It is possible—though far from certain—that the coming Trump presidency will herald a broad retreat from most of America’s overseas military commitments and actions. In the past, Trump has expressed his skepticism—or, perhaps better said, his irritation—over such commitments, especially to NATO. And while their apparent views are yet to be tested by actual overseas crises, J. D. Vance and Pete Hegseth, Trump’s nominee as Secretary of Defense, are both said to be disenchanted with America’s “forever wars.” 

Whether or not in the coming years there will be a turn toward “isolationism”—better termed “military non-interventionism”—there is a strong case for the gradual end of U.S. military commitments and actions outside our own country.

From 1776 through 1941, except for the U.S. entrance into World War I in 1917, the grand strategy of America was essentially that of isolationism. As set out by Washington and Jefferson, that policy was defined primarily to mean no political or military commitments to foreign countries that could embroil the United States in foreign wars that were irrelevant to our national security. As is often noted, isolationism did not entail complete withdrawal from world affairs, nor did it mean economic autarky. Indeed, even military non-interventionism was understood not to apply to “our backyard,” typically defined to mean the entire Western Hemisphere.

Isolationism permanently ended with the U.S. entry into World War II. Since then, the fundamental premise of American foreign policy has been that national security requires the maintenance of a balance of power in the major world regions. After the defeat of Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany, that goal was pursued through the policy of containment, which aimed to prevent Soviet, Chinese, or communist expansionism in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East.

The underlying logic or premise of wars fought to maintain regional balances of power has been that it is better to fight a war—even a major war—against an expansionist state or group of states sooner rather than later when they could have attained preponderant power. However, even if this logic was compelling in the past, as in WWII, particularly against the Axis powers, it is no longer. The costs of going to war now against nuclear powers—such as Russia, China, or possibly Iran in the near future—might already exceed comprehension. Alternatively, deterrence, smart diplomacy, and other instruments of statecraft might well prevent the postulated later war from ever occurring. 

There are only two ways in which the security of the United States in its homeland can be threatened: by a conventional invasion or by nuclear war. But the United States would continue to be immune from invasion even in the most extreme and barely imaginable scenarios, in which either a revived imperialist Russia came to dominate Western Europe or China somehow brought the lands, population, and resources of Asia under its control—for what could they do next, send their fleets across the Atlantic and Pacific to invade America?

To be sure, national security is not the only national interest of the  United States, for it is undeniable that we have important overseas political and economic interests that could be jeopardized by the emergence of hegemonic states in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. Nor is it the case that all overseas U.S. military interventions have been chiefly motivated by balance of power considerations. However, those considerations have been the crucial ones when our basic security—or predominance—in the Western Hemisphere has been thought to be ultimately threatened, as in WWI, WWII, and the major conflicts with China and Russia—or their perceived “proxies”—since 1945.

Europe

There is increasing concern about the ultimate intentions of Vladimir Putin’s Russia, which, in some analyses, may go beyond Ukraine to threaten the former Soviet-dominated states of Eastern Europe. In light of the difficulties Russia has had in conquering just the eastern parts of Ukraine, the immense casualties it has suffered, and the high and increasing economic costs of its war, the feared threats of further Russian expansionism seem far-fetched.

Moreover, should such a threat develop, it is hard to see how the overall European balance of power could be overturned as long as Western Europe itself was not threatened. Still, for the sake of analysis, let us suppose that such a Russian threat really materialized, that Russia conquered Eastern Europe and then was in a position to threaten Western Europe. The fundamental issue in terms of American national security would be whether the United States should again go to war—a nuclear war, in all likelihood, at least at the level of tactical nuclear weapons—in order to preserve the European balance of power.

It is hard to see why. In the event of a radical Russian threat to the continent, the European members of NATO would not only have the nuclear deterrence of France and Britain but also the economic, geographic, and technological capabilities to mount a purely conventional defense that could defeat a Russian attack without any American participation. And if the Europeans are unwilling to pay the economic and other costs of building up their defenses and refuse to do what could conceivably be necessary to preserve their very independence, then there is little case for the United States to go to war with Russia on their behalf. Trump’s skepticism about NATO has some basis, though it seems to be largely due to the wrong reasons: his emphasis should not be on the allegedly “unfair” economic costs to the United States but rather on the risks to our national security.

The policy implication of the argument I have been making is this: the United States should announce that over the next five years, its military bases in Europe will be gradually closed, and at the end of that period, we will withdraw from NATO. That is sufficient time for the nations of Europe, collectively far stronger than Russia, to shore up their defenses.

Asia

In the past decade, driven by balance-of-power thinking, the United States has greatly expanded its military power and defense commitments in Asia. It is instructive to reflect on how and why the United States came to believe that its national security required the maintenance of a balance of power policy in Asia. It appears that this began “in a fit of absence of mind,” as nineteenth-century British imperialism was famously characterized.

In 1898, the United States “acquired” (as it is often quaintly described) the Philippines, previously a Spanish colony, as an unintended and unforeseen byproduct of the U.S. defeat of Spain in the Spanish-American War. As a result of what should be regarded as an absurd historical accident, it became an unexamined axiom that the United States—now a self-described “Pacific Power”—must maintain a balance of power in Asia in order to prevent a potentially hostile power from dominating the mainland and invading—Where? Surely not the American homeland? In fact, during the rise of Japanese expansionism in the 1930s, the primary concern of the U.S. government was over the threat to the Philippines.

In short, had we not “acquired” the Philippines, it is unlikely we would have come to think of ourselves as a “Pacific power” (as Obama and others have termed us) with the attendant need to preserve Asia’s balance of power. Consequently, this unexamined axiom led to the American intervention in the Korean War and especially the unnecessary war with China, a consequence of the Truman administration’s decision to let American armies conquer all of Korea and advance to the Chinese border, rather than settling for the re-establishment of the division of Korea after the defeat of the North Korean invasion.

Then, in an even worse tragedy, the United States went to war in Vietnam in the 1960s to prevent the communists from winning a civil war. In the process, the intervention precipitated another Chinese intervention that might have come perilously close to a full-scale Sino-American war—a war that even then might have become a nuclear one. And if balance-of-power thinking continues, there will be a growing risk that this country may stumble into its worst and most dangerous war yet against a nuclear-armed China.

Is China An Expansionist State?

Unsurprisingly, China sees itself as a defensive state legitimately alarmed by the growing U.S. military power and commitments in Asia. Consequently, China has taken a series of steps, including what we see as military “provocations,” in order to assert what it considers to be its national rights in the region.

Chinese behavior raises three issues. First, is China truly an expansionist state that seeks to establish hegemony over the entire region? Second, even if China has such intentions—or later develops them as its military and economic power continue to grow—will it have the capability of destroying the Asian balance of power? The third issue is by far the most important one in terms of U.S. national security: why should the United States be prepared to use armed force, even if that were the only way to prevent Chinese domination of Asia?

Many Chinese and regional specialists are skeptical about alarmist assessments of the Chinese threat in Asia. Rather, they argue that despite the Chinese military buildup in general and in the South China Sea in particular, together with its assertive claims to small islands also claimed by other Asian states, Chinese behavior should be best understood as motivated not by the grandiose goal of gaining “hegemony” over the region, but—with the clearly worrisome exception of its claim to sovereignty over Taiwan—its security concerns over the U.S. military buildup in the Pacific.

To be sure, many other specialists are more pessimistic about Chinese goals in Asia. However, if China’s policies threatened to harm the important national interests of other Asian countries, states like Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, India, Pakistan, and the Philippines would be hardly helpless, especially if they act collectively to defend themselves and their vital interests, even in the absence of U.S. participation.

Suppose, however, that this argument is wrong. Suppose that China has or soon develops both the power and the goal of gaining hegemony over Asia. Then, the weaker states in the region bandwagon with China rather than seek to balance against it. 

The argument here is that even in this worst-case scenario, U.S. national security would not be at stake. While it is certainly true that we have economic and other non-security interests, they are not so crucial that we must be prepared to go to war to protect them, especially against nuclear powers.

But What About Taiwan?

To be sure, Taiwan is a special case, at least morally, given the real Chinese threat to its independence and democracy. It must be admitted that a U.S. military withdrawal from the region might well lead Taiwan to develop nuclear weapons, and Japan and South Korea have the capability of following suit. 

Nevertheless, given the risks of a major war between the United States and China—a war which many U.S. military studies have predicted we would lose—understandable concerns over nuclear proliferation should not dominate our Asian policies. In any case, the overall effects of the already-existing nuclear proliferation elsewhere have been stabilizing rather than destabilizing—MAD certainly worked in preventing the Cold War from becoming hot. While there can be no guarantee that the same result would occur in Asia, the real question is whether nuclear proliferation can be prevented, especially if that goal requires America to go to war with China.

In considering this issue, let us assume the worst case, in which China should turn out to be a radically expansionist state that somehow gains control of all the resources and population of Asia. Even then, U.S. national security—our only truly vital national interest—would not be at stake. As stated earlier, there are only two ways in which our security could be threatened: by conventional invasion or by a nuclear attack. Even if China somehow gained control over the population, land masses, and economies of Asia, it would not be capable—or sufficiently lunatic—to try to cross thousands of miles of ocean and invade a nuclear-armed United States.

On the other hand, the nuclear danger is all too real. That danger would not be increased by Chinese expansionism since China already has the capability of launching a massive nuclear attack against the United States from its own soil. That is, since, for all practical purposes, the danger is already absolute; by definition, it can’t be increased. Put differently, an irreversible state of MAD between the United States and China already exists, so that even if China placed nuclear weapons outside its borders, they could do nothing more than—as Churchill memorably put it—“make the rubble bounce.”

What follows is that we should avoid any war against China, even so-called limited wars that may escalate into nuclear ones, particularly if we are likely to lose them. Put differently, the most likely “threats” (Chinese border conflicts with neighboring states, military clashes over sovereignty claims in the South China Sea, and even its designs on Taiwan) have the least relevance to genuine U.S. national security, while the theoretically most dangerous one (a large-scale extension of Chinese military power into the Western Hemisphere) is the least likely to occur. 

In that light, as in Europe, the United States should announce that over a five-year period, we will withdraw our military power and commitments from Asia. This will alarm the U.S. allies in the region, but that cannot be a decisive argument in favor of continuing current policies that are highly dangerous to us. We have to make independent judgments about the nature of U.S. interests, the necessity of the use of force, the chances for success, the costs and risks we are prepared to accept, and the probability that states that feel threatened can defend themselves.

What is really at stake for the United States in Asia is, then, not national security or truly vital interests, but rather America’s image of itself as a Pacific power and the consequent projection of its military power into Asia. The task now is to reassess the unexamined axioms or premises on which U.S. balance of power policies in Asia have been based and avoid yet another Asian war, likely another losing one, and this time potentially a nuclear one.

Non-Interventionism, Not Isolationism

Everyone engaging in the current debate over U.S. foreign policy, of course, understands that nuclear weapons have changed the nature of international politics. Yet, the full implications of the nuclear revolution have been characteristically understated. That is, on the one hand, our nuclear weapons, together with our overwhelming conventional military power, ensure that regardless of the balance of power in Europe and Asia, no state or combination of states could threaten our national security by invading our homeland. Yet, on the other hand, the spread of nuclear weapons to other states means that U.S. national security can now be threatened, not merely by major powers like China or a resurgent Russia, but even by lesser nuclear-armed states like North Korea.

Since a state of MAD—mutually assured destruction—between us and all nuclear-armed states is almost certainly irreversible, national security can be protected only by avoiding wars with such states. Yet, the anachronistic but still unexamined “balance of power” axiom threatens to lead this country into catastrophic wars with our rivals.

To be sure, even if such wars are averted, the proliferation of nuclear weapons and possibly other weapons of mass destruction means that our cities are vulnerable to catastrophic terrorist attacks, even by non-state actors. However, not only are regional balances of power irrelevant to such threats, but also overseas U.S. military interventionism is much more likely to increase rather than solve the WMD terrorism issue, whatever its magnitude.

What follows is that the basic U.S. national security policy should be one of military non-interventionism. Such a policy should not be confused with general “isolationism,” for it does not preclude but rather emphasizes overseas political, diplomatic, and economic goals and policies.

Jerome Slater is a professor (emeritus) of political science at the State University of New York at Buffalo. He is the author of  Mythologies Without End: The U.S. and the Arab-Israeli Conflict 1917-2020.

Image: Igor Grochev / Shutterstock.com.