Isolationism

Dr. Charles A. Kupchan is Professor of International Affairs at Georgetown University and Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. From 2014-2017 Kupchan served as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for European Affairs on the National Security Council in the Obama White House. He was Director for European Affairs on the NSC during the first Clinton administration. Prior, he worked in the U.S. Department of State on the Policy Planning Staff. Kupchan has served as a visiting scholar at Harvard University's Center for International Affairs, Columbia University's Institute for War and Peace Studies, and other renowned institutions. He was a Henry A. Kissinger Scholar at the Library of Congress, a Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, a Senior Fellow at the Transatlantic Academy, and a recipient of the Hubert H. Humphrey Award for notable public service by a political scientist.

• Preface 1. American Isolationism: Past as Prelude?2. An Anatomy of Isolationism Part I - The Era of Isolationism, 1789-1898 3. The Revolutionary Era: Contemplating Nonentanglement4. From the French Revolution to the War of 1812: Isolationism as Doctrine5. Westward Expansion and the Monroe Doctrine: The Limits of Hemispheric Ambition6. The Civil War, Reconstruction, and the Rise of American Power: Restraint Amid Ascent Part II - The Defeat of Realist and Idealist Internationalism, 1898-1941 7. The Spanish-American War and the Onset of Imperial Ambition8. Republican Imperialism and the Isolationist Backlash9. Wilsonian Idealism and the Isolationist Backlash10. The 1920s: Influence without Responsibility11. From the Great Depression to Pearl Harbor: Delusions of Strategic Immunity Part III - The Rise and Fall of Liberal Internationalism, 1941-2020 12. World War II and the Cold War: The Era of Liberal Internationalism13. The End of the Cold War and the Isolationist Comeback14. Between Isolationism and Liberal Internationalism: The Search for a Middle Ground

In this excellent account, Kupchan, a former policy maker, traces the history of American foreign policy from the French and Indian War to the Trump presidency, organizing his work around the nation's isolationist tradition.