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Show I flASRSSfl ISSUES FORUM Americans as Isolationists . . . Editor's Notei This 1 the ninth In a series of 18 articles exploring Issues of the American Ameri-can Issues Forum. This series has been written eipec tally for the second segment of the Bicentennial program of Corses Cor-ses by Newspaper. COURSES BY NEWSPAPi ER was developed by the University of California Extension, Exten-sion, San Diego, and funded by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. . Copyright c 1976 by the Regents of the University of California. By Walter LaFeber In 1945 much of the world lay devastated by war, but the United States emerged as a superpower. It monopolized the atomic bomb and operated the greatest industrial comp-plex comp-plex in history. LIFE magazine bragged of the coming "American "Amer-ican Century" in which Americans Amer-icans would dominate international internat-ional affairs as had the Romans and British in the past. With this awesome power, however, came awesome responsibilities. res-ponsibilities. Americans suddenly sud-denly had to deal with such problems as controlling nuclear nuc-lear energy and rebuilding Europe and Japan. Many of these military and economic dilemmas still haunt us, threatening us with instant annihilation or as in the case of the energy crisis- slow economic strangulation. But it would be wrong to conclude that the post-1945 era marks the first time Americans have confronted such foreign policy problems. The Founding Fathers had to cope with diplomatic decisions no less perplexing. They, like us, had to answer tough, ; funda- ; mental questions: How isolationist isolat-ionist can this country afford to f be? How much security must t we have? Can we get along I with the growing number of revolutionary nations? Should the President be given free I rein as he tries to maintain the American Century? In this i article and the three to follow, we shall take up these age-old problems of America's world ! role. Only Commerical Connections When tn bp "icnlatmnict" nr "internationalist" troubled the Continental Congress only hours after it declared American Ameri-can independence. The members mem-bers engaged in a prolonged argument over how to protect the new nation, and, of course, their own necks. They quickly agreed that survival required good relations with France, the great enemy of England. But the members bitterly divided on how close the young nation could move towards alliance with the French without losing control of its own destiny. "What connection may we safely form with France?" John Adams asked. He ruled . out political or military links for these might allow the stronger French to dictate policy. "Only the commercial connection" could be acceptable, accep-table, Adams concluded, since France would then provide . only needed supplies but not political advice. Paris officials soon destroyed destroy-ed Adams' hope that foreign policy consisted solely of profitable economic exchanges. exchang-es. France offered to help only if the United States formed a political and military alliance. Facing imminent bankruptcy, the Americans reluctantly signed such a pact in 1778. By 1780 Adams' worst fears had been realized. The French Minister to the United States became a powerful influence in the American government. He worked to defeat the British army, but he also connived to further French territorial ambitions in North America by undercutting American Am-erican claims to land beyond the Allegheny Mountains. Only the brilliant diplomacy of Benjamin Franklin and John Jay during peace negotiations in Europe stopped France's attempt to coop up the young nation along the Atlantic coast. It had been a iiear disaster. The wounds were so deep that in his Farewell Address of 1796 President George Washington Wash-ington warned Americans: "The great rule of conduct for us, in regard to" foreign nations, is in extending our commercial relations to have with them as little political connection as possible." By following this rule, he hinted, Americans could eventually acquire sufficient power to dictate terms to the Europe-eans. Europe-eans. His advice was followed. The United States did not sign another alliance for 150 years. Developing Our Continent Not that Americans were isolated during those years. We fought five foreign wars, sent troops into Latin American Americ-an nations more than a dozen times, and even dispatched forces to such exotic places as the Barbary Coast and Peking. But we devoted ourselves primarily to developing our own continent. Avoiding the quarrels of Europe while feeding its warring armies, we were, in Jefferson's words, "fattening upon the follies" of the Old World. During the century after 1815 this strategy worked so well that is the Europeans prepared to s slaughter each other in 1914, the United States was the world's most rapidly growing industrial power. It ranked second only to England in world trade. American missionaries and intellectuals spun a global web of religious and cultural influence. These triumphs resulted not from isolationism. Americans had simply followed follow-ed Washington's advice to keep affairs wholly in their V own hands so maximum profit could be extracted. Europeans understood what was happening. In NOSTRO-MO NOSTRO-MO (1904), British Novelist Joseph Conrad had an American Ameri-can financier proclaim, "Of course, some day we shall step in. We are bound to. But there's no hurry. Time itself had got to wait on the greatest country in the whole of God's Universe. ...We shall run the world's business whether the world likes it or not. The world can't help it and neither can we, I guess." Internationalism rejected President Woodrow Wilson willingly assumed that burden as he led the nation into World War I. He tried to create a world in which Americans could prosper, or, as he phrased it, "a world made safe for democracy." But at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, Wilson faced the same problem that had plagued the Founding Fathers. His British and French allies offered to accept his proposals for world peace only if he promised to defend their interests in Europe and such colonial areas as Africa. Many Congressmen, Congress-men, however, were in no mood to shed American blood in post-war European quarrels, quar-rels, so the Senate refused to sign the Versailles peace treaty and the League of Natins Covenant. TGhe United States did not have to submit to European demands in 1919 as the new nation had to do in 1778. Having sold billions of dollars of goods to Europe during the war, we were the world's richest people. Throughout the 1920s we entered no political alliance but maintained complete comp-lete freedom of action to use this economic leverage as we wished. Led by Herbert Hoover, the nation again followed Adams' and Washington's Wash-ington's advice to form only profitable commercial links with Europe and Asia. An American Century That policy ended disastrously disast-rously in the economic crash of 1929 and the diplomatic chaos of the 1930s. Hoover's methods meth-ods had failed. Attempting.-to defend our global interests with economic power alone nearly destroyed those interests. inter-ests. As the Nazis overran Europe in 1939-41, Americans found they could not safely withdraw from the world. Comumnist Dorothy Thompson Thomp-son stated the problem in 1941: either there would be "an American Century" after the war "or it will be the beginning of the decline and "- l fall of the American Peope 1 No democratic nation sav ourselves might have remain! ed had we not fought the second world war. t Clearly an "American Cen-tury," Cen-tury," like the empires of ! ' Rome and Great Britain required the use of politicaJ and military muscle. When the Axis surrendered in 1945 H Americans possessed that t muscle. As Washington had I prophesied, we could not IV virtually dictate our own terms r in world politics. Hence our entering into the United Nations and the joinino of military alliances did not ' seem like radical acts to most Americans. We willingly be. K longed to such organizations '' because we dominated them But we could not control the ' Soviet Union and Communist ?' China. When these two ;S nations condemned our polio. '' ies, the result was cold war and even, in Korea, a shooting ' war. i'1 In Secretary of State Dean Acheson's words, the United States tried to create"posit. ". ions of strength" in the late t 1940s to break down Russian and Chinese opposition. The policy did not always work. By the late 1960s we had spent over a trillion dollars on i defense, stationed more than 1 ij million men in thrity countries and signed mutual defense jl treaties with more than forty i nations, but we could not end l the cold war on our own tersm. is Instead our influence besan 1 ' to dwindle in Southeast Asia, -ji Latin America and Western ! Europe. Not even theawesome ;s American economy escaped. ?( Foreign oil producers drained If $24 billion out of it in 1974, $ and it sunk into the worst ii slump since the 1930s. ;, Now after two centuries i Adams' and Washington's advice is no longer useful. As the world's greatest power, the United States cannot " abstain politically from world W affairs or protect its interest tt through only "commercial connections." But neither can it any longer demand a perfect -i world environment or threaten &1 to quit its global responsibility 8 ies.' It can no longer manage f1' the world by military force 13 along. -f For the first time in our ;l!fj history we are compelled to s cooperate and compromise !0 and become tru internation-alists. internation-alists. But 200-year-old habits are not easily broken, and the challenge we face will make us feel less secure. As we shall ! see, however, insecurity is hardly new in the American ' experience. ', , '" |