The Wages of Neo-Isolationism

At Hoover's 2014 Fall Retreat, Victor Davis Hanson, the Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow at Hoover, discussed American foreign policy in a talk entitled “The Wages of Neo-Isolationism.” Hanson argued that, since the end of the Second World War, there has been seventy years of engaged US foreign policy with two exceptions: the Carter administration and the Obama administration. He then offered examples and potential explanations for that assertion.  He ended by warning that the next twenty-four months will be the most dangerous in the post—World War II era, particularly in four arenas: Iraq, Iran, and the rise of radical Islam; Putin, Crimea, and the conflict in Ukraine; China and its bullying in East Asia; and Turkey’s ambivalence and the decline of NATO.