Who Are You Calling a 'Non-Internationalist'?

To say that restraint is “non-internationalist” is to admit that you don’t really know anything about restraint.

Ash Jain has come up with some wildly misleading labels to define contemporary foreign policy “schools of thought”:

I have delineated six distinct foreign-policy camps that represent the dominant strains of thinking on the U.S. role in the world. These camps can be placed along a spectrum of international engagement. Four of them fall on the more assertive side of this spectrum, constituting “internationalists,” who believe that the United States should exercise its influence and be actively engaged in global affairs. And two of the camps are “non-internationalists,” [bold mine-DL] who believe that the United States should scale back its global commitments and adopt a less forward-leaning foreign policy.

Whatever else you want to say about restraint, you cannot say that it is “non-internationalist.” It is a less polemical label, but it is no less misleading than using isolationist. Every argument for foreign policy restraint says that the U.S. needs to change how it engages with the rest of the world, but restrainers absolutely do not reject international engagement. In some respects, restrainers are more interested in international engagement and cooperation than other “schools” that prize U.S. “leadership.” They are more respectful of international law than many of the “internationalist” groups that Jain identifies.

There are certain kinds of commitments that restrainers believe that the U.S. should reduce, but at the same time almost everyone that identifies with restraint will say that the U.S. should be more actively engaged when it comes to diplomacy. For example, restrainers have been among the loudest critics of decisions to scrap working arms control and nonproliferation agreements, and we tend to be some of the most vocal opponents of economic warfare and other efforts to isolate and coerce other countries. To say that restraint is “non-internationalist” is to admit that you don’t really know anything about restraint.