President Donald Trump’s egregious misrepresentation of the Russia–Ukraine war, his coarse calumnies of Ukraine’s president, and his snub of our European allies all left observers gasping. But his bluster obscures a coherent strategic philosophy that deserves a serious answer. Trump argues that the war in Ukraine “doesn’t have much of an effect on us because we have a big, beautiful ocean in between.” The name for that strategy is “isolationism.”
This outlook explains the president’s readiness to abandon Ukraine to Russia, no matter the damage to American credibility. It explains his readiness to deal a possibly fatal blow to NATO, which has been the centerpiece of U.S. security policy for three-quarters of a century. It explains his imposition of tariffs ham-fistedly, starting with friendly nations. It also explains his decisions to eliminate foreign aid, and shutter all overseas broadcasting which provides truthful reporting amid autocratic darkness.
But can the president be called an “isolationist” when he also proposes to buy Greenland, capture the Panama Canal, take over Gaza and make Canada the fifty-first state?
The answer is that these ideas are little more than trolling. Denmark is not going to sell Greenland; Canada is not going to join the USA; the Palestinians are not going to depart Gaza en masse. Even in the unlikely event he is serious about seizing the Panama Canal, which would cause us more trouble in the region than any benefit, it would not place him outside America’s isolationist tradition, which, ever since the Monroe Doctrine, has always treated Latin America differently.
Trump’s isolationism rests on two ideas, one captured in his slogan, “America First,” and the second, in his reference to the ocean.
“America First” in part reflects resentment of foreign spending, which surveys show Americans vastly overestimate and blame for our budget deficits. In truth, foreign aid amounts to one percent of the federal budget and less than four percent of our annual deficit.
“America First” also reflects resentment of international organizations but fails to recognize critical distinctions among them. Institutions like the United Nations (UN) and its ancillary bodies presume to constitute a skeletal world government. At the UN’s founding, President Truman reportedly carried a copy of Tennyson’s Locksley Hall, with its misty verses about “the parliament of man.” Many Americans resent the derogation of our sovereignty, especially because these institutions have clearly failed at their core mission of preserving peace.
But NATO is an international body of a different sort. It is an alliance in self-defense, which admits only those it chooses and which does nothing without our agreement. In respect to alliances, “America First” is redundant: we join for our own benefit, not abstract principles. As with other alliances, our NATO membership is an exercise of sovereignty, not a derogation from it. We have sought allies in every war our nation has fought, starting with France in 1776. In contrast to the U.N., NATO has been entirely successful, keeping the peace of Europe following two horrendous wars in which America suffered 1.4 million dead and wounded.
In invoking the “big, beautiful ocean,” implying that the Atlantic keeps us safely distant from Europe, Trump voiced the bedrock thought of isolationism, namely that we are protected by our blessed geography. Oddly, however, his designs on the Panama Canal were justified largely by invoking China, which is separated from us by an ocean twice the size of the Atlantic.
While the two oceans have long afforded us more security than most nations enjoy, the 20th century taught us how difficult it is to remain above the fray when peace is broken. In 1914, when war broke out, President Wilson declared neutrality, then ran for reelection in 1916 on the slogan, “He kept us out of war.” But by early 1917, with German submarines attacking our shipping, Wilson requested a declaration of war, which passed Congress overwhelmingly.
When Hitler attacked Poland in 1939, launching World War II, the U.S. again proclaimed neutrality. President Roosevelt pledged “every effort” to “keep America out of this war.” But in two years, Japan and Germany found us such an impediment to their ambitions that they declared war on us. In 1950, the lines of the Cold War were drawn, and Secretary of State Dean Acheson described an American “defense perimeter” running off the coast of Asia, thus excluding South Korea. This apparently tempted North Korea to attack. Virtually overnight, Washington decided it had to defend South Korea.
In 1990, when Iraq’s Saddam Hussein threatened Kuwait, our ambassador assured him, “We have no opinion on Arab-Arab conflicts, like your border disagreement with Kuwait,” which Saddam took as a green light to invade. This prompted us to send a huge army to repel him.
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Time and again, conflicts we wished to avoid eventually pulled us in. The reasons are many. Our economy depends on imports and exports. Our sense of ourselves as a nation depends on the fate of freedom in the world. Above all, our security depends on limiting chaos and preventing powerful aggressors from having free rein.
Can we safely withdraw behind our oceans, however beautiful, and let Putin and Xi and Khamenei and Kim have their way in the world? When the irons were in the fire, no American leader faced with an equivalent choice has ever concluded that we could.
Joshua Muravchik is the author of 11 books, including Heaven on Earth: The Rise, Fall, and Afterlife of Socialism. He is a professor at the Institute of World Politics.
