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 __BODY__.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.

ISOLATIONISM (ISSUE)

FURTHER READING