Isolationism broadly speaking is the notion that the US is better off withdrawing to fortress America and leaving the rest of the world's nations to fight it out among themselves. The isolationist impulse in the US is what caused the US to enter both world wars years after they began. It is what has propelled much of the anti-war sentiment on the far Left and the far Right alike since Sept.11. The far Left argues the US should withdraw from world leadership because the US is evil. And the far Right argues that the US should withdraw from world leadership because the world is evil.
Good or bad, these outcomes are not insignificant. Do we really know enough to go muddling about in the affairs of others?
A dear friend of mine, very liberal, would always lament US foreign policy. One got the feeling that he thought "if only people with my insight could do it, we could get foreign policy right." Of course, every political candidate says the same thing, and certainly, The President thought his apology tour would have a positive influence. My friend never made the connection - we screwed up foreign policy for the same reason we always will; we don't know enough, cannot know enough, to make the world dance to our tune. It is hubristic to think we could.
... in practice the consequence of Bush's adoption of the neoconservative worldview was the empowerment of populist and popular jihadists and Iranian allies throughout the Middle East at the expense of US allies. Hamas won the Palestinian Authority elections in 2006. Its electoral victory paved the way for its military takeover of Gaza in 2007.
Hezbollah's participation in Lebanon's 2005 elections enabled the Iranian proxy army to hijack the Lebanese government in 2006, and violently takeover the Lebanese government in 2009.The Muslim Brotherhood's successful parliamentary run in Egypt in 2005 strengthened the radical, anti-American, jihadist group and weakened Mubarak.
And the election of Iranian-influenced Iraqi political leaders in Iraq in 2005 exacerbated the trend of Iranian predominance in post-Saddam Iraq. It also served to instigate a gradual estrangement of Saudi Arabia from the US.
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