Charles Beard, properly understood

It is in this regard that what for the purposes of this article we have argued to call "isolationism" might at last come into its own: in toppling the pedestal that has kept the Wilsonian premise beyond serious scrutiny since World War II. Recent events make it clear that the critique of internationalism devised by Beard and others remains as apt today as when it was first formulated: the Somalian mission, where messianic intentions--remember Bush commending the troops for doing "God's work?"--have given way to would-be saviors being stalked by those whom they were sent to save; the paleo-Wilsonian clamor for intervention in Bosnia where American airpower will presumably untie the knot jerked tight by centuries of animosity; the extraordinary belief that a few billion dollars will forestall the disintegration of Russia--despite the manifest failure of spending on a much larger scale to alleviate disintegration on a lesser (but still disturbing) scale at home; the missile attack on Baghdad devised as much to allow a fumbling commander-in-chief to look momentarily presidential as to serve any discernible military purpose.

One can imagine the sulfurous contempt with which Charles Beard would have greeted such undertakings. One need not imagine--because Beard's writings make the point explicitly--that it is precisely such fecklessness to which internationalism has consistently been prone. Deprived of the discipline of a clearly discernible proximate threat, the United States finds itself today more than ever susceptible to such tendencies. The resultant spasms of missionary activism promise much and cost more but typically yield little. Beard would tell us that when the United States bases its policies on the presumption of superior moral insight, such results are inevitable.

Moreover, with modern-day disciples of Woodrow Wilson finding echoes of the Thirties or Forties in every grim turn of the 1990s, the isolationist critique reminds Americans that while some problems justify extraordinary exertions, most do not. Then is not now. The third-rate dictators of current vintage are not to be confused with Hitler. However odious their policies, countries like Serbia are not to be mistaken for the Third Reich. However welcome the West's triumph in the Cold War, the demise of Soviet totalitarianism does not signify that Lasting Peace is at hand if only we will try a bit harder to grasp it. On the contrary, as Winston Churchill foresaw several decades ago, ending the war of the giants has led not to peace but to an era in which pygmies vie to settle long-simmering grudges.

In these circumstances, a dose of Beardian skepticism would be salutary. It is time to readmit his critique into the canon of permissible opinion.

1 "Radio Address Delivered by President Roosevelt from Washington," May 27, 1941 in Peace and War: United States Foreign Policy, 1931-1941 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1943), p. 611.

2 The most recent effort by a reputable scholar to question the necessity of American intervention in World War II is Bruce M. Russett, No Clear and Present Danger: A Skeptical View of the United States Entry into World War II (New York: Harper and Row, 1972).