WILL
THE REAL "ISOLATIONIST" PLEASE STAND UP?
"Isolationist?
The Senate Republicans? If only it were so! Unfortunately,
Jesse Helms, far from being an isolationist, is and always
has been in the front ranks of the War Party, whether the
enemy is Russia, China, Iraq, or Serbia. The same goes for
the vast majority of Senate Republicans, who generally supported
Clinton's criminal war on the former Yugoslavia. Even the
Republican-controlled House, which voted against the war,
also voted to fully fund it – indeed, they voted
for far more funding than even Clinton and the Pentagon requested
or wanted. Some "isolationists"!
WE
NEED ANOTHER BORAH
Oh,
what I wouldn't give for a real isolationist. How I
pine for the good old fashioned variety, such as Senator
William C. Borah, Republican of Idaho, the great enemy of
Wilsonian internationalism who laid the League of Nations
low, led the fight for the Neutrality Acts of the 1930s, and
fought FDR's vigorous efforts to drag us into the second great
conflagration. Wouldn't it be refreshing to hear his Stentorian
voice echo throughout the Senate chambers, as he denounced
the "munitions makers" and "special interests
that profit from war." The arms race, he declared, was
"a crime against humanity." Speaking barely two
years after the Armistice that marked the end of World War
I, the Lion of Idaho warned that unless the arms buildup was
shelved and reversed war with Japan was inevitable within
a quarter century. His fellow isolationists, mostly Republicans,
such as Hiram Johnson of California, Senator Robert LaFollette,
of Minnesota, and Gerald P. Nye, of North Dakota, formed a
bloc that stood guard against the inroads of the War Party
and ceaselessly agitated for peace. Nye conducted a famous
series of hearings on the power and influence of the armaments
industry: the financial interests that dragged us into World
War I were outraged, but the public loved it. Embittered and
made wiser by a war for "to make the world safe for democracy"
that had only made it safe for the potentates of Europe and
their creditors, the American people cheered as "isolationist"
Republicans exposed the symbiotic relationship between Wall
Street and the Washington warmongers. The first battle pitting
a Democratic President against Republican isolationists ended
in tragedy – FDR manipulated us into war and the isolationists
were smeared, defeated, and forgotten. Now, that same battle
is being reenacted as a farce – with nary a genuine isolationist
in sight.
THE
LESSON OF HISTORY
I
have news for our President, who is so fond of citing history:
A truly "isolationist" Republican Congress in full
possession of its senses would have approved the CTBT,
and in very short order. In the 1930s,the Republicans, while
distrusting international organizations and opposing entangling
alliances, supported disarmament measures, opposed conscription,
and railed against the morbid idolators of the war god. On
the other hand, FDR and the Democrats embraced internationalism,
initiated a huge arms buildup, called for peacetime conscription,
and berated their isolationist opponents for not supporting
"preparedness." This is the real "isolationist"
tradition – one the President might have successfully
appealed to if he was really the history buff and expert politician
he is supposed to be.
CLINTONIAN
SELLOUT
The
reality is now setting in among supporters of the ban on nuclear
testing: Clinton made no real effort to get this treaty past
the Senate, as Washington diplomats and even members of his
own party are now saying. An Agence
France Presse report cited a Senate Democratic aide as
saying: "Senate Democrats have been talking about this
and made a rather large push since August. Three months work
by the White House on this would have been more helpful than
two weeks." Clinton blamed the Republicans for scheduling
a short debate, but even the Democrats on Capital Hill weren't
buying it: "I don't think it's fair for the president
to abdicate his responsibility, and say he'll only work on
it when the Senate gets ready to work on it," said the
Democratic Senate aide "There were some pretty important
issues there, they deserved more than lip service."
LIP
SERVICE
Lip
service of a different kind was on the minds of some Senate
Republicans, notably Jesse Helms, who outraged the White House
with a speech on the Senate floor in which he impersonated
Clinton on the phone with British Prime Minister Tony Blair,
asking for a letter of support for the treaty: "Tony,
I got a problem over here, a hat-full of worries, how about
sending me a li'l ole letter.'' Helms then mimicked Blair's
reply in a "British" accent heavily overlaid
with his North Carolina drawl: "Oh yes, I'll do that.
And give Monica my regards"!
THE
WORST
Presidential
spokesman Joe Lockhart sputtered "I would certainly hope
that any chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee
would put our national security interests over any personal
view he has," a remark that no doubt caused more than
a few titters in our nation's capital. The obvious retort
is that all views are "personal," and are
furthermore held by human beings, not soulless automatons.
Lockhart's protests of "partisanship" miss the point:
many of these same Republicans had supported and voted for
Ronald Reagan's INF treaty, the first step in a process that
was supposed to culminate with the Senate ratification of
the test ban. While the Clintonians wailed that the defeat
of CTBT was due to "partisan politics of the worst kind",
the truth is that, in voting against a treaty supported by
the overwhelming majority of Americans, Republicans sacrificed
their own partisan interests out of sheer contempt for Bill
Clinton – a President, and a man, of the worst kind.
THE
ABDICATION
The
news report cited above states that world leaders are "appalled
that the United States has virtually abdicated its leadership
on nonproliferation." Clinton, they complain, did not
really make his case. Well, then, what kind of a case might
he have made? How could he have appealed to these "isolationist"
Republicans, who hate him and everything he stands for, and
gotten them to vote for a measure that would help ensure that
his legacy would be more than the memory of a bizarre sex
scandal? Let me tell you how I would have done it:
MY
ADDRESS TO THE SENATE
Alright,
I would have said, in my address to the Senate, if you won't
consider the legacy of your beloved Ronald Reagan, who ushered
in the era of disarmament that preceded the end of the Cold
War, then consider this: think of all the many tripwires we
have set down in every corner of the globe. Korea, Taiwan,
the Baltic republics, the Balkans, all of which could easily
become the arena for a confrontation between the US and a
nuclear-armed adversary. Do you really want to get into another
arms race, restart the Cold War, and engage in another ruinous
and economy-distorting arms buildup at gargantuan cost?
WHO
LOST AN ENTIRE SUBCONTINENT?
But
surely, you think, these Senators, many of them creatures
of what Borah called "the special interests," would
be immune to such entreaties, being totally without shame.
Oh, but I am just getting started! I would have looked them
straight in the eye, and bellowed: Do any of you really want
to be haunted for the rest of your lives by the anguished
question: "Who lost Pakistan?" or "Who lost
India?" And I mean "lost" in the most literal
sense of the word, i.e. as in vanished from the face of the
earth. For that is precisely what is in store for the peoples
of the South Asian subcontinent if and when the Indo-Pakistani
standoff erupts into all-out war. I would have stood in the
well of the Senate and mimicked Jesse Helms talking to his
campaign manager:
MY
JESSE HELMS IMPERSONATION
"Well,
now, Herbert, it seems we have a lil' ole problem heah,
what with this radioactive cloud a hangin' ovah Charlottesville
– do you think you could get me a letter from a certified
doctah provin' it ain't a 'tall deleterious to the voters'
health?"
"Why,
sure-rah enough, Senator, that won't be any problem
a 'tall. Don't you worry none, Senator, I'll get right back
to you on that. Oh, and by the way, give my regards to Dorothy
and the kids – I hope they get over their radiation sickness
real soon."
PROLIFERATION
AND INTERVENTION
But
the real argument, from an authentically isolationist point
of view, is that the proliferation of modern weapons can only
drag us into endless wars. This was true enough in the era
of Senator Borah, and is even truer today. For we are not
just confronting the possibility of a nuclear exchange with
any one of a number of emerging regional powers, but also
the necessity of endless wars of prevention –
as in the series of Gulf wars, launched against Iraq, on the
grounds that Saddam Hussein just possibly might be
interested in acquiring "weapons of mass destruction."
But in the face of the aggressive NATO-ization of Europe,
and the world, by "humanitarian" interventionists,
the only hope small nations have of maintaining their sovereignty
is by acquiring a nuclear deterrent. Does anyone doubt that,
this winter, the Serbs will wish they had had a nuclear shield
to hold up against NATO's cruel bombardment? The Clintonian-Blairite
doctrine of warlike internationalism is fundamentally hostile
to the concept of disarmament, unless, of course, we are talking
about the disarmament of "rogue nations" –
and of all non-Western nations – and their complete
submission to the diktat of Washington, London, and Berlin.
WHO
CAN BLAME THEM?
As
we go careening across the globe, rescuing turbulent peoples
who don't want to be rescued, and taking sides in civil wars
from Bosnia to Kosovo to the Transcaucasian steppes and beyond,
how many enemies will wish they could somehow deter the great
humanitarians from wreaking any further havoc? The rabid internationalism
that currently infects Washington – and has always infected
London – is the greatest impetus for nuclear proliferation.
If the Serbian people had the means to acquire nuclear weapons,
who, at this point, could blame them for doing so?
NUCLEAR
TRIBALISM
And
so it goes for any of the other designated villains whose
countries have been targeted for destruction and dissolution:
Iraq, Indonesia, the Sudan – and who knows who else is
on the list? In the Third World, China, Pakistan, India, Israel,
and South Africa have so far developed a nuclear capability,
and thus ensured themselves at least a modicum of independence,
and the rest are not far behind. In a world of ethnic warfare,
and religious conflict, do we want every tribal feud to go
nuclear?
QUAGMIRES
AWAIT US
Instead
of attacking the Republicans as being too "isolationist,"
I would conclude my oration by pointing out that they are
not isolationist enough. For the failure to ratify
the treaty will involve us in more quagmires than anyone now
imagines, as the small nations make their final stand against
the West.
HIT
THEM WHERE THEY LIVE
I
would end with a flourish, a quote from Pat Buchanan's new
book, A
Republic, Not an Empire – now that
would throw them off balance, for sure! I would cite a passage
in which the author notes the vast gulf that separates the
Cold War mindset from the realities of the post-Cold War world:
"The difference between crafting foreign policy then
and now is the difference between arithmetic and calculus."
Yes, indeed it is, in the sense that the stakes are much higher.
As Buchanan puts it: "When one considers that today,
nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons can be delivered
by such conventional means as merchant ships and truck bombs,
the case against going abroad in search of monsters to destroy
becomes conclusive."
IN
ANSWER TO MY CRITICS
Now,
I have not seen anything from the Buchanan campaign on this
question, although I can make an educated guess: the impulse
of most of Buchanan's supporters, if not their leader, is
no doubt very much opposed to the treaty: I got letters from
some of them in response to my
last column, all complaining that support for the treaty
amounts to a surrender of American sovereignty and the ability
to act unilaterally, and, besides that, the treaty is unverifiable.
To begin with, any agreement can be unilaterally abrogated
by any of the parties at any time, as the opponents of this
treaty never tired of pointing out: that, they averred, is
precisely why it is unverifiable. Given this, the sovereignty
argument loses much of its force. As for the verifiability
of any such treaty, that objection also loses much
if not all of its force given our unquestioned position of
military superiority. In this context, a ban on testing and
development is in our national interest because it means the
freezing of this "unipolar moment" in history. By
maintaining the status quo, and preventing the further development
of nuclear weapons, US superiority remains unchallenged.
UTOPIA,
DISARMAMENT, AND THE FALL OF MAN
The
unspoken implication in the argument against the treaty made
by many conservatives is that it represents a liberal utopian
impulse that underestimates the cunning of our enemies –
and, perhaps, also ignores the consequences of the Fall of
Man. I will leave the latter to the theologians, and only
take up the former far more widespread misconception. Far
from being utopian, the impulse to negotiate is motivated
by naked self-interest. For no nation wants to be embroiled
in the maelstrom of war, particularly in the age of nuclear
weapons, and on this subject I yield the floor once more to
Mr. Buchanan, whose eloquence and passion I cannot match:
"At
the opening of the twentieth century there were five great
Western empires – the British, French, Russian, German,
and Austro-Hungarian – and two emerging great powers:
Japan and the United States. By century's end, all the empires
had disappeared. How did they perish? By war – all of
them."
REALISM
IN THE NUCLEAR AGE
This
position, consistently applied, means support for all
disarmament measures that we can get agreement on. However,
it is necessary to put this in its full context: The day we
return to the concept of maintaining a continental defense,
and leave Europe and Asia to their own devices, will usher
in a new era in which the goal of negotiating a comprehensive
nuclear arms agreement will be based on hardheaded realism
– on the stark realization that, in this day and age,
we have no choice.
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