Hoover and Offshore Foreign Policy, 1921-1933

This article contends that during the Republican administrations of the 1920s, U.S. officials pursued no deliberate strategy of offshore balancing. On the contrary, Washington hoped to transcend the necessity for balance of power policies altogether through developing a new, demilitarized and economically interdependent world order. The strategy was certainly offshore, in the sense of avoiding alliance commitments, but it did not involve great power balancing. Instead, it combined a business orientation, deep aversion to the use of force, and a profound optimism in the inevitability of peaceful international progress.