Today, though, as American preeminence wanes, so does the story that national leaders have told about America’s place in the world. Trump broke the eight-decade streak of presidents who warned the US public off isolationism. He had no use for the term, either to describe himself or to denounce others. And Joe Biden, after liberally decrying “the forces of isolationism” as vice president, has yet to utter the word as president, even as he seeks to project a new era of restoration in US global leadership.
This is a healthy development. Isolationism is not, and has never been, a real position, whereas fear of it creates problems of its own.
Only with the approach of World War II did Americans start speaking regularly of something called isolationism. The term, a new “-ism,” was pioneered by those who sought to throw America’s weight behind the British and French cause and ultimately install the United States as the supreme global power. To succeed, they had to discredit their country’s longstanding aversion to joining the alliances and wars of Europe and Asia. For most Americans, a seemingly fruitless foray into World War I had only reinforced the conventional wisdom against far-flung entanglements. This time, many believed, it would suffice to guard the Western Hemisphere from outside attack, thereby preventing any possible invasion of the US mainland.
To call this position “isolationism” was a misnomer from the start. Supposed isolationists stood accused of seeking to “confine all activities of our people within our own frontiers,” in the words of Secretary of State Cordell Hull. In fact, they favored nothing of the kind. Most supported trade, diplomacy, and other forms of interaction across borders. Even militarily, they wanted America to dominate the entire Western Hemisphere.
The coalition they cobbled together was ideologically diverse: some, like aviator and America First Committee spokesman Charles Lindbergh, were nationalists and anti-Semites; others, such as democratic socialist Norman Thomas, were internationalists and anti-imperialists; many were mainstream liberals. But they were lumped together as isolationists simply for seeking to curb US involvement in European and Asian wars. As the historian Walter McDougall notes in his classic study of US foreign policy, “Our vaunted tradition of ‘isolationism’ is no tradition at all, but a dirty word that interventionists, especially since Pearl Harbor, hurl at anyone who questions their policies.”