It’s Time to Wind Down the Empire of Nothing

1,921 words

Patrick J. Buchanan
A Republic, Not an Empire: Reclaiming America’s Destiny
Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, Inc., 1999

See also: “The Collapse of British Power,” “The Audit of War,” “The Lost Victory,” & “The Verdict of Peace”

If ever there was a call which went unheeded, it is former presidential candidate Patrick J. Buchanan’s admonition that once the Cold War ended, the United States should have reduced its military footprint to a size capable of dealing with its own national interests.

America is a completed nation. Its frontiers are established, and Manifest Destiny has been achieved. American military policy should therefore be shifted to a defensive mode. The sword of offensive military campaigns should only be drawn in the event of a genuine existential threat. America should not become a “knight errant” seeking to right the wrongs of a sinful world, and should not deploy its military unless intruded upon.

Nobody prominent in government at the end of the Cold War saw things this way, however. In early 1992, a top secret memo was circulated in the Pentagon which came to be called the Wolfowitz Memorandum, and within days was leaked to the New York Times. Strangely, there was no hunt for whoever provided a classified document to a major media outlet, suggesting that the Washington elite wanted its contents to be publicly known.

The memo’s suggestions were followed by every subsequent presidential administration before Donald Trump’s. This saw the United States maintain the alliances it had set up during the Cold War even as it entered into new ones. This has led to the US becoming a combination of the Ottoman Empire in the Levant, the Spanish Empire in the Western Hemisphere, the Japanese Empire in the Pacific, and the British Empire on the high seas and in the Persian Gulf simultaneously. The resulting security obligations are enormous, and each region has its own unique tensions that could escalate quickly into armed conflict — and American policymakers cannot control when, where, or in what form US involvement will end up taking in them.

Buchanan starts his book, which was published in 1999, by pointing out the potential hot spots where the United States might become unwittingly involved at the end of the twentieth century: Korea, Taiwan, and the Baltics. No hot war directly involving the US has arisen in any of those places yet, but tensions remain high in all of them — as does the potential for war. Interestingly, Buchanan also predicted a “Second Persian Gulf War” as well as a “Terrorist War.” He believed that the “Terrorist War” would involve Osama bin Laden and the Afghan Taliban (p. 44).

As little political connection as possible

The policy of maintaining so many US military bases around the world — the US currently maintains approximately 750 bases across more than 80 countries – leads to Americans being put immediately on the front lines should any actor in a particular region go to war. Prior to the Second World War and the Cold War, American military policy was designed to avoid this problem. Since 1945, however, such a wise policy has instead been derided as “isolationist.” Isolationism is a political devil word that is thrown at those Americans who urge caution when it comes to aggressive military deployments abroad.

You can buy Greg Hood’s Waking Up From the American Dream here.

American military and foreign policy during the Cold War did call for the US military to deploy, but such deployments were carefully considered in terms of how they would advance American policy aims. The US had a similar policy in the years prior to America’s entry into the Second World War, called “America First.” The roots of this idea go all the way back to the Washington administration. In his Farewell Address, Washington said that “[t]he Great rule of conduct for us, in regard to foreign Nations, is in extending our commercial relations to have with them as little political connection as possible.

This policy was followed by all American presidents until the First World War, and was generally agreed upon in the broader American political establishment, although it did have its detractors already in the eighteenth century. In 1794, during Washington’s presidency, John Jay’s Treaty was signed, which among other issues led to the US favoring the British over the French in trade relations while the latter two were at war during the French Revolution. The agreement was met with fierce resistance by some quarters of the Jeffersonian faction of the Republicans (not the same as today’s Republican Party, which wasn’t founded until 1854). This was partially due to the sentimental views some Americans had of France’s role in America’s Revolutionary War, as well as the fact that the Jeffersonians were supportive of the French Revolution.

Alimony for France and problems with the British

During the John Adams administration (1797-1801), a conflict with France arose which came to be called the Quasi-War. President Adams became the first US President to pay a significant political price for enacting a true America First policy in relation to the war. Adams’ Federalist Party base wanted to turn a diplomatic insult — a French privateer had captured an American merchant vessel off the New York coast — into a full-blown war. Adams however, recognized that war would have impeded the development of American industry and Western expansion. He opted to pay France $20 million and use the payment to opt out of the Alliance of 1778, which had required the United States to come to France’s aid should the latter go to war. Had this alliance remained in place following the Quasi-War, the fledgling US would have been drawn into the Napoleonic Wars.

During the War of 1812, many of New England’s Federalists believed that America was stabbing Mother England in the back given that the British were holding the line against Jacobin and Napoleonic tyranny. At the same time, however, the British still maintained forts in the American Midwest and were attempting to lure American settlers into the British trading network, which they hoped would enable them to take over the still largely unorganized American West. The British were likewise supporting Indian attacks against white settlements and stopping American ships on the high seas, impressing American sailors into service in the Royal Navy.

You can buy Greg Johnson’s The Year America Died here.

Even after the War of 1812, problems with the British remained. They supported the Republic of Texas, for example, in order to hinder the US’ western expansion. This made the annexation of Texas a vital American interest, even though it severely disrupted America’s domestic politics. There were problems with the British in Oregon as well.

President James K. Polk was elected on a platform that included resolving the Oregon dispute by annexing the entire territory up to the 54^o40’ Parallel. Polk’s victory showed the British government that the American public would support a war for Oregon. This made the British willing to compromise, and negotiations set the boundary between British North America and the United States at the 49th Parallel.

Polk would go on to fight a war with Mexico, but that conflict was not a bald-faced imperialist adventure, as it has come to be seen as by modern Leftists and anti-whites. The Mexican government was extremely anti-American and deliberately sent troops to create an incident with American forces in the disputed area between Texas and Mexico. The war was therefore unavoidable.

Shortly after the Mexican War, the first charge of isolationism in America was made. During the 1848 Revolution, the Hungarians fought to gain independence from the Austrian Empire and sought American support in making their claim. While they were positively received in Washington, it wasn’t in America’s interests to become involved in the events in Central Europe, and senators John C. Calhoun and Henry Clay kept the US out.

During the US Civil War, which was the biggest disaster the American people have ever experienced, President Lincoln made a point of avoiding entangling the Union in a war with the British. He told his Secretary of State, William Seward, that the US should only fight “one war at a time.” Seward’s tenure at the State Department marks the point when America switched from building an ethnostate to becoming an empire. Seward’s purchase of Alaska was still in line with the policy of expanding America for white settlement, but Seward also got a law passed that allowed the US government to annex uninhabited islands in the Pacific. It was this latter policy that put America’s toes into the waters of interfering in matters unrelated to its own national security.

The Spanish-American War, which broke out in 1898, was unquestionably an imperialist venture. The war also led to the first ugly insurgency that Americans had faced abroad, namely in the Philippines. This rebellion caused the US to abandon its idea of annexing Cuba. Unfortunately, conquering the Philippines also led to problems with the Muslim Moros on the Island of Mindanao which persist to the present day. The annexation of the Philippines likewise made war between the US and Japan inevitable.

Buchanan claims that the US was right to stay out of the League of Nations after the First World War. Part of the problem with the League was that it required all its members to respect the borders of all other members, which would have caused America to become embroiled in the troubles in Ireland on behalf of the British. After the First World War, the US also signed various treaties with Japan that gave it responsibilities in the Pacific, despite the fact that the US did not have sufficient naval power to deter the Japanese from attacking at the time. These treaties likewise prevented the US from fortifying its colonies in the Pacific. Had the Bataan Peninsula been turned into something akin to the Maginot Line, and with ample supplies of food and ammunition, it is possible that the US would have not lost the Philippines to the Japanese in 1942.

The situation in the Pacific on the eve of the Second World War was similar to what we see today. The US had too many areas that it was obligated to defend, and lacked the necessary forces to actually follow through. Buchanan further points out President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s aggressive and dishonest maneuvers to get America involved in the war during this time. While America did emerge from the conflict a superpower, the costs of doing so were enormous. Most of Europe and Japan were destroyed, while 60 million people died. The US then became responsible for the defense of both Western Europe and Japan, which compelled it to fight brutal and costly wars in Korea, Vietnam, and other places. More than 100,000 American soldiers were killed in action during the Cold War.

In the years since A Republic, Not an Empire was published, America has continued its follies. The United States subsidizes allies such as Israel, thereby enraging the Muslim world. This policy, as well as stationing American troops in Saudi Arabia, was part of the reason for the 9/11 terror attack. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq that followed were debacles that cost trillions of dollars as well as thousands of lives, and ended badly. Even now, in places such as South Korea, American troops are engaged in defending a commercial and industrial rival amidst a conflict that constantly threatens to turn hot.

It is time to heed Buchanan’s advice. Americans must reevaluate their relationship with their empire. American policy should be reoriented to pursue solely American interests. Foreign pressure groups that steer Americans into their own quarrels need to be shown the door. This is simply sound racial and ethnic policy: American foreign policy must ultimately align with the interests of American Majority whites.

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