Though getting increasingly involved in the European conflict in the years before the attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, that day officially led the U.S. into World War II, marking the definitive ...

American isolationism was unique in one final—and crucial—respect: it was an end as well as a means, a fundamental maxim of U.S. statecraft and not just an instrumental practice. Britain ...

marking the definitive end of traditional isolationism. With the war’s conclusion, American strategic thinking shifted, recognizing that even partial disengagement was no longer an option in a ...