Isolationism: A History of America's Efforts to Shield Itself from the World
by Charles A. Kupchan  (Author)

About the Author
Charles A. Kupchan is Professor of International Affairs in the School of Foreign Service and Government Department at Georgetown University, and Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. From 2014 to 2017, Kupchan served in the Obama administration as Special Assistant to the President on the National Security Council. He also served on the National Security Council during the Clinton administration. He is the author of The End of the American Era (Knopf), How Enemies Become Friends (Princeton), and No One's World (Oxford).

About this Book
The first book to tell the full story of American isolationism, from the founding era through the Trump presidency.

In his Farewell Address of 1796, President George Washington admonished the young nation "to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world." Isolationism thereafter became one of the most influential political trends in American history. From the founding era until the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States shunned strategic commitments abroad, making only brief detours during the Spanish-American War and World War I. Amid World War II and the Cold War, Americans abandoned isolationism; they tried to run the world rather than run away from it. But isolationism is making a comeback as Americans tire of foreign entanglement. In this definitive and magisterial analysis-the first book to tell the fascinating story of isolationism across the arc of American history-Charles Kupchan explores the enduring connection between the isolationist impulse and the American experience. He also refurbishes isolationism's reputation, arguing that it constituted dangerous delusion during the 1930s, but afforded the nation clear strategic advantages during its ascent.

Kupchan traces isolationism's staying power to the ideology of American exceptionalism. Strategic detachment from the outside world was to protect the nation's unique experiment in liberty, which America would then share with others through the power of example. Since 1941, the United States has taken a much more interventionist approach to changing the world. But it has overreached, prompting Americans to rediscover the allure of nonentanglement and an America First foreign policy. The United States is hardly destined to return to isolationism, yet a strategic pullback is inevitable. Americans now need to find the middle ground between doing too much and doing too little.

Brief Contents
1.American Isolationism: Past as Prelude?
2.An Anatomy of Isolationism
PART I THE ERA OF ISOLATIONISM, 1789–1898
3.The Revolutionary Era: Contemplating Nonentanglement
4.From the French Revolution to the War of 1812: Isolationism as Doctrine
5.Westward Expansion and the Monroe Doctrine: The Limits of Hemispheric Ambition
6.The Civil War, Reconstruction, and the Rise of American Power: Restraint Amid Ascent
PART II THE DEFEAT OF REALIST AND IDE_ALIST INTERNATIONALISM, 1898–1941
7.The Spanish-American War and the Onset of Imperial Ambition
8.Republican Imperialism and the Isolationist Backlash
9.Wilsonian Ide_alism and the Isolationist Backlash
10.The 1920s: Influence without Responsibility
11.From the Great Depression to Pearl Harbor: Delusions of Strategic Immunity
PART III THE RISE AND FALL OF LIBERAL INTERNATIONALISM, 1941–2020
12.World War II and the Cold War: The Era of Liberal Internationalism
13.The End of the Cold War, Overreach, and the Isolationist Comeback
14.Where Isolationism and Liberal Internationalism Meet: The Search for a Middle Ground
Notes
Index

Pages : 464
ISBN-10 : 0199393028
ISBN-13 : 978-0199393022
Publisher : Oxford University Press (October 1, 2020)
Language : English