ISOLATIONISM, it would seem, is once again on the rise.
President Nixon has used the term neo-isolationist to describe certain of his senatorial critics who would alter U.S. foreign policy or who seek a greater role for the Congress in shaping it. Once the name of a popular and viable political doctrine, isolationism today—with or without "neo" attached to it—is a pejorative word. It has no real validity in a world of instant communications, internationally linked economies, and nuclear weapons that can bridge continents at Mach 23 speed. Properly speaking, the term suggests someone who would like to disengage the U.S. from the rest of the world and return to a 19th century insularity. No doubt some Americans are experiencing an emotional recoil from foreign commitments, as a result of Viet Nam and domestic troubles. But apart from a small group of myopic radicals totally obsessed with the need for revolution at home, there are hardly any real isolationists left.
The conflict between the President and an influential minority of the present Senate is real; but the heart of the dispute is not isolationism v. internationalism. At issue is a desire to put space and time limitations on the fighting in Indochina, to strike a new balance between the President and Congress in committing military forces to combat abroad, and to avoid further proliferation of U.S. commitments round the globe without congressional sanction. There is also a feeling that the nation's values should be re-examined so that more money will be spent on domestic priorities and less on extravagant weapons systems that may prove to be redundant, provocative or both.
However arguable their proposed alternatives may be, none of the leading Senate critics of the President's foreign policy can be fairly accused of being isolationist. Republican Jacob Javits of New York—the only Senator who has been cited by name in Nixon's attacks—wants to curb the President's war-making powers. But Javits sided with his party's leader last week in voting against Senator Mike Mansfield's amendment to reduce U.S. forces in Europe by half. John Stennis of Mississippi, who shares Javits' views on war powers, is generally the Senate's stoutest defender of Nixon's defense-budget and national-security policies. Mansfield, whose defeated amendment may have seemed isolationist, supports the President's effort to negotiate peace in the Middle East, an enterprise that certainly depends on U.S. power and willingness to use it. Even the most publicized of the Senate doves who want a speedy and definite end to the Viet Nam War—such men as John Sherman Cooper, William Fulbright and George McGovern—are not isolationist in any real sense of the word.