Steve Forbes warns against U.S. isolationism, explaining why dialing back of the India-Pakistan conflict illustrates this.
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00:00The Trump-engineered ceasefire between two nuclear powers demonstrates why the U.S. must not go isolationist.
00:12Hello, I'm Steve Forbes and this is What's Ahead, where you get the insights you need to better navigate these turbulent times.
00:19President Trump, Vice President Vance, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio deserve fulsome praise for bringing about a ceasefire between India and Pakistan.
00:30The growing scale of fighting between these two nuclear-armed antagonists was spiraling into a full-blown war.
00:37U.S. diplomatic intervention has, for now, put out this growing fire.
00:43The significant achievement of Trump and his team here has been crowded out by other news.
00:48But make no mistake, if we hadn't become involved, the unthinkable, the use of nuclear weapons could well have happened.
00:55Unfortunately, there's a growing sentiment in both political parties for the U.S. to turn its back on the world.
01:03Let Europe stew in its own juices, is their attitude.
01:06If those countries want to help Ukraine, they can do it on their own dime,
01:10especially since countries like Germany aren't spending nearly enough on defense.
01:15Concerning Taiwan, these neo-isolationists ask, should the U.S. really risk a war over this island?
01:23Many skeptics are not in favor of Israel wiping out Hamas.
01:26Isolationists make the point that we should take military action only when attacked.
01:33Alliances, particularly NATO, will only get us involved in unnecessary conflicts.
01:38The one part of the world we ought to be active in, they concede, is the Americas.
01:44Hence, many supported President Trump's pressuring Panama to end the Chinese presence so near the canal.
01:50But even here, many in the far left are not in favor of America forcefully active in its own neighborhood.
01:57So much for the Monroe Doctrine.
02:00These go-it-alone perceptions were widespread in the 1930s.
02:05Believers were labeled isolationists.
02:08The Second World War, followed by the Cold War with the Soviet Union, put paid to this kind of thinking.
02:14We ignore the world at our own peril.
02:16Now, isolationism is making a comeback, fueled in no small part by our long, lethal, and frustrating military involvements in Afghanistan and Iraq.
02:28Nonetheless, these blunders should not blind us to the necessity of U.S. active leadership in keeping the world safe
02:36from the imperial ambitions of Putin, Xi Jinping, the Iranian mullahs, Kim Jong-un, and other terrorists.
02:43Not to mention, preventing crises like the deep antagonism between India and Pakistan from escalating into a conflict that would be disastrous for us all.
02:54The blunt truth is that some trouble spots are not amenable to quick solutions.
03:00India and Pakistan have been at each other's throats over the Kashmir region for decades.
03:06The two countries were partitioned just before independence from Britain in 1947.
03:10India would be primarily Hindu, Pakistan, Muslim.
03:16The split necessitated the most ghastly, deadly population exchange in history.
03:21Around 2 million people perished in the violent process.
03:25Kashmir is primarily Muslim, but was ruled by a Hindu.
03:29A war ensued, and the area is split now between the two countries.
03:33There have been two subsequent wars and countless bloody incidents over Kashmir.
03:39Pakistan is a troubled, chronically unstable country forcibly kept together by the ruling army and infested with terrorist groups.
03:48A number of Indian tourists in the Indian-ruled part of Kashmir were murdered recently by terrorists that India accuses Pakistan of fomenting and supporting.
03:58Pakistan, of course, denies this, but the country has employed terrorism to try to force India out of the disputed territory.
04:07India retaliated with air attacks, making clear it was sick of Pakistani provocations.
04:13The fighting quickly escalated.
04:15The U.S. stepped in and brought about a tense ceasefire.
04:19China has allied with Pakistan.
04:22Russia still has close relations with India.
04:24Only the U.S. could tamp things down.
04:27The lesson is, we cannot safely turn our back on the world.
04:32I'm Steve Forbes.
04:33Thanks for listening.
04:34Do send in your comments and suggestions.
04:36I look forward to being with you soon again.