[Mb-civic] It's Not Isolationism, but It's Not Attractive By DAVID BROOKS

[Michael Butler]

The New York Times
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March 5, 2006
Op-Ed Columnist
It's Not Isolationism, but It's Not Attractive
By DAVID BROOKS

This was going to be a column on the growing isolationism of the American
people. I was going to argue that in the post-Iraq era, the quickest way for
an unprincipled cynic to get to the White House is by running as a smiling
Democratic-Buchananite.

Attack the Dubai ports deal to burnish your security credentials. Call for
less foreign adventurism and more spending at home to win the Democratic
base. Go hard against illegal immigration to win the working class. Rail
against China and free trade deals to build support in the Midwest. Bash
France just for the fun of it. Bingo! You're cruising to Inauguration Day.

Unfortunately, before I had finished that column, I looked at the facts. The
bulk of the evidence suggests there is no rising tide of isolationism in
this country, even with the bloodshed in Iraq.

A polling analyst, Ruy Teixeira, has taken the closest look at the data over
at his Web site, Donkey Rising. Teixeira argues that instead of seeing a
turn to isolationism, what we are seeing in poll after poll is public
opinion returning to normal post-World War II levels, after the unusual 9/11
blip.

Much of the isolationist talk started when a Pew survey found that 42
percent of Americans believe that the U.S. should mind its own business
internationally, a 12-point rise over three years. But Teixeira points out
that the 42 percent number puts Americans back where they were throughout
the Clinton years, when Americans supported more foreign interventions than
ever before.

Meanwhile, the rest of the evidence shows high engagement in foreign
affairs. Public support for multilateral action remains phenomenally strong.
Support for foreign aid is higher than it's been. International issues like
global terrorism remain among Americans' top concerns.

Attitudes toward economic globalization are, if anything, more positive than
they have been historically. In 1953, 54 percent of Americans favored free
trade. In 2000, 64 percent of Americans said free trade was good for the
U.S. In 2004, 64 percent said globalization was good for the U.S. and 65
percent agreed international trade was good for "your standard of living."

In the late 1940's, Americans were asked if the U.S. should be active abroad
or stay out of world affairs. Back then, during the heyday of American
internationalism, 69 percent said the U.S. should be active abroad. Today,
the share of people who say that is the same: 69 percent.

On the Republican side, there has been no surge of Pat Buchanan-style
paleoconservatism. On the contrary, the influence of Reagan and Bush, and
the growing evangelical interest in foreign affairs, have virtually
eliminated isolationism from the Republican Party, its traditional home.
Meanwhile, the likely Democratic presidential nominee is Hillary Clinton,
who has been barely distinguishable from John McCain on foreign policy
matters (aside from her ports pandering).

In short, Iraq, in this sphere as in so many, is not Vietnam. The Vietnam
War caused America to swing from extroversion to introversion. The Iraq war
has a different dynamic.

That's because in the late 1960's, the Vietnamese were not going around the
world carrying out suicide attacks. Vietnamese were not rioting over
cartoons. The Vietnamese did not fly planes into skyscrapers. The current
conflict has an element of existential menace Vietnam did not have.

Thus the chief effect of Iraq is not to move the U.S. toward isolationism;
it has been to shift American opinion from one form of internationalism to
another.

George Bush's brand was based on the premise that Arabs aren't very
different from anybody else, and can be brought into the family of
democratic nations. This brand is, sadly, fading.

The rising internationalism is based, by contrast, on Arab exceptionalism.
This is the belief that while most of the world is chugging toward a
globally integrated future, the Arab world remains caught in its own
medieval whirlpool of horror. The Arab countries cannot become quickly
democratic; their people aren't ready for pluralistic modernity; they just
have to be walled off so they don't hurt us again.

People won't express such quasi-racial views directly to pollsters, but the
attitude shows up in the mammoth reaction to the Dubai ports deal, in the
spike of people who want the U.S. to eliminate its dependence on Middle East
oil, in the reaction to the cartoon riots. A similar attitudinal shift is
evident in Europe ‹ in spades.

As I tried to argue in a column about the ports deal, this reaction is a
crude overgeneralization, but it's there. As the election season progresses,
voters are going to pull candidates in a gritty, bloody-minded direction. No
more uplifting talk about freedom. Soon the contest will be over who can be
toughest on the crescent menace.

America isn't growing more isolationist. Americans are going to be happy to
integrate with the world, just not with the Arab world.

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