1. Geopolitical–to prevent Eurasia, and our near neighbors, from falling under the sway of a hostile power or alliance. That rationale was strongest before the USSR and China had their falling out.

2. Counter-Revolutionary–to prevent an expansionist, hostile system from becoming powerful enough to threaten us.

3. Tit-for-tat. Retaliation for attacks on our people or our commerce.

Nos. (1) and (2) justified some of the Cold War activities, though that’s not to say these were all wise, or well-executed. WWII arguably fell under (1) and (3), but it took the attack to create a consensus for war, an attack FDR’s polices helped to provoke. The (3) justification for our entry into the Spanish-American War and WWI was either fabricated or exaggerated.

No. (3) justified action against the Barbary pirates, and attacking the Taliban, who harbored people who attacked us and refused to turn them over.

Gulf War I had a different rationale–”collective security”–and given our and our allies’ dependence on oil perhaps it was wise to prevent Saddam Hussein from taking over the Saudi oil fields, if in fact he intended to do so. I would agree with Daniel that our involvement in international efforts of this kind should depend upon our own interests, not on some abstract principle.

All of these rationales are subject to questioning both as general principles and as applied to particular cases, but each makes some sense.

What doesn’t make sense is attacking even a very nasty government far from our shores because it does bad things, or might attack us in the indefinite future (but not imminently). Equally mistaken is trying to spread our institutions, democracy and a market economy, with our own armed forces. Islamism is a danger, but primarily because of permissive immigration and ex-Christian sterility in Europe, not because of its economic or military power, of which it has very little.

I would add to these notions the proposition that we should always add an extra dose of caution when we consider going to war. We should regard war as a momentous decision and a last resort. It leads to statism, the loss of liberty, and often to unforeseen disasters. Hence the Constituton’s requirement, honored in the breach, of a Congressional declaration.

General Sherman was right.

Leaving aside Vietnam even, during the Cold War we had substantial commitments of troops or money or weapons in Korea, Germany, Nicaragua, Angola, Afghanistan, Grenada, etc, etc. We also had various military efforts during the 90s, except that, as a generalization they were smaller, faster, and more limited in objective in the latter case.

I suspect that if we sort this all out, the overall narrative of the Cold War does discredit your theory of non-interventionism. The Reagan Doctrine (Nicaragua, Afghanistan, etc) was not thought of as rollback by its proponents. And in any case, containment (as practiced during the Reagan Administration) and the Reagan Doctrine _were_ lumped together as generic anti-Communism, not least in Reagan’s mind.

But before we get that far, I think we’ll have to bright-line your conception of interventionism.

In any case, the whole of them add up, in just about every substantive way, to less than the containment/rollback/Reagan Doctrine actions of the Cold War, which you’re willing to characterize as non-interventionist. Right?

Then I think you have to concede that the policy we _did_ follow in the early 90s was non-interventionist, especially in light of the fact that you’re willing to allow that designation for the Cold War. And, it’s also pretty clear that we’d be non-interventionist today if 9/11 had not intervened. Are you with me this far?

The point about Soviet internal weaknesses is that their economic system was unsustainable, especially when combined with massive military outlays that the USSR would have had in any case for the purposes of projecting power. My point here is not to dispute that containment in Europe and resisting Soviet expansion was the right policy at the time. Under the circumstances, I think it was the right policy. What I am saying is that the collapse of the USSR did not invalidate or discredit non-interventionism. Indeed, if there was a moment in the last 60 years when non-interventionism should have made perfect sense to an overwhelming majority of people it was in the early ’90s.

There were episodes of interventionism during the Cold War carried out in the name of containment that I think were unnecessary to the containment of Soviet power (e.g., Vietnam), but, no, I would not call U.S. containment policy in Europe interventionist nor would I call all of U.S. foreign policy during the Cold War interventionist. A policy of rollback would have been interventionist, and it would have probably had catastrophically bad results, but that was not the policy we pursued.

My guess is there could be a disconnect between us over “interventionism”. So let me ask you, in your mind did the American response to Communism, either in the Reagan Administration, or over the Cold War as a whole constitute an example of interventionism?