Isolationism

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Essentially the term “isolationism,” when applied to the foreign policies of the United States, suggests a diplomatic tradition at variance with that of other great nations of the modern world. That American behavior in the external realm has not always followed the established patterns of Realpolitik is demonstrated repeatedly by the record itself. Yet historians have never agreed on either the nature or the degree of that divergence. Like most broad generalizations, isolationism defies any precise definition. Not even as a form of escapism did isolationism create necessarily unique national responses; for the United States, in attempting to hoard its energy by limiting its commitments abroad, pursued principles universally accepted by prudent statesmen.

Isolationism as a foundation of national policy cannot be divorced from the geographical insulation that the American people enjoyed through much of their history vis-à-vis the great powers of Europe. Yet to the Founding Fathers, isolationism was more than a response to geographic factors or the basis of thoughtless preoccupation with inner-directed and self-sufficient pursuits. The United States never sought the solitude of such hermit nations as Japan and Korea; from its republican beginnings, it created and maintained a commercial empire that blanketed much of the globe. American isolationism was always political and military, never commercial or intellectual.

In an effort to limit the political interests of the United States to the Western Hemisphere and to employ the nation’s geographical advantages in the defense of those interests, early American leaders made the avoidance of entangling alliances the keystone of their diplomacy. John Adams, during a conversation with the Englishman Richard Oswald in November 1782, explained his fear of any permanent American commitment to Europe. “It is obvious,” declared Adams (Works, vol. 3, p. 316), “that all the powers of Europe will be continually manoeuvering with us, to work us into their real or imaginary balances of power‖. But I think it ought to be our rule not to meddle; and that of all the powers of Europe, not to desire us, or perhaps, even to permit us, to interfere, if they can help it.” In his farewell address, George Washington acknowledged the diplomatic and military benefits that accrue from distance. “Why forego the advantages of so peculiar a situation?” he asked ([1753–1796] 1948, p. 641). For Washington, such convictions reflected a realistic judgment of European power and the conclusion that the young republic would only waste its energies if it engaged in struggles abroad which it could not control.

In their preoccupation with diplomatic flexibility, the Founding Fathers reinforced the doctrine of no entangling alliances with the principle of complete neutrality in relation to Europe’s wars. No nation could be completely free that had bartered away its right to be neutral. To thoughtful Americans the avoidance of involvement abroad was a less important consideration than preserving the nation’s freedom to carry out the decisions that best defended its interests. If the United States maintained its independence of action more successfully than did the powers of Europe, it did so not because of differences in intent, or even of geographical insulation, but rather because the precise political conditions of Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries seemed to assure American security. American diplomatists could pursue a policy of isolationism throughout the years 1815 to 1900 because they understood that the European balance of power was adequate for the nation’s needs.

Unfortunately this favorable balance, anchored to British power and diplomacy, was ultimately taken for granted and its relationship to American security all but forgotten. By the 1890s, Americans no longer recognized the nation’s vital stake in traditional European politics. The restoration of the Continent after the Napoleonic wars created such conditions of stability that the average citizen of the United States, enjoying perennial security at relatively little cost, began to put his faith in the fact of geographic isolation itself. This gradual identification of American security with the Atlantic Ocean, rather than with a British-dominated European balance of power, created the foundations of twentieth-century American isolationism, which viewed less involvement in European affairs as the essence of sound policy. Whatever happened in Europe, ran the burgeoning isolationist argument, it could not challenge the historic security of the American people.

This nation’s dramatic entrance onto the world stage at the turn of the century in no way challenged its isolationist habits of thought. The new sense of obligation to expand did not include, except on the part of a brilliant minority of American writers, any gauging of the forces being unleashed by British–German rivalry or any evaluation of the meaning of that rivalry for the American future. Some critics of national behavior, such as Alfred Thayer Mahan, demanded, but in vain, a closer rapprochement with England, if not an actual alliance. Perhaps Lord Bryce (1888, I, p. 310 in 1909 edition) described the prewar attitudes of the American people with precision when he wrote: “America lives in a world of her own.... Safe from attack, safe even from menace, she hears from afar the warring cries of European races and faiths.... But for the present at least—it may not always be so—she sails upon a summer sea.”

That American expansion into the Pacific failed to challenge the nation’s isolationist tradition reflects fundamentally the ease whereby the acquisition of Hawaii, Guam, and the Philippines, as well as the establishment of an open-door policy in China, was achieved. Even in the Caribbean, where the nation faced no competing power, the new commitments created the illusion of huge accomplishment at a minimum of financial and military expenditure. Thus the nation could underwrite enthusiastically the policies of expansion into Latin America and the western Pacific while rejecting all involvement in European affairs as an unnecessary and dangerous overcommitment of the resources of the United States. The powerful Asia-first orientation of American isolationism had its inception in the basic conviction, demonstrated by events, that the United States could protect its interests in the Far East at relatively little cost. As late as 1940, when Hitler’us armies were sweeping across Europe, Americans were more fearful of Japan than Germany, more determined to defend the integrity of China than that of Norway, the Low Countries, or France.

From 1917 to 1920, Woodrow Wilson’s crusade for a new world order attempted to commit the United States to the maintenance of a stable world, which would supposedly resolve the pressures for change in the postwar status quothrough representative deliberative bodies. Instead it laid the foundation for the violent isolationist reaction of the 1920s, for it was clear by 1919 that Wilson could not uproot the traditions of European power politics. The League of Nations seemed to obligate the nation to action in undefined and unforeseeable contingencies. Its rejection by the Senate, the result of many factors, reflected basically an American disinclination to commit United States military forces to the defense of the Versailles system. Disillusioned by the apparently meager benefits that accrued to the United States from the great involvement of World War I, many Americans accepted the new watchwords of national purpose, “never again.”

The powerful isolationism of the interwar years has been subjected to endless scrutiny by American scholars. It was a national phenomenon. Yet its chief strength always seemed to lie in the upper Middle West, especially in the prairie states. For many students, this was the simple dictate of geographic reality. It appeared reasonable that isolationism should center in those regions of the country most remote from world events.

For others, interwar isolationism had a clear economic base. Many western agrarians, for example, long regarding eastern bankers and industrialists as their mortal enemies, attributed the American involvement in World War I to the influence of Wall Street. They disliked England because that nation represented the system of international finance and investment that led the great nations to war. Charles A. Lindbergh, Sr., in his book Your Country at War and What Happens to You After a War (1917), blamed the war on profiteering and international bankers. Agrarian isolationists attributed the destruction of progressivism to wartime profits.

This form of liberal economic isolationism reached its climax in 1934 with Senator Gerald P. Nye’s investigation of the munitions industry. The public was prepared to hear the worst of the “merchants of death”—those who had profited so handsomely from the war effort. Nye, a former North Dakota newspaper editor, regarded the farmer as the backbone of American society, al-ways beset by the bankers of Wall Street. Gradually, Nye identified the interest of the farmer with those of the citizens of the midwestern villages and even the large midwestern cities, for all such business centers had a clear interest in the welfare of the farmer. All, moreover, were enemies of Wall Street. His investigation of the munitions makers was the logical extension into the field of foreign affairs of his long crusade against the influence of finance capitalism. His conclusions were as much antibusiness as they were antiwar.

In the late 1930s, economic isolationism shifted gradually from liberalism to conservatism. By 1939 many men of wealth stood at the forefront of the American isolationist crusade; they dominated such organizations as the influential America First Committee. Conservatives feared more and more that American involvement in war would further weaken the American free enterprise system. For the isolationist leadership in the Republican party, the program of “America first” was fundamentally an anti-New Deal crusade. Eventually, even Nye discovered that the masses had outbid the farmer for control of governmental policy—that the New Deal spoke largely for the urban dweller. By the late 1930s, he had turned to the conservatives for support in his effort to keep America out of war.

For some Americans, isolationism was largely an expression of the nation’s democratic idealism. Its purpose, in short, was to protect the uniqueness of American society against the corrupting influence of European politics. Traditionally this sense of uniqueness was the essence of an affirmative faith. According to Abraham Lincoln, America was the earth’s last best hope. The achievement of that promise demanded the rejection of Europe. As John Dos Passos once observed, “Repudiation of Europe is, after all, America’s main excuse for being.” By the late 1930s, even the desire to protect the uniqueness of American society had turned conservative. For many isolationists, the concepts of progress and change had retreated before the conviction that American society had matured and that Europe, with its radical tendencies, must be avoided. No longer did isolationists view the United States as the changing society in a reactionary world, but as a stable and accomplished society in a revolutionary world. Isolationism was the means whereby the nation would preserve its economic, social, and political institutions against the dangers of experimentation abroad.

Samuel Lubell, from his studies of the elections of 1920 and 1940, concluded that American isolationism was neither geographic, economic, nor idealistic. In The Future of American Politics (1951, p. 132) he wrote, “This concept of isolationism must be discarded. It is a myth. The hard core of isolationism in the United States has been ethnic and emotional....” The great Democratic setbacks in 1920, when contrasted with the 1916 returns, he discovered, came in Swedish, German, Norwegian, and Irish districts, revealing an ethnic reaction to Wilson’s decision to lead the American people to war against Germany. In 1940 Roosevelt’s majority vote dropped roughly 7 per cent from 1936. In 20 counties the losses exceeded 35 per cent; 19 of these were fundamentally German in background. Another 35 counties showed a Democratic drop of 25–34 per cent; in all but four of these, German was either the first or second strongest nationality of origin. The same ethnic factors were present in another 83 of 101 counties where Roosevelt’s 1940 vote dropped between 20 and 24 per cent. It was, concluded Lubell, the absence of Germans in the South that limited that region’s isolationism.

As war returned to Europe in 1939, the concept of a fortress America became the ultimate intellectual refuge of the nation’s isolationist leadership. American security, ran the argument, did not hinge on Britain or the balance of power, but on the United States’ capacity to guard the sea lanes. Herbert Hoover announced in February 1939 that the hemisphere was protected by a “moat of 3000 miles of ocean on the East, and 6000 miles on the West” (1940, p. 101). By this isolationist doctrine, the course of war in Europe mattered little. Charles A. Beard wrote: “It was one thing to regard Hitler and Mussolini as madmen at Munich ... it was another thing to maintain that the United States should pour out the blood of its sons in restraining the dictators after Great Britain, France, Russia and the other powers of Europe had failed to unite against them in diplomacy and coercion” (Beard & Beard 1939, pp. 499–500).

For such men, the outbreak of war in Europe merely affirmed the notion that the United States was invulnerable. “Actually,” wrote Oswald Garrison Villard in September 1939, “from the purely military point of view, the security of the United States has been increased by the outbreak of war. And the longer war continues, the safer the United States will be, if it ever was in danger. For with each day that passes, the exhaustion of the contestants will become greater” (1939, p. 324). Whatever the logic of such convictions, they failed to preserve American neutrality. Again, as in 1917, it was the nation’s ultimate unwillingness to countenance a British defeat at the hands of Germany that brought it into the European war.

For the vast majority of Americans at mid-century the isolationist tradition was no longer relevant. The disintegration of the alliance with Russia and the acceptance by the United States of a world-wide commitment to the containment of communist power seemed to leave little room for the doctrines of the 1930s. Senator Robert A. Taft, one of the nation’s leading proponents of prewar isolationism, declared in 1950: “I don’t know what they mean by isolationism; nobody is an isolationist today.” Dwight D. Eisenhower observed two years later, “I have long insisted—and do now insist, that isolationism is dead as a political issue.”

Yet isolationism was not dead. World War II had demonstrated its obsolescence, but it had not destroyed the emotions and traditions that underlay it. What remained had changed its emphasis, but its significance for the nation was only partially diminished. Contributing to the rebirth of a powerful conservative American isolationism in the postwar era was the conviction that the Roosevelt administration, through its involvement of the country in World War II, had assured the rise of Russia to a position of power. Past Democratic policies, in short, were responsible for the un- precedented insecurity of the American people. Senator Taft charged quite characteristically (1951, p. 6) that “our leaders failed to foresee that the Soviet Union would turn against us after the defeat of Germany and Japan. They made no attempt to insure our future against that eventuality.” The vast power revolution of the 1940s appeared to demonstrate that the isolationists of the interwar years were correct in their judgment of the national interest after all.

Aggravated by the postwar dread of communism, American isolationism, more than ever before, placed its emphasis on the uniqueness of American society and the need for protecting that uniqueness from its enemies at home and abroad. For many Americans, the containment policies of the Truman administration were nothing but an assault on the nation’s values. The reactionary-nationalist foreign policy elite, as Gabriel Almond (1950) has defined it, attributed American insecurity not to Russian power and aggressiveness, but to the gradual destruction of the traditional American free enterprise system. Beginning with the presidency of Woodrow Wilson, ran its argument, socialism, New Dealism, heavy military expenditures, and high taxes had undermined the strength of the nation. If the United States would return to the old Americanism as it existed before 1914, the nation’s external challenges would evaporate. Organizations of the extreme right, such as Merwin K. Hart’s National Economic Council, opposed the Marshall Plan as a scheme to “finance socialism in Europe.” It termed the United Nations an octopus leading to a “statist, collectivist world.” The United States should clear the decks for action “by reducing our government expense and rejecting the whole Truman program for a socialized welfare state.” The American Coalition of Patriotic Societies, led by John B. Trevor, agreed that the danger to American security lay in the “nationalist socialist planners.” When the nation again returned to its nineteenth-century orthodoxy, it would enjoy security without excessive military expenditures.

If few Americans identified American insecurity abroad so completely with the erosion of American values, a significant body of editors and politicians condemned the nation’s commitment to the defense of Europe. Senator Taft, in his book A Foreign Policy for Americans, explained his opposition to NATO: “I do not like the obligation written into the pact which binds us for twenty years to come to the defense of any country, no matter by whom it is attacked and even though the aggressor may be another member of the pact ...” (1951, pp. 88–89). Taft, like other conservative Americans, believed that the essence of American security lay in the domestic economy. He opposed the American commitment to NATO as an overestimation of both the Soviet threat and the defense burden that the American economy could bear. “Just as our nation can be destroyed by war,” he declared (1951, p. 14), “it can also be destroyed by a political or economic policy at home which destroys liberty or breaks down the fiscal and economic structure of the United States.”

American isolationism in the postwar world continued to harbor its Asia-first tendencies. If the United States had failed in its historic effort to preserve the open door in China by permitting the transfer of political power from Chiang Kai-shek to Mao Tse-tung and the Chinese communists, the answer lay not in the nation’s inability to subdue the Chinese revolution but rather in errors of judgment, if not actual treason, within the Department of State. This denial of the vast power revolution in Asia permitted those who favored the reduction of American forces in Europe to demand a show of aggressiveness in Asia without appearing to assume an expensive military burden. The mere return of Chiang to the mainland promised the re-establishment of the open door at little cost.

Perhaps the key development in the history of American isolationism was the shift from a realistic evaluation of both the role of distance from the power centers of Europe and the significance for the nation’s security of the European balance of power, to an assumption that the country’s security had become absolute and rested on the fact of geographic insulation and the supremacy of the nation’s economic and political institutions. So secure did the country appear in the nineteenth century that, according to Abraham Lincoln, it could be injured only from within. Anchored to such assumptions of omnipotence, American isolationism in the twentieth century became identified with a primary concern for the domestic economy, an overestimation of American power, and a belief in the nation’s moral superiority, all of which encouraged the tendency toward unilateralism in diplomacy. Isolationism, although a logical consequence of geography and the national experience, was in fact the creation of several generations of writers, editors, and politicians. It triumphed as a political program and achieved a predominant place in American thought simply because no other course of national action could promise so much at such negligible cost. World War Ii and the events that followed destroyed only the illusion of geographical insulation. The traditional belief that the United States could achieve security at less expense to itself than nations with fewer physical advantages was not destroyed.

Norman A. Graebner

[See alsoForeign policy; National interest; National security.]

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Adams, JohnThe Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States. 10 vols. Boston: Little, 1851–1856.

Adler, Selig 1957 The Isolationist Impulse. New York: Abelard-Schuman.

Almond, Gabriel A. (1950) 1960 The American People and Foreign Policy. New York: Praeger.

Beard, Charles; and Beard, Mary 1939 America in Midpassage. New York: Macmillan.

Bryce, James (1888) 1909 The American Commonwealth. 2 vols. New York and London: Macmillan. → An abridged edition was published in 1959 by Putnam.

Cole, Wayne S. 1953 America First: The Battle Against Intervention, 1940–1941. Madison: Univ. of Wisconsin Press.

Cole, Wayne S. 1962 Senator Gerald P. Nye and American Foreign Relations. Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press.

De Conde, Alexander (editor) 1957 Isolation and Security: Ideas and Interests in Twentieth-century American Foreign Policy. Durham, N.C.: Duke Univ. Press.

Graebner, Norman A. 1956 The New Isolationism: A Study in Politics and Foreign Policy Since 1950. New York: Ronald Press.

Hoover, Herbert 1940 Further Addresses Upon the American Road: 1938–1940. New York: Scribner.

Lindbergh, Charles A. SR. (1917) 1934 Your Country at War and What Happens to You After a War. Philadelphia: Dorrance.

Lubell, Samuel (1951) 1956 The Future of American Politics. 2d ed., rev. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday.

Lubell, Samuel 1956 Revolt of the Moderates. New York: Harper.

Taft, Robert A. 1951 A Foreign Policy for Americans. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday.

Villard, Oswald G. 1939 Issues and Men: The United States and the War. Nation 149:324 only.

Washington, George (1753–1796) 1948 Basic Writings of George Washington. New York: Random House.

Weinberg, Albert K. 1940 The Historical Meaning of the American Doctrine of Isolation. American Political Science Review 34:539–547.

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

ISOLATIONISM (ISSUE)

From the time when George Washington (1789–1797) gave his farewell address at the end of his presidency, warning against "entangling alliances with Europe," through the nineteenth century, the United States maintained an almost steadfast policy of isolationism. But at the beginning of the twentieth century the United States began to turn away from the isolationism that preceded the Spanish-American War (1898). As a major industrial nation with expanding foreign markets, the United States was soon considered a world power. Global expansion meant increased wealth as raw materials became cheaper to acquire; prices were driven down and consumption was up. The new century saw American businesses prospering in many sectors, including oil, steel, textiles, railroads, and food products. This unprecedented technological progress was marked by the birth of the automobile and the aviation industries. But even with increased prosperity, the isolationist reflexes of the U.S. still shaped U.S. economic and diplomatic life until the advent of World War II (1939–1945).

In the first four decades of the twentieth century the United States clumsily attempted to ward off Japanese aggression in China, assumed a paternalistic administration of Philippine affairs and engaged in "dollar diplomacy" vis a vis its smaller neighbors in the western hemisphere. The most ambitious and idealistic diplomatic project that the U.S. attempted was to intervene in World War I for the most altruistic and idealistic of reasons but with little diplomatic success. In short, the U.S. had little to show for its diplomatic efforts before World War II. With very different policies, Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson stand out as the most internationalist presidents. Neither believed that the U.S. could go far with an isolationist foreign policy.

Teddy Roosevelt put forth a muscular, imperialist foreign policy, while Wilson tried a kind of "missionary" foreign policy—sacrificing 112,000 American deaths simply in order to participate in the peace treaty through which he tried to structure a post-war set of diplomatic relationships that would end all wars. Wilson stood for democracy as the most advanced, humane, and Christian form of government. For him all people were capable of being trained in the habits of democracy and it was the role of the United States to help them achieve democracy.

When the nations of Europe were drawn into World War I (1914–1918) the majority of U.S. citizens wanted their country to remain neutral. The national consensus was solidly isolationist. They approved of trade, but they feared being sucked into a war in which they could see no moral difference between the belligerents. The pattern of immigration led most Americans to sympathize with the British and the French, and they grudgingly accepted the British maritime blockade of trade with Germany. Wilson helped to create a pro-war national consensus based on the belief that German actions—especially its submarine warfare, were morally bereft and would, if left unchecked, eventually threaten the United States. U.S. trade with Germany declined from $169 million in 1914 to $1.2 million in 1916, but the flow of U.S. goods into Allied hands was overwhelming, rising from $825 million to $3.2 billion in the same period. The United States became a warehouse for the Allied powers and sent munitions, food, and goods to Europe.

World War I gave the Wilson administration unique opportunities to achieve its international economic goals. He was successful in getting the Allies to accept the concept of the League of Nations. But his arrogance in dealing with the Republican Senators, plus the isolationism that sprung up again with the end of the war led the Senate to reject the Treaty of Versailles. This resulted in a powerful swing back to isolationism in the years before World War II.

During the 1920s the nation's attention was directed towards internal changes rather than international affairs. In the opening years of what would be a decade of worldwide depression, President Herbert Hoover (1929–1933) made a series of proposals to quiet rising international tensions. In 1930 his administration extended the naval-limitations agreements of the early 1920s. In 1931 he proposed a moratorium on international debt while refusing to cancel the lingering World War I debts owed to the United States by the European powers. Hoover also pressed for an international agreement on arms limitation, but the World Disarmament Conference held in Switzerland in 1932 failed to achieve its goals. International economic and military pressures intensified. Fascism in Italy, Nazism in Germany, State Socialism in the Soviet Union, and militarism in Japan were ascendant, fueled by the global depression.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt's (1933–1945) early foreign policy achievements were mixed. His administration took an isolationist stance at the World Economic Conference in June, 1933, when U.S. representatives refused to cooperate in an effort to stabilize world currencies. In 1934 however Roosevelt took an internationalist stance in the U.S.-negotiated Reciprocal Trade Agreements on tariff reductions. His vacillating policies reflected his political priorities: at the beginning of his administration, domestic issues were much more important than foreign policy.

The predominant mood in the United States in the 1930s was deeply isolationist. Not only was the Great Depression (1929–1939) wreaking havoc domestically, but many citizens believed that the nation's losses during World War I far outweighed the gains. Between 1934 and 1936 discoveries made by a Senate investigating committee headed by Senator Gerald P. Nye further fueled the nation's mood of isolationism. Exposing war profiteering by banks and corporations during World War I, the Nye committee investigation led many to conclude that the interests of U.S. banks and corporations had driven the United States into a war the nation should have avoided. The notion that "merchants of death" were responsible for manipulating the United States into war was widespread.

Influential men such as Charles Lindbergh and retired U.S. Marine Corps Maj. Gen. Smedley D. Butler promoted the idea of "Fortress America," the notion that the United States was ensconced safely between the moats of the Atlantic and the Pacific, armed for defense against but not for intervention in the corrupt affairs of Europe. The Senate's refusal to allow the United States to join the World Court in 1935 was another indication of the country's, pervasive, isolationist mood. Fearful of being pulled into a war from which it would only suffer, Congress passed three acts that declared U.S. neutrality. In the event that a war broke out between other countries, the Neutrality Acts of 1935 and 1936 made it clear that the United States would not supply either side with weapons or ammunition. The Neutrality Act of 1937 moved the nation further in the direction of isolation and asserted a "cash-and-carry" policy by which warring countries could purchase weapons (but not ammunition) in cash only. When the Spanish Civil War broke out in 1936, the United States remained on the sidelines.

Interventionists insisted that the future of the United States lay in establishing peace and stability abroad for the sake of trade and commerce. A world divided into closed and self-contained trading blocs was a world in which the United States would not prosper. Interventionists anticipated that renewed U.S. trade abroad might end the Depression. They believed that the United States had a vital stake in ensuring that the outcome of the war in Europe and Asia favored liberal democracies and market economic systems. However, not all interventionists advocated direct military involvement toward this end. Many argued that economic assistance, as in the case of the Lend-Lease Plan, would be enough to ensure the survival of western democracies. Others, however, insisted that liberal democracy and free enterprise would perish in a world dominated by authoritarian regimes. Such interventionists saw no alternative to military engagement.

In his first term Roosevelt worked closely with isolationist progressives such as Senators Robert La Follette, Jr., Hiram Johnson, George Norris, Burton K. Wheeler, and Gerald P. Nye. During his second term Roosevelt gradually broke with the isolationists as international tensions heightened. In October, 1937, Roosevelt's famous quarantine speech which called for international cooperation in bringing unspecified economic and diplomatic pressure to bear on aggressor-nations irritated the isolationists. Beginning in 1937 they increasingly turned against the president.

As the 1930s drew to a close the United States stood by while Hitler began his push eastward. As World War II began Roosevelt declared, "This nation will remain a neutral nation," but he called for a revision of the Neutrality Acts to allow the United States to sell England and its Allies weapons and ammunition. Congress skeptically allowed purchase of arms on a cash-and-carry basis.

Ironically, European orders for war goods sparked a phenomenal economic boom that brought the United States out of the Depression for good. Many believed that as long as the United States stayed out of the war both peace and prosperity were possible. But members of the Roosevelt administration leaned toward U.S. intervention in the European conflict. Economists within the administration warned that German success in Europe and Japanese victory in Asia would irrevocably close huge markets for U.S. goods. Unless the United States intervened in these conflicts, they argued, the economic future of the United States would be worse than the Great Depression. Such arguments, in concert with war atrocities on the part of Germany and Japan, convinced Roosevelt and his administration that the United States must set isolationism aside and take an active hand in the European and Asian wars. But the people of the United States still resisted. On December 12, 1937 Japanese airplanes sank the Panay, a U.S. gunboat navigating the Yangtze River in China. But people in the United States were ready to forgive the incident after a formal Japanese apology. The Japanese invasion of Manchuria remained a major cause of disagreement between the United States and Japan. But only the bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, effectively pulled the United States out of the isolationistic attraction.

See also: Franklin D. Roosevelt,Woodrow Wilson, World War I, World War II

FURTHER READING

Cole, Wayne S. Roosevelt and the Isolationists, 1932– 1945. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1983.

Divine, Robert A. The Illusion of Neutrality. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1962.

Jonas, Manfred. Isolationism in America, 1935–1941. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1966.

Keylor, William R. The Twentieth-Century World: An International History, 2nd ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992.

ISOLATIONISM

ISOLATIONISM was the dominant ideology guiding American foreign policy from the era of the founders until the end of World War II. Its central tenet was that the United States should take advantage of its geographic distance from Europe and refrain from intervention in Old World affairs. Supporters of isolationism also thought America was better off pursuing its interests in other parts of the world without participating in alliances or foreign wars. Isolationists thought the best way to secure democracy and prosperity was to build it at home.

Although isolationist assumptions were widely accepted for over 150 years, the terms "isolationism" and "isolationist" were actually seldom used until after World War I. When the war ended in 1917, President Woodrow Wilson wanted the United States to enter the League of Nations. Those who opposed American participation, fearing the United States would lose its autonomy over foreign affairs, were pejoratively labeled "isolationists." In the 1930s, the term was used even more frequently to refer to the politicians and lobbyists who actively opposed U.S. intervention in World War II.

Origins

Isolationism has its roots in the experiences of America's colonists. Those settlers crossed the Atlantic Ocean to escape constant war, religious persecution, and other adversities in Europe. They considered the vast body of water separating them from continental strife a blessing from the Divine. They believed the New World was morally superior to the Old World. The colonists' hunger for land and trade brought them into conflict with the Native Americans, the French, and the Spanish. Some of the wars waged over territory were driven by the colonists' desire for security; others arose from rivalries between the European powers. Nevertheless, the colonists came to feel unfairly burdened by these conflicts and resented having their fate in the hands of the British Crown. After the English victory over the French in Canada in 1763, colonial leaders argued that they ought to avoid further involvement in European wars. Although the colonies' alliance with France was crucial in winning the revolutionary war, they viewed the break with England as the definitive step in severing ties to Europe.

During the early years of the republic, French efforts to draw the United States into supporting its postrevolutionary wars against England, Holland, and Austria put isolationism to the test. French diplomats unsuccessfully attempted to influence the 1796 presidential election; they led Americans to believe that if Federalist John Adams became president over the pro-French Thomas Jefferson, a war with France would be imminent. President George Washington, in his Farewell Address of 1796, issued the most significant statement of isolationist principles in American history. He called for vigilance against "the insidious wiles of foreign influence" and argued that it would be unwise to "implicate ourselves, by artificial ties, in the ordinary vicissitudes of [European] politics, or the ordinary combinations and collisions of her friend-ships or enmities." Washington, however, did not advocate the United States completely cut its ties to other nations. He called on Americans to engage in trade abroad with "as little political connection as possible." And, he noted that circumstances might require further engagement. "Tis our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world … [but] we may safely trust to temporary alliances for extraordinary emergencies."

Expansion Without Intervention

Isolationism was strongest in the nineteenth century, when the growing nation needed to concentrate on domestic development. Moreover, the United States did not yet have the means to support the naval forces necessary to sustain a more active foreign policy. After the War of 1812, the United States was able to continue western expansion without incursions from foreign powers. However, in the 1820s, American leaders grew concerned about the possibility of renewed European intervention in the Pacific Northwest and in Latin America. In response, President James Monroe announced his 1823 doctrine, which reiterated and expanded Washington's neutrality policy. He proclaimed that the "American continents … are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by any European powers." He also warned that the United States would consider any European move "to extend their system to any portion of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and safety." Lastly, Monroe pledged that the United States would not take part in "wars of the European powers in matters relating to themselves."

International circumstances in the nineteenth century reinforced Americans' confidence in isolationism. The United States did not become involved in dangerous foreign engagements largely because a balance of power was maintained on the Continent. The British navy provided a security blanket for American commerce. Thus, the United States was able to act unilaterally in expanding in Latin America and even the Far East. Americans considered the nation's growth and prosperity a consequence of its adherence to a foreign policy of nonintervention and neutrality.

By the 1880s, domestic and international developments were making isolationism less relevant. For example, the expansion of American industrial and agricultural production dictated a search for new markets abroad. Busier foreign trade led the United States to establish a large navy. The days of relative peace in Europe were also fading. Germany and Japan were building up their military forces, prompting a European arms race. Meanwhile, all the powers scrambled for empire in Asia and Africa. In 1898, the United States demonstrated its newfound status as a world power by winning its war against Spain. The spoils included the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and Cuba.

World War I and the League of Nations

When Europe went to war in 1914, President Woodrow Wilson vowed not to break the tradition of American isolation. However, Wilson's neutrality policies worked to favor England and France. German attacks on American ships and Germany's attempt to ally with Mexico eventually led Wilson to seek congressional approval for a declaration of war in 1917. In keeping with the American preference to see itself as morally superior to the Europeans, Wilson said the United States needed to go to war to "vindicate the principles of peace and justice in the life of the world against selfish and autocratic power" and because "the world must be made safe for democracy." Only the most ardent isolationists failed to vote for war.

Wilson believed that if, after a peace settlement was reached, the United States joined a collective security organization, the world would be spared another devastating conflict. But his mostly Republican opposition was not convinced. Some feared the United States would become the world's policeman if it joined the league. Other isolationists argued Congress would lose its power over warmaking. The Senate rejected the treaty that would have ratified American participation in the organization.

World War II and the Rise of Internationalism

In the 1930s, Japan's invasion of China and Nazi Germany's militarism in Europe failed to sway the United States from its policy of noninvolvement. The Great Depression had reinforced Americans' conventional isolationist sentiments. Americans were already concerned about the expansion of federal powers to revive the economy; they feared involvement in another war could bring a dictatorship to American soil. Although isolationism was a nationwide and bipartisan phenomenon, its strongholds were in landlocked midwestern, Great Plains, and Rocky Mountain states. Important ethnic groups also favored isolationism: the Germans, Irish, Italians, and Scandinavians. Isolationist leaders in Congress, such as senators William E. Borah of Idaho, Gerald P. Nye of North Dakota, and Arthur Vandenberg of Michigan led investigations that concluded greedy arms makers and Wall Street bankers had unduly influenced President Wilson's decision to become involved in World War I. If it was a mistake to have fought the last war, as another war loomed, most Americans concluded that the United States should remain aloof from Old World conflicts.

When the first signs of overt aggression were evident in 1935 with Italy's Ethiopian conquest and Germany's 1936 reoccupation of the Rhineland, isolationists fashioned neutrality legislation. Congress passed laws forbidding arms sales and loans to warring nations, and restricting American travel on belligerent ships. Only in the wake of Germany's 1939 invasion of Poland did the tide of public opinion begin to turn against isolationism. President Franklin Roosevelt, an internationalist, who, needing support for his domestic policies, acceded to isolationists' demands and convinced Congress to repeal the arms embargo. This move away from isolationism sparked zealous lobbying by groups such as the America First Committee, whose most famous member was the aviator Charles A. Lindbergh. Roosevelt's efforts to assist England, which was attacked in 1940, were championed by both the Committee to Defend America by Aiding the Allies and the Fight for Freedom Committee.

The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941 and U.S. entry into World War II ended isolationism. The United States emerged as a superpower after the Allied victory and internationalism became the dominant ideology guiding foreign policy in the latter half of the twentieth century. Even former isolationists rallied behind the creation of the United Nations. The onset of the Cold War with the Soviet Union led the United States to become intimately involved in European affairs through the Marshall Plan and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Subsequent efforts to contain the spread of communism led the United States to expand its reach globally. During debates over various interventions, such as Korea in 1950, Vietnam in the 1960s, or Bosnia in the 1990s, isolationist arguments resurfaced in a phenomenon labeled "neo-isolationism." But by the start of the twenty-first century, America's vast global responsibilities had rendered the tradition of noninvolvement and unilateralism obsolete.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Adler, Selig. The Isolationist Impulse: Its Twentieth-Century Reaction. New York: Abelard-Schuman, Ltd., 1957.

Cole, Wayne S. America, Roosevelt, and the Isolationists, 1932–1945. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1983.

Dallek, Robert A. The Illusion of Neutrality. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962.

———. The American Style of Foreign Policy: Cultural Politics and Foreign Affairs. N.Y.: Knopf, 1983.

Jonas, Manfred. Isolationism in America, 1935–1941. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1966.

Ellen G.Rafshoon

See alsoAnti-Imperialists ; Imperialism ; Intervention ; Neutrality ; andvol. 9:America First ; The Monroe Doctrine and the Roosevelt Corollary .

Isolationism

EARLY U.S. ISOLATIONISM

COLD WAR

POST–COLD WAR

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Isolationism can be defined as a state’s deliberate policy of extensive withdrawal and seclusion from some forms of interaction in the international system. Notable examples include the economic isolationism of Japan and China before the nineteenth century and the cultural isolationism of China and the Soviet Union in parts of the twentieth century. In the U.S. context, isolationism has constituted one of the principle foreign policy grand strategies from the founding of the country up to the present day.

EARLY U.S. ISOLATIONISM

From the United States’ inception, isolationists such as George Washington have argued for the benefits of avoiding wars and “entangling alliances” with other great powers at all costs. Military commitments and involvement in the affairs of such states bleed the country of its prosperity. Precious money is wasted on armaments that often antagonize foreign nations. Democratic principles are sometimes suspended and sacrificed in the effort to fight wars. And the United States is unnecessarily distracted from more pressing objectives. “Keep the ships at home,” said Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826), “and we will have fewer reasons to fight.” It was such philosophies that helped keep the United States out of war with European states for most of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Apart from the United States’ relatively minor involvement in the Napoleonic Wars against France from 1798 to 1801, the only war that was fought with a European power was the War of 1812 against the British. Isolationist policies freed America to focus on territorial expansionism in North America, interventionism in Asia and Latin America, and economic activism throughout the globe.

While it is true that U.S. isolationism was assisted by its geographic separation from Europe by the Atlantic Ocean, as Walter Lippman describes in U.S. Foreign Policy: Shield of the Republic (1943), U.S. security during most of the nineteenth century was safeguarded more through a shrewd, unwritten 1823 alliance with Great Britain and the British-led balance of power in Europe than through its geography. Because of Britain’s naval dominance of the approaches from Europe to the Western Hemisphere, Britain was the only force that in theory posed a significant threat to the United States. From the perspective of the British, such an alliance had the advantages of freeing much of its navy to police more critical regions than the Western Hemisphere and to preserve its dominion of Canada from U.S. messianic visions of continental annexation.

When the British-led European balance of power unraveled at the end of the nineteenth century, isolationists nevertheless persisted with the false assumption that the United States was still secure. To avoid a creeping U.S. allegiance to any side in Europe, Congress enacted the Neutrality Acts of 1934 and 1936, which forbade the sale of war matériel to belligerent states. German efforts to dominate Europe during World Wars I and II and Soviet expansionism after World War II nevertheless shattered the illusion of geographic invulnerability. U.S. leaders realized that a single power, such as Germany or the Soviet Union, or a hostile alliance of powers, in control of most of Eurasian military and industrial power, could pose a potentially superior threat. Therefore, the possibility of an unfriendly balance of power against the United States justified a policy of military “preponderance” rather than isolationism (Layne 1997, pp. 88–97).

COLD WAR

When the cold war became the dominant focus of U.S. policymakers, isolationism returned as one among a number of realist strategies, including containment and rollback, which were designed to secure U.S. interests when faced with a menacing Soviet Union. Proponents of cold war isolationism, such as Robert A. Tucker (1972), departed from some of the traditional isolationist arguments. Tucker conceded that isolationism had previously failed to take into account the necessity of having allies. Allies tipped the world balance of power in the United States’ favor by helping to preclude the emergence of a threatening Eurasian hegemon.

Tucker (1972), however, argued that with nuclear weapons powerful allies in Western Europe or elsewhere were no longer necessary. The threat of mutually assured nuclear destruction made concerns about a balance of power irrelevant. Even if the Soviet Union were to somehow conquer Western Europe, Soviet control of the European military-industrial complexes would do little to add to the existing threat posed by a Soviet nuclear first-strike from submarine-based nuclear missiles. In the new nuclear-armed world, the United States was safe from direct Soviet threat because of the deterrent effect of an assured U.S. nuclear counterstrike, not by whether U.S. allies were safe.

Furthermore, it was argued that an isolationist foreign policy is completely compatible with fulfilling an activist U.S. economic agenda abroad since market forces provide the incentives for trade rather than alliances or physical control. For example, even hostile states will be eager over the long run to sell their oil and other goods to the United States—let alone friendly and developed states—whose economies frequently have more to lose through a loss of U.S. trade than the U.S. economic colossus has with respect to them. And with the complete withdrawal of U.S. military commitments from Asia and Europe, those regions will be physically secure from an economically devastating attack, because states such as Germany and Japan would acquire their own nuclear capabilities.

POST–COLD WAR

While the term isolationism may not be so popular today, the assumptions, goals, and remedies that the isolationist concept provides continue to be attractive to many. Modern-day versions of isolationist foreign policy are variously referred to as “disengagement,” “benign detachment,” “policy of restraint,” “offshore balancing,” and “Jeffersonian policy.” Post–cold war isolationists build on the aforementioned cold war arguments. They continue to stress the great costs and dangers of a forwardly engaged military with bases and troops across the globe. Such militarism, they argue, incites terrorism, creates incentives for nuclear proliferation, needlessly wastes money when the United States would be secure anyway, and tends to “turn allies into neutrals and neutrals into enemies” (Gholz, Press, and Sapolsky 1997, p. 37). Like their predecessors, modern isolationists nevertheless agree with limited military engagement. They are in favor of a strong (although significantly reduced) military to fight piracy, defend the homeland, and to ensure the safety of commerce. They believe in maintaining a considerable nuclear deterrent. And they support firm U.S. retaliation in the event of attack. Isolationists, however, continue to be criticized. Critics are uncomfortable with trusting other states to a multipolar balance of power based on nuclear weapons. As the Cuban missile crisis showed, brinksmanship and near misses are still possible even with nuclear weapons. Still, others criticize the isolationists for being immoral and irresponsible in their strong reluctance to forcefully prevent wars, humanitarian emergencies, and genocide. They are also criticized for being careless in protecting U.S. economic interests abroad in the event of future regional conflicts.

SEE ALSO Public Policy

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Art, Robert J. 2003. A Grand Strategy for America. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

Bandow, Doug. 1994. Keeping the Troops and the Money at Home. Current History 93, no. 579: 8–13.

Fensterwald, Bernard. 1958. The Anatomy of American “Isolationism” and Expansionism. Part I. Journal of Conflict Resolution 2, no. 2: 111–139.

Gholz, Eugene, Daryl G. Press, and Harvey M. Sapolsky. 1997. Come Home, America: The Strategy of Restraint in the Face of Temptation. International Security 21, no. 45–48.

Layne, Christopher. 1997. From Preponderance to Offshore Balancing: America’s Future Grand Strategy. International Security 22, no. 1: 5–48.

Lippmann, Walter. 1943. U.S. Foreign Policy: Shield of the Republic. Boston: Little, Brown.

Mead, Walter Russell. 2001. Special Providence: American Foreign Policy and How It Changed the World. New York: Knopf.

Nordlinger, Eric A. 1995. Isolationism Reconfigured: American Foreign Policy for a New Century. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Posen, Barry R., and Andrew L. Ross. 1995. Competing Visions for U.S. Grand Strategies. In Strategy and Force Planning, ed. Strategy and Force Planning Faculty, 115–134. Newport, RI: Naval War College Press.

Ravenal, Earl. 1991. The Case for Adjustment. Foreign Policy 81: 3–19.

Tucker, Robert W. 1972. A New Isolationism: Threat or Promise? New York: Universe.

David A. Rezvani

Isolationism. Isolationism is best defined as opposition to U.S. intervention in war outside the Western Hemisphere, particularly in Europe; to involvement in binding military alliances; and to participation in collective‐security organizations. Historically, isolationists have sought above all to preserve the nation's freedom of action. In contrast to pacifists, isolationists can favor unilateral military action.

From the founding of the republic through the early twentieth century, the United States pursued an isolationist policy. In Common Sense (1776), Thomas Paine warned that continued ties to Britain “tends directly to involve this continent in European wars and quarrels.” John Adams's Model Treaty of 1776 envisioned a purely commercial treaty with France, a proposal the French rejected. President George Washington's Farewell Address of 1796 advised his countrymen “to steer clear of permanent Alliances.” In his first inaugural address in 1801, Thomas Jefferson sought “peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none.” As part of what was later known as the Monroe Doctrine, President James Monroe proclaimed in his annual message of 1823: “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.”

Although the United States engaged in several major wars in the nineteenth century—the War of 1812, the Mexican War, and the Spanish‐American War—all these conflicts were fought unilaterally and therefore did not violate classic isolationist principles. Even when the United States entered World War I in 1917, it did so as an “associated power,” so as to avoid any obligations that might come from a binding military alliance. In 1919, President Woodrow Wilson unsuccessfully sought American membership in the League of Nations, whose covenant obligated member states to engage in collective security if one of its members faced “external aggression.” The Republican senators Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts, William E. Borah of Idaho, and Hiram Johnson of California invoked isolationist tenets to fight the proposal, as did the League for the Preservation of American Independence. Hence, throughout the 1920s and most of the 1930s, traditional isolationism remained intact.

The years 1934–1937 marked the peak of isolationist activism. As President Franklin Delano Roosevelt sought discretionary power to aid nations facing fascist aggression, his foes rallied and strongly fought such entanglements. In 1934, Congress forbade private loans to nations in default of obligations; in 1935, it rejected American membership in the World Court; and from 1935 to 1937 it passed a battery of neutrality acts that remained law until September 1939.

As more and more Americans endorsed collective action against rising dictatorships, however, isolationism became increasingly contested. As the word itself became more pejorative, isolationists preferred such terms as “noninterventionist,” “hemispherist,” “nationalist,” and “continentalist”—the term favored by the historian Charles A. Beard. After September 1939, when war again broke out in Europe, isolationists determinedly fought Roosevelt's interventionist proposals, though without success. Although a number of groups were involved, including the quasi‐pacifist National Council for the Prevention of War and the short‐lived No Foreign War Committee, the major isolationist organization was the America First Committee, formed in September 1940.

Classic isolationism ended on 7 December 1941, with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. After both world wars, however, “revisionist” historians such as Beard, Charles Callan Tansill, and Harry Elmer Barnes wrote accounts claiming that in each case the isolationist position had been the correct one.

During the Cold War, some citizens fought against America's major internationalist and interventionist moves: membership in the United Nations (1945) and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (1949), entry into the Korean War (1950), and early involvements in Indochina (1954). However, such former isolationists as Senator Robert A. Taft (Rep.–Ohio) sacrificed consistency by supporting more militant action in Asia. Isolationists suffered a major defeat in 1953–1954 when the Senate defeated a constitutional amendment proposed by Senator John Bricker (Rep.–Ohio) limiting presidential treaty‐making power.

Most opponents of the Vietnam War could not be called isolationists in the traditional sense as they seldom, in principle, repudiated membership in international organizations, military aid overseas, economic sanctions, or the use of combat forces under certain circumstances. In the 1980s and 1990s, a few “neo‐isolationist” political scientists and historians called for America's withdrawal from alliance systems, security arrangements, and international organizations and advocated a defense limited to the Western Hemisphere. Like their predecessors in the late 1930s, however, they shunned the discredited label “isolationism” and preferred such terms as “interest‐based policies,” “strategic disengagement,” “strategic independence,” or “national strategy.”
See also Foreign Relations: U.S. Relations with Europe; Internationalism; Pacifism; World War II: Military and Diplomatic Course.

Bibliography

Manfred Jonas , Isolationism in America, 1935–1941, 1966.
John Milton Cooper Jr. , The Vanity of Power: American Isolationism and World War I, 1914–1917, 1969.
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 , The Battle Against Intervention, 1939–1941, 1997.

Justus D. Doenecke

isolationism (USA) A persistent factor in US politics, the origins of which go back to Presidents Washington and Monroe. Isolationists advocate the avoidance of all alliances or participation in world affairs outside the American hemisphere, especially on a permanent or binding basis. They foiled Woodrow Wilson in his attempt to take the USA into the League of Nations, and during the 1930s isolationism was responsible for the Neutrality Acts. Since US entry into World War II isolationism has been much less prominent, but by no means irrelevant. It has advocated political and military withdrawal from overseas bases and the establishment of a ‘fortress America’, protected by military systems such as the SDI. The 1990s have seen a revival of isolationism in opposition to efforts to integrate the USA into the world economy, such as NAFTA or the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation agreements. This was reinforced by the fall of Communism and the lack of a clear threat to the US. Populists, particularly on the right, have asserted a form of isolationism as an alternative to international US involvement (and leadership). Although in evidence from the 1990s, this stance received a great boost after September 11, when the US under George W. Bush moved to act on the world stage, but without being bound in the last resort by international commitments or organizations.

America First Committee

isolationism An approach to US foreign policy that advocates non-participation in alliances or in the affairs of other nations. It derives its spirit from George Washington's proclamation of neutrality in 1793, and was further confirmed by the MONROE DOCTRINE (1823). It foiled Woodrow Wilson in his attempt to take the USA into the LEAGUE OF NATIONS (1919 and 1920), and it hindered Franklin D. Roosevelt's support for Britain, France, and China before and during World War II, by ensuring passage of restrictive Neutrality Acts (1935–37). Present-day isolationists favour political and military withdrawal from overseas bases as well as the establishment of a “fortress America” protected by an elaborate modern military system.

isolationism Avoidance by a state of foreign commitments and alliances. It is connected in particular with the foreign policy of the USA. US isolationism was not applied to the Americas, considered an exclusively US area of interest under the Monroe Doctrine, nor did it prevent US involvement in China and elsewhere in pursuit of commercial gains. With respect to Europe, it was interrupted when the USA entered World War I in 1917 and permanently abandoned in 1941, although it continues to have some advocates.

i·so·la·tion·ism / ˌīsəˈlāshəˌnizəm/ • n. a policy of remaining apart from the affairs or interests of other groups, esp. the political affairs of other countries. DERIVATIVES: i·so·la·tion·ist n.

isolationism n.a policy of remaining apart from the political affairs of other countries.
isolationist n.