U.S. Isolation is Bad Policy, Even if Americans Say They Want It
By Michael Gerson | OCTOBER 13, 2014
The value of U.S. foreign policy conducted by majority vote — which might have resulted in a Nazi-occupied London — is once again evident.
In 2013, 52 percent of Americans agreed that their country should “mind its own business internationally.” (In 1964, the figure was 20 percent.) This robust consensus for disengagement was soon followed by the rapid expansion of the Islamic State in a vacuum left by U.S. inattention, and then by an outbreak of Ebola in West Africa that should have been confronted months earlier with larger resources.
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