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Comment by m000 | Hacker News Reader

> but unfortunately you don't always get a choice

Arguably USA does have this choice, by virtue of sitting across the ocean.

It's an illusory choice. The USA has tried isolationism a couple times before and that didn't work, either. While I do favor a less interventionist foreign policy it's naive to think that the oceans will protect us. Hostile powers including North Korea and Iran either already have the capability to strike the US homeland — or will have it soon.

Remind me again why Iran and North Korea have beef with the US?

There's no historical reason for it like fomenting revolution, waging a war of choice that killed a double digit percentage of the population, extrajudicial assassinations, or any other shenanigans like that, right? The US hasn't been actively waging economic war against these countries for the better part of a century have they? These countries just have it in for the US, and no choices were made that led to that?

That's a non sequitur. I won't attempt to defend the foreign policy errors which put us in this situation but we have to deal with the situation as it obtains today, regardless of the cause. There is a very real possibility of missile and drone attacks on the US homeland as well as critical overseas facilities and allies.

Its not a non-sequitur. You were saying that isolationism doesn't work, my argument is that non-isolationism is at the root of US problems with MANY countries.

Sure the US needs to prevent that sort of attack, but one way to prevent it is to avoid the situation in the first place. I don't need to worry about Iran or North Korea nuking me because I live in a country that hasn't had a war of choice with either of them. The price of installing the Shah is still being paid in the need to defend from Iranian retaliation.

When did the USA try isolationism and have it not work. If you refer to WWI and WWII, the USA was hardly isolationist in either of those conflicts. Between the embargoing of Japan in WWII (which was reasonable, and Japan's attack on pearl harbor very stupid), and US ships following German U-boats and broadcasting locations, they were hardly impartial. In WWI the Lusitania was actually found to be carrying weapons. The US has not done real isolationism.

And there it is, the "no true isolationist" argument. It's always disappointing to see arguments about major policy issues on HN descend into this type of low-effort "gotcha" while entirely missing the main point.

If everything short of boots on the ground is Isolationism, then nothing is. These are definitionally non-isolationist things that were being done despite the populace at the time being isolationist.

Pearl Harbor, 9/11. If you'd argue limiting oil exports to the empire of Japan or arming the Mujahideen (1) aren't isolationist policies and (2) caused those attacks, consider that your definition of isolationism might require the US to give up its sovereignty.

What sovereignty exactly did we get from messing around in the middle east?

I agree. This is US strongest defensive "weapon". I always compare it to playing Age of Empires II while having isolated Island for yourself with all resources imaginable.

It gets even better: the US sell and profit a lot from expensive interceptors

Except that interceptors are in demand, and in turn others are not starting to enter that market. Which in turn drives interceptor costs down...

Distance didn't stop 9/11 or Pearl Harbor. And now there's GPS and other COTS tech that bridge the distance for an adversary.

Of course. But the idea that you can arm yourself to the point where you can stop any and all attacks is an imperial folly.

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