Isolationists and unilateralists

In a recent post I mentioned the idea that what real isolationists that are around are really soulmates to Bush-style unilateralists. (The ways in which Bush and others use "isolationism" as a bogey-man is a different issue.)

Mark Danner in an interview with Tom Engelhardt of TomDispatch.com makes a similar comparison:

Danner: On empire, what's unusual about this administration isn't only its focus on power, but on unilateralism. It's the flip side of isolationism. The notion that alliances, economic or political, and international law inevitably hinder the most powerful nation. You know, the image of the strings around Gulliver. They said in the National Security Strategy of the United States, the 2005 version, that rivals will continue to challenge us using the strategies of the weak including "international fora, judicial processes, and terrorism." They're associating terror and asymmetric warfare with international law as similar ways to blunt the overwhelming power of the United States. That represents an attitude toward international law and institutions that, I think, is a real and dramatic break from past practice in the United States. In our history, certainly recently, there's just no comparison to them - no government anywhere near as radical.

TD: They're really extreme American nationalists, though you can't use that word in this country.

Danner: That's true, and they combine with this belief in great-power America an almost nativist distrust of international institutions. That's the difference between Truman America and this regime in its approach to foreign policy. They put international institutions in a similar class with terrorism – that is, weapons of the weak[.] (my emphasis)

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