#isolationism

It's all very well for us to sit here in the west with our high incomes and cushy lives, and say it's immoral to violate the sovereignty of another state. But if the effect of that is to bring people in that country economic and political freedom, to raise their standard of living, to increase their life expectancy, then don't rule it out. ↗

— Niall Ferguson

#interventionism #isolationism #noninterventionism #realpolitik #sovereignty

Roosevelt was the one who had the vision to change our policy from isolationism to world leadership. That was a terrific revolution. Our country's never been the same since. ↗

— W. Averell Harriman

#change #country #had #isolationism #leadership

That war [Bosnian war] in the early 1990s changed a lot for me. I never thought I would see, in Europe, a full-dress reprise of internment camps, the mass murder of civilians, the reinstiutution of torture and rape as acts of policy. And I didn't expect so many of my comrades to be indifferent - or even take the side of the fascists. It was a time when many people on the left were saying 'Don't intervene, we'll only make things worse' or, 'Don't intervene, it might destabilise the region. And I thought - destabilisation of fascist regimes is a good thing. Why should the left care about the stability of undemocratic regimes? Wasn't it a good thing to destabilise the regime of General Franco? It was a time when the left was mostly taking the conservative, status quo position - leave the Balkans alone, leave Milosevic alone, do nothing. And that kind of conservatism can easily mutate into actual support for the aggressors. Weimar-style conservatism can easily mutate into National Socialism. So you had people like Noam Chomsky's co-author Ed Herman go from saying 'Do nothing in the Balkans', to actually supporting Milosevic, the most reactionary force in the region. That's when I began to first find myself on the same side as the neocons. I was signing petitions in favour of action in Bosnia, and I would look down the list of names and I kept finding, there's Richard Perle. There's Paul Wolfowitz. That seemed interesting to me. These people were saying that we had to act. Before, I had avoided them like the plague, especially because of what they said about General Sharon and about Nicaragua. But nobody could say they were interested in oil in the Balkans, or in strategic needs, and the people who tried to say that - like Chomsky - looked ridiculous. So now I was interested. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#bosnia-and-herzegovina #bosnian-war #ethnic-cleansing #genocide #humanitarian-intervention

Hand in hand with nationalist economic isolationism, militarism struggles to maintain the sovereign state against the forward march of internationalism. ↗

— Christian Lous Lange

#economic #forward #hand #internationalism #isolationism

Our view is that economic isolationism is the wrong way to go. Vibrant, successful growing economies that advance the interests of their citizens engage the global economy. And, we're committed to engaging the global economy. ↗

— John W. Snow

#citizens #committed #economic #economies #economy

Isolationism is over. ↗

— Ralph Steadman

#over

America... goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. ↗

— John Quincy Adams

#imperialism #independence #isolationism #liberty #noninterventionism

I respect those who say that the United States should simply withdraw from the Middle East, but I don't respect them for anything but their honesty. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#isolationism #middle-east #noninterventionism #respect

If our Founding Fathers wanted us to care about the rest of the world, they wouldn't have declared their independence from it. ↗

— Stephen Colbert

#isolationism #political-philosophy #politics #humor