The Neutrality Acts of 1935, 1936, 1937, and 1939 were intended by their very name to prevent the United States from being drawn into foreign wars. The Acts banned the sale of arms to warring nations and restricted American citizens from traveling on belligerent ships. The Acts were watered down in 1939 by an amendment that allowed the U.S. to sell arms to nations at war provided the buyers paid cash and moved the goods themselves.
On an historial note, the restriction on American citizens traveling on belligerent ships in the Neutrality Acts was explicitly intended to prevent a repeat of the Lusitania incident that had drawn the U.S. into World War I after a German submarine sank the British ocean liner RMS Lusitania, killing 1,198 people, including 128 Americans.
Lend-Lease Act
On March 11, 1941, President Roosevelt signed the Lend-Lease Act, effectively ending a decade of declared U.S. neutrality and isolationism. It allowed the President to “sell, transfer title to, exchange, lease, lend, or otherwise dispose of” military aid to any country whose defense was considered vital to the United States. The first beneficiary was Britain, followed by China in April 1941, and the Soviet Union after the German invasion in June.
In deciding which countries should benefit from Lend-Lease, the United States was signalling its strategic sympathies and future commitments, and in effect drawing the battle lines for future conflicts.
Japan invaded Manchuria in 1931 and China proper in 1937. So when the U.S. extended Lend-Lease to China it sent a clear message to Japan.
The U.S. embargo on oil and other critical materials and the freezing Japanese assets after Japan invaded Indochina in July 1941, pointed directly to the coming inevitability of war between Japan and the United States.
Trump, The Strange Isolationist
Over the past handful of years, commentators have described Trump’s isolationist policies with his threats to pull out of Nato because the U.S. was saddled with too much of the cost. The result is that European nations have increased defence spending. You can discern two reasons. One is that they don’t want to lose the USA. The other is that if they are unsuccessful and they do lose the USA, then they want to be strong enough on their own to counter any threat.
The notion of being ‘isolationist’ doesn’t square with the deal that the U.S. has struck for the extraction of minerals in eastern Ukraine. That is, the deal is in place on a piece of territory that stands directly in the way of Russia’s ambitions under Putin.
And Trump has not been shy of declaring his position over Gaza, to simply take it over and administer it.
Nor has he backed off confronting Iran or in forging stronger links with Saudi Arabia and the wild card Qatar.
And then there’s his showman sleight of hand over intentions in Canada and Greenland.
Keep them guessing, is how it seems to me. But for a supposed isolationist he has a global reach with American fingers in a lot of international pies.
Update
I am updating this on the evening of 15 August 2025, before whatever agreement Putin and Trump may come to over Ukraine has been made public. Commentators are saying Trump is a fool, a plaything in Putin’s hands. If no deal is struck – what will Trump the supposed isolationist do?