ISOLATIONISM

Isolationism is the pejorative twentieth-century term used for America's traditional noninvolvement in European wars and avoidance of "entangling alliances." It assumed the United States' interests and values were different from and superior to those of Europe and held that America could lead the world toward freedom and democracy more effectively through example than through military action. Isolationists, however, never favored cutting off the United States from the rest of the world, nor did they rule out the possibilities of American expansion—territorial, commercial, financial, ideological, or military—particularly in the Western Hemisphere, the Pacific, and East Asia.

The roots of isolationism extended back to the colonial period. Settlers came to escape religious persecution, economic hardship, wars, or personal problems in Europe. From the beginning there was the assumption (or the hope) that the New World would be better than the Old. The long and dangerous journey magnified the geographic (and moral) separateness of America. Despite the alliance with France during the American Revolution, the attitudes undergirding isolationism were well established long before independence.

When George Washington in his Farewell Address asserted that Europe had "a set of primary interests which to us have none or a very remote relation" and advised America "to steer clear of permanent alliances," he was advancing views that were already old and widely accepted. The United States ended its alliance with France in time for its third president, Thomas Jefferson, to warn against "entangling alliances."

During the nineteenth century the United States expanded across North America and began to build an overseas empire in the Caribbean and the Pacific without departing from those traditional policies. It waged the War of 1812, the Mexican War, and the Spanish-American War without intervening in Europe or entering alliances. Nonetheless, forces were building at home and abroad that would undermine and then destroy those policies in the twentieth century. Fundamental were socioeconomic and political changes within the United States, along with power and security changes abroad.

If experiences had alienated Americans from Europe, other experiences and the Western heritage provided bonds with the Continent. Improved transportation and communication facili ties—steamships, cable, radio—linked the two. The growth of foreign trade and shipping gradually built bases for America's world role. Within the United States the triumph of urban industry and finance and the decline of rural and small-town America were fundamental to the demise of isolationism. Traditional policies began to encounter more critical judgments in leadership circles.

Externally the growing German challenges to British power led some to see the British fleet as "free security" for the United States. German challenges to Anglo-French dominance in two world wars were turned back, but they led American leaders increasingly to recognize the significance of European power relationships to American security. The country's participation in World War I against the Central Powers was the first major break with traditional policies. Nonetheless, isolationism was by no means dead. Some, particularly Western agrarian progressives such as William Jennings Bryan of Nebraska, Robert M. La Follette of Wisconsin, and George W. Norris of Nebraska, spoke earnestly against involvement. It was significant that the immediate precipitant for the American declaration of war was unrestricted German submarine warfare and the resulting loss of ships and lives on the high seas, not developments on the European continent. The United States fought in World War I as an associate power, not as an ally. Despite President Woodrow Wilson's leadership the Senate rejected the Versailles treaty ending that war, and the United States never became a member of the League of Nations.

In the 1920s and 1930s the term isolationism came into widespread denigrating use, but the majority continued to oppose involvement in European wars and alliances. The Senate Investigation of the Munitions Industries in 1934-1936 and adoption of the Neutrality Acts of 1935, 1936, and 1937 marked a high point in the political defense of those policies. Isolationism was strongest in rural and small-town America in the Midwest and Great Plains and among Republicans more than among Democrats. It won a substantial following among Irish-Americans and German-Americans. Among its most prominent spokesmen were Western agrarian progressives such as William E. Borah of Idaho, Hiram Johnson of California, Burton K. Wheeler of Montana, Gerald P. Nye of North Dakota, Henrik Shipstead of Minnesota, and Robert M. La Follette, Jr., of Wisconsin. They denounced eastern urban business, financial, ideological, and political elites for involvement in European affairs.

The year 1940 marked a turning point for isolationists. German military triumphs in Europe and the Battle of Britain forced widespread American reconsideration of its relation to the war. Many worried that if Germany and Italy triumphed in Europe and Africa, and Japan triumphed in East Asia, the Western Hemisphere could be the next target. Even if America withstood assaults, its democracy, freedom, and economy could be traumatized in the "fortress America" it might have to maintain to guard its security. Given that frightening worst-case scenario, the majority, by the autumn of 1940, believed it important to ensure the defeat of the Axis even at the risk of war.

But in 1940-1941 many still supported the noninterventionist America First Committee. Isolationists failed to block proposals by the Roosevelt administration to aid victims of Axis aggression with methods short of war. Nonetheless, 80 percent of Americans opposed any declaration of war against the Axis states. Not until after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and Germany and Italy declared war on the United States on December 11 did America turn to full-scale war against the Axis.

Isolationist perspectives did not completely disappear, but never again did they dominate American attitudes and policies. During World War II the Roosevelt administration and leadership elites led Americans to support the creation of a United Nations Organization, and after the war the challenges posed by the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin argued against the resumption of isolationism.

Within the United States the growth of urban industry and finance, expanded educational and informational facilities, and leadership by internationalists overwhelmed remnants of isolationism. Some still wished to return to America's traditional policies of nonintervention. But the world environment, military technology, and conditions within the United States had changed too drastically. In practical terms, traditional American isolationism was dead.

Wayne S. Cole, Roosevelt and the Isolationists, 1932-1945 (1983); John Milton Cooper, Jr., The Vanity of Power: American Isolationism and the First World War, 1914-1917 (1969); Ralph Stone, The Irreconcilables: The Fight against the League of Nations (1970).

Wayne S. Cole

See also America First Committee; Borah, William E.; Bryan, William Jennings; La Follette, Robert M.; Neutrality Acts; Versailles Treaty and League of Nations.