So Far, So Fast

America made its first great leap into the international arena when it launched an expeditionary force in 1917 to come to the aid of Britain, France, and Italy, in their first world war with the combined German and Austrian empires.

After the war the League of Nations was formed, but Germany descended into hyper-inflation, and America entered into the Great Depression. America withdrew from the rest of the world into Isolationism, as it was known. When Germany entered Poland, thus starting the second world war, American opinion was opposed to intervention, and Britain had to struggle alone for two years, although America was generous in supplying her material needs. America only came into the war when it was attacked by Japan,whereupon Germany declared war.

After the war America adopted a new, enlightened policy of economic aid for Western Europe, called the Marshall Plan, and cooperated in the creation and development of NATO, as a shield against aggressive Communist expansion. It was not, however, an imperial effort, and when Britain and Israel invaded Egypt in 1956, to gain control of the Suez Canal, President Eisenhower forced them to withdraw.

Since then there has been a clouding of the principles which have governed American foreign policy, at least to me there has. Vietnam was, supposedly, a war against Communism, based on the 'Domino Theory', that if you did not fight Coommunism, wherever it raised its head, then it would overwhelm you. The problem, in my mind,is that Vietnam was a French colony. Were the insurgents really Communists, or were they freedom fighters? In any event,it seems to me that this blurring of the motivations for international interventions has increased, to the extent that America has recently displayed much of the attitude and activity which we have traditionally described as Imperialism.