For the record, I'm not trying to make some melodramatic accusation of unique guilt of the US Government.moda0306 wrote: ↑Fri Aug 03, 2018 10:40 amDeclared wars are absolutely interventions... you could argue they're more obvious or more legitimate, but they are in no-way non-intervention. In-fact I think one of the main names for folks who wanted to stay out of WWI were "non-interventionists." "Isolationists" was the pejorative version of that.Kbg wrote: ↑Fri Aug 03, 2018 10:06 am I think we are getting a bit loose with the definition of interventionist. I think we weren’t really interventionist until the late 1800s and by no stretch of the standard definition could you call the two world wars interventionist.
Latin America, Hawaii, a bit in Africa, Russia 1919) those are interventions (e.g. getting involved in the internal affairs of a country via outright support or overthrow of a domestic political faction). And, no question we had an imperialist phase with the Philippines and Cuba being the prime examples.
Declared wars are not interventions, they are international political disputes being resolved by force/violence.
Also, the context of manifest destiny is pretty important and normally forgotten by the PC oriented. During the period of MD, the entire North American continent was an open field. Someone was going to fill the void and the winners ended up being the US and the UK. Don’t forget the French were trying to establish a Mexican client state as late as the US civil war.
And there's also a "power vacuum" or some similar "context" to colonialism. "If we don't do it someone else will" has been a common excuse over time for many "interventionist" policies by many governments. It may aid in understanding the logic behind most interventions, colonial adventures, and even genocides, but it's by no means "non-intervention" just because someone else might do it too.
I'm basically saying that "state structures and ambitious corporate interests and profiteering individuals will engage in violence to survive and prosper." This is a human thing... not a US thing... it's just important we operate in the realm of reality, and it's obvious why the US didn't join European wars in the 1800's and but did in the 1900's, and it's not a shift from anti-interventionism to interventionism.