Serious financial turmoil forced the U.S. ruling elite to look for ways to reduce the expenditure side of the budget, thus, it was necessary to limit the arms race. Since the Washington Conference provided the example of a partial agreement to limit the naval arms race, Hoover tried to use this experience to broaden the scope of naval arms limitation. However, not all countries were ready to support even partial disarmament. Nevertheless, this issue has long been a key one for the U.S. because it directly affects the country’s security. The isolationist strategy allowed the U.S. government to maintain a free-hand policy in international affairs while pursuing territorial expansion and U.S. domination. When Roosevelt came to power, it was expected that extraordinary measures would be taken since a complete collapse of the U.S. economy could not be allowed. The country sought to overcome internal crises, and its foreign policy actions were rather forced. Thus, from the 1930s to the 1950s, three aspects of U.S. foreign policy were isolationism, domestic security, and responding to the actions of other countries.
Although Roosevelt saw isolationism as an outmoded foreign policy ideology, he was in no hurry to make any drastic steps to restructure U.S. foreign policy strategy. The New Deal reforms, crucial for the country, provoked mixed societal reactions and essentially split the political elite (Henry, 2018, 2). Accordingly, it was extremely risky to put on the agenda the question of a radical revision of the basic parameters of the country’s foreign policy. In addition, the international situation was unstable, and therefore it was not easy to develop a long-term line of behavior in the international arena. Accordingly, the country needed to resolve internal contradictions without allowing domestic security to be threatened.
The establishment of diplomatic relations with the USSR during Roosevelt’s presidency was an important event in the history of the two states and the entire history of the world. However, Roosevelt’s actions in other areas of foreign policy were less productive. When he came to power, there was a real trade war between the U.S. and Europe. Under the influence of the crisis, many countries decided to increase the customs tariffs and cancel the gold standard of their currencies (Zelmanovitz, Newland and Rosiello, 2020, 1). Consequently, inflation rose sharply, and the competition for markets intensified. The stabilization of international economic relations as a whole was of paramount importance.
The U.S. entry into World War II immediately presented Washington with a set of new foreign policy problems. Chief among these were the search for allies, diplomatic opposition to the Axis powers, and the strengthening of the U.S. powers in the Western Hemisphere. Henceforth, the whole military and foreign policy strategy were subordinated to one goal: to win the war with minimum human losses and other costs to the USA itself. With no threat of enemy invasion, a substantial economic base with plenty of production capacity, and time for a gradual build-up of forces, America could afford a very forgiving model of mobilization. The administration’s plans, the foundations of which were already in place before Pearl Harbor, focused on aiding the belligerent allies and building military and economic capacity beyond the production capabilities of the Axis countries.
U.S. participation in World War II was inevitable; the country avoided participation, but opinion changed during the spring of 1940. The U.S. began to strengthen the army, especially the navy, increased arms supplies, and allocated significant funds to Great Britain. The U.S. came out of the war as the leading power economically, militarily, and politically. The defeat of its main rivals permanently eliminated possible threats to its domestic security. At the same time, the military-political circles of the country did not escape the feeling of U.S. insecurity in the face of the new realities of the postwar world. The destruction of Europe and much of Asia, economic collapse and political chaos, and the strengthening of leftist forces and national liberation movements around America created a favorable environment for the spread of communist ideas and Soviet influence. Once again, external circumstances caused the country’s need to act; that is, the U.S. reacted in response to specific events more often than it became an actor itself.
Overall, however, the U.S. found itself in a position of a superpower, which subsequently allowed the country to engage in the Cold War with the Soviet Union. It also led to a series of conflicts in Asia, including the wars in Korea and Vietnam. In 1962, the deployment of Soviet missiles in Cuba triggered the Cuban Missile Crisis, when the USSR and the United States came close to starting a nuclear war (Karlsson and Acosta 2019, 12). The beginning of the period was marked by persecution of Communists and those suspected of collaborating with them.
Isolationism’s influence on contemporary U.S. politics is evidenced by Washington’s withdrawal from the Asia-Pacific region and Europe and troops from Afghanistan and Iraq. Moreover, it should be noted that the way Roosevelt managed to establish contact with the Soviet Union largely determined the further course of the history of Russian-American relations. Besides, the confrontation between the two political and economic superpowers, the USSR and the United States, commonly referred to as the Cold War, continues to be seen in the modern era of U.S.-Russian relations. Thus, isolationism, the Cold War, and Roosevelt’s establishment of the U.S.-Soviet diplomatic nexus are phenomena that influence contemporary politics.
References
Henry, John F. 2018. Reflections on the New Deal: The Vested Interests, Limits to Reform, and the Meaning of Liberal Democracy. Levy Economics Institute of Bard College
Karlsson, Håkan, and Tomás Acosta. 2019. The Missile Crisis from a Cuban Perspective: Historical, Archaeological and Anthropological Reflections. Routledge.
Zelmanovitz, Leonidas, Newland, Carlos, and Juan Carlos Rosiello. 2020. The Great Depression as a Global Currency Crisis: An Argentine Perspective. Springer.