US Foreign Policy

Isolationism

- For the first 200 years of United States history, the national policy was isolationism and non-interventionism

○ George Washington's farewell address is often cited as laying the foundation for tradition of American non-interventionism

No Entangling Alliances in the 19th Century

- President Thomas Jefferson extended Washington's ideas in his 4 March 1801 inaugural address

○ "peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none."

- Non-interventionism continued throughout the 19th century

- The United States' policy of non-intervention was maintained throughout most of the 19th century

○ The first significant foreign intervention by the United States was the Spanish-American War, which saw the US occupy and control the Philippines

20th Century Non-Intervention

- Theodore Roosevelt's administration is credited with inciting the Panamanian Revolt against Columbia in order to secure construction rights for the Panama Canal, begun in 1904

○ President Woodrow Wilson, was compelled to declare war on Germany and so involve the nation in WW1 when the Zimmerman Telegram was discovered

○ Yet non-interventionist sentiment remained; the US Congress refused to endorse the Treaty of Versailles or the League of Nations

Non-Interventionism Between the World Wars

- In the wake of WW1, the non-interventionist tendencies of US foreign policy were in full force

○ The US congress rejected president Wilson's most cherished condition of the Treaty of Versailles, the League of Nations

○ Many Americans felt that they did not need the rest of the world, that they were fine making decisions concerning peace on their own

○ Even though "anti-League was the policy of the nation, private citizens and lower diplomats either supported or observed the League of Nations

- Although the US was unwilling to commit to the League of Nations, they were willing to engage in foreign affairs on their own terms

○ August 1928, 15 nations signed the Kellogg-Briand Pact

○ Pact that was said to have outlawed war and showed the US's commitment to international peace had its semantic flaws

- Non-interventionism took a new turn after the Crash of 1929

○ The US began to focus on fixing its economy within borders and ignored the outside world

○ As the world's democratic powers were busy fixing their economies in their own borders, the fascist powers of Europe and Asia moved their armies into a position to start WW2

○ With military victory came the spoils of war - a very draconian pummelling of Germany into submission via the Treaty of Versailles

WW1 and the League of Nations

- The League of Nations was an intergovernmental organization founded as a result of the Paris Peace Talks that ended WW1

- The diplomatic philosophy behind the League represented a fundamental shift from the preceding hundred years

○ Lacked its own armed force and depended on the Great powers to enforce its resolutions, keep to its economic sanctions or provide an army when needed

○ Great powers were often reluctant to do so

○ Sanctions could hurt League members, so they were reluctant to comply with them

- After a number of notable successes and some early failures in the 1920s, the League ultimately proved incapable of preventing aggression by the Axis Powers

○ In 1930s Germany, Japan, Italy, Spain and others withdrew from the League

○ The onset of WW2 showed that the League had failed its primary purpose

○ The United Nations replaced it after the end of WW2 and inherited a number of agencies and organisations founded by the League.

World War 2

- As Europe moved closer and closer to war in the late 1930s, the United States Congress was doing everything it could to prevent it

○ Neutrality Act

- The war in Europe split the American people into two distinct groups: non-interventionists and interventionists

○ Basic principal of interventionist argument was fear of German invasion

- Ultimately, the rift between the ideals of the United States and the goals of fascist powers is what was at the core of the interventionist argument

○ "how could we sit back as spectators of a war against ourselves?" - Archibald MacLeish

- There were still so many who held on to non-interventionism

○ Rooted a significant portion of their arguments in historical precedent

○ In 1941 the actions of the Roosevelt administration made it clearer and clearer that the US was on its way to war

- On 7 December 1941, the Japanese attacked the America fleet at Pearl Harbour, Hawaii

○ Intended as a preventative action in order to keep the US Pacific Fleet from interfering with military actions the Empire of Japan was planning in Southeast Asia against overseas territories of the UK, the Netherlands and the US

○ Following day, the US declared war on Japan

○ Domestic support for non-interventionism disappeared

○ Clandestine support of Britain was replaced by active alliance

- During the final stages of WW2 in 1945, the US conducted atomic bombings of the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan

○ These two events represent the only use of nuclear weapons in war TO DATE

Policies of Interventionism

- After WW2, the US took a policy of interventionism in order to contain communist influence abroad

The Cold War and Containment

- Containment was a US policy using numerous strategies to prevent the spread of communism abroad

○ Response to a series of moves by the Soviet Union to enlarge its communist sphere of influence in Eastern Europe, China, Korea, and Vietnam

○ It represented a middle-ground position between détente and rollback

- The basis of the doctrine was articulated in a 1946 cable by United States diplomat, George F. Kennan

- Containment is associated most strongly with the policies of United States President Harry Truman (1945-1953), including the establishment of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), a mutual defence pact

- President Jimmy Carter (1976-1981) emphasized human rights rather than anti-communism, but dropped détente and returned to containment when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan in 1979

○ Central programs begun under containment, including NATO and nuclear deterrence, remained in effect even after the end of the war