Why did America stay isolationist from 1914-1917?

Question

I know Wilson wanted to stick to policy, but wat else?

Answer 1

From the founding of the US American did not want to be involved in European wars. Our foreign policy was (Monroe Doctrine) to keep European powers out of the Americas and not to get involved in Europe. This feeling was very strong even up to WWII and beyond.

Answer 2

The biggest reason was that Wilson was not as convinced of America's power as Roosevelt was. So he was hesitant when he saw the sheer might that was being expended on battlefields. The European alliances were also a literal snake pit. There were open alliances, and then there were the secret alliances some of which actually directly contradicted the open ones. Wilson thought that trying to untangle that mess would only entangle the US. Not until Germany refused to stop unlimited submarine warfare did the US get pushed into a corner.

Answer 3

I think America just didn't want to get involved in another war, remember that less that 100 years prier we had come out of the Civil War, and then not to long after the Civil War America was involved in the Spanish American war in 1898, so at that point America just wanted to be at peace and didn't want to get ivolved in other people's war, but of course when America got the Zimmeran telegram, that period of Foreign Policy went out the window.

Answer 4

Frankly, because the United States felt that the struggle to save European democracy was not as important as the ability of its capitalists to make money selling war goods to both sides.

As in the Second World War, the USA only entered when attacked themselves. It made my grandfather so proud he resigned his commission in the army engineers in 1914 and emigrated to Canada to enlist.