FD Roosevelt Administration

In his popular history of U.S. foreign policy, David Fromkin treats American isolationism between the two world wars as the norm, despite evidence to the contrary.

George Kennan’s "X" article, published in these pages more than 45 years ago, outlined for the United States a "doctrine of perpetual struggle" against communist ideology. The "containment" strategy optimistically assigned the American people the task of redeeming their Soviet rival. As long as the Kremlin remained wedded to its ideology, negotiation was futile. The struggle could only end with the collapse and conversion of the Soviet system. Critics assailed the policy as too global, reactive and moralistic for a nation possessed of no authority to undertake a crusade. Containment nonetheless guided American policy, and Kennan came closest, and earliest, in his prediction of the fate that would befall Soviet power.

The two world wars are the mountain ranges that dominate the historical landscape of the twentieth century. We still live in their shadows, in America as well as in Europe. Only with these wars did European and American history begin to coincide. The revolutions of 1820, 1830, 1848 and the wars leading to the unification of Italy and Germany marked the nineteenth century in European history, while the major events in American history were the westward movement, the Civil War and mass immigration. These events had certain transatlantic connections, yet not decisive ones. But in the twentieth century the two world wars have been the main events in the history of Europe and America as well.