For a long time, Americans have been branded as “isolationists” guilty of “appeasement” when they question the wisdom of starting or entering another foreign war.
The terms “isolationist” and “appeasement” are used to link today’s noninterventionists to the political leaders who, during the 1930s, did nothing to stop Hitler early on, when that might have been easy. Ever since then, starting or entering wars has been justified by claiming that the present situation is analogous to the threat from Nazi Germany and requires force.
The first problem with such a scenario is that Hitler’s rise to power owed much to a prior war: World War I, which was supposed to end war. That famous phrase appears to have originated with The War That Will End War (1914), a book by the British socialist author H. G. Wells. His dubious claim inspired cynicism early on. British prime minister David Lloyd George reportedly remarked, “This war, like the next war, is a war to end war.” Journalist Walter Lippmann said “the delusion is that whatever war we are fighting is the war to end war.”
