America’s chronic ambivalence about foreign policy is rootedin its long, geographically isolated, colonial history, and in the powerful legacy of George Washington’s hostility towards “foreign entanglements”

President Obama’s announcement late last month that U.S. forces would begin bombing the forces of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria marked a decisive shift towards intervention for his administration. Irina Somerton argues that Obama’s indecisiveness and reluctance to pursue a more muscular Foreign Policy needs to be seen in the context of America’s deep-rooted Isolationism. She writes that this Isolationism, which began over four centuries ago, during 177 years in which the future USA was a group of British colonies, was reinforced after independence by George Washington’s warnings against “Foreign Entanglements”.