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This page features numerous comments that refer to the United States in the first person plural (we, our, etc.). 99.236.161.126 ( talk) 05:52, 11 April 2010 (UTC) reply

A major rework, Wikification of text and an expansion of this article, which needed it. I added historical context, while addressing the NPOV issue(s) in the article (though I left all views represented, as is fair.) For some reason, the "history" function of the page is wrongly showing that I cut some material that I actually did not, so please check it before reverting in a huff. Nhprman 02:51, 13 January 2006 (UTC) reply

Added "Neutral point of view" language to the comment about starving a half million in Iraq. It's an assertion, and rather than debating it endlessly, NPOV language allows it to stand, while implying that this assertion is a contested fact.

"Perhaps the easiest way to make your writing more encyclopedic is to write about what people believe, rather than what is so. ... What people believe is a matter of objective fact, and we can present that quite easily from the neutral point of view. - Jimbo Wales, in the Neutral point of view Article. Nhprman 19:09, 26 January 2006 (UTC) reply

Eventually, some believe Roosevelt succeeded in baiting the Japanese into attacking Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.

Who? Sources? On such an important topic! David.Monniaux 15:38, 16 February 2006 (UTC) reply

Source cited. In Stinnett's book, he quotes those who knew Edward R. Morrow as saying the great reporter - who dined with FDR on Dec. 7 - was uneasy about how well the president took the news, and that he suspected immediately that he had foreknowledge of the attack, but never spoke or wrote about it publicly. [1] The fact is, this accusation is as old as Dec. 8, 1941, the day after the attack. Frankly, I don't believe it, personally, but it's a valid viewpoint that needs to be here. Nhprman 21:39, 16 February 2006 (UTC) reply

Bush 41 sent in troops to Somalia, but Clinton sent the U.S. Army Rangers after Bush left office and escalated the intervention before finally pulling out after losing a battle. See PBS Frontline's Timeline Nhprman 15:22, 24 May 2006 (UTC) reply

I'm not sure that the Spanish American War is the first colonial act of the United States. The westward expansion and displacement of Native Americans could also be considered an act of colonization. Thoughts? Ezratrumpet 13:57, 7 June 2006 (UTC) reply

No, all countries of the world have expanded, that doesnt make them colonial. Ruling other countries like the Philippines is colonialism. /L

The article says "President Jimmy Carter's intervention in the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, which ultimately led to the US financially supporting the future Taliban led government of Afghanistan.". It is true that Carter supported the mujahideen, however it is wrong to say that this lead to "financial support" for the Taliban. The US supported most governments in the middle east, the Taliban wasnt one of them. The little contact they later had, had very little to do with Americas relationship with the mujahideen. Im changing it to simply "President Jimmy Carter's intervention in the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan".

In particular, Wilson's administration intervened in the affairs of a dozen or so different countries, including an invasion of Russia. The article makes it seem that non-interventionism has been American policy for much of the past 100 years when in fact it has rarely been the policy. drh 15:26, 25 July 2007 (UTC) reply

Indeed, I think the article could do with a arguments for/against section. But that might stir upset somehow, heh. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 143.210.222.85 ( talk) 08:25, 28 October 2008 (UTC) reply

The last paragraph in this section is strange, as Jefferson was opposed to the threatened war with France and many of his supporters seemed to see Adams as stirring it up. See the book "American Aurora" by Rosenfeld, see also Benjamin_Franklin_Bache_(Journalist) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.175.70.85 ( talk) 03:34, 19 February 2008 (UTC) reply

I am removing the section that states "...though unilateral interventionism was articulated as the preferred policy of the George W. Bush administration for the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq." This is factually inaccurate. Both of those invasions had multilateral support and were coalition efforts, though neither was done under the auspices of the UN Security Council. Furthermore, the United States attempted to gather as much multilateral support as possible for its actions in both Iraq and Afghanistan, and certainly there was never an expression of unilateralism as a "preferred policy." —Preceding unsigned comment added by Arpadkorossy ( talk • contribs) 10:51, 4 May 2009 (UTC) reply

I have to disagree with you. In the case of Iraq, the fact that several countries took part in the invasion does not mean that it was multilateral: it simply means that more countries acted unilaterally. When you say that America tried to gather multilateral support, you should actually be saying that america tried to involve as many countries as possible in a unilateral attack. "Concerted unilateralism" would be a more accurate term when you talk about a coalition that acts in a unilateral way against an adversery of choice without a clear provocation. Besides, it's useless to try to disguise that G.W.Bush had a more unilateral approach then his predecessors: he referred to this himself on many occasions during his campaign, as well as in meetings with aides or members of his cabinet. I'm certain that if i look for it, i will find a whole lot of sources for this. This sentence has to be put back, but with a differentiation between Iraq and Afghanistan, as the latter had sheltered terrorists and thus indirectly provoked America.( 193.190.253.150 ( talk) 04:24, 10 March 2010 (UTC)) reply

I expanded the sections of non-interventionism between the world wars and highlighted the shift in policy that occurred at Pearl Harbor. Also, I edited the introduction to highlight the interchangeability of non-interventionism and isolationism. There might be some non NPOV parts to these sections so please edit them if you see fit. Esfalcon ( talk) 14:59, 1 June 2009 (UTC) Note: I also edit under my schools IP 72.82.248.98, so it is interchangeable with Esfalcon in the history of edits to the article. reply

I marked the section "Shift in Policy" with a POV tag and Inappropriate person tag. It uses "we" in an inappropriate way and is very one sided on the basis of U.S. isolationism. Americans are not the only ones to read this, along with the fact that it is un-academic. Someone should either redo this section or remove it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.202.83.75 ( talk) 16:16, 5 June 2009 (UTC) reply

There is a fine line between isolationism and non-interventionism. For example, isolationism is defined as "a policy of national isolation by abstention from alliances and other international political and economic relations" (Merriam-Webster's Dictionary Online, retrieved 18 September 2009). By way of contrast, non-interventionism is defined as "abstention by a nation from interference in the affairs of other nations" (Dictionary.com, retrieved 18 September 2009).

In practice, isolationism would dictate the severing of substantive military and economic ties with other nations (i.e., no binding peacetime alliances and minimal international trade), while non-interventionism would merely prescribe forbearance from influencing the domestic policies of other nations, in the expectation that the policy would be reciprocated (i.e., possibly also no binding peacetime alliances, but allowing for as much international trade as deemed necessary by either party, along with cultural exchanges and regulated population movement between nations). In essence, isolationism would produce a relatively closed society (as happened in Edo-period Japan and as many Americans between the world wars would have favored for their country), whereas non-interventionism would allow for an open society fully integrated into the international community, but with no say as to how members of the international community should carry out their internal affairs.

Given the distinct differences between the two philosophies, I believe that American isolationism belongs in a separate article. To this end, I advocate transferring all examples of isolationism within this article to the proposed article on American isolationism, and leaving only examples of non-interventionism within this article. This change would be especially pressing as the past two decades have seen a rise in non-interventionist reaction to American involvement in Somalia, Kosovo, and Iraq, among other countries. It would hardly be appropriate to group present-day non-interventionists with the isolationists of the 1920s and 1930s. To sloppily conflate the two philosophies would at best be lazy, and at worst a demonstration of bias against the non-interventionist school of thought. -- Namenderkrieg ( talk) 08:58, 18 September 2009 (UTC) reply

Agree, your prediction was correct. Darkstar1st ( talk) 10:05, 9 July 2011 (UTC) reply

Currently, "United States Isolationism" directs to this page, meaning that subject must be addressed here, or the opposite occurs - that "isolationism" is subsumed inappropriately by "non-interventionism". At least this page should recognize the times in which the isolationist impulse predominated, such as between the world wars. Huangdi ( talk) 22:34, 23 July 2018 (UTC) reply

The above term of art has been neglected - so I added it today as a redirect. -- Ludvikus ( talk) 05:00, 23 October 2009 (UTC) reply

"Non-intervention is similar to isolationism, however fundamentally different" this sounds like a little child saying something like "A is similar to B, but different". This doesn't make any sense on the semantic level. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 141.3.10.100 ( talk) 04:28, 12 June 2011 (UTC) reply

I added some sourced text about the difference between isolationism and non-interventionism which has been reverted, replaced by text not sourced. unless there is a problem with the source, shouldn't we rely on the reliable source over the opinions of wiki-editors? Darkstar1st ( talk) 13:56, 9 July 2011 (UTC) reply

We need to attribute opinions, and reflect the source correctly.   Will Beback  talk  03:30, 11 July 2011 (UTC) reply

At present, the US is involved in Predator Drone bombing campaigns in at least three countries, Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia. However, the national media has not reported on these interventions with great press. Since these events are a further reflection of our military intervention, they should be added to this page. My question is whether they should be added as Covert Actions or in the long list of Overt Interventions, which mainly displays the US' major wars to date. xLittleP ( talk) 16:07, 3 November 2011 (UTC) reply

This article has a serious POV problem. It is solely based on the assumption that the US was non-interventionist, but completely excludes the opposing view that it was in fact very actively involved in the affairs of other nations (particularly in the Western hemisphere). It's completely absurd that, for example, the War of 1812 is not even mentioned in the article.-- MarshalN20 | ^Talk 08:34, 22 September 2013 (UTC) reply

I thought that Emer de Vattel inspired US. about non interventionism as he is the pioneer of it. Here, he is credited as the root of non interventionism idea. You know, founding fathers are inspired by mainly Law of Nations, Vattel's masterpiece.-- Kafkasmurat ( talk) 12:08, 4 February 2015 (UTC) reply

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In the section "20th century non-interventionism", it only covers through WWII. Then suddenly we jump into the 21st century. Did nothing relevant to non-interventionism occur from 1946-1999? 50.64.112.36 ( talk) 01:08, 4 March 2018 (UTC) reply

I believe it's generally considered to be a period of considerable U.S. interventionism; between the Marshall Plan, the Cold War (and related proxy conflicts), and the War on Terror more recently, along with other interventions in favour of pro-US individuals and regimes, the consensus was for an active U.S. Certain politicians, such as Trump (and I believe one or two Republican Presidential candidates pre-Reagan) have run and in some cases been elected on non-interventionist platforms, but the predominant tendency was that the U.S. was actively protecting her interests abroad. It is quite a stark gap, though, so I've created a section for it; I'm sure there must be material enough during 60 years for a paragraph or two at least. — Sasuke Sarutobi ( talk) 10:44, 4 March 2018 (UTC) reply

Good point. I filled in the section, by a treatment of high level politicians, Taft Eisenhower and Goldwater. Rjensen ( talk) 12:03, 4 March 2018 (UTC) reply

See my title. Detail is lacking here. To get more specific, there were (for example) isolationist movements at universities like Columbia and Berkeley. Rja13ww33 ( talk) 04:34, 28 May 2018 (UTC) reply

When the problem started

This comment is in reference to the " Latest revision as of 19:26, 9 April 2020" version of the article, but the issue raised here seems to have existed since " the edit of 15:29, 23 July 2018".

Where the problem is

The first sentence of the article now has a grammatical error, that was not present before that edit.

It used to be OK

Before that EDIT, the long phrase starting with "the diplomatic policy whereby [...]" and continuing until (and including) the words before the word "has" -- but not including the word "has" -- was an "appositive".

(and ... to save you the trouble of clicking on this link: wikt:appositive#Noun) to the " Wiktionary" entry for the term "appositive" [used as a noun] ... it means: "a word or phrase that is in apposition")

(and, for an explanation of what "in apposition" means, [feel free to] just click on the link to the Wikipedia article [about] " apposition", which explains it well, and gives some helpful examples, etc.)

At that time, -- (that is, before "23 July 2018") -- that long phrase did not contain -- and it was not preceded by! -- the word "is".

Now, it is not OK

Then, the first sentence of the article got changed, so that (from that time on, and continuing until the "Latest revision" mentioned above), now it is impossible to parse (or, to diagram) that sentence without embarking upon a repetitive iteration of failed attempts to try to figure out either

• why the word "is" should be present just prior to that long phrase [the one that used to be an appositive]; ... or else
• why that long (-winded) sentence should not just relinquish its ambition to ... remain one (LONG) sentence, and instead ... just become two shorter sentences.

"Never mind" about failure analysis

Figuring it out -- ("how it happened", e.g.) -- might be hard, but that does not have to be done!
NOTE: Who cares, whether

• someone did not realize that the long phrase was an appositive;

OR whether

• someone had some ignorance or misunderstanding, regarding how to construct a sentence (in ' English') ;correctly;

OR whether

• someone just did not read the entirety of the rest of the [admittedly, pretty long] sentence;

OR whether

• it was something ELSE

-- ? --

It does not matter, so we should not care. All we need to do now (IMHO) is to [decide how to] fix it.

Fixing it, is ... EASY!

There are two relatively simple changes that could be made, to repair the first sentence of this article. It is not necessary to do both of them. Once one "solution" [idea] is chosen, the other one is not needed.

(S1) One simple solution is, to remove the word "is" from that sentence -- (the first sentence of this article). Doing that -- (and inserting a comma where the word "is" used to be) -- would restore the status of the long phrase (mentioned above) as an "appositive" for the hyphenated word "non-interventionism" which is being explained. (One slight drawback: the sentence would still have about 42 words [if I counted correctly]; -- [and I was] counting a hyphenated word as one word; otherwise the total [word count] would have been higher. Some readers might consider that to be too long for convenient, easy reading. " YMMV"...)

(S2) Another simple solution would be, to just change the comma after the hyphenated word "self-defense" to a period. The rest would become the second sentence of this article. It would, of course, be necessary to insert something -- (probably just the pronoun "It"; ... capitalized, of course, because it would now be the first word of the second sentence) -- before the word "has".

I don't know which of these would be better. I could understand why some might prefer option "(S2)" because ... even after leaving in the word "is", -- and adding the word "It" -- the sentence lengths [if I counted correctly] would now be 29 and 15. Some of you might call a 29-word sentence "long" and 15-word sentence kinda "medium" (or "medium long"). But -- (to some readers) -- that still might be preferable to one "very long" sentence of about 42 words -- which we would have, after using the first idea, "(S1)", and removing the word "is".

Thanks for your patience

I might go ahead and EDIT ... using either idea "(S1)" OR idea "(S2)".
But first, ... Any comments? -- Mike Schwartz ( talk) 08:35, 16 April 2020 (UTC) reply

See subject line. Seems like a big omission (on the list of politicians). Rja13ww33 ( talk) 17:29, 10 May 2023 (UTC) reply