Isolationism information:
Noted international relations scholar Stephen Walt wrote in 2013 that "A degree of prudent skepticism about the wisdom of entering the Syrian morasse is not isolationism, of course. Genuine isolationism would mean severing our security ties with the rest of the world and focusing solely on defending sovereign U.S. territory. Genuine isolationism means ending U.S. alliance commitments in Europe and Asia and telling our various Middle Eastern allies that they were going to have to defend themselves instead of relying on help from Uncle Sam. Genuine isolationism would eliminate the vast military forces that we buy and prepare for overseas intervention and focus instead on defending American soil. Real isolationists favor radical cuts to the defense budget (on the order of 50 percent or more) and would rely on nuclear deterrence and continental defense to preserve U.S. independence. And the most extreme isolationists would favor reducing foreign trade and immigration, getting out of the U.N. and other institutions, and trying to cut the United States off from the rest of the world."[1]
According to Walt, "Hawks like to portray opponents of military intervention as 'isolationism' because they know it is a discredited political label."[1]
This article[2] has a lot of good information on reasons to support noninterventionism, even if she describes it as isolationism.
need a section on the arguments for the theory and a section on criticisms. Also polling data on support throughout time??
In his 2003 book, Dr. Robert J. Art, a professor of International Relations at Brandeis University,[3][4] argued that the United States had eight grand strategies from which it could choose at that time: dominion, global collective security, regional collective security, cooperative security, containment, isolationism, offshore balancing, and his preferred strategy of selective engagement.[5]