So, do you care to discuss the distinction between isolationism and non-interventionism that I’ve laid out for you, or should we just look forward to more articles making the same mistake because you’ve got a jones for that particular straw man? Or are you one of those people who is simply incapable of admitting that you’re wrong so you’re not even going to bother to defend your essentially neoconservative position?

I agree. And of course, let’s not forget that the League of Nations and the U.N. were both responsible for using the rule of law to violate the property rights of the Palestinians by creating the state of Israel because the prevailing opinion of the “international community” at the time was that Palestinians’ rights to sovereignty and their property claims didn’t merit serious consideration so the “international community” could give the land to who they wanted. Now, of course, the demographics have shifted so the U.N. seems to consist of people who’d be okay with throwing the Israelis out (which would be just as wrong) even though they’re often not the aggressors. Basically, the more the U.N. gets involved the more they usually fuck things up.

But that’s the best thing that could happen. The UN should only be a forum for discussion. There should be no disillusionment when people realize that it doesn’t have any power. It should merely be a forum for airing opinion from around the world.

The UN shouldn’t be a substitute for bilateral or multilateral negotiations. Nor should countries count on the UN for military support. It would strengthen the desire of countries to secure defensive alliances against possible aggressors. It will stop all those people who cry out against genocide from wasting their time by going to the UN looking for peacekeeping force.

BTW: The proclamation issued by the League against Japan was highly hypocritical. It was issued by imperial powers who’d already subjugated China against another imperial power that was in the process of subjugating it. It was eerily similar to the UN Human Rights Council passing resolutions against Israel.

I’d agree with that, except that I think it’s impossible to keep an international government of any significance from overreaching the way the U.N. does. If people want to enter into alliances on a more local scale, I’m okay with that. As long as we’ve got the UN, I think it’s important to stay involved if just to keep our ear to the wall. But I’m no fan of the UN and wouldn’t be unhappy to see it gone. I also have serious doubts as to whether it’s possible to form another international body that would be better. If it’s not given the ability to override national sovereignty to some degree, it’ll have no teeth and most countries aren’t going to be willing to cede enough of their authority to make it effective (nor, frankly, should they).

“As I said before, your view of non-interventionism seems far more nuanced than the so-called non-interventionism of the Rockwell Brigades”

That’s because they’re usually deluding themselves into believing they’re not isolationists (which they are). I consider that philosophy to be as unrealistic as pacifism (pure pacifism, not just the “no aggression” kind). Just because I don’t think our government should be interfering in someone else’s internal affairs doesn’t mean I think there aren’t threats out there that our government needs to defend our country against. That’s just asking to be the victim. And just because I believe in a strong national defense doesn’t mean I think we should go aggressively using it every time it suits the government to do so. It is a fine line, and there are always gray areas, but true non-interventionism is not incompatible with maintaining liberty…in fact it enhances it by allowing other countries to resolve their internal matters on their own without us dictating terms. Allowing other people to find their own solutions to problems within their own country often allows better, longer-lasting solutions than what we’d find for them.

“Guerilla operations suspected to be supported by a country warrant intervention through non-aggressive means by third parties.”

That’s a gray area where your argument has some validity but the “suspected” level of involvement requires a burden of proof a lot higher than “because the president said so” (which is pretty much the case with Iran, and Iraq, and most of the stuff that Bush does). And, of course, there’s still the issue of our own national interest…it’s not our job to go intervening in every war simply because our leaders don’t like one or both of the parties involved or because we hold the imperial attitude that it’s our world to mediate. The world’s not really all about the U.S.

As for defense treaties, I would generally agree that they should prohibit intervention in member-states’ internal political turmoil. However, I would make an exception for military coups of popularly elected governments (but not for military coups of fraudulently elected governments, or for popular uprisings against any government).

As I said before, your view of non-interventionism seems far more nuanced than the so-called non-interventionism of the Rockwell Brigades (and, to a somewhat lesser extent, Ron Paul himself). From what I’ve read on LRC, the Rockwell Brigades’ form of non-interventionism is completely indistinguishable from isolationism, particularly considering their apparent opposition to international institutions in principle rather than in practice. Your non-interventionism is, I think, distinguishable from isolationism and relatively coherent.

If you’re saying that private citizens have the right to arm the rebels with their own funds and equipment or even go fight for them, that’s perfectly compatible with a pro-liberty position. If you’re saying that our government is the one who should be doing it in the interests of “spreading freedom” then you’re taking an anti-freedom position. Freedom derives from individual, not government, action…you can’t use government to fight tyranny in someone else’s internal affairs without imposing another form of it on them. That’s what the neoconservatives can’t wrap their heads around.

There’s truth in what you say about people needing to see the reason before they’ll accept commitment to a conflict (and the casualties it entails), but your argument about WWII is slightly off. We intervened at (I feel) an appropriate time with the Lend-Lease Act and private U.S. citizens were going over to fight for the Brits and the Chinese before then. Both of these things were not interventionist…they just weren’t isolationist. There’s nothing wrong with forming an alliance with another country to stave off an external threat. And I disagree with the assessment that the Germans were not a threat to us. Or at the very least I’ll argue that the assessment that they were a threat to us wasn’t irrational or unjustified given the information they had at the time (unlike with Iraq now, by contrast). Non-interventionism was very compatible with our pre-war actions in Europe and the Pacific.

Where am I advocating invasion of Sudan over Darfur?

I am merely advocating the arming of the victims of a genocide to put them on an even keel with their persecutors.

You will not change Sudan by invading Darfur. See Rwanda, Somolia, Bosnia, Chechnya, etc. for examples. You’ll put up a good show, some bad guys (as we believe them to be) will die, but nothing inherent about the conflict will change. Change comes from within.

My litmus test for intervention is

Does sovereign country A attack sovereign country B where either sovereign country A or B is a stable, democratic country?

Yes…assist in restoring peace, first through neogtiation, next by force.

Guerilla operations suspected to be supported by a country warrant intervention through non-aggressive means by third parties.

That is my opinion.

Non-interventionism had us stand by while Europe descended into a wider conflict before WWI. Then it kept us out of WWII while Hitler and the Axis conquered the continent.

Similarly, intervention got us Korea, Vietnam, and now Iraq.

The rule is, commit the nation to the war. There is no way Americans would have accepted 600,000 dead in WWII if it was simply a pre-emptive intervention to stop Hitler. There had to be no other choice. Similarly, public sentiment goes sharply against conflicts that are relatively small in comparison simply because the people never saw the threat.

We live in a Democracy, the people have to know why they’re fighting and they have to believe it.

“How would a non-interventionist foreign policy in the 1930s have differed from what the isolationists advocated?”

The policy in the 1930s was largely non-interventionist. We didn’t invade Germany. We didn’t invade Japan. We didn’t interfere in their sovereign internal affairs. Some people would argue that the reason the Japanese attacked us was because we were encroaching on their sphere of influence, but since their “sphere of influence” was not an international boundary but an area in which they were attacking other nations to expand an empire and, you know, since they did attack us first, I don’t consider that to be interventionist at all. Nor do I consider war with Germany interventionist since, you know, Hitler formally declared war on us. You could argue that our actions in the Pacific were somewhat imperialist, but that’s a red herring that provides no justification for Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor. People who trot those arguments out aren’t non-interventionists, they’re isolationists who are falling prey to the other side of the straw man argument you’ve fallen prey to.

About Sudan, there are no national security interest in Sudan. It is not the job of the US government to give any money to those rebels. Instead individuals that want to end genocide should donate their time or money.

About the 1930′s, we should have repeal the tariffs, eased immigration, and began free trade with countries in Europe, especially France and England. I think that an economically stronger France and England could have put up a better fight.

Lend-Lease, if successfully argued that the growth of Nazi Germany was going to be a threat to the national security of the United States and that Nazi Germany was destined to declare war against the United States, would be justified. I would argue against such an argument, and therefore believe that Lend-Lease was unjustified. The Atlantic Ocean is too big of a divide for Nazi Germany to overcome. But many Anglophiles went over to join the RAF and the British Army. That is acceptable, and I think many did.

In absence of Lend-Lease, there is no guarantee that England would have fallen to Germany. Their amphibious assault of England would have been extremely costly. (Right now I don’t quite understand why the Germans choose to bomb London during the Air Battle of Britain instead of bombing RAF airstrips. I would think that securing air superiority was more important than inflicting civilian demoralization.) In the summer of 1941, Germany attacked the Soviet Union. Hilter, one great evil, maybe would have rid the world of Stalin, another great evil. We could have avoided the Cold War altogether. In addition, controlling Russian territory would have been difficult and soak up a lot of German forces. At that point, the US could join into the fight and still fight against a German force that was hobbled by its activities in Russia. There are tons of possibilities for the world without Lend-Lease.

The benefit the US got out of the war was the numerous talented scientists that escaped from Continental Europe to the US. That was extremely helpful to technological development.

“I was just looking for the response on principle alone. The only caveat I would have in supporting an armed indigenous opposition to a tyrannical government is to make sure they were truly fighting for a more politically more liberal government.”

If private citizens wish to contribute to the cause of arming people they believe are fighting for freedom against repressive government, that’s fine. Our government should have no part of it…partly because their contributions come from our tax dollars, partly because one person’s freedom fighter is another’s terrorist, mainly because they’re usually a piss-poor judge of who the “good guys” really are (Pinochet, Batista, Somoza, Duvalier, Fahd, Shah Pahlavi, Mobutu Sese Seko, a couple of South Vietnamese presidents I could name…plus, who can forget this little gem from the current Idiot-in-Chief http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/06/20010618.html )

The problem I have with the U.N., though, is that I don’t think it can really be trusted with any meaningful level of power besides stopping clear international aggression. Once they move into interventionism and nation-building, then it’s an incredibly bad organization because everybody starts grasping for power. It can work as a reactive organization, but not a proactive one.