Isolationism

Isolationism, national policy of avoiding political or economic entanglements with other countries. (Read James Baker’s Britannica essay on isolationism.) Isolationism has been a recurrent theme in U.S. history. It was given expression in the Farewell Address of Pres. George Washington and in the early 19th-century Monroe Doctrine. The term is most often applied to the political atmosphere in the U.S. in the 1930s. The failure of Pres. Woodrow Wilson’s internationalism, liberal opposition to war as...