Foreign Policy America's founding fathers have always earnestly urged the United States to keep to a foreign policy of isolationism. Before leaving office, President Washington warned the budding nation of the dangers of entanglements and potentially implicating treaties with other nations. President Jefferson, taking a similar view, refused to take sides in the conflict between Great Britain and France by going even as far as putting in effect the Embargo, forbidding trade with either nation until they left America out of the conflict. Conceivably, the Monroe Doctrine (1823) was a foreshadowing of the more aggressive stand that America would have t