[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 147 (2001), Part 10]
[House]
[Page 14819]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]


[[Page 14819]]

                     ISOLATIONISM OF UNITED STATES

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Washington (Mr. McDermott) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I come to the floor today to speak about 
something that really bothers me. This country has a constant debate 
within its political body about what role we in the United States will 
play with respect to the rest of the world.
  The battle between being an internationalist and being an 
isolationist is something that has gone on in this country, back and 
forth. Our decisions in the 1920s in this body to pass the Smoot-Hawley 
Tariff Act was a way of erecting barriers around the United States and 
ultimately led to the depression in 1929.
  Those of us who consider themselves to be both free and fair traders 
have had great hope in our decision nationally to deal in trade with 
the whole world as a way of preventing countries from getting into 
wars. If one is trading with somebody it is much less likely that one 
is going to involve oneself in some kind of destructive war that will 
destroy one's own resources as well as those of the country with which 
one is dealing.
  Beginning with the installation of the President by the Supreme Court 
of the United States, a new isolationism has begun to set in in this 
country and most people are not paying much attention to it or they are 
not putting it together and seeing the whole picture.
  This isolationism is not one of economics but one of which the United 
States is isolating itself from the rest of the world in terms of 
public opinion about the problems which face the entire globe. And our 
country willy-nilly goes along deciding we are going to do it our own 
way. Never mind anybody else. We will do it our own way.
  Now, in 1972 they created a convention to prevent the spread of 
biological warfare, 1972. It has been there for 30 years. But this 
administration went to the U.N. and said we refuse to be involved in 
finding any way to enforce that convention.
  It is the same government that says that we are going to bomb the 
living daylights out of and sanction Iraq because they are creating 
biological weapons. If you refuse yourself to be allowed to be 
inspected on that issue, how can you stand and take a public position 
in that world and say, but they cannot do it and we are going to 
isolate them until we stop them. It is simply the United States saying 
we are bigger than they are, we can do whatever we want.
  Recently within the last week or so, the Japanese and the European 
Union decided they were going to try and save the globe from global 
warming. They came to an agreement, a sort of Kyoto II if you will, 
because the United States walked away and said we will not be a part of 
this. We are not going to do anything. We will not worry about global 
warming. We will continue to do what we have always done.
  We are 5 percent of the world's population using 25 percent of the 
energy in the world and producing the largest portion of the global-
damaging chemicals in our air. But the rest of the world has said, 
well, okay, if the United States wants to sit over there on the 
sidelines we will try to save it without them. We isolated ourselves.
  The President does not believe in the anti-ballistic missile treaty. 
He said we have to begin putting up a missile shield because we are 
really afraid of Korea and we are afraid of Iraq and we are afraid of 
these rogue countries. We are going to spend 50, $70 billion trying to 
prevent one missile if it ever should come from one of these countries 
and, in the process, tear up the treaty that said we are not going to 
have more missiles.
  I do not think the problem is going to come from Korea or some other 
rogue country, North Korea. The problems are the old Soviet Union and 
Russia and the Chinese and some of these countries. It is much better 
to have an anti-ballistic missile treaty in place that is gradually 
bringing the number of missiles down.
  To say we are going to prepare for the fact that there is going to be 
an escalation is simply to set it in motion. The minute we put up a 
shield everybody is going to say we have to arm because the Americans 
have a shield up and they can zing us any time they want. We will set 
off back into the Cold War. It is like George Bush won, when the Cold 
War ended, and they did not know what to do so now they will create 
Cold War II. That is what is going on here.
  The CTBT Treaty, the Confidential Test Ban Treaty, the United States 
will not sign that. Why should anyone else? People get all excited when 
the Indians do it or the Pakistanis do it. Why? The United States of 
America will not say we will stop. Where do we have the moral authority 
to tell anybody else? We have isolated ourselves into a position of 
moral authority, but we cloak it in a kind of funny way with we will 
tell all the rest of the world what to do but do not tell us anything. 
That is not going to work.

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