AHC/WI: United States Remains Non-Interventionist

Delta Force

Banned
World War I was initially seen as a temporary divergence from American non-interventionism. Even as late as the early Cold War the United States still had a strong non-interventionist movement. Would it become an untenable position or require some additional PoDs (Japan remaining democratic), or could non-intervention be sustained throughout the 20th century? How does history change if the largest economy and industrial power in the world remains non-interventionist?
 

NoMommsen

Donor
Maybe a bit a question how you define "non-interventionism".

After WW 1 the republican USA tried this or al least advertised it. But they quite quickly came back mingle with world-wide and european politics.

First with the Washington conference of 1921 that resulted not only in the well known Naval Treaty, but also in a number of other treaties to secure status quo in the pacific and China.
(Beside following some financial sanity to avoid another, expensive naval arms race, that would also have limited the US possibilities to regain their war loans givin to France and Britain, it seems, that the Harding administration "just" followed some popular moods in USA).

Then their engagement, that lead to the Dawes-plan on german reparations to - somehow - secure again the payback of Entente debts.
And as the question of reparations, war debts AND politics were - I think much to the US unhappiness - inseparable, they had to act on this stage also, even if unwillingly.

As it looks, the priority of economics and money stood against the return to true revival of the Monroe-doctrine. In the course - or already at the beginning ? - of WW 1, the USA turned from one of the main debtors world-wide to the main creditor worldwide and they were keen on getting their money back.

So I would say you have to create at least POD, that avoids the above said (no loans to France and Britain during WW 1) and THAT would change ... a damn awfull LOT to consider.
 

Delta Force

Banned
Without World War I the United States wouldn't really have much financial need for an arms control agreement. It would be in a position to determine how large it wants the USN to be and let the other countries try to reach it. The Naval Act of 1916 was passed before the United States entered World War I, and it would have made the United States Navy the most powerful in the world by the early 1920s. $500 million is a small sum compared to the $20 billion or so the United States loaned the Entente during World War I.

In United States federal legislation, the Naval Act of 1916 was also called the "Big Navy Act." An overlooked landmark piece of legislation, President Woodrow Wilson determined amidst the repeated incidents with Germany to build “incomparably, the greatest Navy in the world” over a ten-year period with the intent of making the U.S. Navy equal to any two others in the world. Ultimately, more than $500 million was to be spent on ten battleships, six battlecruisers, thirty submarines, fifty destroyers, and other support vessels, to be built over a three-year period.

Opposition to heavily armored and thus expensive "Dreadnought" ships was strong in the House, but was overcome by the results of the one great naval battle of World War I between the British Royal Navy and the German High Seas Fleet, the Battle of Jutland (31 May–1 June 1916), which proved to Preparedness supporters that a heavy, great tonnage Navy armed with large guns was necessary to defend American shores and merchant ships on the seas in the event of war. President Wilson told Col. Edward House that he was anxious to hasten the day when the American Navy was larger than Great Britain’s, proclaiming “Let us build a Navy bigger than hers and do what we please.”

The Senate passed the “Big Navy Act” on July 21 although it specified that five of ten battleships specified would be replaced with battlecruisers. Not until August 8 did Rep. Lemuel P. Padgett, Tennessee Democrat and Chairman of the House Naval Affairs Committee, confer with President Wilson and agree to support the Senate bill. Democrat Rep. Claude Kitchin of North Carolina despaired: “The United States today becomes the most militaristic naval nation on earth.”

In Sept. 1918, the Navy Department’s General Board recommended in addition to the sixteen capital ships called for in the initial act, that an additional twelve battleships and sixteen battlecruisers be built. By 1922, the U.S. Navy, if all the ships had been built, could have surpassed the Royal Navy in size and strength. However the expectation of a ruinous arms race with the British and the Japanese led to the Washington Naval Conference of 1921–22 and the tonnage limit ratio agreements with the US having parity with the RN.

Also, with the Anglo-Japanese Alliance still in force and no shared history in World War I, there might not be enough trust for an arms control agreement to be conducted.
 
I think the big thing is to keep ideology out of things. No ideological menace, just nations pursuing their own selfish interests.

Probably need a CP victory in WWI with the US staying out, and intervention to keep the Soviet Union from forming. Thus Europe is still acting as it has before, and still divided enough to be focused on their side of the Atlantic

The Joker in the deck is Japan, whose interests in China are opposed to US business interests, and threaten US possession of the Philippines. Have to keep Japan focused northwards rather than southwards until the US grants them independence, and then cause a rupture with the former colony. Best way would be a non Soviet Russia that looks to avenge 1904-05

Of course the US is still going to be intervening in Latin America, as prior to WWI (Nicaragua 1912-33, Cuba 1906-9, 1912, 1917, Haiti 1915-34, Columbia 1856 and 1903, Dominican Republic 1903, 1904, 1914, 1916-24, Hondouras 1903, 1907, 1911, 1912, Mexico 1914, 1916-17), but no farther
 
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