Isolationism

Isolationism as a historic attitude in the United States can best be defined as opposition to intervention in war outside the western hemisphere, particularly in Europe; to involvement in permanent military alliances; and to participation in organizations of collective security. Above all, isolationists seek to preserve the United States's freedom of action. Isolationists often differ from pacifists, those who refuse to sanction any conflict and absolutely renounce any war, for isolationists often favor unilateral military action, what some call the doctrine of the “free hand.” Indeed, an isolationist can be stridently nationalistic, endorse military preparations, sanction certain forms of imperialism, and engage in outright war, particularly in Latin America or the Pacific. At no time did most isolationists seek literally to “isolate” the United States from either the world's culture or its commerce.

By the above definition, American policy has been isolationist until the twentieth century. Thomas Paine's Common Sense (1776) combined calls for an independent foreign policy with a plea for commercial supremacy. John Adams's Model Treaty of 1776 envisioned a purely commercial treaty with the French, not a binding military alliance. George Washington's farewell address of 1796 advised his countrymen “to steer clear of permanent Alliances,” a reference to the Franco‐American Alliance of 1778–1800. Thomas Jefferson's first inaugural of 1801 sought “peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none.” When in 1823 President James Monroe advanced what later became known as the Monroe Doctrine, he said: “In the wars of the European powers in matters relating to themselves we have never taken part, nor does it comport with our policy to do so.”

Of course, a nation may pursue an isolationist foreign policy while involving itself extensively in political and military matters outside its borders. In 1812, the United States fought Britain; in 1846, Mexico; and in 1898, Spain. All such engagements were unilateral decisions by the United States and hence did not violate the classic isolationism espoused in the eighteenth century. During the nineteenth century, the United States encouraged the revolts of Latin American nations against Spain, vied with the British to control the Oregon Territory, and sympathized with the European revolutions of 1830 and 1948. It entered into only one agreement involving joint action with another power, the Clayton‐Bulwer Treaty of 1850 with Britain, which limited U.S. action in building a transisthmian canal. Toward the end of the century, the United States possessed its own colonies and played a decisive role in reshaping a new military balance in the world. Yet just three months before the outbreak of World War I, President Woodrow Wilson insisted that “we need not and we should not form alliances with any nation in the world.”

Once, however, Wilson sought U.S. entry into the League of Nations—a full‐fledged system of collective security—isolationism emerged as a distinctive political position. Such opponents of the League as Republican senators Henry Cabot Lodge (Mass.), William E. Borah (Idaho), and Hiram Johnson (Calif.) successfully fought U.S. membership, thereby reasserting the traditional policy of isolationism in the face of its first real challenge.

Only in the 1930s was the general isolationist consensus threatened, for President Franklin D. Roosevelt sought discretionary power to aid victims of aggression. Opponents of such policies fought back so successfully that the years 1934–37 marked the high tide of isolationist legislation. In 1934, Congress adopted the Johnson Act, which prohibited private loans to nations in default of obligations. In 1935, it voted down U.S. membership in the World Court. From 1934 to 1936, the Senate sponsored an investigation, led by Republican Gerald P. Nye, of the munitions industry. From 1935 to 1937, a battery of neutrality legislation was passed, including a ban on loans and credits to belligerents; a mandatory embargo on direct or indirect shipments of arms or munitions; presidential discretion to require payment or transfer of title before exporting any goods to a belligerent; prohibiting American citizens from traveling on ships of belligerents; and enjoining the arming of American merchant ships. Much of this legislation was passed in the belief that lack of such safeguards had led the United States into full‐scale belligerency in World War I. By the 1930s, however, there was enough internationalism in the United States, rooted in the desire for collective action against the rising dictatorships, that isolationism became a distinctive political position and one that was increasingly contested. The word itself became increasingly pejorative, and isolationists preferred such terms as anti‐interventionist, noninterventionist, and nationalist.

In 1938, the isolationists met with their first failure, for they lacked sufficient support in the House of Representatives to pass the Ludlow amendment to the Constitution, a proposal that would have prohibited Congress from declaring war until confirmed by majority vote in a national referendum. Once war again broke out in Europe in 1939, the ranks of isolationists thinned and Roosevelt increasingly aided the Allies. His legislative triumphs included military aid to France and Britain on a cash‐and‐carry basis in November 1939; military conscription in September 1940; Lend‐Lease aid to all nations fighting the Axis in March 1941; extending the terms of army service for draftees in August 1941; and authorizing the arming of U.S. merchant vessels and permitting them to carry cargoes to belligerent ports in November 1941. Acting on his own authority, the president ordered the military occupation of Greenland (April 1941) and Iceland (July 1940); froze Japanese assets (July 1941), thereby bringing all U.S. trade with Japan to a halt; issued a set of postwar aims with Britain called the Atlantic Charter (August 1941); extended aid to the Soviet Union (October 1941); and entered into a undeclared naval war with Germany (fall 1941).

All these moves the isolationists fought bitterly. Isolationist sentiment was increasingly concentrated in the America First Committee (AFC), organized in September 1940 as the major anti‐interventionist group fighting Roosevelt's policies. The AFC was founded by Yale law student R. Douglas Stuart, chaired by Sears, Roebuck executive Gen. Robert E. Wood, and included in its ranks such figures as journalist John T. Flynn, diplomat William R. Castle, former New Dealer Gen. Hugh Johnson, advertising executive Chester Bowles, and aviator Charles Lindbergh. At its peak it had 450 chapters, a membership of 850,000, and an income of $370,000 donated by 25,000 contributors. Huge AFC rallies often featured such speakers as Nye, Lindbergh, Flynn, Democratic senator Burton K. Wheeler (Mont.), and Representative Hamilton Fish. The AFC was unable to defeat any of Roosevelt's legislative proposals, though it undoubtedly caused the president to be more circumspect on such matters as extending terms for draftees and convoying British vessels. The president's specific legislative policies were always supported in the polls, while the AFC stressed that nearly 80 percent of the American people, expressing themselves in the same polls, opposed a declaration of war on the Axis powers.

Although several leading isolationists endorsed conscription for hemispheric defense, many more saw little need for a mass army. In isolationist eyes, a new American Expeditionary Force would simply prolong the struggle overseas and cost over 1 million U.S. lives. Furthermore, it would work against needed negotiation between England and Germany and ensure Soviet domination of Europe. Isolationists claimed that Hitler's blitzkrieg tactics had shown that mass armies were obsolete, and they called for small, highly mobile volunteer forces.

Isolationists differed among themselves as to the efficacy of large naval fleets, while strongly stressing airpower. Airpower, they claimed, was the most cost effective way of defending the United States. They argued that while no foreign power was able to conduct continuous bombardment of the nation, the United States could easily pick off any attacking planes. Moreover, a strong air arm was not dependent upon untrained conscripts.

The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor put an end to classic isolationism. The AFC promptly disbanded. In 1945, the United States became a charter member of the United Nations, occupying a seat on its powerful Security Council. In 1949, it entered its first binding military alliance, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). In 1950, it was fighting in Korea under UN auspices, and in 1965 U.S. ground troops were committed to overt fighting in Vietnam.

During the Cold War, many former isolationists became “Asia Firsters,” warning against involvements in Europe while supporting increased action against communism in Asia. The 1948 and 1952 presidential bids of the isolationist‐leaning Senator Robert A. Taft failed. Anti‐Roosevelt works by such isolationist historians as Charles A. Beard, Charles Callan Tansill, and Harry Elmer Barnes did not receive scholarly acceptance. In 1953 and 1954, Ohio Republican senator John Bricker proposed a constitutional amendment limiting presidential treaty‐making power, but it was opposed by President Dwight D. Eisenhower and defeated in the Senate. A military alternative to NATO, victory over the Soviet Union through airpower alone, was espoused by former isolationist Gen. Bonner Fellers, but lacked widespread support.

In the wake of the Vietnam War, some commentators—such as Democratic senator J. William Fulbright and political scientist Earl C. Ravenal—were dubbed “neo‐isolationists” as they sought drastically reduced American commitments. Yet they differed significantly among themselves, and seldom in principle totally repudiated membership in international organizations, military aid overseas, economic sanctions, and even combat forces.
[See also Lend‐Lease Act and Agreements; Nationalism.]

Bibliography

John Milton Cooper, Jr. , The Vanity of Power: American Isolationism and World War I, 1914–1917, 1969.
Wayne S. Cole , America First: The Battle Against Intervention, 1940–1941, 1953.
Manfred Jonas , Isolationism in America, 1935–1941, 1966.
Manfred Jonas , Isolationism, in Alexander DeConde, ed., Encyclopedia of American Foreign Policy, 1978.
Justus D. Doenecke , Not to the Swift: The Old Isolationists in the Cold War Era, 1979.
Wayne S. Cole , Roosevelt and the Isolationists, 1932–45, 1983.
Justus D. Doenecke , Anti‐Intervention: A Bibliographical Introduction to Isolationism and Pacifism from World War I to the Early Cold War, 1987.
Justus D. Doenecke, ed., In Danger Undaunted: The Anti‐Interventionist Movement as Revealed in the Papers of the America First Committee, 1990.
Wayne S. Cole , United States Isolationism in the 1990s? International Journal, 48 (Winter 1992–93).

Justus D. Doenecke