I do disagree.

Yes, WWII was far less avoidable. Primarily because we didn't avoid the far more avoidable WWI, and the mess that followed provided an optimal environment for the rise of Nazism.

A "libertarian" foreign policy should not have any problems with supplying our economic partners (allies) any of the materiels they need. And there's no problem with us excercising strong moral judgements w.r.t. who we trade with. A militarily defensive US does not mean we'd have to adopt economic isolationism because we feared what the enemies of our friends would do to us.

What if Japan hadn't felt the need for a pre-emptive strike? When do you think we would have entered WWII?

Yes, Hitler would have eventually pushed us into making a decision (probably by 1943) - there would have been plenty of opportunities in the Atlantic. All we would have had to do was secure the convoys and stop the U-boats. No Africa front, no D-Day, no slog throughout Europe. They would have had their hands full with the Soviets. Just hold the line in England.

End result? An A-bomb in Hamburg and a choice between us, glowing, or the Soviets. Europe not in ruins and us writing the terms. Nazism would have been less "broken", but we would have had alot more survivors to make examples out of a Nuremburg.

Oh, and about 500,000+ more Americans alive in 1945.

So, to round out the "line" - US Foreign trade is a principal National Interest, and we should defend the means of conducting that interest (convoys) as we do our borders.

I do concur that not entering World War II would have been bad; that was my point, in fact. But there was no way to tell that a different course of action in 1940-41 that sought to avoid war would ultimately have led to a worse outcome than going to war.

Indeed, that is the entire question in a nutshell: when is it better to go to war before you have to?

In a similar vein one could argue that many policy decisions regarding Iraq helped to make 9/11 a reality. Without the first Gulf War and the subsequent containment of Iraq, it is unlikely we would have become a target of Islamic extremists, at least at this point in time. There would have been no troops in Saudi Arabia, no sanctions against Iraq, no no-fly-zones. In short there would have been far less that bin Laden and the majority of his gang would be able to use to recruit the misguided youth of the Arabic world to wage jihad against the US. The policy of continuous containment of Saddam made us a priority target for the tribalistic and xenophobic members of al Qaeda. Of course not going to war and not engaging in containment would have made it more likely that we would have faced a more powerful foe down the road.

We could have easily avoided WWII, at least in the short term, by looking the other way and ignoring what was happening in Europe and in Asia. We could have continued to trade with all comers, regardless of who they were and what they were doing. But doing so would only lead to long term problems.

Andrew, strengthening your point, I read many years ago in some standard (not fringe) history that by summer 1941 our own navy had "shoot on sight" orders regarding German U-Boats. I am content to concede WWII as a "war of choice" from the US vantage point (probably the British too). I would INSIST that the Pacific War was a war of choice. Roosevelt and Hull knew that their scrap iron decisions meant war, though not necessarily at Pearl Harbor on December 7. The record is clear on this. We made a conscious decision to get into a Great Power rivalry with Japan in the Far East as early as the late 'teens, and pursued it to the point of armed conflict. Obviously they made the same choice.

I still don't see an example of where we are clearly better off because we went to war before we actually needed to.

I don't agree with the general philosophies that high thresholds of military action will lead to worse problems down the road. When you have 9000 nukes, the idea that any legitimate nation state (Iraq, Iran, Syria) is going to pose a real threat to you is, well, pretty paranoid.

Korea, Vietnam, Dominican Republic, Grenada, Panama, Lebanon, Iraq, etc. were not threats to the Constitution of the US or the preservation of the Republic. None of them had attacked us.

Today, we are in a far worse situation than we would be had we left Saddam alone. We seem to think state-less terrorists will be easier to deal with than belligerent states. We WANT bad guys to have borders. We WANT them to have something to protect.

Those of us old enough remember the dire warnings that the Ayatollahs were going to just destroy us with oil price increases. Turns out that markets are more powerful than religion. OBL wouldn't last a month as ruler of SA if he shut down oil exports. 20 million Saudi's can't eat oil.

More tests: You don't go to war until your national interests have been attacked, or an enemy with a demonstrated capacity to hurt you is in the process of launching an attack. We should be masters of preparation and brinksmanship. Any offensive conflict should require an explicit Act of War.

Preserve, protect and defend. These aren't passive words of cowards. Fufilling those duties are, and should be, HARDER than the easy way out of political, economic and religious crusades.

Not only is when to go to war a question, but what alliances and enemies will you create. In other words what side would you be on? Could you imagine what would have happened if we joined Germany and Japan instead?

Most of our Founders had strong aversions to any military alliances whatsoever, except those required to maintain/create our existence (ie, France back then). Economically, we should be as open as possible, but preferably have stronger "values" for determining who we sell arms to.

Had the America First movement won in the 30's, we might have well sold arms to the Germans. And certainly would have cut off England. But that would not have been isolationist, libertarian or in our own interests. The leadership of the America First movement would seem to have been more enamored by Nazism/Fascism, and not a allegiance to our founding principles.

In general, always avoid militarily expansive powers. Don't worry about making enemies if you are true to your charter.

There's something seriously wrong with the character of a nation that one day could embrace the likes of Noriega and Saddam one day, and call them an enemy of freedom the next. The logic is we had to mess up the world to save it from Communism (destroy the village to save it), and we had to grin-and-bear-it (well, the folks under the Shah and Saddam had to bear it). I think it had more to do with the retreat of colonial powers and our desire for expansion and control. We should have had more faith in our founders and capitalism.

And had a little more reasoning when it came to letting the idealogues drive policy (red scare, missle gap, domino theory, neocons, whatever).

I'm not saying there weren't threats, or that some containment may have been needed.

GB says the words, but I'll bet we don't see our policies via Egypt/Pakistan/Russia/China/etc changing one iota - because they're still stuck dealing with how to manage (control) the world.

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