Overview

In his Farewell Address of 1796, President George Washington admonished the young nation to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world. Isolationism thereafter became one of the most influential political trends in American history. From the founding era until the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States shunned strategic commitments abroad, making only brief detours during the Spanish-American War and World War I. Amid World War II and the Cold War, Americans abandoned isolationism; they tried to run the world rather than run away from it. But isolationism is making a comeback as Americans tire of foreign entanglement. In this definitive and magisterial analysis, Charles Kupchan explores the enduring connection between the isolationist impulse and the American experience. Strategic detachment from the outside world was to protect the nation's unique experiment in liberty, which America would then share with others through the power of example. Since 1941, the United States has taken a much more interventionist approach to changing the world. But it has overreached, prompting Americans to rediscover the allure of nonentanglement and an America First foreign policy. The United States is hardly destined to return to isolationism, yet a strategic pullback is inevitable.

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Charles A. Kupchan is professor of international affairs in the School of Foreign Service and Government Department at Georgetown University, and senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. From 2014 to 2017, Kupchan served in the Obama administration as special assistant to the president on the National Security Council. He also served on the National Security Council during the Clinton administration. He is the author of The End of the American Era, How Enemies Become Friends, and No One's World. Adam Barr, a recovering lawyer, former golf industry executive, former singing telegram messenger, and former print and television reporter, now bends the energy of all those formers toward his passion for acting and singing. He enjoys reading, rowing, baseball, music, cooking, wine, and cooking with wine while music is playing. He lives near New York City with his family.

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