Workers World, Vol. 17, No. 20, May 16, 1975
May 12 – The monumental victory of the Vietnamese and Cambodian peoples has forced the capitalist establishment to begin a reassessment of its foreign policy. Not a day goes by without some capitalist politician asserting the need to look into “the basic assumptions of American foreign policy.” However, they never seem to say exactly what these basic assumptions are, or what they propose as an alternative. The conclusion drawn by the bulk of the American people is that this means a withdrawal by the U.S. from the world arena as the policeman guarding global affairs.
It would be the height of folly to believe that the debate over the reappraisal of foreign policy means a reappraisal of imperialist policy. Rather, the ruling class press has set the stage for a debate around the issue of “isolationism” vs. the U.S. continuing as the “leader of the free world.”
Senator Mansfield, the majority leaders of the Senate and a longtime foreign policy adviser to various U.S. administrations on Asian affairs, sadly declared a bare fortnight before the Vietnam victory that “the U.S. is no longer an Asian power. We have been relegated to the Pacific islands.” He mentioned Japan, Indonesia, the Philippines, Singapore, and what is called Malaysia.
But even as he spoke, this too was being challenged by the upsurge of the masses. Such is the speed of developments following the U.S. debacle in Indochina.
There is, however, undoubtedly a review and reassessment of U.S. foreign policy going on at the very summit of U.S. finance capital. But it is not the public debate to which the mass of the people are being treated. This debate follows along the lines of isolationism vs. continued U.S. intervention. It is important that the character of this debate be explained.
‘Isolationism’ then and now
The liberal politicians who scorned the concept of isolationism when it was prevalent do not bother to give an accurate explanation for the reemergence of this phenomenon. If one examines the concept of isolationism on the basis of its purely ideological content only, it is of course a ridiculous anachronism, especially viewed in the light of the contemporary world. But if we examine the concept from the point of view of its material roots and economic content, it’s another matter.
Isolationism, as a foreign policy trend in the U.S., thrived in the period following the First World War, when the U.S. was already a world power of towering stature in relation to the other imperialist powers. The so-called withdrawal of the U.S. from “foreign entanglements” at that time must be understood in the light of the economic position of the U.S. after World War I.
Regardless of what Senators William Borah and Gerald Nye might have meant by isolationism, in the field of economics the “isolationist” era in the U.S. was characterized by the most feverish economic penetration of American finance capital throughout the whole world.
One only has to remember that, in the space of a few short years, Yankee imperialism completely eliminated Britain from Latin and South America, where it had been dominant for centuries. To a lesser extent, U.S. penetration in Asia was just as feverish. Europe itself had become, in fact, completely subjugated to the dollar.
Under such circumstances, American politicians felt that U.S. economic power alone obviated the necessity for dubious diplomatic alliances and costly military commitments. This is not to say that the isolationist era was not also the era of gunboat diplomacy. This was, however, supplementary to the basic economic aggression which seemed to suffice “with a Navy second to none,” as the phrase went in those days. But economic expansion was accompanied by a minimum of foreign diplomatic and military commitments.
Economic power prevailed
That was the root economic content of the isolationist phase of American diplomacy. It reflected the material position of the U.S. as a world power. The nonsense about a new world order based upon the League of Nations, and other imperialist myths cultivated by bourgeois liberal diplomacy, seemed wholly unnecessary. The fact that the U.S. Senate rejected affiliation to the League of Nations was not necessarily based on any narrow view of the U.S. as a world power, but on the blunt fact (which liberal historians try to close their eyes to) that American imperialism felt strong enough economically not to need the kinds of diplomatic or military alignments which were then being vigorously pushed by the spokesmen for the liberal element in the capitalist establishment.
The present position of the U.S. differs wholly from the heyday of American economic expansion in the twenties. The concept of isolationism as it is propounded today, and may be pushed vigorously in the coming period, is pure demagogy and has no economic foundation to it. It can only act as a cover and as a preparatory period for more aggressive military adventures at a later date. In fact, imperialist isolationism is a precursor, at least so far as American history is concerned, for imperialist intervention. The isolationism of the thirties, with its false anti-war overtones, served as no alternative to the struggle against the war. Rather it was a cover for U.S. war preparation for the Second World War.
No retreat from imperialist policies
The retreat forced on American imperialism by the military victory of the Indochinese people does not herald a conscious, deliberate effort by the imperialists to withdraw from the international arena as an aggressive, counter-revolutionary military power. They are not capable of such maneuverability, which is inherently in contradiction to the continued, unbridled growth of the productive forces in the United States. The multi-national corporations, the sinews and vital arteries which span the continents as well as the oceans of the world, cannot embark upon an era of economic retreat. This would be like confining an ocean liner to a local lake. Nor can they enter an era of untrammeled economic expansion which would obviate the necessity for military might, not to speak of far-flung diplomatic alliances. Wherever the U.S. attempts to economically expand or even to hold its own, it meets with political and violent opposition. This differs fundamentally from the isolationist era, when the U.S. could expand economically without necessarily involving itself militarily in wars such as Vietnam.
The only historical alternative is a revolutionary socialist solution in which the working class takes over the ownership of the tremendously productive technological apparatus to operate it in the interests of the masses here and in cooperation with a socialist world.
It is not without significance that it is precisely the extreme right wing of the capitalist establishment which is most strongly opposed to any kind of talk of isolationism. The old isolationist demagogy would fit Goldwater most neatly, but it is precisely he who sees in it “a very great danger” and has roundly denounced it. And Goldwater speaks the mind of the Pentagon.
Real debate is over socialist countries
There is a review of foreign policy going on in the summits of finance capital, but it is not the demagogic public debate to which the American people are being treated. The real debate, which is conducted in secret, concerns the relations of the U.S. to the Soviet Union and China. This has been the real question for U.S. foreign policy ever since the end of the Second World War and the emergence of the People’s Republic of China. It is the keystone issue of U.S. foreign policy today. It is the one issue in foreign policy, if it can be called a single issue, which overshadows all others.
The Middle East may be the most urgent today, but this issue, like many others, must be viewed in the Pentagon, as well as in the White House and at the State Department, first of all with a view to the USSR and China. It is here that they now are pondering on how to proceed. The policy that they began with the emergence of the Sino-Soviet alliance had foundered. This policy of the U.S., which was uniformly backed by the capitalist establishment, had as its objective the destruction of the Sino-Soviet alliance; if need be, by force.
This was proclaimed openly and flagrantly throughout the fifties, and it was only when the split between China and the USSR was finally consummated that U.S. policy took on a different form. It then began to concentrate on exploiting the split, envenoming the relations between the two socialist countries, and banking on the outbreak of military hostilities between the two socialist countries that would culminated in a nuclear disaster for both of them, after which the U.S. would be able to pick up the pieces. What had begun as a progressive ideological break with revisionism by China deteriorated into a false polemic and then a state-to-state, political and diplomatic conflict. Objectively this was the result of sever pressures and maneuvers on the part of the U.S. and other imperialist powers.
No evaluation of the changed relationships on the world arena can be accurately made unless this central fact is first of all taken into consideration. This really has been at the very center of U.S. policy considerations all these many years, through the fifties and sixties and right up until the flag of the Provisional Revolutionary Government was hung up on the City Hall of Saigon, newly renamed Ho Chi Minh City.
Despite split, aid to Vietnam
The fact that the outbreak of actual hostilities between the USSR and China was shortlived is one of the most remarkable and unheralded setbacks to American diplomacy, particularly in Southeast Asia. For, over the long years in which the split between the USSR and China continued unabated, and the polemics became more vehement, both continued their fraternal aid to Vietnam, military and economic. It was by no means the central fact contributing to the victory of the Vietnamese people, but certainly no one can doubt that it was indispensable.
There were periods when the Chinese and Soviet leaders seemed hopelessly at loggerheads, accusing each other of betraying Vietnam and not giving sufficient aid. But at no time did either of them ever cease to continue to render the necessary assistance. For the entire period of the Vietnam war, the class bonds of the socialist countries triumphed over the state-to-state, bureaucratic rivalries.
The capitulation of Soviet and Chinese leaders to Nixon’s mining of Haiphong harbor, a fact of enormous political significance for every revolutionary Marxist-Leninist to take into calculation, proved not to be decisive to the Vietnam struggle, but did contribute heavily to delaying the victory.
Vietnam victory for socialism everywhere
What has emerged from the Vietnam victory is the enormously enhanced stature in world affairs of both the USSR and China, notwithstanding their mutual antagonism. This also is given scant attention in the American press. It is so much more helpful to the ruling class to dwell on the plight of the so-called refugees to divert attention from what is truly an important development in the struggle between the two rival social systems – the system of socialist construction in the USSR and China and that of decadent, destructive imperialism in the U.S.
The focus of world attention will now shift more and more to the USSR and to China. This is one of the byproducts of the revolutionary victory of the Indochinese people. And it is about this that the ruling class is engaged in an “agonizing reappraisal.” It is not only Southeast Asia that has emerged victorious, it is all the socialist countries. And, of course, the powerful stimulus to the national liberation movements everywhere is only too obvious to need detail.
Finally, the policy of exploiting the antagonism between the USSR and PRC leaderships having proved bankrupt as early as the Tet Offensive, the U.S. was forced to a position of seeking from the USSR or from China that kind of diplomatic leverage calculated to force the Vietnamese to a settlement which the Vietnamese were opposed to.
The development of the Vietnamese struggle proved that neither the USSR nor China could control – nor wanted to control – a country headed by a party and a leadership determined to take destiny in their own hands. While both the USSR and China vied for influence in Vietnam, the imperialist thesis that this amounted to domination or control was pure fiction.
It is on the basis of these realities that the planners in the Pentagon and in the State Department have receded into seclusion to deliberate upon a new course. It is not reason nor the power of persuasion regarding the dangers of military adventure that will ultimately prevail in the councils of the military-industrial complex. Their future course depends wholly on the outcome of the struggle of factions in the ruling class, and, more importantly, on the course of the class struggle, particularly here in the United States.
There are those in the capitalist establishment who speak sweet reasonableness and take on a liberal coloration. There are those again who hew to a more aggressive stance. And ominously enough, there is now George Wallace, whose recent pro-Hitler statements show that he hews to complete madness – and this too is quite in accord with the rapacity of the imperialist policy of domination.
It is, however, the course of the class struggle in America, urged on by the greatest economic crisis since the thirties, which opens up a new era – and a new opportunity for the American working class and all the oppressed to take the destiny of this country into their own hands.
Last updated: 11 May 2026