Trump II Should Bring Back ‘Proclamations of Neutrality’

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, Sardinia, Great-Britain, and the United Netherlands, of the one part, and France on the other, and the duty and interest of the United States require, that they should with sincerity and good faith adopt and pursue a conduct friendly and impartial toward the belligerent powers.”

The trend was standard. It was continued by President Ulysses S. Grant during the Franco–Prussian War in the 1870s: “A state of war unhappily exists between France on the one side and the North German Confederation and its allies on the other side.” North Americans had kinship and ties on both sides, so he made another Proclamation of Neutrality barring the republic from choosing a side in the conflict. 

Theodore Roosevelt, who was absolutely interested in American power in Latin America, acted as a peace emissary in the Russo–Japanese War of 1904, trying to bring the belligerent sides on the table after declaring official neutrality in the conflict and announcing severe penalties for those who joined or lobbied for either side of the conflict. 

America wasn’t unique. Great Britain declared an official neutrality during the American Civil War, citing commercial interest and kinship on both sides of the belligerence, although without forbidding individuals to take part on either side per the dictates of their conscience. 

As I wrote, realism isn’t isolationism, but it is theater prioritization. Vance might end up as potentially the most consequential vice president in modern American foreign policy by reorienting our priorities. He might want to think about bringing the time-tested “proclamations of neutrality” to conflicts which are of no direct strategic interest to the U.S., including penalties for those who lobby for the U.S. to take a side.