One of the key journalists of the current ruling camp in Poland has recently suggested that autarky would be the best solution for Poland, in all respects: economic, political and even cultural. Some politicians of the United Right would undoubtedly build a wall with their own hands to protect Poland against “demoralizing ideologies” (headed by “gender ideology”) that come to us from the West. They would build a tight lampshade that would protect the Polish judiciary, the media system, and even the functioning of democratic institutions from the prying eye of Brussels. And surely, if it were not for the promise of money from the European Union, they would have gone to war with Brussels for good, so that the Polish electorate would finally decide that isolationism would be the best solution for the country. Even the war in Ukraine has not sober these hot heads and they are pushing for Polish self-exclusion. Isolationism is tempting.
Isolationism is an established political doctrine. It can take many forms. It may be of a cultural and civilizational nature, mean reluctance to contact with foreign cultures, resulting from the sometimes xenophobic belief in one’s own superiority and self-sufficiency. Throughout history, it was Japan who practiced this model of isolationism. Until the mid-nineteenth century.
Convinced of its uniqueness, supported by the belief that the nation descended from God (with the emperor as the son of the heavens), naturally separated as a chain of islands from other civilizations, Japan did not build ties with the world. It was not, however, so solipsistic in its attitude, because Japan had a good awareness of the world, it took something from it, especially in the neighbourhood, but kept a great (and safe) distance from the outside environment. Only once, until modern times, was it tempted by an expansionist march. In 1590, Toyotomi Hideoshi landed on the Korean Peninsula, with the ultimate intention of conquering China itself. However, he was stopped, and the intervening Chinese army forced the Japanese to the southern edge of the Peninsula. Japan withdrew from mainland Asia for centuries. Perhaps, then, this postural isolationism was a veil of fear that a frontal exposure to the neighbour could only become a source of trouble.
The neighbourhood of the great Chinese civilization indisputably influenced Japan’s identity. Japan imported from there many elements of culture and religion, including script characters. But it skilfully processed these borrowings in its own way, preventing cultural dyspepsia and creating a unique civilization pattern. It consistently resisted Chinese attempts to incorporate Japan into its tributary system. It repulsed twice the Chinese invasion with the help of a divine wind (“kamikaze”). It played protocol games with the Chinese. Never in its documents and actions did it allow to be considered subordinate. Politically, isolationism served Japan well to reject the hierarchical model of the Asian order in its Sinocentric version.
After the unsuccessful escapade to the continent by Hideoshi, Japan retired even more. It did not run away from foreign trade, including with the West. But it only allowed it in selected places and under strict control. In the early nineteenth century, Japan even decided that this was too much and went to the complete removal of foreigners from the Japanese islands. Matthew Perry’s mission in the mid-nineteenth century, however, made them realize that Japan was too much inferior in terms of technology and military power to effectively resist the commercial pressure of the West (supported by military force). And the Meiji revolution put Japan on the path of a nimble assimilation of technological, industrial and organizational achievements of the West. Occidentalization did not cause any major social opposition. The conviction about Japan’s own unique identity neutralized all fears about the cultural consequences of the great import of foreign achievements.
And by copying the West, Japan was building strength. It was capable of reviving its plans to conquer the neighbourhood. Even before the end of the 19th century, Japan removed Korea from Chinese dependence and appropriated it (together with Taiwan). As early as 1905, Russia was painfully convinced of the power of civilization changes in Japan. The military humiliation of a European empire gave Japan a never-before-known self-confidence. This was undoubtedly the final end of political isolationism and the entry into imperial expansion. In World War I, Japan took over the bases in China from Germany, then it conquered Manchuria after the war, and then China. As an Axis state in the Second World War, it spread its empire over Southeast Asia and the Pacific Islands. The Japanese conquests were merciless and bloody, they were humiliating and unexpected for the West (the fall of Singapore in 1942). But to this day, their proud side is still seen in Japan. In the Japanese narrative, they made people living under colonial rule in Southeast Asia realize that the West had no right to feel the superiority of civilization in Asia. That there were Asians who could defeat the West militarily, they were more agile and stronger. The Japanese conquests are treated as the primeval source of the process of national liberation and Asian emancipation.
Defeated in World War II, Japan humbly accepted the verdict of history and made another dramatic turn. It accepted the legacy of the military dies irae with all consequences. It has renounced militarism and expansion. It declared political pacifism.
Preoccupied with its own affairs, it built the industrial and technological potential which in the 1970s inspired forecasts that Japan would become the number one economic power in the world. But growth has slowed, and Chinese progress has eclipsed the Japanese economic miracle over time.
In a political sense, however, Japan has become part of the West.
Another form of haughty isolationism, albeit not purely political, not civilizational-cultural or economic-commercial, was the former doctrine of “splendid isolation” practiced by Great Britain.
“Splendid isolation” stuck as a term in British foreign policy after the Congress of Vienna of 1815. And it was used until the beginning of the 20th century, with particular intensity, especially in the years 1870-1905. The term was picked up by the British from Canadian politician George Foster. Foster used it to praise British restraint from engaging in disputes in a conflicted Europe. This term was popularized in British journalism of that time. Politicians began to use it, especially Viscount George Goschen, the First Lord of the Admiralty, who in 1896 said: “We were alone here in isolation – our splendid isolation, as one of our colonial friends put it.”
The “splendid isolation” policy was characterized by a reluctance to enter into permanent alliances with European and world powers. The British refused to ally with Europeans into rigid alliances, to make commitments in the face of, what they called, abstract and hypothetical threats and challenges. They refused to enter the Holy Alliance in 1815, and saw the Concert of Powers as a format for European conferences to solve specific problems. George Canning, the minister of foreign affairs of the Viennese era, is associated with the principles of the politics of the time, which envisaged no intervention and non-participation in any European police system, basing politics on facts and not on abstract theories, respect for treaty obligations, but caution in extending them, striving to maintain the balance of power in Europe by supporting the weaker.
Isolation from Europe was to favour the concentration of political energy on colonial expansion, especially in the second half of the nineteenth century.
In 1866, the Minister of Foreign Affairs Lord Derby explained the policy as the duty of the government of Britain, given its geographic location, to maintain goodwill relations with all neighbouring nations without becoming involved in any single or monopolizing alliance with any of them; and above all, the desire not to interfere unnecessarily in the internal affairs of any foreign country.
However, the British were able, when there was no other option, to intervene in European affairs, such as on the side of Turkey in the Crimean War of 1853-1856, or by acting politically for the independence of Belgium or Greece.
The re-evaluation of the position by Great Britain was forced to the increase of the power of Germany and its imperial ambitions, especially after the departure of Bismarck. Germany decided to challenge Britain on seas and oceans. They began demanding redistribution of the colonial pie. By giving them Kilimanjaro and the Caprivi isthmus, Britain could by no way to pacify them. Earlier, an open war had nearly broken out between Britain and France in 1898 due to the Fashoda incident. The British felt acutely lonely during the Second Boer War. The United States, which, after all, with the support of Great Britain once proclaimed the Monroe Doctrine, they themselves began to push the British out of America. The Russians pushed from Central Asia to Afghanistan. Splendid isolation turned into a dangerous assumption.
In the words of Wilhelm II, the goal of German policy was with time the end of the “free ride of Great Britain on the tailcoats of the Triple Alliance”. In 1898, the minister for the colonies, Joseph Chamberlain, tried to negotiate an alliance with Germany. He spoke publicly about Britain’s difficult diplomatic situation, complaining: “We had no allies. I’m afraid we didn’t have friends… We are alone.”
The conclusion of the British-French entente in 1904 and the signing of the Russian-British agreement in 1907 ended the policy of “splendid isolation” definitively. UK Britain entered the system of “rigid” alliances.
For many years, many European observers have warned against a new American isolationism. Seen from their perceptions, the American society, tired of the costs of maintaining order in the world by the United States (Pax Americana), guaranteeing many states their security, frustrated by failures in stabilizing inflammatory regions and failed states, would force the political elite to withdraw from its global obligations and take over with your own affairs. There are reminiscences of the times of isolation, for example after World War I, which were good for the growth of America’s power, calls to stop naive charity and futility of working for the world. Nothing of the kind, however, can happen. The United States may be leaning towards a more egotistical (but not selfish) view of the world, as was the case under Donald Trump. The United States can more selectively define global priorities, as was the case in the presidency of Barack Obama (decline in interest in Europe). They can give withdraw from some awkward places, like Afghanistan under Joe Biden’s presidency. There will be no new American retreat from global responsibility, however. The US support to Ukraine now is a good illustration.
Isolationism in diplomacy, at the executive level, never works. The guiding principle of diplomacy is: never be alone in a diplomatic game. Of course, one can argue whether the right in the dispute (and the truth even more so) can be established by voting. Especially from a historical perspective, it is often seen that the erroneous positions were of the majority. But even great powers that can afford sublime isolation do not want to appear lonely. It is interesting to look at the voting patterns of the various anti-Israeli resolutions (Palestinian rights, West Bank settlements, Middle East nuclear weapons, etc.) which have been voted in by the UN General Assembly over the past decades. The United States always stands in solidarity with Israel voting against these resolutions. But the Americans don’t want to feel lonely, either. Therefore, they can always count on the company of the Marshall Islands or Palau, which are not even suspected of any independent policy in the Middle East. And Russia also, recognizing the self-proclaimed independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, would also feel bad in solitude, so for a small price it secured the recognition of the separatist republics by Nauru and Nicaragua. The views of these countries on the issues of territorial integrity and self-determination were neither earlier nor later more widely known. Russia forced Syria into the recognition of the self-proclaimed Donbass regimes.
A soaring monument of lofty isolation was undoubtedly Poland’s behaviour in the game of extending the mandate of Donald Tusk as president of the European Council. The infamous twenty-seven-to-one spanking in March 2017 may be an example of principled alienation. Trumpeting it as a diplomatic success was a crude offence to the intelligentsia of Poles. But the millions of Poles, stuck in blind faith in the wisdom of the ruling party, were not offended.
In September 2007, I experienced the burden of the politics of haughty isolation upon myself. The European Union and the Council of Europe were to establish the European Day against the Death Penalty (celebrated on October 10). The Polish government of the time was categorically against the initiative. In Brussels, formal attempts were easier for Poland to block, because the principle of unanimity applies there, so the Polish veto closed the case. But in the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe, there was a desire to pass the decision by a majority. There is, however, a provision in the Committee’s regulations that allows any state to apply for special treatment of the matter and postpone the decision. But the legal service of the Secretariat of the Council of Europe made a firm (albeit logically aborted) opinion that the Committee can decide whether a matter is special by a simple majority. Even if, from the point of view of pure logic, such an interpretation is idiotic, the very fact that the legal services of the Secretariat wanted to impose this interpretation on the governments of the member states was already a sign of serious incapacitation of the body, after all, political and superior.
The renunciation of the application of death penalty by a state is a membership criterion in the Council of Europe. Perhaps the decision-makers in Warsaw did not realize it at the time. Nevertheless, they decided to bring the heaviest guns against the symbolic initiative. This was perceived as an attack on the identity of the organization. My personal views on the death penalty are unequivocal: I am opposed to it, although I do not treat its use in the USA or Japan as a reason for a moralizing mission against them. Nor do I think that any discussion should not be allowed on the merits of waiving the death penalty. we can talk about it. Just like about the permissibility of euthanasia or abortion.
Opposition to the initiative exposed us to massive pressure in Strasbourg, both from several Member States and, above all, from the Secretariat. However, with their ill-considered statements, our partners made it easier for us to present the matter in a purely procedural dimension. Because politically we were made to understand that Russia would be allowed to resist such pressure with good dose of understanding on the part of Western partners (not so much because it did not formally abolish the death penalty, but only suspended it, but because Russia is a big power without which the Council Europe wouldn’t make sense). So a principled dispute arose as to whether a state of a medium size, even if alone, had the right to special treatment of a matter considered by it as important. It was no longer the case at the Strasbourg meeting whether the death penalty was good or bad, or whether a special day in the calendar was needed for its universal abolition. The question was who could determine what was important to a Member State and how. Such a procedural approach to the matter meant that the discussion turned in a way which showed that we were not alone. We were in a painful minority, but not alone (and Russia hid behind our backs cleverly).
Sometimes it is possible and necessary to stand up to the views of the majority, even at the cost of isolation. The point is only that the issue on which we stand up should be of strategic importance for our interests. Because standing up for the sake of posturing only undermines the political prestige and image of the country.
