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Foreign Aggression & US Foreign Policy

The purpose of this essay is to consider the question of whether the United States should maintain its vigilance against foreign aggression. Examples from the distant and recent past will be considered, both of situations in which the U.S. was overly isolationist and out of touch with world events, and situations in which the U.S. was too impulsive in its intervention in foreign affairs.

Despite media rhetoric, foreign policy has never been separated very far from domestic policy in U.S. administrations. There are always multiple ways in which they are intertwined, so that decisions in one arena will have serious ramifications in the other. It is certainly not essentially a question of there being only so much pie to divide, as would have been thought a century ago, because some kinds of spending stimulate the economy more than other kinds do. Instead, the basic question now is: what sort of foreign policy will have the greatest long-term benefits for the United States and its people?

This question could hardly have been asked before World War I. Despite its generally ill-advised adventures in the Pacific and in Latin America, which saddled it with responsibilities for various small countries, the U.S. simply did not yet conceive of itself as a great world power. There were a few thinkers who foresaw that it was becoming one, but they did not have the ear of the decisionmakers. Only after the Armistice forced upon Germany by America's belated entrance into the war did it become obvious that the United States was the only industrialized nation not badly damaged by the war, and so could be considered one of the strongest nations on Earth.

Unfortunately, Americans did not yet understand that they had to take a pro-active role in world affairs to ensure their own survival. Despite all of Woodrow Wilson's work on the League of Nations, the U.S. declined to join it; without America's power, it was ineffectual. America also ...

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Foreign Aggression & US Foreign Policy. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 09:15, March 29, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1712216.html