Actually if you think about the apparent American disengagement from Europe - and we put aside the histrionics from the current incumbent in DC - one interpretation of current events could be that US involvement outside of the Americas ( as defined by the Monroe doctrine ) is actually the aberration and non involvement outside of the Americas is actually the normal.
If you examine relatively recent history then the USA spent more time avoiding foreign entanglements than seeking them - this was certainly the case between 1801 - 1896 ( a period which saw foreign interference in the Americas with French involvement in Mexico and the supply of arms, supplies and ships by the UK and others between 1861 and 1868 ).
From 1912 until 1916 the USA stayed out the first world war, the 1916 Presidential election ( between Woodrow Wilson and Charles Evans Hughes ) took place against the background of the conflict raging in Europe and unrest in Mexico - with most Americans wanting to avoid any involvement. Woodrow Wilson won - using the slogans “He kept us out of the war” and “America First”.
Wilson won the popular vote by 3.1% the lowest margin by any winning President between 1812 and 2004. The sinking of the Lusitania and other American merchant ships in the Atlantic and the return to unrestricted submarine warfare and the leaking of diplomatic cables which showed the German interference in Mexico and a promise to return Mexican territories that had been lost too the US in 1848 - finally led to the USA entering the war on the Allied side in April 1917.
For a President who had been elected to keep the USA out of the war, Wilson ended uo advocating hikes fourteen points, the independence of Poland and self determination for the peoples of Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire, the freedom of the seas and the establishment of a League of Nations to play a key role in the post war world.
Wilson established the USA as one of the big four Allied powers, but a combination of events, including a badly demobilisation of US troops, discontent over the rise of power and influence of the Federal government and political divisions over the Versailles Treaty and the League of Nations, and Wilsons refusal to compromise and his illness combined to see the rejection of the Treaty and led, with election of a Republican President led to non participation in the League.
President Roosevelt long associated with the new deal and his leadership of America during the Second World War, was re-elected for the third time in November 1940 - with a very public commitment to not getting involved in the Second World War.
This position was particularly articulated during the run up to the November 1940 Presidential election. At the Democratic Concession, the Democratic platform adopted in Chicago, in 1940, stated: “We will not participate in foreign wars, and we will not send our army, naval or air forces to fight in foreign lands outside of the Americas, except in case of attack.”
And again on October 30, 1940, in Boston, Mass., the President said: “And while I am talking to you, mothers and fathers, I give you one more assurance. I have said this before, but I shall say it again, and again and again. Your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars. They are going into training to form a force so strong that, by its very existence, it will keep the threat of war far away from our shores. The purpose of our defense is defense.”
Once America was attacked everything changed and the American’s pulled together and worked and home and overseas to win both the military and production battles. Even Charles Lindbergh ( an arch isolationist ) supported the war and passed his aviation knowledge and skills to aviators in the South Pacific.
Once the war in Europe and Asia was over ( at least for the Americans ) they rapidly disbanded the vast armed forces they had created, and converted many of their factories back to peace time production. One of the long term consequences of the new deal and the war years was a massive expansion of the Federal government and its agencies.
In 1948 Presidential election between Truman and Dewey was an election that delivered a real change in American policy - not due to the result but more down to what followed. Dewey was an ally of Senator Taft ( an isolationist ) - while Dewey and Taft had put their shoulders to the wheel when the USA was attacked, they did not necessarily seek a wider role in the world for the USA outside of the Americas once the war was over.
The 1948 Presidential election set the scene for a real change in American policy and commitment, when Truman unexpectedly beat Dewey which was significant shock in itself. What followed rapidly was the Korean War, the Berlin Blockade, the marshal plan and the establishment of NATO ( to defend democracy in Western Europe ) along with a US commitment to role in the wider world followed.
"It must be a policy of the United States," President Harry Truman announced, "to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressure." This in essence became the Truman Doctrine - the idea that helping to defend democracy abroad was vital to US national interests.
It is easy to see this as the moment that leadership of the western world passed from an exhausted Britain to the United States. Perhaps more accurately this was the moment that revealed that it already happened. The USA previously traditionally isolationist and safely sheltered by two vast oceans, emerged from the Second World War as the actual rather than default leader of the free world.
America projected its power around the globe, it spent the post-war decades remaking much of the world in its own image. The boomer generation grew up in a world that looked, sounded and behaved more like the United States than ever had previously as the USA became the western world's cultural, economic and military leader.
There were moments when US resolve weakened, the traumatic Vietnam war, which focused American interests away form Europe and the instability in the Middle East where protecting American oil interests was a prime motivator, still failed to dent the US commitments to a wider world.
Yet for a few years after the end of the Vietnam war, there was a period of drift which ended the USA under President Reagan after 1980 rearmed and took a much are aggressive stance against the Soviet Union. After the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan the Cold War reignited and the deployment of the Cruise and Pershing missile systems alarmed Europeans and the Soviet Union upped the anti even more.
The missiles like the the Soviet SS20’s were perceived as tactical strike weapons rather than weapons of deterrence. There were worries that the Americans and the Soviets could fight a limited nuclear war in Europe as tensions between the Americans and the Soviets got worse.
In fairness, the Americans never quite realised how alarmed the Soviets were until informed by spies and defectors - armed with that knowledge Reagan moved to tone down the rhetoric, and started talking seriously to the Soviets about disarmament and within a few arms serious reductions in nuclear weapons followed.
During the Clinton years there was more of a focus on the Pacific and some domestic option to expanding NATO eastwards with the addition of former Warsaw pact members - during various votes on the House - there was some vigorous opposition.One of the founders of a popular ice cream company funded posters opposing NATO expansion - the vote went through and some years later some of the same people actively backed Donald Trump in 2016.
President Trump’s election in 2016 was perhaps a long time coming, but, not much changed save for the pullout from Afghanistan, and the warnings to NATO members about paying their fare share towards collective defence - this sentiment has also been uttered by previous Presidents both Democratic and Republican.
President Biden’s term of office briefly put the political rise of isolationism of hold in the wider world, President Trump’s victory in the 2024 Presidential election, on a campaign largely focused on pocketbook issues. This time round as far a foreign policy goes President Trump hit the ground running, pulling support from the Ukraine and starting to pull rug out from under Europe and reseting the relationship between the USA and Russia.
Very public spats with Canada and Mexico and threats of tariffs have followed. Since President Trumps inauguration the US isolationists dislike of Europe has been very manifest. The isolationists have little interests beyond commercial benefits for the USA outside of the Americas and no love of any foreign entanglements in a modern day version of the Monroe Doctrine.
This can be interpreted as a reset of American foreign policy to its old pre 1941 position, something that understandably has the many of the Europeans on the mainland are very worried, as are the Anglo-Brit elite, as one of the main pillars of geo politics since 1948 - the American commitment to Europe is effectively gone - and any relationship ( special or otherwise ) with the US is history. And for the first time since October 1941 the Anglo-Brit elite are potentially well and truly on their own…
