Since World War II, the United States has pursued a “rules-based international order,” with treaties and organizations that promote mutual defense and world trade.
Some conservatives now are questioning those arrangements, seeing them as entangling the U.S. in foreign wars (such as those in Ukraine and Israel) and creating a global economy that has harmed American workers.
Sen. J. D. Vance (R-Ohio) has formulated a different approach to foreign policy that he wants to put in its place. According to an article on the subject in Politico,
“In place of the rules-based international order, Vance thinks the U.S. needs to chart a new, more nationalistic system where individual nations are solely responsible for their own security and economic well-being, and more insulated from global economic and military entanglements.”
That makes sense. But does it amount to an unrealistic and possibly dangerous isolationism? With this approach, wouldn’t the strong nations just invade weaker nations like they used to, resulting in wars that would eventually involve us anyway, as happened in World War II? And don’t American farmers and manufacturers depend on access to foreign markets?
Help me out here.
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