Speaking about foreign conflicts, J.D. Vance in his first outing as a VP nominee said that “sometimes, it is just none of our business and we ought to stay out of it,” throwing the ahistorical commentariat into a tailspin.
It is so unusual and refreshing to see the senator from Ohio saying, in clear terms, that he cares more about his own country’s borders than faraway conflicts in distant foreign lands, that one tends to forget that this was the traditional foreign policy consensus of the American republic. In fact, “neutrality” and balance of power was the traditional Anglo-American instinct throughout the 19th century, the last such era of multipolarity similar to the one we are entering.
George Washington set this clear guideline in his Neutrality Proclamation of 1793, during the French revolutionary wars: “Whereas it appears that a state of war exists between Austria, Prussia,…
