AHC: US a pariah, isolationist state that constantly threatens its neighbors

At any point after 1900, turn the United States into an isolationist, pariah state that constantly makes war threats against Canada, Mexico and the Caribbean in order to extract concessions and tribute. The US can be democratic or dictatorial. It must keep the Stars and Stripes as its flag, and cannot be communist (to circumvent the UAPR scenario in Against All Odds).
 
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It is really hard to be a pariah state when you're in possession of as many resources as the US is (it was the Saudi Arabia of oil exports for an awfully long time). When people need you that much and can't easily conquer you, they put up with an awful lot.
 
The US did get involved in a lot of wars & POd a lot of people. Re: the Banana Wars. In 1928 a US fleet landed a combined brigade of US Army and Marines in Shanghai. In 1919 & 1920. There was the Siberian expedition. First Hoover, & then Roosevelt reduced the US military adventures.

Maybe had overseas business interests prevailed the Marines would have continued to land hither & yon through the 1930s
 
Hmm, generally the US sought a more subtle commercial "hegemony" than this. It sought to open markets for its exports, which were good value, whilst restricting imports that could hurt US interests. Demanding tribute is less efficient. (Though it does mean you don't have to lend customers the money to buy your goods, which is where mercantilism can break down as in 1930-2.)

Perhaps FDR's measures don't produce enough of a recovery to gain reelection. Instead a quasi-imperialist gets elected under the Republican banner. MacArthur? Or a demagogue?
 
The US did get involved in a lot of wars & POd a lot of people. Re: the Banana Wars. In 1928 a US fleet landed a combined brigade of US Army and Marines in Shanghai. In 1919 & 1920. There was the Siberian expedition. First Hoover, & then Roosevelt reduced the US military adventures.

Maybe had overseas business interests prevailed the Marines would have continued to land hither & yon through the 1930s
Well, the Marines you mention were there until 1941 when Japan declared war on the US. The Siberian expedition was part of a coalition as part of post-world war I cleanup activities and is seen as an extension of WWI. Neither would have added to a reason for nations to consider the US a pariah. In fact the request of this thread includes an isolationist atmosphere, so you'd have to butterfly Siberia and China.
 
True, however the 4th Marine Regiment was half strength & operated as a glorified embassy guard.

Caribbean operations ended with the Hoover administration. Roosevelt continued the previous reduction in PI
 
I tried to do this in my Tripartite Alliance Earth timeline of two decades ago (!), beginning with a United States that took a decidedly xenophobic swing in the early 19th century (earlier, and longer, participation in the Napoleonic Wars) eventually to go down an Argentine trajectory of underperformance leading to seriously negative political sequelae. This included, by the 1970s, a descent into a messy and chaotic police state that was starting to get involved in all kinds of conflicts with neighbours near and far.

Leaving the general plausibility of my timeline aside, I'm not sure that this outcome is stable. How do you get a United States that is not only sufficiently isolationist and militaristic, but a) keep it there and b) manage to get it not overwhelm its neighbours? In the specific case of TpA, that United States had underperformed significantly relative to OTL, with particularly South America doing well, such that the United States was only one relatively large and wealthy country of many, something that could be counterbalanced by its neighbours. Even then, I didn't think it plausible to assume that this United States would be solidly on side with this aggressive militarism, if only because it was a large federation with presumably plenty of people disinterested in autarkic militarism. How do you get Americans not to care about their own freedom?

In the case of TpA, the United States ended up falling apart. In its setting--developed in a free-form collaborative storytelling forum, FWIW--if it hadn't fallen via external war it would have fallen via internal dissension.
 
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