ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses early twentieth century Progressive influences on U. S interests, as they shaped not only a Wilsonian crusading liberalism but also the interwar isolationist backlash that would constrain policy through Franklin Roosevelt's administration to a pragmatic realism. It describes the shifts from Theodore Roosevelt's realist approach to balancing interests, to Woodrow Wilson's Progressive stress on institutional alternatives to the balance of power in constructing World War I as a democratic crusade, and to the isolationist backlash that would span the interwar decades. The chapter argues that this isolationist backdrop would force Franklin Roosevelt to employ a slow-thinking caution in responding to global hostilities. An approach marked by moments of advance and retreat across debates over Roosevelt 1937 "quarantine" speech, the Soviet entry into the war against Germany. His realist vision of a postwar setting dominated by "four policemen" in the United States, the United Kingdom, Soviet Union, and China.
