I usually am content to read my Tolstoi and Oppenheimer, I recently decided to make a foray into the realm of Pat Buchanan. I remembered liking things about, A Republic, Not an Empire despite its theme of protectionist nationalism.
This book, Churchill, Hitler and the “Unnecessary War”, has a lot of good points about how it was in no ones coherent interest for England to get involved in the First and Second World War. While I don’t agree with some of Buchanan’s analysis on some points, I find that his America-First isolationism actually corresponds well with my pacifistic and anti-military views. It is interesting that we agree the war would be disastrous both for its own content and its consequences, which is usually the opposite I see from the Republican bobble-heads.
Robert Higgs reviewed the book for The Freeman, 11 June 2009. I disagree with some of the conclusions brought forth by Pat Buchanan, and even had the pleasure of talking to Robert Higgs about them at Cato University 2009 (although, we only spoke for a bit, and I simply conceded the point given that as a student it was not in my interest to debate him without first establishing that I did it as a fan of his work; Robert Higgs was one of the main reasons I applied for the scholarship to attend the conference).
I’m not ashamed to say I generally like Buchanan, I really enjoyed The Death of The West.
He’s usually spot on about addressing problems; but being a Republican would seem to have a problematic influence when stating his solutions.
His Liberal equivalent would be Greg Palast.
If you liked Churchill, Hitler and the “Unnecessary War”, I wholeheartedly recommend David Irving’s, Hitler’s War and Churchill’s War. Both are fantastic (better than Buchanan’s book, IMO) and freely available online.
The problem is that I am not sure whether or not the argument Higgs gives in his review is really Buchanan’s argument, as I have never read the book and so do not know the wider context of the quote. But, Buchanan seems to suggest that had Britain and France remained neutral during the German invasion of Poland, then the Second World War would not have sparked. This, to me, reeks of the same fallacious thinking that Western Europe operated under when they “allowed” the Germans to occupy Austria and Czechoslovakia. There is no obvious reason as to believe that the Germans would not have invaded the Soviet Union. Originally, I had also suggested that Germany’s invasion of France, after Poland, was largely inevitable. Today, I may not support such a thesis as strongly as I would have before, but I still think that I am generally correct (as France owned the Alsace-Lorraine, a territory I believe that Hitler would have used as a cassus belli to wage war on France). Over the long-run, I feel that the British would have been pulled into the war irregardless.
In fact, I believe that it was British-French “neutrality” during the invasion of Poland which allowed the war to drag into a six year war. Although I am no longer has well-read on the option of a French invasion of Western Germany in September 1939, it is true that Germany’s defenses in the West were rather weak at the time (the bulk of the German Wehrmacht was operating in Poland or in Eastern Germany), although it is also true that it would have taken quite some time and effort for the French to develop some type of attacking force in the area. Nevertheless, there was clearly room for more effort on part of France and Great Britain.
Militarily, a French invasion of Germany was quite logical. Politically, you have to consider that the third republic was a complete mess, and that many elements of the military were quietly sympathetic to fascism.
I do not think the British or French ever should have gotten involved in World War 1, and I don’t see World War 2 happening without that. The monarchies needed to be undone, but what replaced them was pretty horrific.
Protectionist “isolationism” is by no means peaceful… It is violence at large. The trade ‘wars’ that evolve from this supposed self sufficiency almost always escalate into very real conflict, and that is disregarding the smaller scale skirmishes between the black market smugglers and the prohibitionists. A very good argument could be made that protectionism inevitably leads to imperial ambitions as territorial expansion is seen as the only way to gain access to that lamp post that you’ve always wanted on the other side of the fence. I was very pleased on the day that my father stopped quoting Pat Buchanan. =]
Mercantilism is the enemy of both old liberalism and socialism. I think the idea of appealing to conservatives is foolish, I personally have had far more luck talking to socialists then a hard line Henry Clayite.
The last state to truly practice isolationism was Tokugawa-era Japan. It ended with the country powerless and humiliated by a squadron of technologically-dominant American ships.
Yeah, and the Tokugawa dynasty prohibited trade with foreigners except in some limited capacities, the Dutch for example. I guess the Japanese learned the error of their ways from the American navy and from then on decided to emulate their policy. During next half century east Asia and the Pacific enjoyed many friendly visits from the Japanese military.
This is what makes the United States tolerable to me. You can really see it transforming into a cyberpunk anarchist thing at the drop of a hat. It would just take some stunningly black swan events. There is an undercurrent of ideological radicalism, technotopianism, transhumanism and self-expressionist anarchism that resonates through its oddball civilization. These are by no means, individually, mainstream currents. But it is interesting how frequently they intersect. Witness The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson.
I don’t know if anyone else on this board gets a kind of Randian feel from some of the strangest places in the US, and its odd combination with leftist radicalism; but I can tell you it is much different from people from southeast asia.
I have jet to get to the end of this book. I got through maybe one third so far. It is a good book overally, but not perfect. I like Buchanan when he sticks to the real politik which is most of the time. But I think he often fails when he starts making moral pronouncements. The most often problem is that he contextualizes actions of one actor but not of the other so that one has to end up looking more villanous than the other.
Buchanan`s thesis is that the war could have been limited to a German-Soviet clash and that it was foolish on the part of Great Britain to lose its empire over it.
Yes, but the reason that people largely refer to WWII as “the good war” was due to the holocaust; it usually doesn’t have too much to do with Germany invading other nations.
As far as Buchanan regards it, and I agree with him, the holocaust didn’t really begin until the US got involved. Before that, I’m not at all convinced that Germany invading other nations was any worse of an event than those nations having existed in the first place - what’s the difference about the flag being raised over the capitol? The people largely lived the same anyways.
Furthermore, I’m entirely certain that the German government would have collapsed soon anyways. For some reason, only the US has really gotten the whole modern empire thing down and Germany didn’t seem to really follow a sustainable empire model.
I would say that the US, and the new world in general, does possess a higher degree of individualism. I think, however, this is more related to the larger presence of agriculturalist culture than anything else. The same type of individualist fervor exists to a lesser extent in places like Spain, Italy, South America, and Mexico - especially in Mexico.
I don’t think it’s anything unique to the US, but I agree that it exists.
How sectarian of you to say so. Actually what flag flies from the capitol is about the most important thing to people you can imagine. And you are plain wrong. The occupation changed every aspect of people`s lives, certainly everything to do with public life and national culture.
Maybe in America. Not in the countries that were invaded.
I’m not sure this is completely true. In any case, I’m not sure how this is relevant to what you quoted.
Oh, so it’s OK for one nation to subjugate another? I mean, what’s the difference? The United States, under that rationale, should have just succumbed to the will of the Soviet Union.
On the topic of the holocaust, I’m sure that the Third Reich accelerated its killing programs as the war got tougher (it may have coincided with the United States’ entry into the war, but also had to do with the Soviet Union), this ignores the mass murder which took place in Poland after the occupation (the majority of the ruling elite were liquidated), and also the mass murder which took place during the initial occupation of Western Russia (see Masters of Death).
Without passing judgment on Buchanan’s thesis, we aren’t talking about the United States. We are talking about Britain’s entry in the war, which occurred whilst the Soviet Union and the Third Reich still honored a non-aggression pact between them.
