Isolationism is the pejorative twentieth-century term used for America's traditional noninvolvement in European wars and avoidance of "entangling alliances." It assumed the United States' interests and values were different from and superior to those of Europe and held that America could lead the world toward freedom and democracy more effectively through example than through military action. Isolationists, however, never favored cutting off the United States from the rest of the world, nor did they rule out the possibilities of American expansion - territorial, commercial, financial, ideological, or military - particularly in the Western Hemisphere, the Pacific, and East Asia.
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