"The path of the United States towards interventionism was not inevitable". This was stated by the professor of the Complutense University of Madrid, José Antonio Montero. A specialist in the history of International Relations, he has taught a seminar of the group of research in Recent History (GIHRE) of the School of Philosophy and Letters of the University of Navarra.

In his speech, he explained the irregular process by which the United States became, between 1890 and 1952, an interventionist superpower. Likewise, Montero pointed out that a series of historical currents were opposed to the participation of the United States beyond its borders. This was the view, for example, of the supporters of the old President Washington, a staunch advocate of non-intervention in European affairs. Or those who subscribed to doctrines such as that of President Monroe (1823: America for the Americans) or the idea of the manifest destiny of the United States to spread throughout the continent. These currents conceived of the United States as an exceptional fact, whether because of its youth, ideological origin or its character as a "frontier" country expanding westward.

However, on the basis of this "exceptionalism", U.S. intervention in matters outside its sphere of influence also began to be justified. For example, the defense of the democratic principle or the extension of free trade, ideas that President Wilson considered essential to the United States, were defended in Europe and Asia. But the American leaders' awareness of belonging to an exceptional nation did not lead them to the intervention that eventually took place. Montero reviewed some historical events such as the Spanish-American War and the First and Second World Wars to describe the complex march of the American state towards interventionism. "The path of the United States to interventionism or the superpower subject they became was not inevitable," Montero explained.

During the Spanish-American War, for example, in whose study the role of the press in triggering intervention against Spain has been noted, in reality it was not unequivocal. Not all newspapers advocated intervention, nor was this position subscribed to in all states. Even Presidents Cleveland and McKinley did not see clearly the participation in the war and only the latter finally decided to do so, in a framework of enormous tension in the congress and with the pressure of several prominent positions of the Administration. Even the annexation of the Philippines in 1899 raised important anti-imperialist protests.

Montero has also pointed out that the intervention in World War I was made when in the immediately preceding elections the two candidates had waved the flag of isolationism. President Wilson's famous 14 points were more famous outside the United States than in his own country. Wilson himself fell into disgrace after the war, his plan failed and in 1919 the workers' strikes in the United States demonstrated that not only did America exert influence over Europe, but that the opposite was also true status .

The term "isolationism" to describe the ideological civil service examination to intervene in international affairs was popularized in World War II to scorn the many detractors of participation. The slogan America First was wielded at the time by the likes of aviator Charles Lindbergh, who believed that the United States should remain inward-looking. Even in 1952, in the election contest between Eisenhower and Taft, the latter was in favor of the isolation of the United States. But it was also then, in the wake of Ike's victory, that a consensus in favor of interventionism began to emerge.

Throughout the GIHRE's seminar , Professor José Antonio Montero also reviewed the trade policy and culture of the United States to explain the ambivalence of its international position, between openness and isolation. Degree In this sense, he recalled, for example, the paradox that occurred in the 1920s, when Europe reached a very high level of economic dependence on the United States and, at the same time, the United States was so prone to protectionism. Montero, a connoisseur of Spanish-American diplomatic relations and an expert in cultural diplomacy and soft-diplomacy, will soon publish a book with Pablo León Aguinaga, another specialist in international relations, graduate United States and the World (1890-1952).