June 2014 3-05: Explain why American foreign policy was isolationist before 1939. [12 marks]

?

Explain why American foreign policy was isolationist before 1939. [12 marks]

Causes

  • The Democratic Party was defeated in the post-war Presidential election of 1920.
  • Import tariffs were introduced.
  • The USA responded to the Ottawa Conference (1929).
  • Roosevelt had campaigned in the 1936 Presidential election, partly, on a platform of non-intervention in foreign wars.
  • The long-term basis of US foreign policy had been the Monroe Doctrine.
  • The focus of US foreign policy had traditionally been Central and South America.
  • Many Americans were wary of European entanglements during the 1930s as Nazism grew in strength.

Effects

  • The Republican Party and its immediate post-war Presidents, Harding and Coolidge, focused its policy priorities on economic issues rather than foreign policy.
  • This inevitably led to an isolationist position being adopted. This was largely a response to the widespread rejection amongst Americans of the USA’s involvement in the First World War.
  • The outcome of which led to the principle of imperial preference, by reinforcing its own economic isolationism. This also served to reinforce the foreign isolationism that had developed in the USA.
  • This was a popular political focus and a vote winner. This was based on a series of Neutrality Acts during 1935 and 1936.
  • This had traditionally served to narrow US perspectives on foreign policy and foreign involvements beyond America’s immediate geographic interests.
  • Although this was not pure isolationism it was clear that the range of US involvement in foreign interventions was clearly defined and limited.
  • Roosevelt could not ignore this uncertainty.  Even when the war started in Europe in 1939, the USA remained neutral.

Overall summary

Link economic and political factors. Suggest that throughout the 1920s and 1930s there were powerful economic constraints and these also had a political impact on decision making.

Comments

No comments have yet been made

Similar History resources:

See all History resources »See all America - 19th and 20th century resources »