Falling sure. Having very annoying setbacks, avoidable setbacks, no.
250 years ago if some crop failed in Neverheardofit America probably wouldn’t even know. The world was big, and countries really didn’t impact on each other unless they got into a war. Now, probably a bunch of American companies are invested in that industry, others are dependent on it, one crop failure in the middle of nowhere can screw up a whole sector of the economy. Now we have a vested interest in making Neverheardofit doesn’t have a crop failure. And also doesn’t get invaded.
This is what we learned with WWII. We tried being isolationist. We tried letting them “handle it themselves”. And we got attacked. And the world is much much smaller than it was in 1941. Isolationism is a non-starter, we just aren’t isolated anymore, we CANNOT be.
America is a republic not an empire.
The most recent failure of isolatioism is when bush i told saddam that his dispute with kuwait was of no concern to the us. That gave saddam the green light to invade kuwait. Some will say thats what bush really wanted.well that proves the point!