We hear the repeated admonition from isolationists and Libertarians that America should stay out of entangling alliances. That what happens in Iraq or Georgia is an internal matter to those lands, of no direct concern to us, and something we should stay out of, treaties and supposed interests notwithstanding. Not only should we not extend NATO membership to Georgia, we should drop out of NATO as just one more entangling alliance.What is an entangling alliance? The Founding Fathers were economical speakers. Had they opposed alliances as such, they would simply have said so, no need for the use of a gratuitous modifier in their admonition. But the Founding Fathers did not oppose all alliances. Indeed, according to the Constitution, treaties ratified by the Senate are "the highest law of the land." What do we know about the types of treaties that existed during the Revolutionary era which Americans may have wanted to avoid?
The precursor event to the American Revolution was the Seven Years War, fought between Britain and France. The war was one for control of colonial interests: Canada, India, islands in the Caribbean. Neither France nor Britain maintained at that time any serious claims to the homeland of the other. The war was one of proxies and mercenaries, fought overseas and - significantly - in the American colonies. Washington was a P.O.W. in that war. Pittsburg was founded as a military outpost. The American colonists suffered hardship and lost trade with France, yet supported the British cause and bore much of the burden of battle. But when the war was successfully concluded, the Colonies saw themselves as punished, rather than rewarded for their efforts. Taxes were maintained and even raised by the Crown which said that the Colonies must pay for their defense from France, which was expensive. Yet the American Colonies were also forbidden from further westward expansion, limited to settled lands east of the Appalachians - a limitation that had not existed before the war.
This war had not been one of self defense. It had been a competition over foreign possessions. Such wars had raged on and off between Holland, Spain, Portugal, Britain and France for two centuries. They were seen as little benefiting the colonials. They were not wars of self defense in the normal sense. And, importantly, they were waged in a context of shifting alliances, one colonial power after another being ganged up upon so that the allies might plunder their victims. Most of the islands of the Caribbean had been held by at least two European powers. Britain got into the colony game late, and used diplomacy to wrest colonies sometimes from France, sometimes from Spain, sometimes from Holland.
The support of France for the American colonies during this period was a cynical continuation of this gamesmanship. The King of France did not make it a habit of supporting the idea of revolt against monarchy in general. American independence weakened Britain. This was what mattered. France acted in its own perceived interests, and the Americans knew this. After the war was over, their was no natural interest in a further alliance with France or with Britain. America was not in any immediate danger of invasion. No alliance of mutual self defense was necessary or possible. America could not and need not help France defend her mainland from Britain, nor vice versa.
The opposition to entangling alliances was just that - opposition of levelheaded republicans from getting involved in the proprietary struggles of two self-interested European monarchies. There were plenty of radical partisans in America. Paine and others supported the French and la revolution. Many others harbored lingering British loyalty. America, secure then in her geography, and not interested in conquest, had no need of forming an entangling alliance of the European sort meant to serve not as self defense, but as a means of ganging up on a weaker power.
This is the meaning of entangling alliance. An alliance of mutual self defense, had one made sense, would have been an alliance - but not an entangling alliance. Those like Washington who advised against entangling alliances knew that there were partisans of the British Crown and of the French Revolution who would have had us form an alliance nlot of mutual dfense, but to support these foreign causes. Their context was clear. The Founding Fathers spoke clearly to each other. The conflicts of their day were not, to them, ancient history, but headline news.
Modern thinkers make a mistake when they use the language of the Founding Fathers without its meaning or its context. Their context was radically different from ours. The Founding Fathers did not oppose all alliances as entangling. They opposed all entangling alliances. This is the same as opposing stupid decisions, not opposing decisions as stupid. Understand the difference.
