Isolationism: A History of America's Efforts to Shield Itself from the World
Charles A. Kupchan
Mar 2021 · Tantor Media Inc · Narrated by Adam Barr
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20 hr 4 min
Unabridged
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About this audiobook
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.
About the author
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 2014-2017, he served in the Obama administration as special assistant to the president on the National Security Council.
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 lives near New York City with his family.
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