words, the the uh 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 declared the independence of uh of an American nation, they uh 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 uh Greek independence and Polish independence and and Indian independence and the independence of the Jews.
	I mean, 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 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 gonna, you know, we're gonna go ahead and start eliminating all the borders uh among nations and having global governance.
	Um there was a bit of that in the 1960s through the 1980s, but it really gets off the ground in 1990 when they get 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 gonna erase all the borders.
	One uh new world order, George H. W. Bush called it the new world order, where there's only gonna be one law for all nations, and anybody who opposed it is like a Nazi.
	You say you want nationals and you want independent nations, so you're some kind of Nazi.
	Now that was never true.
	It was never fair.
	It's i 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, is that the old uh um American, British, you know, uh European value of having independent nations was eliminated after World War II through this despicable maneuver of allowing Hitler to teach us political theory.
	I mean that's fascinating.
	Also this redefinition of words, convenient redefinition of words to mean sometimes the exact opposite of of what they originally meant, without the populace realizing that that that has happened.
	It seems to be like a common and Marxist and neo-Marxist uh ploy.
	It turns out if you can get everybody to use the new definition, you can change the what everybody's thinking.
	I mean, you know, it today it's not such a uh you know a brilliant new insight, you know, or Orwell was you know famous for for uh describing this in in 1984, the the the way that newspeak, it changes the way people are able to think, because you can only think using the words you have.
	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, Yorim Hazzoni, such a pleasure to have had you on again.
	Thanks for having me.
	Thank you all for joining Urim Hazzoni and me on this episode of American Thought Leaders.

▲