What it means when someone calls you an 'isolationist'

The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines “isolationism” as “a policy of national isolation by abstention from alliances and other international political and economic relations.”

In a recent article exploring the foreign policy positions of Donald Trump’s potential running mates, Washington Post columnist Max Boot described the Quincy Institute, the publisher of Responsible Statecraft, as “an isolationist think tank” when referencing a comment Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) made at a QI conference earlier this year.

Except you won’t find any policy paper, analysis, commentary or public statement from the Quincy Institute promoting “a policy of national isolation by abstention from alliances and other international political and economic relations.” Nor will you find any such content on Responsible Statecraft.

In fact, the policy positions the Quincy Institute promotes are just the opposite; they are rooted in rigorous, multilateral engagement with countries around the world — at times through formal or informal alliances — to solve problems through diplomacy, while eschewing, where and whenever possible, the now very common American push for a military first approach.

It’s the latter point about the utility of U.S. military power in solving problems that causes heartburn for so many American national security establishmentarians like Max Boot. But we’ll get back to that.

Given Boot’s false characterization of the Quincy Institute, QI leadership asked editors at the Washington Post to issue a correction. But they refused. “The column's characterization of the institute reflected the writer's considered opinion and thus does not lend itself to correction as a factual error,” a Post editor said.

Instead, the Post offered QI the opportunity to respond to Boot’s article by writing a letter to the editor. In it, Quincy Institute CEO Lora Lumpe noted that while QI “challenges the United States’ overreliance on the use of military force, we do not in any way favor American retreat from the world.” Lumpe then went through a litany of QI policy positions that in no way resemble any kind of “isolationism” and concluded: “The institute should appear ‘isolationist’ only to those who believe that the only meaningful way for the U.S. to engage in the world is by waging war.”

I don’t know what a “considered opinion” is but it’s pretty clear that Boot’s description of the Quincy Institute is based on a factual error. The burden of proof is on him to show how QI advocates isolationism. In her LTE, QI’s Lora Lumpe provided ample evidence to the contrary, which should just be another nail in the coffin.

But the truth is that while correcting the record is perfectly appropriate in this and other similar cases, there’s never going to be enough “well actually-ing” to satisfy those throwing about the “isolationism” smear against those in pursuit of international peace. Critics of the Quincy Institute, and its ideological allies, don’t care whether what they espouse is actually isolationist. They use the charge to try to undermine restraint in U.S. foreign policy because most often, they don’t have much by way of substantive arguments to counter it.

And it’s well documented that there are a variety of constituencies in Washington and beyond — whether they’re newspaper columnists, lawmakers, lobbyists, think tank “experts,” or weapons company executives — that stand to lose both politically and financially should the United States start trimming fat off the Pentagon budget, cooperate with Beijing, or end the war in Ukraine.

The darker side of this coin is that these critics know that the isolationism charge is meant to link the accused to the isolationist movement from the 1930s, which itself had an undercurrent of anti-semitism and rhymes with Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement of Nazi Germany.

So in that sense, those screaming “isolationist” at restrainers and proponents of peace aren’t that different from others (or in many cases, the very same people) calling advocates of diplomacy with Iran and critics of Israeli government policy “anti-semites.”

The people who level these accusations know that the military first approach of the last 20-plus years has yielded disastrous results not just for U.S. interests, power and prestige, but also for those around the world whose lives, families and communities have been ruined by misbegotten American military adventures. They can’t make that case. But they can call you an “isolationist.”

The irony here is that many of these same people who go around calling proponents of diplomacy “isolationist” are themselves advocates of lobbing sanctions on any country that dares say anything bad about the United States. Wouldn’t Merriam-Webster then call that isolationism?