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The Conditions of Isolationism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2011

A. E. Campbell
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Extract

Recent work on American foreign policy between the two world wars has shown some dissatisfaction with the term “isolationism” as a tool for the historian. The immediate reasons for this dissatisfaction are two. First, it is remarkably difficult to identify an individual statesman firmly as an isolationist or an interventionist. Lodge, Hughes, Kellogg, Hoover, Stimson, Roosevelt, Hull – the list could be extended – all move embarrassingly from positions which can be called isolationist to others which seem to strain the term past recognition; nor are these shifts in one direction only. Second, a specific policy which can be identified as isolationist is often justified by remarkably various arguments, so that support for the policy makes some curious allies, while dividing men from others with whom they seem, in general, to have far more in common. If the term can be used neither to identify a man throughout his career, nor to identify a group of attitudes, a cast of political mind, its usefulness is certainly diminished

Type
Research Article
Information
Bulletin of the British Association for American Studies , Volume 9 , December 1964 , pp. 32 - 46
Copyright
Copyright © British Association for American Studies 1964

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References

1. The most recent expression of this dissatisfaction is D.C. Watt, “American ‘Isolationism’ in the 1920's: Is It a Useful Concept?” in the Bulletin of the British Association for American Studies, NS, no. 6, June 1963, 3–19. See also Williams, W.A., “The Legend of Isolationism in the 1920's” in Science and Society, XVIII: 1, Winter 1954, 1–20; and the work listed by Watt, loc.cit., n.5.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
2. Of the several terms which have been used as the opposite of “isolationism”, I choose “interventionism” as the most general and least confusing.Google Scholar
3. See, e.g., Watt, loc. cit., pp.7–8. This dichotomy has been most fully developed and most rigorously worked out by Osgood, R.E. in Ideals and Self-interest in America's Foreign Relations (Chicago, 1953). Professor Osgood, pp. 7–10, modifies and refines the terminology which I have given in its most crude and familiar form; but the difficulties set out below remain. It is not accidental that this terminology should have become popular at a time when the scope for choice in American policy is less than it has been in the past.Google Scholar
4. See e.g. Watt, loc. cit. p. 15.Google Scholar
5. The fact that the core of isolationism is not inactivity but the desire to retain a free hand is well established by Weinberg, A. K., “The Historical Meaning of the American Doctrine of Isolationism” in the American Political Science Review, XXXIV: 3, June 1940, 539–547. (Throughout, Weinberg uses “isolation” as most writers use “isolationism”.)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
6.The fact that realist exposition of policy struck no public chord, while idealist statements did, causes much irritation to historians. It is, in a sense, the core of their problem. See above pp. 40–41. This comment may seem ungracious in a foreigner. But see above, pp. 37, 41.Google Scholar
7. See Billington, R. A., “The Origins of Middle Western Isolationism” in the Political Science Quarterly, LX:1, March 1945, 44–64; W. G. Carleton, “Isolationism and the Middle West” in the Mississippi Valley Historical Review, XXXIII:3, December 1946, 377–390; and R.W. Leopold, “The Mississippi Valley and American Foreign Policy, 1890–1941: an Assessment and an Appeal”, M.V.H.R., XXXVII:4, March 1951, 625–642, the last a useful bibliographical survey. See also Samuel Lubell, The Future of American Politics (London, 1952), ch.7 (“The Myth of Isolationism”).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
8. Not all work on the roots of isolationism, of course, is regional in scope. The definitive study is Adler, Selig, The Isolationist Impulse. Its Twentieth-Century Reaction (London and New York, 1957).Google Scholar
9. This point is well emphasised in Carleton, loc.cit., pp. 380–385.Google Scholar
10. See, for example, the argument of Halle, L. J., Dream and Reality (New York), 1958), pp. 266–272.Google Scholar
11. During that time, it may be noted, the Middle West was a region quite as radical as the rest of the country.Google Scholar
12. The Grand Alliance (Volume III of The Second World War) (London, 1950), p. 539.Google Scholar
13. Watt loc. cit., p. 7.Google Scholar
14. Williams, loc.cit., pp. 7–13. See also the same author The Tragedy of American Diplomacy (Cleveland, 1959).Google Scholar
15. For a forceful discussion of this point see Beloff, Max, “Historians in a Revolutionary Age” in Foreign Affairs, XXIX:2, January, 1951, pp. 259–262.Google Scholar
16. Even today discussion of American foreign policy is not usually cast in strictly realist terms. For an able plea that this should be recognized and its implications accepted, see Cook, T. I. and Moos, M., “The American Idea of International Interest” in the American Political Science Review, XLVII:1, March 1953, 28–44. One of those implications is perhaps that American reserves of power are still very great.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
17. See above, p. 40.Google Scholar
18. “It is conceivable that it would be impossible to bring under cover of one logical, consistent foreign policy all the conflicting demands for action and inaction that now confuse American opinion. The same elements of conflict and indecision that prevented European democracies from taking strong policies in the face of totalitarian challenges may be operating similarly in the United States. The nation may be forced to wait, as were Great Britain and France, until confronted with a concrete situation, before opinion in this country crystallizes to the point where a strong, consistent foreign policy is possible”. Comment of the Detroit Committee of the Council on Foreign Relations, printed in Miller, F. P. (ed.) Some Regional Views on our Foreign Policy, 1940 (Council on Foreign Relations, New York, 1940), p. 82. It should be added that such recognition of the importance of a sharply defined occasion for action was far from typical of the comments in this volume.Google Scholar