Time and again, they have shown themselves unable to understand that thinking in terms of particular interests is suicidal for all democratic nations regardless of their size or strength, failing to recognize that if democrats do not jointly forge a new security order while they can, a new order will be built by somebody else. The threats looming over us in the present era can be averted only when we all awaken with renewed vigor and a renewed ethos to a sense of our responsibility for the world as a whole, and for its long-term future. We can no longer afford a lack of solidarity among democratic nations. Once and for all, we must discard the illusion that enemies of democracy will be stopped by a policy of appeasement. The experience of the 1938 Munich Agreement should be a sufficient warning.
American isolationism is another concrete expression of that kind of particularism.
It has had a long tradition in modern American history, recurring again and again and taking a different form each time. Never throughout that history, however, has isolationism saved America from any threat. On the contrary, its effect was that America's involvement always came too late. By the time the United States stepped in, the conflicts were fully ablaze and had begun to pose a vital threat to America itself. Consequently, the price Americans had to pay for their initial indifference or reluctance was a thousand times higher than any costs that may have been entailed in a political or military action taken right at the beginning of the conflict or, better still, even before that.