The devastating impacts of isolationism
Isolationism may have worked well for the Founding Fathers when the British Empire ruled the world, but the post-WWI years taught us that peace in the Western Hemisphere required more than just the occasional cameo appearance of thousands of American troops in Europe.
In 1947, I was nearly 15 years old living as a Hungarian refugee in a U.S. occupation zone in Austria as a so-called “ex-enemy displaced person.” I was living within the parameters of the Yalta construct where Stalin prevailed. Germany was going to be an agricultural wasteland, and my former country of Hungary was going to suffer under the punitive Stalinist yoke of Soviet Socialism. Europe was in shambles, communist parties in Italy and France were thriving. Everyone expected the U.S. Army to depart, like after WWI, leaving the deleterious vestiges of a Soviet dominated Europe behind.
After Mr. Churchill announced in 1947 that an Iron Curtain had been erected across Europe, the European Recovery Plan, the Marshall Plan and the creation of NATO, America was de facto cast as the leader of the free world. This strategic shift to America’s leadership was to the delight of all those living on the free side of the Iron Curtain and left some vague hope of an eventual change with those Hungarians, Czechs and East Germans living on the wrong side.
America was never, ever in its history as great as when the sun set on the Soviet Union in 1989. The United States’ presence in Europe worked like a miracle, turning enemies into friends, forming an alliance where the deterrent power rested with the United States and allowing economic prosperity.
A sudden reversal in U.S. national security policies now embracing isolationism would have devastating consequences, causing the collapse of NATO’S military and economic construct.
This is what I hear in the almost flippant political palaver of our previous president, who took apart our presence in Afghanistan and now promises to undo NATO. I can only be astounded and bewildered by the ignorance of some American voters, who do not seem to understand that American militarily cannot occupy a viable military stance in the Western Hemisphere without having its feet firmly planted in Europe, dominating the Mediterranean and the North African coastline. Without a strong U.S. presence in the Mediterranean, Israel also is sentenced to death and cannot survive.
There has got to be some way that the common sense of millions of Americans voters can stop Trump from making America isolated again. The hopes of the free world, comprising countless nations, ride on the success of this unprecedented alliance. There are millions in this world like me who watch in awe as Mr. Trump, well-intentioned or not, wants to rewind the historical clock and recreate a dark world of Russian dominance in Europe.