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From thee constant stream of American history, I was taught throughout m years in school, I came to the conclusion that America should not involve itself in other countries' business. I always thought the best solution was for the U.S. is for the country to invest in itself and not worry about what's going on in other countries since we have so many problems ourselves. If we look at pre-World War I, America did not step in and worked on its own problems until about 3 years after and they came out the war unscathed. The same occurred for World War II. I guess since then America began to feel a great deal of cockiness since they were able to help win those wars immensely enough to consider themselves the world's greatest power (sadly enough, it is). But, post WWII, America isolated themselves again until the beginning of the Cold War. America did not feel the need to "help others" but instead, beat the Soviets in a race against arms. America felt threatened by the Soviets and their power and did not want them to spread their communism across the world, for communism and capitalism go together as good as water and oil. America began building their arms, investing more in technology and became imperialistic since they decided to take over Puerto Rica, the Philippines,etc. Although this all brought about great change and innovation, the outcome of it all made America even more cocky, since they won the Cold War.
"The Unpopular Moment" by Charles Krauthammer, kind of proves my point about America becoming more involved with countries since after the Cold war since they felt the need to assert its power. Krauthammer sort of brings forth two points, the good of isolationism and the bad of it. He lists the good that isolation can bring about, like restoring ones economy and avoiding foreign entanglements. I agree with this because other countries' problems should be the least of America's problem unless their problems could reach over seas and cause us trouble. That's where Krauthammer says that even if America goes into isolationism, if there are problems in other countries that may affect our trade with them, our resources there, etc. then we have to protect that countries since it's going to give us trouble. So our isolation would still involve protecting other countries, so why not go further and just protect the rest of the world since American is such a great power?
Krauthammer made me change my perception of "isolationism." America is very powerful and has the power to change the world for the better and if we were to close ourself up from foreign problems, our economy may rise and we wouldn't be in foreign entanglement which may bring us out of be on "top of the world" right now, we can't ensure the safety of the world from itself. Krauthammer states "If America wants stability, it will have to create it. Communism is indeed finished; the last of the messianic creeds that have haunted this century is quite dead. But there will constantly be new threats disturbing our peace." Yes, I put this in red, because I believe that is a very great quote and it says a lot about what's to come.