Research Catalog

Title

Isolationism : a history of America's efforts to shield itself from the world / Charles A. Kupchan.

Author

Kupchan, Charles

Publication

• New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2020]
• ©2020

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

xvii, 446 pages; 25 cm

Summary

"The United States is in the midst of a bruising debate about its role in the world. Not since the interwar era have Americans been so divided over the scope and nature of their engagement abroad. President Donald Trump's America First approach to foreign policy certainly amplified the controversy. His isolationist, unilateralist, protectionist, and anti-immigrant proclivities marked a sharp break with the brand of internationalism that the country had embraced since World War II. But Trump's election was a symptom as much as a cause of the nation's rethink of its approach to the world. Decades of war in the Middle East with little to show for it, rising inequality and the hollowing out of the nation's manufacturing sector, political paralysis over how to fix a dysfunctional immigration policy--these and other trends have been causing Americans to ask legitimate questions about whether U.S. grand strategy has been working to their benefit. Adding to the urgent and passionate nature of this conversation is China's rise and the threat it poses to the liberal international order that took shape during the era of the West's material and ideological dominance. Isolationism speaks directly to this unfolding debate over the future of the nation's engagement with the world. It does so primarily by looking back, by probing America's isolationist past. Although most Americans know little about it, the United States in fact has an impressive isolationist pedigree. In his Farewell Address of 1796, President George Washington set the young nation on a clear course: "It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world." The isolationist impulse embraced by Washington and the other Founders guided the nation for much of its history prior to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941"--

Alternative Title

History of America's efforts to shield itself from the world

Subject

• Isolationism > United States > History
• Diplomatic relations
• Isolationism
• United States > Foreign relations > History
• United States

Genre/Form

History.

Note

• "A Council on Foreign Relations Book."

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (pages 373-427) and index.

Contents

1. American Isolationism: Past as Prelude? -- 2. An Anatomy of Isolationism -- pt. I THE ERA OF ISOLATIONISM, 1789-1898 -- 3. The Revolutionary Era: Contemplating Nonentanglement -- 4. From the French Revolution to the War of 1812: Isolationism as Doctrine -- 5. Westward Expansion and the Monroe Doctrine: The Limits of Hemispheric Ambition -- 6. The Civil War, Reconstruction, and the Rise of American Power: Restraint Amid Ascent -- pt. II THE DEFEAT OF REALIST AND IDEALIST INTERNATIONALISM, 1898-1941 -- 7. The Spanish-American War and the Onset of Imperial Ambition -- 8. Republican imperialism and the Isolationist Backlash -- 9. Wilsonian Idealism and the Isolationist Backlash -- 10. The 1920s: Influence without Responsibility -- 11. From the Great Depression to Pearl Harbor: Delusions of Strategic Immunity -- pt. III THE RISE AND FALL OF LIBERAL INTERNATIONALISM, 1941-2020 -- 12. World War II and the Cold War: The Era of Liberal Internationalism -- 13. The End of the Cold War, Overreach, and the Isolationist Comeback -- 14. Where Isolationism and Liberal Internationalism Meet: The Search for a Middle Ground.

Call Number

JFE 21-6554

ISBN

• 9780199393022
• 0199393028

LCCN

2020019840

OCLC

1143631739

Author

Kupchan, Charles, author.

Title

Isolationism : a history of America's efforts to shield itself from the world / Charles A. Kupchan.

Publisher

New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2020]

Copyright Date

©2020

Type of Content

text

Type of Medium

unmediated

Type of Carrier

volume

Bibliography

Includes bibliographical references (pages 373-427) and index.

Other Form:

Online version: Kupchan, Charles. Isolationism. New York : Oxford University Press, [2020] 9780199393251 (OCoLC)2020019841

Research Call Number

JFE 21-6554