We unfortunately do have a neo-isolationist movement in the country which is almost totally based in the Trump movement and is represented most loudly by the Freedom Caucus in the House. As I have noted hear before, the six-month delay in arms to Ukraine was a more effective military strike against that country than anything the Russian military was capable of doing over the last two years. Ukrainians died because of that interference.
Most of the movement's allure is due to woeful ignorance of history, global economic reality, and critical international interests. The myth of being able to hide behind our oceans seems to arise every seventy or eighty years only to be shattered by bloody and expensive reality. It is worth remembering that even the founders recognized the need for an aggressive foreign policy. In 1801-1805 the fledgling US Navy fought a war in the Mediterranean against the Barbary Pirates (the shores of Tripoli and all that), and The Monroe Doctrine was promulgated in the 1820's
What worries me most about Trump and Ukraine is that he seems to value his personal grievances more than the good of the country or even his own political best interests - witness the alienation of Nikki Haley and her supporters in a neck and neck presidential race.
That said, Harris is an empty vessel, and the cadres waiting in the wings to fill it seem determined to create a new United States modelled on the equal outcome mythology of Karl Marx and an allied social justice construct that seeks to destroy every aspect of the nation's traditional culture. Here I would simply add that in a country with no stable ethnicity, religion, language or lengthy history what passes for a traditional culture and the constitution are the very thin glue holding the republic together.
The criticisms of the Obama administration voiced here are absolutely correct. His relatively spineless approach to our international interests emboldened Putin, Xi, and the Mullahs and their proxies. The Afghanistan withdrawal debacle further empowered those adversaries. Our overly cautious support of Ukraine has created an abiding flashpoint in Eastern Europe, the outcome of which remains very much in doubt. Twelve of the last sixteen years were the responsibility of the democratic presidency. Against that litany of international failure, Trump's administration looks pretty good.
