The Founders on Intervention: American Military Action Abroad (1783-1860)

Marion Smith / May 20, 2011

Those who advocate strict non-interventionism usually intend it to mean that America should remain militarily uninvolved abroad except when there is a clear and imminent threat to U.S. territory. But this isolationist doctrine of non-interventionism is not in keeping with the founding principles of America’s early foreign policy.

The Founding Fathers, whose foreign policy some non-interventionists claim to champion, were no strangers to difficult foreign policy decisions. When faced with the choice to allow attacks on American ships of commerce by Barbary pirates in the Mediterranean Sea or to punish the perpetrators of those attacks, President Thomas Jefferson and his Secretary of State James Madison chose the latter. (more…)