User:Samuel A. Evans/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
United States non-interventionism

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
I have chosen to evaluate this article because it is a C-class article in my field of interest has a long history of edits, as well as an involved talk page that can be referenced if I need more context into the article.

Evaluate the article
(Compose a detailed evaluation of the article here, considering each of the key aspects listed above. Consider the guiding questions, and check out the examples of what a useful Wikipedia article evaluation looks like.)

The Article is a great introduction to the impacts of non-interventionist policy on the United States over its history, however there are several parts of the article, both structure and substance, that should be improved and expanded. Beginning with the latter, and working from the lead:

The page leads with a somewhat misleading sentence "United States non-interventionism primarily refers to the foreign policy that was eventually applied by the United States between the late 18th century and the first half of the 20th century". This sentence seems to portray non-intervention as a progression of US policy towards non-intervention, rather than addressing any potential back and forth between non-interventionism and interventionism, the popularity of which have constantly shifted back and forth in their balance over the history of the nation, as elaborated on later in the page (especially in reference to WWI and WWII).

Content
As far as content of the body of the article is concerned, the quality of the writing is adequate, I find it difficult to understand how all the points brought up are connected. As an example, the first sentence in the 'Background' section refers to British Prime Minister Robert Walpole and how he introduced isolation to Americans. However, the connection between Walpole's isolationist policy and America is not described beyond "Walpole's position was known to Americans". This sort of of glossing over connections is present in other parts of the page, and is a serious issue with its credibility as a well-sourced and well-argued page.

Another issue with the body of the article is the lack of any clear distinction between non-interventionism, neutrality and isolationism, three separate policies which would have drastically different effects on foreign policy. this is a serious shortcoming that should be remedied either in the background section, or in a special 'Definitions' section. This issue is brought up on the page's talk page, and would be one of the first things to remedy.

I took issue with the statement "In the wake of the Frist World War, the non-interventionist tendencies gained ascendancy". This sentence sets up the coming two paragraphs, however it both unsourced and not elaborated on (there is no explanation on how or why this occurred). In the same section, the section about the Kellogg-Briand Pact seemed to be biased in its interpretation of the pact, and did not cite any sources in the final sentence, which seemed to draw conclusions from the pact, rather than from any academic interpretation.

The Life survey in 'Non-interventionism before entering World War II' is an excellent source at presenting the extent of interventionist support in 1940, however the page had not provided any statistics for the popularity of non-interventionism before this point, so it is hard to gage what sort of shift actually happened with WWII.

Jumping forward towards the end of the article, at the end of the section 'Non-interventionism in the 21st century' there is only passing mention of the war in Ukraine, which in my opinion would warrant more examination as a gage of current US non-interventionist sentiments.

Finally, the last two sections written in prose 'Conservative policies' and 'Criticism' are very underwritten for the amount of attention paid to other parts of the article. The latter, especially, comprises only one source from the 1990s and could be greatly expanded with both older and more recent criticisms of the policy. This is one of my most requested changes to the page.

Structure
The page's structure could be substantially improved as well. On a most basic level, the page is lacking in photos and visual references for readers, with only 2 images. Many areas of the paper would benefit from more images, such as a graph of non-interventionist support over time to illustrate the importance of events like WWII (if available), or even just images of key figures brought up by the paper, like Robert A. Taft.

The page also could benefit from a restructuring of its sections, which especially towards the beginning of the page feel arbitrary, especially between 'No entangling alliances (19th century)' and '20th century non-interventionism', where the divide is chronological, and similar policies are described in both sections. I would restructure this into '19th century non-interventionism' and 'non-interventionism surrounding World War I' to better reflect what had an impact on the policy.

The page also lacks any sort of information on non-interventionist sentiment between the 1960's and the Obama presidency, with no explanation for the skip. It is understandable to want to skim over this period, as there was very little non-interventionist sentiment over this period, but the page does not give any reasoning for the skip, leading it to be jarring when the page is read.

All of this brings me to my biggest issue with the page, and the one I would like to see changed most. That is the biased portrayal of the United States as non-interventionist across its history, with stints of interventionism as exceptions. I believe that this narrative of the page is not substantiated by the evidence given, and as brought up in the page's talk page, the page ignores international interventions by the US such as the war of 1812 or its support of the White Russians after the World War I. This page could be substantially improved by discussing the periods of interventionist and non-interventionist policy in a more nuanced way and by making more of an effort to explain the shifts in policy over time, rather than stating them without argument.