Non-isolationist inter-war US

WI post-WW1 the US did not retreat into economic and political isolationism?

The hows and whys are not so important; what is under consideration here is the effects on the world at large.
Would the depression have started up with more access to the world market for US goods? - As a result would WW2 (as we know it; fascism vs. others anyway) vanish or do you think the fascists would take hold anyway even without economic problems?

What of the League of Nations- would it work?
 
Depends on the way they turned out to be. Expansionistic, Anglophile, Germanophile?

(Okay, I know the last one has been done to death)
 
Let's try an Italianophile one: A non isolationist US will have no time to butterfly fascism in Italy (up and running by 1922), wile it might do it in Germany (say with more mild reparations)
 
Depends on the way they turned out to be. Expansionistic, Anglophile, Germanophile?

(Okay, I know the last one has been done to death)

It wouldn't be expansionistic; it would still be the US afterall.

As for the other two...well there wouldn't be much difference whichever way. Germany and Britain weren't opposed to each other.
 
The seeds of late '30s isolationism were certainly sown in the 1920s: Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover were three of the more conservative presidents the US has ever had; tariff walls were raised as the US economy looked inward; apart from the Dawes Plan (one of the rare times a vice president has ever made a mark on US history/policy) and the naval treaty, there was little of note in foreign relations.

Getting the US to not be isolationist after the disillusionment after the armistice would be difficult: the population had had enough of Wilson's sermons, which added up to the equivalent of "eat your spinach; it's good for you". It would have taken a dynamic internationalist president (e.g., Theodore Roosevelt) to galvanize the electorate and keep it from turning inward. And since TR died unexpectedly in January 1919, that makes the task more difficult.
 
You also have things like the Nye Committee (1934-36) which investigated US entry into WWI. Its findings (that the US loaned 85x the amount to France and the UK than it did to Germany) were though to suggest that business interests helped to influence the decision for war. This was crucial in determining members like Sen. Arthur Vandenburg on a course of strict isolationism in the coming conflict.

Overall, the US was probably only slightly isolationist until the Great Depression. Depite conservative presidents in the 20s, you still had the Washington Naval Treaty and the Kellog-Briand Pact. In this sense, the isolationism of the late 30s grew out of a repulsion towards war in general.

It's not really all that different from Britain: an obsession with disarmament in the 1920s leading to a need to adhere to strict pacifism leading to appeasement. Except appeasement wasn't necessary for the US because of the Atlantic Ocean. If the intent is to somehow get the US involved in things like the Munich conference, that seems pretty hard since the US had no military capacity to affect the situation at all. And that was really the result of more than a century of aversion to standing armies.
 

bard32

Banned
The U.S. Government isn't reluctant to pay more money for the U.S. Army
Air Service. It's also not reluctant to spend more money on the Navy. It
modernizes the ships of the Asiatic Fleet and decides to increase the size of
the Army.
 
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