What is Isolationism?
Isolationism is a stance in foreign policy rather than a full political ideology. Its supporters argue that a nation should avoid permanent alliances, stay out of other countries' conflicts and limit binding international commitments. Some isolationists also want to restrict trade, immigration or cultural contact, while others want only to avoid military and political entanglements. The term is most closely linked to the United States between the two world wars, but it has also been used for other countries that cut themselves off from the outside world. Many supporters prefer the term non-interventionism, because they see isolationist as a label used by opponents.
Core beliefs
- A nation should avoid permanent alliances with foreign powers.
- Wars abroad cost lives and money and rarely serve the national interest.
- Domestic problems should take priority over foreign commitments.
- International organizations and treaties can limit national sovereignty.
- Geography or neutrality can keep a country safe without foreign entanglements.
- Many isolationists add that domestic industry and culture should be protected from outside competition.
History
In his Farewell Address of 1796, George Washington warned the United States against permanent alliances, and Thomas Jefferson spoke in 1801 of entangling alliances with none. The Monroe Doctrine of 1823 asked European powers to stay out of the Americas while the United States stayed out of European affairs. After the First World War, the US Senate rejected the Treaty of Versailles and membership in the League of Nations. In the 1930s, Senator Gerald Nye led an inquiry into the role of arms makers and bankers in American entry into the earlier war, and Congress passed a series of Neutrality Acts from 1935. The America First Committee, founded in 1940, campaigned against entering the Second World War, and its best-known speaker, Charles Lindbergh, was widely condemned for an antisemitic speech in 1941. After the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, the movement collapsed. Outside the United States, Japan under the Tokugawa shogunate tightly restricted foreign contact from the 1630s until the 1850s.
Variants
Political isolationism opposes alliances and wars but accepts trade and cultural exchange. Economic isolationism, or autarky, seeks national self-sufficiency and tight limits on trade. Some states have pursued near-total isolation, such as Tokugawa Japan or Albania under Enver Hoxha. Neutrality, as practiced by Switzerland, is related but different, because neutral states usually take part in international trade and diplomacy. Today, some scholars and politicians use the term restraint for a foreign policy that reduces commitments without full isolation.
Criticisms
Critics argue that isolationism allowed aggressive powers to expand in the 1930s and left democracies unprepared for war. Liberal internationalists argue that in an interdependent world, problems such as trade, pandemics and security threats cannot be solved by one country alone. Economists warn that economic isolation reduces growth and raises prices. Some historians also argue that the United States was never truly isolationist, since it traded widely and intervened often in Latin America and Asia.
In practice
American isolationism shaped the refusal to join the League of Nations, the Neutrality Acts and high tariffs such as the Smoot-Hawley Tariff of 1930. After 1945, the United States joined the United Nations and NATO, and isolationism lost much of its influence, though Senator Robert Taft and others questioned new commitments. Non-interventionist arguments continue to appear in debates over foreign wars, foreign aid and alliances on both the right and the left.