Looking backwards.

• Author: Bresler, Robert J.
• Position: STATE OF THE NATION

DEMOCRACY REQUIRES that leaders ask the public to rise above its basic instincts and simplistic solutions, such as isolationism, protectionism, and nationalism. With different variants, these impulses had been themes of populism and Republican conservatives in the 1930s and early 1940s. Western populists played a central role in the isolationist movement. In 1930, Republican Pres. Herbert Hoover signed the Smoot-Hawley Act, which raised tariffs to record levels on more than 20,000 imported goods. Since then, Democratic and Republican presidents, from Franklin D. Roosevelt to George W. Bush, have worked to overcome these impulses. These presidents--and we can add Bush's successor, the otherwise timid Barack Obama--have supported the expansion of world trade and a global role for U.S. foreign policy.

As though he were a voice from the past, Donald Trump has stumbled upon a slogan to describe his otherwise incomprehensible foreign policy, "America First." He did not invent the term. From 1939-41, America First was the name of the U.S.'s most influential isolationist group; its major spokesman was the legendary pilot, Charles Lindbergh. Its members opposed any measures they thought would take the U.S. into World War II, such as sending U.S. naval destroyers to Britain, passing the Lend-Lease Act, and protecting American merchant ships traveling the Atlantic Ocean. The America Firsters preferred to see Britain capitulate to Germany's Adolf Hitler, leaving that madman to control Europe, than to have the U.S. provide any support to the Winston Churchill government that valiantly was defying the German Luftwaffe. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the subsequent German declaration of war against the U.S. forced the America First organization to shut its doors. They had a naive vision then and it is a naive one now.

After World War II, U.S. leaders built an extraordinary alliance system. It worked brilliantly and, after 45 years, it led to the collapse of the Soviet Empire. The task remains unfinished. The threat of radical Islam, whether in the form of ISIS or some other variant of this barbaric movement, is more diffuse than the Soviet threat. It may be as deadly. These lunatics could get their hands on chemical, biological, or even nuclear weapons. The alliance system that existed during the Cold War is essential to defeating radical Islam. To junk NATO, as Trump foolishly suggests, would undo the work of almost 70 years. The European...