Address is its inaugurating document, it is not a tradition separate from liberty, but simply the means of defending the first tradition. Moreover, one of McDougall’s main purposes throughout is to show that unilateralism was not isolationism, which in fact never existed. “Our vaunted tradition of ‘isolationism,’” he states, “is no tradition at all, but a dirty word that interventionists, especially since Pearl Harbor, hurl at anyone who questions their policies” (p. 40). That the term functions as a smear (and a proven method of forestalling debate) is true enough. But it is hard to see how Washington’s doctrine can be equated with McDougall’s unilateralism. After all, it is possible to pursue a policy of intense global activism unilaterally. …show more content…
Washington’s advice was that “taking care always to keep ourselves by suitable establishments on a respectable defensive posture, we may safely trust to temporary alliances for extraordinary emergencies.” And he declared, “The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is, in extending our commercial relations to have with them as little political connection as possible” (“Washington’s Farewell Address,” in Documents of American History, edited by Henry Steele Commager [New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1948], 174, emphasis in original). The latter statement, incidentally, was the motto Richard Cobden, the greatest libertarian thinker on international relations, placed on the title page of his first published