2 - The Established Issues
International Relations
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
Summary
By happenstance, what would become the American National Election Study arrived at a crucial turning point in American foreign policy. For more than a hundred and fifty years beforehand, international relations for the United States had featured disengagement from what were viewed as “entangling alliances.” In its early years, the country followed this path of conscious nonalignment – isolationism – out of practical necessity. A weak new nation in a world of strong established powers appeared to be best served by staying out of their intermittent but eternal conflicts. Yet, as the new nation grew, its sense of being apart, and its attachment to this strategy of disengagement, only grew as well.
Throughout the nineteenth century, the United States was happy to focus on the Western hemisphere and stay out of the balance-of-power politics of the rest of the developed world, in a seemingly distant Europe. This grand strategy received a short, sharp exception with World War I, suggesting the possibility of change: initial resistance to foreign engagement, followed by delayed but forceful entry, followed by an inescapable leadership role. Yet, in the aftermath of war, the United States again largely withdrew from international politics, refusing most dramatically to join the new League of Nations. And all the while, the country prospered. By the time of the Second World War, accordingly, the United States remained that most unusual of nations, an isolationist Great Power.
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- The American Public MindThe Issues Structure of Mass Politics in the Postwar United States, pp. 41 - 73Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010