By Patrick J. Buchanan

Regency Publishing Inc., 1999

437 pages

ISBN 0-89526-272-X

Reviewed by Alasdair Czyrnyj

The years after the War of Independence were particularly rough ones for the United States. The Constitution of the republic was only a few years old, most of the civil institutions were still in the process of forming, and Founding Fathers were engaged in often-venomous debate over just what this new nation should be, in every area from immigration to industrialization to slavery. To make matters worse, the French Revolution had touched off a fire across Europe, and Americans were in heated debate over if and for whom America should intervene. The Republicans, under Thomas Jefferson, argued that America should support the French as a fellow nation of liberty, while the Federalists of Alexander Hamilton cautioned that an alliance with Britain, America’s biggest trading partner and guardian of the Atlantic, would be the wiser course. George Washington, though a Federalist, was not in favor of either alliance, and spent the last years of his presidency trying to keep the United States from veering too far towards either party. During the 1786 presidential campaign, Washington, in a speech now known as the "Farewell Address," he announced his intention not to run for a third term, as well as offer his advice to future administrations. While much of the address is forgotten today, one of the few parts that have remained is Washington’s warning against foreign alliances. Rather than getting involved in European affairs that Americans had no stake in, Washington argued, America should use its resources and its geographic isolation to trade freely with Europe while not picking favorites among the powers.

At the time, Washington’s advice was prudent. The United States did not have the ability to project its power anywhere into Europe, and even a war in North America could easily bring the young republic to ruin, as the war of 1812 showed. Furthermore, the whole concept tied in rather nicely with old American ideas of exceptionalism, going all the way back to the "Christian city on the hill" of the original Puritan settlers. Because it was tied to these traditionally American concepts, Washington’s advice has survived far longer than anyone in 1786 may have anticipated, influencing layman and congressman alike.

This is the philosophy that influences Patrick J. Buchanan’s controversial 1999 work, A Republic, Not An Empire. Published after his unsuccessful run at the presidency in the much-maligned Reform Party, A Republic is a codification of Buchanan’s foreign policy. For Buchanan, almost everything the United States is doing today is wrong. Rather than fighting "wars of liberation" or championing the spread of democracy, the United States should heed Washington’s advice, and use its power to remain aloof from the turmoil and bloodshed of Old Eurasia. After all, as Buchanan puts it, "America’s leaders are reenacting every folly that brought these [European] powers to ruin–from arrogance and hubris, to assertions of global hegemony, to imperial overstretch, to trumpeting crusades, to handing out war guarantees to regions and countries that Americans have never fought before." For Buchanan, judgment day is due any minute.

Unfortunately, while Buchanan is correct in identifying some of the flaws in American foreign policy, his advice is sorely lacking. Rather than handing out commitments and treaties willy-nilly, Buchanan argues, America should only act on its "vital interests." What is a "vital interest?" According to Walter Lippmann, who is quoted often throughout the book, vital interests are "those interests which the people of the nation are agreed they must defend at the risk of their lives." In essence, rather than basing a foreign policy on protecting key sources of natural resources or vital foreign markets, never mind keeping the international system running on a predictable level, Buchanan prefers to leave the matter to the whims of the citizenry. Considering the seesaws of public opinion that have occurred in the Vietnam and Iraq wars, the importance of various interests begins to resemble a churning storm cloud rather than an orderly set of bullet points.

Buchanan starts the reader off with a brief discussion of the state of U.S. foreign policy just before the millennium. Buchanan’s primary concern here, in what may strike may of the "post 9/11" mindset as odd, is the state of affairs of Russia and Eastern Europe. With the expansion of NATO into Poland and the Czech Republic, and with plans to bring the Baltic states, the United States has provoked foolishly provoked Russia, setting the stage for a military showdown where Americans will be dying for no reason other than protecting Warsaw’s sovereignty. Buchanan also takes the opportunity to outline six other scenarios of how disputes in the Balkans, Korea, Taiwan, and the Middle East could snowball into a major war, thanks to American involvement. What these scenarios all have in common is a Tom Clancy-esque philosophy that all nations are interested in expansion of their power at any costs, consequences be damned. Most of the time, nations prefer to act cautiously, either to remain at a steady level to expand modestly. To take Russia as an example, the expansion of NATO into Eastern Europe, while despised by Moscow, is not really worth getting into a war with a far stronger opponent, especially if the payoff is a bunch of barely-Russian territories that will suck up resources and constantly rebel, as Eastern Europe did during the Cold War. Rather, Russia today is content to play the international game, expanding its energy markets into Europe, holding negotiations between Middle Eastern groups, and using "administrative resources" to help out the local pro-Russian candidates in the CIS. The payoff is not as spectacular, but much safer and easier to deal with. While there are innumerable examples of nations that have violated this policy, they are the exception to day-to-day affairs of great powers, rather than the rule.

To further expand on his argument, Buchanan uses the majority of the book to recap the history of American foreign affairs, carefully pointing out how America has prospered thanks to neutrality. For the first century of American history, Buchanan’s philosophy holds up quite well. The United States in this period concerned itself almost wholly with westward expansion, only dealing with European powers in order to gain more territory in North America, in accordance with the ideology of Manifest Destiny. Despite some early setbacks, this policy was a success, and Buchanan writes lovingly about it, giving the whole period a warmly pro-American cast. In a rather odd twist, Buchanan declares that this expansion was not actual imperialism, as it did not involve the acquisition of populous territories into an inferior relationship with the original states. As Buchanan says, "Manifest Destiny was never about imposing rule on alien peoples; it was about extending the boundaries of American liberty and freedom." Presumably the expansion of the Russian Empire into sparsely populated Central Asia during this period was merely a similar expansion of "Russian liberty", rather than the "tsarist imperialism" of history textbooks.

Perhaps odder still is the intense focus Buchanan gives on the predations of the malevolent British on the young United States. Throughout his account, Buchanan peppers references to British agents provoking the Seminole Indians of Florida to raid British settlements in the aftermath of the War of Independence, British attempts to woo the Texan Republic and California into the empire in the 1830s, as well as British aid to the Confederacy during the Civil War. He writes appraisingly of the War of 1812 as a justified reaction to British harassment on American shipping, despite the fact it was a near-disaster for the country. While these accounts do show that London did not see to eye-to-eye with Washington on many issues, Buchanan’s listing of these grievous insults to insinuate a British conspiracy against the United States during the 19^th century seems ill founded. Given how Oregon Territory was ceded rather passively to the United States, and how pro-British Indian tribes were left to their fate in the aftermath of the War of Independence suggests that, with the exception of Canada, North America was a secondary priority to London. Given the riches and of Australia and South Africa that were uncovered in this period, the natural resources of Canada, to say nothing of the wealth of India, the bounty of America seems much less impressive by comparison.

Of course, this state of affairs was not to last, and Buchanan singles out the Spanish-American War as the conflict that sent the United States on its current sorry course. It was a consciously imperial war, and the dividends it paid far less than were originally anticipated. However, the war did start to draw America out of its shell, and it marks the beginning of the "globalization" of American trade, which has been the backbone of American prosperity throughout the entire 20^th century. Buchanan also takes the opportunity to vent at the "Open Door" policy, proposed by Teddy Roosevelt in 1898, at British urging, to give equal commercial and industrial rights to all the nations involved in China, and to maintain Chinese territorial integrity. While Buchanan argues that this policy was violated repeatedly, and mainly served to irritate the Japanese, it seems that the creation of this policy was one of the few things that kept the dying Qing Empire from being divided by the European powers, which would have almost certainly kicked off another major showdown in East Asia, and would have speedily led to a world war.

The next major betrayal of America’s sacred neutrality came a mere one and a half decades later, when Woodrow Wilson formally brought the United States into World War I. Though the country was predominantly pro-British, Buchanan musters anecdotes and quotes to describe the great power of the anti-interventionist movement. In a recurring theme, he berates the British for interfering in American trade to Germany, while paying plenty of attention to the plight of the German people under the British blockade. Buchanan is using a selective interpretation of the motives of Kaiser Wilhelm and his ministers to cast Imperial Germany as the victim, failing to note the more aggressive aspects of German policy. With the multiple Moroccan crises of the 1900s, as well as the German attempts at intervention in the Boer War and the showdown with the United States in Venezuela in 1902, Wilhelm was looking for an empire, and he was not particularly choosy about how he got it. Perhaps the most audacious plan for a German Empire was the infamous "Operational Plan 3," a set of plans developed in the closing years of the 19^th century, discussed at length in Paul Kennedy’s book War Plans of the Great Powers. In these plans, the goal was to gain American colonial possessions by launching an amphibious operation against New York City and Puerto Rico, as well as oceanic raids to destroy the Atlantic fleet and east coast shipyards, until Washington acceded to German demands. Though these plans were mercifully abandoned by 1907 as the American Navy expanded, the fact that they were drawn up at all and discussed with Wilhelm himself does not bring any confidence in the innocence of the Second Reich’s designs.

Wilson is repeatedly castigated throughout Buchanan’s narrative, first for his excessive friendliness towards Britain, and later for his behavior after the war, with the Fourteen Points and the Versailles Peace. Buchanan turns to counterfactuals to prove his point, suggesting the world would have been much better had the Americans not intervened in the war, either militarily or financially. If the Allies had come negotiated a settlement with Germany after the 1918 Spring Offensive succeeded, the Germans would’ve gone home, and disposed of the Soviet regime to the east shortly afterward. There would have been no Stalinist purges, no Hitler, no World War II, and no Holocaust. This is a rather old-fashioned alternate history, and it is quite wrong-headed. Many of the problems that led to WWII that are unfairly blamed on Woodrow Wilson have origins that stem from the fundamental order of Europe at this time. The Austrian and Ottoman empires were too damaged to have survived much longer after WWI, so the rebuilding of order in Eastern Europe would have been in the hands of Berlin. Given the number of disputants and the problems within Germany itself, it seems unlikely that more could have been done than a few half-hearted measures with left plenty of irate nationalists plotting for revenge. The doctrines of racial science would still have been bubbling away regardless of who won the war, and the ease with which they could be merged to traditional nationalist snobbery suggests that they would have found a receptive audience with the conservative elites of Europe. Furthermore, the old conservative nationalists that were discredited in Germany in the aftermath of WWI would have still held onto power, and would in fact have had their worldview vindicated by their victory over the "decadent" liberal democracies of Western Europe. Finally, while the German army could probably have thrown the Bolsheviks into the ash heap of history, it seems unlikely that Russia could have had more than an arch-conservative Cossack leader who toasts the Kaiser’s health, refuses to build industry, and slaughters every Jew and socialist he can get his hands on. Without the United States, the world may not have seemed all that different, but it would be one where the interests of France and Britain are sidelined for Germans ones, and the wishes of America are ignored entirely. It is unlikely Buchanan would want to live in such a world. Whether or not American troops were needed in Europe after the German Spring Offensive of 1918 failed is debatable, but certainly the hope that the Americans were coming was a great morale boost to the war-weary Allies, one that probably kept them going long enough to win.

In his discussion of World War II, Buchanan’s argument takes an odd course. Temporarily abandoning his thesis on the benefits of American neutrality in world affairs, he launches into a discussion on the course of British policy towards Germany in the 1930’s. In discussing the somewhat hypocritical nature of British policy towards the guarantees of territorial sovereignty for Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Poland, Buchanan comes to the bizarre conclusion that London had no "vital interest" in European affairs, and was merely the age-old policy of preventing one power from dominating Europe, which Buchanan, thanks to the words of Lord Salisbury, likens to a "dead carcass." Given how free British access to the Mediterranean had always been the vital artery of the empire, and the policy of Belgian neutrality had deprived other powers of suitable ports to launch an invasion of Britain itself, it is hard to imagine why Britain would stand to have one major continental power control British access to both.

Furthermore, Buchanan mentions Hitler’s positive words regarding the British Empire, and concludes that Hitler’s primary goal was always in expansion to the east. The surest way to peace in Europe, by this reckoning, was for Western Europe to blithely stand aside while Hitler duelled it out with Stalin. This raises a difficult question Buchanan, against all logic, ignores. Simply put, it’s all very well to talk about Hitler and Stalin going at each other and leaving Western Europe alone, but what happens if one of them wins? A Third Reich that holds everything from the Rhine to the Volga would be a fearsome opponent, to say nothing of a Soviet Eurasia that straddles the Earth like a colossus. Given the vast resources of either superstate, it seems unlikely that either the British or French could mount an effective defense without heading into economic ruin. With both those nations neutralized, the leaders in either Berlin or Moscow, lacking any meaningful restraint, would likely begin the final task of completing the revolution, ready to finally make the world a socialist paradise or a glittering racial autocracy. In addition, both a Soviet and Nazi Eurasia would seek to isolate themselves with command economies, resulting in a shutdown of the trans-Atlantic trade system that has been key to American prosperity. While the United States could survive such a trial, its prospects would be very grim indeed.

Another odd facet of Buchanan’s analysis comes through in his description of the German and Soviet leaders. While Buchanan never misses an opportunity to describe Stalin as "the Great Terrorist," or as having "hands drenched in blood," he makes no similar pronouncements on Hitler’s name. Later on in the book, when discussing the influence various national lobbies have over U.S. foreign policy, he discusses at length the influence of the Jewish population of the United States. While Buchanan is certainly no Nazi, as his critics allege, he does not seem to be making much of an effort to prevent people from making such comparisons.

A similar optimism regarding the Axis powers infects Buchanan’s discussion of the breakdown of American-Japanese relations. Here, the argument is that thanks to the foolish decision to annex the Philippines in the Spanish-American War, America was committed to defending islands it did not have the willpower to defend. Support of the Open Door Policy and the Washington Naval Treaty only angered Tokyo, which soon equated the United States with the rest of the European powers. Finally, Franklin Roosevelt cut off sales of oil to Japan, which was desperately needed for the war in China. Needing that oil, Japan attacked the United States at Pearl Harbor, after attempts to negotiate for more oil, even with the offer of abandoning China in exchange, fell on deaf ears. Given the outright fanaticism shown by the Imperial Japanese Army towards holding their territory, and even the near-coup that broke out after Hirohito’s surrender address, it seems unlikely that China would actually have been relinquished had Washington agreed. Buchanan seems to blame the rise of Japanese nationalism in the 1930’s on the shortsighted doings of the Europeans, as opposed to the unpleasant transformations of a society attempting to make the leap from medieval feudalism to modern industrial state in less than fifty years. Certainly the more expansionist aspects of Japanese policy were far older than the Roosevelt Administration. The "21 Demands" of 1915, which Tokyo dictated to China and essentially made China a Japanese protectorate, were a trial run for the occupation fifteen years later. Japan merely lacked the resources to enforce them in 1915. Even without the United States, the Japanese Empire would have been a dangerous beast, and it would have been just as unkind to American presence near its areas of its "vital interest" as it was in our history.

After the discussion on history winds to a close (Buchanan has little to say about the Cold War, save that he agrees with it and that Vietnam was fought completely wrong), Buchanan lays out his vision of a new foreign policy designed to keep the United States secure from imperial overstretch. The plan is, to put it mildly, sweeping. In North America, immigration should be strongly curtailed, and the Mexican border should be sealed up. Puerto Rico should become an independent country; Greenland should be annexed, as should any provinces of Canada that separate. In East Asia, American forces should be pulled out, and Japan and South Korea should be militarized to contain the power of China. In the Middle East, America should explore more sources of oil closer to home, Israeli policy should grant the Palestinians a state, and the whole region should be forgotten about. In Europe, America should all but leave NATO, Germany should be remilitarized to act as the guardian of Central Europe, and Russia should be brought into the EU. The United States would have no major overseas commitments, and thus would be safe forever.

This final pronouncement illustrates the problem that lies at the heart of this book. While the United States of America did not enter the 20^th century with the intention to rule the world, that is what ended up happening. While many interventions were made that were shortsighted or simply delusional, many of them did make life safer for those of us who live in the West. In addition, the United States, by virtue of its wealth, industry, military, and people, has become the lynchpin that holds the international system together. With America running the show, life and international trade have become safe and predictable. Remove that lynchpin, and the international order would degenerate into a Darwinian state of nature where every nation is out for itself, like the late 19^th century.

There is a good argument to be made that America should pick its battles carefully, a lesson not every president has learned. However, refusing to play the game is not an option. Rather than regaining the freedom Buchanan feels has been lost during the 20^th century, an America that retreated back to North America to never stir would be like the Qing Empire, convinced of its own superiority, refusing to deal with the barbarians until, one day, the barbarians can make themselves heard and enforce their will on the nation.

Simply put, if you don’t play the game, the game plays with you.