Regarding the the-world-is-connected type of argument… I think the way you put it is backwards. The connections exist because how the world is; it’s not that the world is how it is because of the connections.

By “connections” I understand that supply chains and tourist routes and shipping/air lanes cross borders. That’s great! But the point is that supply chains include manufacturers from other countries because that countries are host to profitable producers.

The spontaneous order of economics develops against a background of the physical and political given. If a country turns batshit-crazy with Islamic fundamentalism, then some of these connections with it will be broken, because the individuals involve won’t find that connection profitable. What’s wrong with that?

Just because at one time I chose to trade with you it doesn’t mean that I commit to always doing so and it certainly doesn’t follow that you’re justified in keeping me in a certain relationship by force.

I guess I’m trying to say that political isolationism and international free trade can go hand-in-hand. The economic world doesn’t need the power of politics (coercion) in order to work.

I will not whip our cabinet,’’ he said Tuesday in Ottawa.

Replace “Ottawa” with “Washington,” and you have a scandal that makes Clinton’s problems pale in comparison!

True you can’t force people to trade, but let us remember that free trade has its gun-point element – the U.S. military keeps the trade routes and resource supplies open by force of arms. Every country in the global economy benefits from this, and a few, such as Britain, Poland, the Aussies, etc., help out at times, but most free-load (I won’t mention any in particular). And of course this means maintaining regional hegemonies which lead to tensions with local powers seeking local hegemony, a la Iran and Baathist Iraq. Call it another part of our British heritage.

But that background is usually forgotten; its like the wallpaper, its always there, so people don’t think about it.

Yeah, using the US military to open up sorta-free trade, that always works out well. After all, if Commodore Perry hadn’t forced Japan to open up to trade, they probably wouldn’t have had the ability to build the fine ships and guns they had as our allies in World War I, or beaten the Russians in the Russo-Japanese war.
There is trade and there is colonization. Iraq might as well be a colony of the US, and reprinting Dr. Seuss cartoons doesn’t make it not so. I would argue that if the US had been totally isolationist in World War I, instead of deciding to make money off the Allies, and stayed out of the damn war, maybe we wouldn’t have to spend so much money on trying to force the rest of the world to do what we want today. Maybe the Twentieth Century wouldn’t have turned into the horror show it did.

I didn’t ask of the US to keep any trade route open. I can sort out my own security. The fact that the US secures certain routes for its own benefit doesn’t mean that I owe anything. There’s a huge literature on positive externalities and positive obligations which I suggest we don’t repeat here.

My point is only that connections appear and disappear on their own, based on the entrepreneurial decision of property owners and other individual decisions. In this context, I ask nothing of the State as I know that everything the State does is against free men and for the benefit of interest groups.