Interventionist or Isolationist? I believe that there is no clear-cut position as to whether we should be Interventionist or Isolationist. It all comes down to circumstances. Almost every conflict the United States had been involved in has been about economics and what our country can gain. We have been one of the world’s greatest powers since the early 1900’s, mainly because of colonialization and domination of world economy. In World War I, we should have maintained our isolationist policy if possible. The main reason we became involved was because the new expansionist mood of the Axis Powers threatened the global empire we were apparently building. And, the war interfered with our prosperous trade system with the other countries. As Henry Ford put it, “Do you want to know the cause of the war? It is capitalism, greed, the dirty hunger for dollars.” And, in the end, I don’s think we could have stayed out of the war if we wanted to. The world at the time was a tangled web of alliances that meant a local conflict could start a massive war. The assassination of Archduke Ferdinand and his wife was the spark that ignited that web. Even after the start of World War I, the United States was content to sell food and munitions to the countries involved in the conflict. It wasn’t until Germany began to attack the ships taking those trade items to Europe that the U.S. started to get mad. They had been trying to pursue a policy of neutrality and semi-isolationism, but now they were being dragged into a conflict they had nothing to do with. The United States had nothing to gain but the money from trade. Therefore, we payed a price of many lives for little to no gain.I have a different view, however, on World War II. Once the war had started, it should have been interventionist all the way, from an economic and a patriotic point of view. The desire to avoid "foreign entanglements" of all kinds...
