In many ways 'isolationalism’ seems a patently misleading concept when applied to the foreign policy of the USA. Clearly the United States was never isolationist in the manner, say, of Tokugawa Japan, deliberately cut off from economic, cultural and religious contacts with the West. Throughout its history the USA has attracted millions of immigrants into an increasingly pluralist society, participated in what became an intense, two-way transatlantic traffic in ideas and culture, and exported primary products and later capital and manufactured goods all over the world.
Some diplomatic historians have focused on this latter theme of commercial expansion, notably exponents of the so-called 'Open Door Interpretation'. This spans a variety of historians but is most closely identified with William Appleman Williams and such works as The Tragedy of American Diplomacy (1959; rev. ed., Dell, 1972). The basic argument is that the USA developed a distinctive philosophy of a world open to American values, influence and trade, and that this world view, conducive to the interests of American capitalism, has guided US foreign policy.
These ideas remain controversial, but they have left an indelible mark on historiography, and they highlight the difficulty of talking about American 'isolationism'. In fact, the term was often pejorative rather than descriptive: it was particularly applied by supporters of Democratic Presidents Wilson, Roosevelt and Truman to stigmatise as naive the opponents, frequently Republican, of their foreign policies. For all these reasons some historians would like to eliminate the concept of isolationism from their professional vocabulary. Others still employ it, however, but more specifically, to describe the policy of avoiding permanent political and military commitments to foreign powers, particularly in Europe. In this sense 'isolationism' does not preclude military intervention, especially in Latin America or even Asia. Nor is it incompatible with a policy of economic expansion: indeed the two were combined in Thomas Jefferson's classic statement of the isolationist tradition in 1801, when he advocated 'peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations; entangling alliances with none'.
During the nineteenth century American diplomacy broadly followed Jeffersonian precepts of economic expansion and political non-commitment, concentrating on the extension of US territory and influence in North America. This policy made sense for an infant nation of limited economic and military strength, which was afforded a large measure of 'free security' by wide oceans and the European equilibrium. By the end of the century, however, conditions had changed. The European powers were scrambling for empire and two hostile alliance blocs were emerging on the Continent. At the same time the USA had become the world's leading manufacturer, with a military potential greater than any rival. An enhanced American role in world affairs was inevitable, and it had long been predicted by European observers such as Tocqueville, Gladstone and Bismarck. The question was the form this involvement would take. How far could the traditional doctrines of independence and nonentanglement be preserved in an increasingly interdependent world?
For an overview of America's response to the twentieth century readers might turn to C.J. Bartlett, The Rise and Fall of the Pax Americana (Paul Elek, 1974), or to Thomas G. Paterson, J. Garry Clifford and Kenneth G. Hagan, American Foreign Policy: A History (2 vols, 2nd ed., D.C. Heath, 1983). The former is a concise British survey; the latter a popular and recently revised US college textbook. Robert Dallek, The American Style of Foreign Policy: Cultural Politics and Foreign Affairs (Knopf, 1983), a stimulating reinterpretation of the century, sees US foreign policy as often being an expression of domestic hopes and fears rather than a simple reaction to events overseas. For detailed bibliographical assistance consult the vast Guide to American Foreign Relations since 1700 , ed. Richard D. Bums (ABC-Clio, 1983).
Earlier historians argued about whether the Spanish-American war of 1898 marked the emergence of the USA as a 'world power'. But the acquisition of the Philippines and the annexation of Hawaii were only temporary aberrations from traditional American antipathy to formal colonies, and the special circumstances of that imperialist interlude are explained by Charles S. Campbell, The Transformation of American Foreign Policy, 1865-1900 (Harper and Row, 1976). Likewise, Teddy Roosevelt's vigorous foreign policy, sympathetically re-assessed by Frederick W. Marks, Velvet on Iron: The Diplomacy of Theodore Roosevelt (University of Nebraska, 1979), did not undermine the tradition of no entangling alliances. Far more important was the First World War. In April 1917 the USA intervened directly for the first time in Europe's quarrels. Her economic and military power helped ensure the hard-won Allied victory and President Wilson played a decisive role in arbitrating the peace and in creating the League of Nations. The best survey of the period is still Daniel M. Smith, The Great Departure: The United States and World War I, 1914-20 (Wiley, 1965). Wilson's own thinking is explored in Arthur Link's Woodrow Wilson: Revolution, War, and Peace (Harlan Davidson, 1979).
Challenged by the events of 1914-20, isolationism developed from a broad unexamined tradition into a clearly articulated political position. The process can be followed in Selig Adler's older book, The Isolationist Impulse: Its Twentieth Century Reaction (Abelard-Schuman, 1957) and in the perceptive study by John M. Cooper, The Vanity of Power: American Isolationism and the First World War, 1914-1917 (Greenwood, 1969). Cooper finds the main base of isolationism in 1917 was progressivism – the fear that war would endanger domestic reform – modified by the partisan allegiance of liberal Democrats to their President. The isolationist tradition was also exploited by certain ethnic groups, notably of German descent, who opposed entangling alliances with Britain and France. In 1919-20 the anti-Wilson coalition comprised rather different elements. Popular emphasis on the role of the few 'Irreconcilables' – anatomised in Ralph A. Stone, The Irreconcilables: The Fight Against the League of Nations (University of Kentucky, 1970) – can distract from the fact that a majority of the Senate and the American public would probably have approved US membership of some form of League. Opposition focused on the apparently open-ended commitments entailed by Wilson's League, and it was intensified by Republican antipathy towards the President – themes explored by Smith and William C. Widenor, Henry Cabot Lodge and the Search for an American Foreign Policy (University of California, 1980). The latter shows how Lodge and many Republicans would have accepted limited commitments to the security of France, and were not therefore isolationists in even the strict sense of the term. The issue between Wilson and Lodge was not whether but how the USA would be involved in international affairs.
The Wilson years demonstrated the growing dependence of the Old World on the New, and US foreign policy would never be the same again. Nevertheless, the First World War did not destroy isolationism. The United States never formally allied with Britain, France and Italy; Wilson himself conceived of the League as an alternative to traditional alliances; and, in any case, he failed to secure the two-thirds Senate majority required to ratify US membership. This withdrawal from permanent political commitments in Europe was confirmed by Wilson's Republican successors in the 1920s.
On the other hand, the USA did not remain aloof from world affairs, as we can see from surveys such as Arnold A. Offner, The Origins of the Second World War: American Foreign Policy and World Politics, 1917-41 (Praeger, 1975). Suspicious of Japan, she helped create the new treaty structure for the Pacific, and her ability to out-build any rivals in an arms race obliged Britain to concede naval parity. Above all, America used her economic power for diplomatic ends, as shown in recent scholarship, influenced by Williams, which emphasises how modern international relations cannot be studied simply as the activities of diplomats without reference to commerce and finance. For, although abstaining from the League and offshoots such as the World Court, Republican administrations in the 1920s encouraged bankers and businessmen to assist in the reconstruction of Europe through loans and trade. This policy is analysed in Melvyn P. Leffler, The Elusive Quest: America's Pursuit of European Security and French Stability, 1919-33 (University of North Carolina, 1979); its limitations are indicated in Charles P. Kindleberger, The World in Depression, 1929-39 (Allen Lane, 1973). America's stance in the 1920s has been aptly described by Joan Hoff Wilson as 'independent internationalism' – involved but not committed. This policy was understandable at a time when Europe was at peace and America's economic growth rested on the booming domestic market: the USA's security and wealth did not depend on events overseas.
The 1930s, rather than the 1920s, saw the apogee of American isolationism. Like imperialist feeling in late Victorian Britain, which flourished as the Empire's days were numbered, so an organised isolationist movement surfaced in the USA in response to the likelihood of involvement in total war. As unearthed by Manfred Jonas, Isolationism in America, 1935-1941 (Cornell University Press, 1965) and Justus D. Doenecke, The Literature of Isolationism: A Guide to Non-Interventionist Scholarship, 1930-1972 (Ralph Myles, 1972), the roots of this movement were varied and complex. It encompassed advocates of a 'fortress America' and those who deplored vast armaments. Though its tone was generally more conservative than in the First World War, it again included many who believed that war would jeopardise domestic reform. If it had a sectional base, this was to be found in the agrarian states of the Great Plains, and it drew once more on the anglophobia of ethnic groups, notably Germans and Irish, though this was less important than in 1914-17. But the most distinctive feature of 1930s isolationism was probably the combination of traditional ideas of nonentanglement with the deep pacifist sentiment of the time. Its main expression was the series of Neutrality Acts of 1935-39, of which the best account is still Robert A. Divine, The Illusion of Neutrality (University of Chicago, 1962), aimed in part at insulating America from foreign wars by curtailing trade with belligerent countries.
The political struggle over isolationism can be followed in Wayne S. Cole, Roosevelt and the Isolationists, 1932-45 (University of Nebraska, 1983). On FDR's diplomacy the major study is Robert Dallek, Franklin Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, 1932-45 (Oxford University Press, 1979), which emphasises the President's constant concern to build a durable foreign policy consensus and his haunting memories of Wilson's failure. Roosevelt's ambivalence about getting too involved in Europe is stressed in Robert A. Divine, Roosevelt and World War II (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1970) – still the best introduction to the whole period – and in David Reynolds, The Creation of the Anglo-American Alliance, 1937-41 (Europa, 1981). When France fell in June 1940, the European equilibrium – so long the underlying justification for isolationism – was dramatically upset, and the USA was forced into growing commitments to Britain. However, the residual strength of anti-war feeling, combined with Roosevelt's own hesitations, restrained America from taking the final step. In the end the confrontation with Japan brought America formally into world war, and the unending argument about Pearl Harbor is best dealt with in the massive study by Gordon W. Prange, At Dawn We Slept: The Untold Story of Pearl Harbor (Michael Joseph, 1982).
Unlike 1917-18, the Second World War saw global US intervention on an enormous scale and full American membership of the United Nations. A network of US bases criss-crossed the Americas and the Pacific, her leaders took a sustained interest in post-war European problems, and she became a major force in areas of the world where her influence had previously been small, such as East Asia and the Middle East. Nevertheless, the mid-1940s, like 1919-20, did see a degree of US withdrawal once victory had been won. American forces were pulled back from Europe and policy makers considered the UN and America's monopoly of atomic weapons as alternatives to conventional alliances now that the European balance had been redressed.
What finally killed isolationism was not the Second World War but the Cold War, of which overviews, from different angles, can be found in Walter LaFeber, America, Russia and the Cold War, 1945-1980 (4th ed., John Wiley, 1981) and John L. Gaddis, Strategies of Containment (Oxford University Press, 1982). Initially American assistance to Western Europe was mainly diplomatic and economic, but the Berlin crisis of 1948-49 helped draw the USA into signing the North Atlantic pact in April 1949 – the first formal American alliance since the treaty with France in 1778. It was only with the onset of the Korean war in 1950, however, that NATO became a full military organisation, with various national forces under US leadership – an evolution conveniently summarised by Alan K. Henrikson, 'The Creation of the North Atlantic Alliance, 1948-52', US Naval War College Review, 32:3 (1980).
In Asia, too, a tentative US policy, involving detachment from the doomed Chiang Kai-shek, was reversed by the Korean War, as shown in Akira Iriye, The Origins of the Cold War in Asia (Prentice-Hall, 1974) and William W. Stueck, The Road to Confrontation: American Policy toward China and Korea, 1947-1950 (University of North Carolina, 1981), and the new US commitments in East and Southeast Asia were underlined by the creation of SEATO, the looser Pacific counterpart to NATO. Sustained by mounting defence expenditure and the development of the H-Bomb, the Cold War became institutionalised, and with it an acceptance of permanent US peacetime commitments over much of the globe. For a survey see Robert A. Divine, Eisenhawer and the Cold War (Oxford University Press, 1981).
The reactions of veteran isolationists are examined in Justus D. Doenecke, Not to the Swift: The Old Isolatianists in the Cold War Era (Bucknell University Press, 1979). Subsequently there has been periodic talk of US withdrawal, notably after the Vietnam war – see for instance Robert W. Tucker, A New Isolationism: Threat or Promise? (Universe, 1972) – and calls for reducing US troop levels in Europe have recurred in Congress, but to date European fears that the USA would retreat from its overseas involvements have generally proved groundless.
On the other hand, there is no necessary reason why that involvement in Europe and elsewhere should be embodied in conventional alliances. As this brief summary has shown, American intervention abroad has taken many forms, and for much of her history the USA has felt secure enough to conduct an independent foreign policy instead of accepting the trammels of alliance politics. This is relevant to understanding current American disaffection with the United Nations and the International Monetary Fund, and her invasion of Grenada, as well as the crisis in NATO – an alliance that originated in response to mid-century circumstances very different from the configurations of world power today. It is virtually inconceivable that the USA will renounce a world role, but there is nothing inevitable about the shape her involvement will take.
- David Reynolds is a Fellow of Christ's College, Cambridge.