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AMERICAN
FOREIGN
POLICY
By D. W. EROGAN

OXFORD PAMPHLETS
ON WORLD AFFAIRS
OXFORD PAMPHLETS ON WORLD AFFAIRS
No. 50

AMERICAN FOREIGN
POLICY
BY

D. W. B R O G A N

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

LONDON: HUMPHREY MlLFORD
1941
 NOT only the winning of the war, but the future of
civilization depends upon some kind of collaboration
between the United States and the British Empire, and
the meeting in August 1941 of President and Prime
Minister on the waters of the Atlantic, that both divides
and joins America and Britain, symbolizes the supreme
importance of this collaboration.
When two democratic groups go into partnership, the
foundations must be laid on mutual understanding and
knowledge of each other by the people of each group.
Nowhere is this knowledge more necessary—or the lack
of it more likely to lead to misunderstanding—than in the
field of foreign policy. In this pamphlet Professor Brogan
describes the traditional outlook of America on world
affairs, the policy which she has followed in recent years,
and the machinery by which that policy is carried out.
He clears up many difficulties for the British reader—
such as the real meaning (or meanings, for it has varied
from time to time) of the Monroe Doctrine; the reason
why America has time and again renounced all partici-
pation in European affairs, but is time and again drawn
back into them; the nature of Pan-Americanism; the
occasional striking apparent discrepancy between the
high moral line taken in foreign affairs by American
public opinion, and the much more' realistic' attitude of
the State Department. Particular attention is devoted to
the development of policy since 1918 and the gradual
weakening of the extreme isolationist position, and the
most controversial subjects, such as the League of
Nations, War Debts, and the Neutrality legislation, are
dealt with with admirable detachment.
Professor Brogan is the author of The U.S.A.: An
Outline of the Country, its People and Institutions in ' The
World To-day' series.

First published 18 September 1941

 AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY

The United States and the World

T is not a mere accident of language that in American

I speech 'frontier' means not the area bordering on
neighbouring states, but an ever-changing internal area,
the región won in any geueration from the wilderness and
the Indian and, in a more general way, the whole process
of settling and civilizing the vast empty areas of the North
American continent. Ñor is it unimportant that of the
two wars that have left an abiding mark on the American
national memory, the first, which the British cali' the War
of Independence', is known to the Americans as 'the
Revolutionary W a r ' , while the second is known to all the
world (except the South) as 'the American Civil W a r ' . 1
Other wars have created military reputations or have pro-
vided political issues, but no war, not fought on the
present territory of the United States, has left a permanent
mark on American life, has really entered into the national
tradition. This is true of the wars with México and Spain
and even of the American share in the World War of
1914-18. There is in the American attitude to these con-
flicts something of the spectator's attitude, something of
the attitude, too, of the man who regrets a youthful folly.
Few Americans feel the equivalent of Rupert Brooke's
' córner of a foreign field that is for ever England' and the
main effort of American piety after the last war was not to
create great war cemeteries in France, but to bring back
to America the bodies of her dead.
For the greater part of its history, the United States has
been able to ignore the power politics of less fortúnate
regions. It has no near neighbours who are in the least
1 In the South it is known as 'the War Between the States'.
3<D AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY

degree formidable to it. It is not only that until very

modern times the United States had no need to fear any
but naval power, but that no European power, no matter
what its character and ambitions, could risk the immense
extensión of its ambitions across the Atlantic or Pacific,
because no power was sufficiently secure at home to daré
turn its back to Europe or Asia and bring into its own
orbit any part of the New World. Without being con-
scious of it, the United States benefited from a balance of
power that kept Europe disunited and left the United
States potentially the strongest power in the world—
and gave it time, if need be, to. turn that potentiality into
actual fact.
It was natural, then, for American statesmen, and still
more for American public opinion, to regard foreign
policy as something of a luxury. American diplomatic
history, save for brief moments like the period of the
Civil War, does not consist of elabórate manceuvres, of
treaties and alliances, but of claims for compensation for
injury to American citizens in Russia, China, Ireland, in
disputes over the admission of pork to the Germán market,
or Japanese to California. T h e American minister or
ambassador was by definition a wall-flower. He watched
the diplomatic dance, he did not join in it.
T h e composite character of the American population
helped to make this attitude part of American political
tradition. There were too many emotional links between
various American and European groups to make it prudent
for the United States to take a line in world politics which
would lead to the reproductioii, in America, of the age-old
feuds of Europe, and for many a reasonable and generous
American, one of the worst results of American interven-
tion in the last war was the bitterness it bred between
Germán-Americans and other Americans. T o the average
American, an active and continuous foreign policy has the
same repellent quality as a rigorous and long-continued
health regime has to a normally robust man.
 3<D AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY

The U.S. as Missionary of Freedom

Yet there are certain permanent characteristics of
American foreign policy and of American public sentiment
towards questions of foreign policy. Deeply engraved on
the American mind is the belief that 'righteousness
exalteth a nation' and if the sin that is ' a reproach to any
people' is more easily imputed by Americans to other
nations than to themselves, that is merely to say that
Americans are human. But there always has been in the
United States, ever since its foundation, a constantly
vigilant minority, becoming from time to time a majority,
that has criticized, opposed and altered the policy of the
Union. In the long run, no policy that is merely self-
regarding, merely prudential, has commanded continuous
Ameritan support and whether the alleged victims of
American oppression have been Indians a century ago or
Nicaraguans in the last twenty years, the conscience of
America has been aroused by men and women convinced
that the United States owes the world a higher standard
than the mere pursuit of the máximum advantages made
possible by her position and her power.
This view of the United States as, in a special sense, a
trastee for the hopes of mankind, a forcé making for
progress and enlightenment, dates in part from the
Puritan founders of New England, but more directly from
the makers of the Republic. They, or the democratic
section of them, were convinced that the new nation had a
great role as a teacher by example. T h e oíd bad days of
tyranny and darkness were over in the United States and
the visión of America as the home of ' liberty enlightening
the world was early cherished'—and not only in America
but in Europe as well.
It was this belief that America was the great exemplar
of liberty, of democracy, that is the basis of Lincoln's
most famous speech. If the Union fails, so ran his brief
argument at Gettysburg, the possibility of the survival of
3<D
AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY

a nation ' conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the pro-

position that all men1 are created equal' will be held to
be disproved. For democracy, the belief in equality, is the
American political religión. He who in Europe or in
Britain makes these matters of little moment, talks of
mere 'idiosyncrasies' of political behaviour, cuts himself
off from the living waters of, American life. For that life
is based on Jefferson's belief that the day had come when
it was evident in America t h a t ' the mass of mankind has
not been born with saddles on their backs, ñor a favoured
few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately,
by the grace of God. These are grounds of hope for
others.'

No ' Entangling Alliances'

This view of the United States as a missionary of
freedom is, at first sight, incompatible with another
equally strong American tradition, the doctrine preached
by Washington in his Farewell Address. ' T h e great rule
of conduct for us, in regard to foreign nations, is in extend-
ing our commercial relations, to have with them as little
political connection as possible.' 1 But the circumstances
of the age explain Washington's attitude well enough. He
was concerned to warn his countrymen against the
dangers of their taking sides, passionately, in the great
controversies over the French Revolution. His warning
was as much addressed to the dangers of what we cali a
'Fifth Column' as against too active a foreign policy. But
it was undoubtedly a warning against too great concern
with the then remote continent of Europe which had ' a
set of primary interests, which to us have none, or a very
remote relation'. That the United States was not strong
enough, or united enough, to play a part in European
politics was the judgment of all the Founding Fathers.
She grew stronger, but she did not, in this field, neces-
1 It is almost universally believed that Washington warned his

countrymen against' entangling a l l i a n c e s T h a t phrase is Jefferson's.

3<D AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY

sarily grow much more united. And Europe, torn with

dynastic and national feuds, was not a theatre in which
America could act naturally or with ease. American
opinion was puzzled and angered by the apparently
endless tale of blood, and grateful that 3,000 miles and
sound political institutions separated" her from the
incorrigible continent.

American Sympathy with Democracy

Yet this political reserve was not incompatible with
sympathy with democratic movements. Greeks, Hun-
garians, Italians, Poles, Irish, Armenians, Chínese—all
the peoples whom American ways of thought identified
with the good fight—got sympathy and aid and comfort
from Americans, if not from the United States. It was
not only the realization of how deep was the gulf between
the imperial Germán government and the United States
that made it possible for Wilson to lead the American
people into the war in 1917, but the collapse of the
Tsardom, the symbol for most Americans of dynastic
tyranny and corruption.
On the plañe of sentiment, American public opinion and
American < policy have swung from realization of her
geographical remoteness and ignorance to passionate
sympathy with those who spoke or seemed to speak her
political language. If the pendulum has usually swung
back to an isolationist policy, which, it is asserted, is sancti-
fied by the advice of Washington, it has done so because
Americans have been pained and disillusioned to discover
that a community of ideáis is not enough, that there must
be a community of interest and of continuing eífort. For as
Chesterton pointed out after the last war, ' T h e world will
never be made safe for democracy; it is a dangerous
trade.' Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty and, like
other peoples, the Americans are tempted to lie back and
regard as permanently won the victory that each
generation must win over again, the victory of liberty and
3<D
AMERICAN F O R E I G N POLICY

law. When it has become plain that the battle has to be

fought again, the American people has remembered its
charter, the Declaration of Independence, which declares
for all men, not merely for Americans, the right to 'life,
liberty and the pursuit of happiness'.

The Machinery of American Foreign Policy

T h e American constitution, too, imposes special
obstaclls to diplomacy. In the words of the Constitution
the President has 'power, by and with the advice and
consent of the Senate, to make treaties, provided two-
thirds of the Senators present concur'. T h e framers of
the Constitution in 1787 thought it possible that the
Senate would act as a kind of Privy Council, that it would
both propose treaties to the President and advise him
durirfg the course of negotiations; but although both have
been done; in normal practice the Senate's control over
foreign policy becomes operative only when the President
has negotiated a treaty and demands its ratification. 1
That is, the división of power between an executive, the
President (whom Congress cannot get rid of) and the
legislature, Congress (which the President cannot dissolve),
is carried over to the field of foreign affairs. T h e Con-
stitution, by forbidding cabinet officers to sit in Congress,
has made it necessary to find other means of collaboration.
Therefore the Secretary of State 2 has constantly to deal
with the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations and
especially with its Chairman.
This provision of the American constitution can be
defended to-day for the same. reasons that caused its
adoption in 1787. T o grant unlimited power of treaty-
making to the President would be to abandon a large part
1 T h e consent of the Senate is alsorequiredfortheappointmentof am-

bassadors, ministers, etc., but this power is seldom used to control policy.
8 The American Foreign Office is kriown as the Department of

State. Although its work is almost exclusively diplomatic, it has a

few formal functions in domestic affairs.
 3<D A M E R I C A N F O R E I G N POLICY

of the legislative power to him, for treaties, like ordinary

federal statutes, are part of 'the supreme law of the land'.
It was so evident that such a grant was contrary to the
separation of powers of the federal constitution, that it was
originally proposed to exelude the President from treaty-
makingaltogether. Butsomuchdiplomaticbusinessmust, in
fact, be executive in character, that this plan was recognized
as equally impracticable; the conjunction of the Senate
and the President in treaty-making was thus inevitable. 1
More difficult to justify is the requirement of a special,
two-thirds majority for the ratification of treaties. As
each State has the same representation in the Senate,
regardless of its size and population, the one-third plus
one that may veto a treaty may represent a great deal less
than a third of the American people. Quite a small
minority can block an international policy desired by a
large majority. Y e t the two-thirds rule can be justified.
It refleets the fact that the United States is very large,
very diversified and that a foreign policy that has not a very
wide backing, fairly distributed over the whole unión,
is dangerous.
Y e t American constitutional rules make American
diplomatic action very difficult. A President negotiating
a treaty may bear in mind the probable reactions of the
Senate; he may consult leading Senators; he may use them
as negotiators; but he can never be sure that the most
carefully drafted treaty will not be so altered in the
Seríate that he will be unprepared to act on it, or the
foreign nation will refuse to accept the senatorial amend-
ments, or the Senate will itself refuse to ratify the treaty in
any versión. As amendments can be made by simple
majorities, it is possible for a succession of amendments to
1 When treaties involve the expenditure of Hioney, in addition to

senatorial ratification of the treaty it is necessary to have a Bill voting

the money passed by a majority of each House. In such cases, it is
difficult to prevent the merits of the Treaty itself being debated in the
House of Representatives, without whose action the Treaty would in
effect remain a dead letter.
3<D AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY

be passed which produce a final versión of the treaty so

inconsistent or so unworkable that the necessary two-
thirds majority cannot be found.
Then, as in all congressional business, the role of the
relevant committee is of great importance. It is in the
Committee of Foreign Relations that the treaty is first
debated and amended or rejected. That committee may
be filled with Senators of the party opposed to the Presi-
dent or by dissident members of his own party. Its
members have not the pressure of responsibility for action
that drives Presidents to seek to do something; reasons for
not doing anything are not hard to come by. On the other
hand, most members of this committee go on to it because
they are interested in foreign affairs; membership has
prestige valué but is not of immediate political importance
in domestic affairs. Normally weight in the Committee
goes by length of service, which ensures that the leading
members have had a long experience of diplomatic busi-
ness. On the other hand, mere seniority may bring to the
chairmanship of the Committee a Senator who is unfit for
his job, or bitterly hostile to the President.
Lastly, the constitutional control of foreign affairs by
the Senate encourages debate on all issues of foreign
policy. Petitions, delegations, public-opinion polis, even
interruptions from the gallery, even picketing of Senators
whose views are disliked by any organized group, ensure
that Senators will not forget that they are representatives
of the people, not irresponsible legislators. T h e barrage
of appeal and counter-appeal may intimidate some Sena-
tors and baffle others and it ensures that foreign policy is
discussed in an atmosphere of heat which, in some cases,
almost more than outweighs the advantage that it i?
discussed in the light.

Areas of Special Interest: The Pacific

It is natural that we should think of American foreign
policy in terms of European conflict, but, in fact,
 3<D AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY

American policy has been far more concerned with what

in America is called 'the Orient' and with the rest of the
American continents than it has been concerned with
Europe.
American interest in the Pacific dates from the early
days of the Republic, when the American merchant and
sailor found in China one of their most profitable fields
óf action. Soon there was added the great missionary
interest which, in political and emotional power, carne to
eclipse any purely commercial connection. By making
over its share of the indemnity imposed on China after the
Boxer Rebellion of 1900 to a fund for educating Chínese
in America, the United States further tightened the bonds
between herself and the new China. T h e Chínese
Revolution of 1912 was in great part the work of
American-trained Chínese and still more has the per-
sonnel of the Kuomintang party been under American
influence. For China, millions of Americans feel a moral
responsibility and a moral interest they do not feel for any
other cóuntry.
Although it was an American squadron that forced open
the gates of Japan in 1853 and although there have always
been important business connections with Japan,
American opinion has never been as sympathetic to the
island Empire as to the great continental agglomeration.
T h e only Oriental state to become a great power, Japan
was in a position to deal with the United States on equal
terms. Despite tbe limitations accepted at the Washing-
ton Conference of 1921, the Japanese Navy in its home
waters was a match for the American Navy. It was both
because of reliance on the permanence of British control of
the Atlantic aird because of a realization that it was
probably in the Pacific that American physical power
might have to support moral influence, that the main
American fleet was moved to the Pacific bases and that
Honolulu became the chief American fortress. Y e t
American opinion was far behind naval opinion in its
3<D
AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY

appreciation of the realities of power politics in the

Pacific. It was in agreement with the policy of ending
American control of the Philippines, acquired in 1898
from Spain. It opposed the fortification of Guam: and it
was content with a defence policy based ón Hawaii, a
policy that gave Japan, strategically, a free hand in the
Asiatic half of the Pacific.
When, despite its treaty obligations, Japan took'
advantage of this free hand to seize Manchuria in 1931,
American public opinion was indignant, but its reaction
was confused. Mr. Hoover's Secretary of State, Mr.
Stimson, 1 was anxious to oppose, with all the means in his
power, the Japanese aggression. But it was not very clear
(given American public opinion) what means were in
his power. And informed American opinion was less
angered by British hesitation to launch out on a bold
policy in which the Hoover administration might not be
able to follow, than distressed by the forensic skill and,
indeed, by something that might almost be called warmth,
with which the then British Foreign Secretary 2 put the
Japanese case. As the Manchuria 'incident' has de-
veloped into the 'China incident', that is, into a first-class
war, American opinion has become increasingly hostile to
Japan, prepared to support lavish economic aid for China,
but still holding off from any steps that might make a
move from moral and economití to military support
inevitable or even likely.
Y e t American interest in China is deep and genuine.
There was probably more real indignation over the
bestialities that followed Japanese victories in China than
over formally more provocative acts like the bombing of
the American gunboat Panay in the Yaiígtse (1937). As
the European situation has got more critical, the impli-
cations of the Axis for American security have become

1 Now M r Roosevelt's Secretary of War.

s Lord (then Sir John) Simón.
3<D AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY

clearer; the nuisance valué to Germany of Japanese

threats has been noted and resented; and the decisión to
build a 'two-ocean' navy reveáis the death of the illusion
that, in the contemporary world, moral example or aid
are enough in themselves.

Latín America and the Monroe Doctrine

Even more involved in American emotions, historical
traditions and economic and strategic interests, is the rest
of the American continents. Cañada can be dismissed in a
few words. It is hardly regarded as a foreign country,
though the odd illusion that it is ' owned' by Britain still
survives. All but a few cranks admit that the protection
of Cañada is a fundamental interest of the United States.
Less easy to define or ¿Ilústrate is the attitude of the
United States to Latin-America, that mass of traditions,
policies, precedents, interests covered by the magic term
' the Monroe Doctrine'.
According to American legend, an apparently respec-
table citizen was about to be lynched despite his frenzied
protests. He was rescued by the Sheriff who asked what
was his offence. ' H e said that he didn't believe in the
Monroe Doctrine'. 'It's untrue. I love the Monroe
Doctrine; I admire the Monroe Doctrine; I'd die for the
Monroe Doctrine. All I said was that I didn't know what
it was.'
Indeed, the Monroe Doctrine has not merely meant
different things at différent times; it has never meant to
the average citizen anything very concrete; it has been
rather an attitude than a policy; while, for the rulers of
America, it has been a useful phrase, respectable and
emotionally potent, which could be used to cover up a
realistic and utilitarian policy whose utility the man in the
street might not have been able to appreciate, had the
policy not been guaranteed by its identification with the
mysterious dogma.
Historically, the message of President Monroe of
3<D AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY

2 December 1823 was directed against schemes deemed

dangerous to the interests and sentiments of the American
government. It was directed against a revival of European
projects of expansión on the north American continent;
here the immediately dangerous power was Russia, which
was advancing down the Pacific coast to California from
Alaska. T h e United States had a good reason to dislike
claim-staking of this kind, for not wishing any part of the
American continents '. . . [to] be consideredas subjects for
future colonization by any European powers'. In North
America, at least, the United States was resolved to be
the dominant power and to be the universal legatee for
all collapsing empires. In less than a generation after
Russia had been politely requested to stay out of Cali-
fornia, the United States had conquered and annexed
that remote dependency of the young Mexican Republic.
T h e Monroe Doctrine was in no sense a self-denying
ordinance, although the valid claims of existing European
powers in the Americas were excepted from the Doctrine's
ban.
T h e message of President Monroe was an announce-
ment to all whom it might concern that the United States
had an interest in the status quo, including in that status
the independence of the newly-established States of
Latjn America. But it did not, in its first form, guarantee
these States against aggression from the United States.
T h e first generation, at least, of the Doctrine was also the
age of ' Manifest D e s t i n y t h e belief that as the strongest,
most energetic, most progressive power in America, the
United States would be only anticipating the inevitable
march of history if she abolished such anomaliés as the
survival of British rule in Cañada and Spanish rule in Cuba
and Puerto Rico. Ñ o r was this all. A s México passed
through revolution after revolution, it carne to be widely
accepted that American power 'and therefore rights'
could and should be extended to cover all North America
down to Darien, as it was taken as in the nature of things
 AMERICAN FOREIGN P O U C Y 15

that when the time carne to build a canal across the

isthmus of Panama, the United States would do it.
Y e t it must be pointed out that the United States
resisted several tempting opportunities to annex Cuba;
that when she occupied Cuba she carried out her promise
to make the island independent; and that her rule in Puerto
Rico has been financially generous and as humane and
tolerant as the permanently unsatisfactory economic
condition of that over-crowded island permits. The
United States did make war on México in 1846, but she
imposed terms of peace far less rigorous than the prostrate
Mexicans could have been forced to accept, and one result
of that moderation is that to this day the greatest of
American western rivers, the Colorado, enters the sea
through Mexican territory, which is highly inconvenient
to the United States. In the long run, it was the United
States which built the Panama Canal, but she was generous
to the heirs of the French pioneers, and if she insisted on
beingfreed from the shackles of the oldtreaties that tied her
hands, President Wilson was able to induce Congress to re-
peal legislationgivingAmericanshippingpreferential rights
in the canal built by American money and American skill.
T h e second aspect of the Monroe Doctrine was vaguer,
more ideological. Alarmed by hints conveyed by the
British Foreign Secretary, George Canning, the American
government protested against designs attributed to con-
servative European powers, 'the Holy Alliance', of
restoring Spanish rule in the revolted States of South
America by means of a French expeditionary forcé. T h e
United States in 1823 was not powerful enough to have
prevented a French fleet and army being transported to
Buenos Aires, a región more remote from New York than
from Cherbourg. But there was no serious intention of
sending such an expedition, and it was natural that á
strong United States should, in later generations, have
exaggerated the effect of this declaration of sentiment into
a potent affirmation of policy.
3<D AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY

This historical exaggeration soon acquired independent

historical forcé. It became an accepted maxim of
American policy that the independence of the Latin-
American States and their territorial integrity was a
major interest of the United States, which had a right—
and a duty—to protect them against aggression from
European enemies, but not from each other or from the
United States.
This policy could have been attacked on narrowly
prudential grounds. T h e southern nations of South
America were remote in space, in institutions, in culture
and in sentiment from the United States. It was a mere
accident of nomenclature that they and the United States
were located on two continents, each of which bore the
ñame America, and which were physically joined by a
narrow isthmus. Ñor did economic interest furnish links
that history and geography had neglected to provide. In
all but mere geographical nomenclature,' Argentina had
more links with Britain than with the United States. T h e
mental habit of looking at maps designed to be read from
north to south, rather than looking at maps designed to be
read from east to west, reinforced a political attitude that
was, until the twentieth century, prophetic rather than
actual. In objecting to British or French or Spanish
aggression in México or in the Caribbean, the United
States was acting as a great power normally does. In
talking as if her interest in the quarrels between Perú and
Chile or the diplomatic difficulties of Venezuela and
Britain were interests of the same kind as those arising
from Mexican or Cuban revolutions, the United States
was acting romantically. Y e t it should be remembered,
that had there not been this romantic sense of Pan-
American du.ty, of the relation of a big brother to weak and
foolish youngsters, there would not only have been less
well-meaning interference in the remoter parts of South
America, but, probably, less willingness to recognize that
what went on in such cióse neighbours as Cuba and
3<D AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY

México was the business of the United States. T h e

Monroe Doctrine was a window, a stained-glass and
deceptive window, through which the United States
looked out on the world. But without the Doctrine, she
might not have looked out at all.
With the completioñ of the Panama Canal in 1914 and
the outbreak of the first Great War, the Monroe Doctrine
acquired a new realistic character. T h e canal brought the
Pacific nations closer to the seat of power in the United
States, the Atlantic seaboard. T h e war, by destroying
Germán and crippling British business activity in South
America, gave an opportunity to American business, which
it took. T h e political course of the war made the United
States, for a time, the most courted and feared of the great
powers and made her permanjpntly one of the two great
naval powers, and the dominating naval power in the
western Atlantic and the Pacific. Compared with any of
her American neighbours, even with Brazil, the United
States was a colossus, and the long tradition that made
her, in the eyes of the American people, especially the
guardian of the weaker American nations, ensured that,
at a time when any activity in foreign affairs was con-
demned by American public opinion, the magic formula
'Monroe Doctrine' would justify activities that, without
the cover of the formula, could not have been attempted
at all.

The ' Good-Neighbour' Policy

In the decades following the armistice of 1918, United
States policy evolved from the friendly but patronizing
attitude of an overwhelmingly powerñil únele, into what
was to be called by President Franklin D. Roosevelt the
'good-neighbour' policy. Latin-American opinion had
been roused to suspicion and hostility at the beginning of
the century largely by the activities of President Theodore
Roosevelt, above all by the support given to the Panama
-Revolution of 1903, a revolution that freed the United
3<D AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY

States from the necessity of coming to terms with Colom-

bia in order to build the Panama Canal, a convenience
paid for in the suspicion and ironical scepticism that
was aroused in Latin-America. Intervention in Central
American and Caribbean republics t o ' restore order' added
to the malaise. President Wilso'n had disclaimed all
annexationist intentions, and although years of Mexican
revolution and counter-revolution gave the United States
many legitímate grievances and many opportunities of
armed intervention, Latin-America remembered General
Pershing's pursuit into México of the 'patriot' or bandit
Pancho Villa, who had raided an American town (1916)
and the less defensible occupation of Vera Cruz (1914),
which was a means of bringing pressure to bear against
the Mexican dictator, Huerta, whose methods of attaining
power had shocked President Wilson. What was—given
the immense preponderance in power of the United
States and the provocations offered by various Mexican
warring factions—extraordinary moderation, was not seen
as such by proud and fearful Latin-Americans. 'Dollar
d i p l o m a c y t h e forcible collection of the external debts of
ill-governed and bankrupt little republics, continued to
make for bad blood. Y e t American opinion, in this as in
every other sphere of foreign relations, was increasingly
pacific and negative. T h e Coolidge administration
(1923-29) carne to terms with México; the Hoover admin-
istration (1929-33) carried farther the liquidation of all
direct political commitments; and the Roosevelt adminis-
tration both gave up the special rights it had in Cuba 1
(which had been freed by American arms) and abandoned
the high moralistic','position of the Wilson administration
which had refused to recognize governments which carne
into power by a revolution.
T h e way was psychologically prepared for a more
genuine 'Pan-American' policy than had been possible in
1 Generally known, from the Senator who sponsored the limitations

on Cuban sovereignty, as 'the Platt amendment'.

3<D AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY

the past. A series of conferences, at Montevideo (1933),

Lima (1938), special conference of foreign ministers at
Panama (1939) and Havana (1940) sought to tighten the
political and economic relations between the American
powers; and the last two, held in the shadow of the new
world war, tried to develop a common defence policy.
But even as late as 1939, the Panama Conference was
content with declaring that American waters (roughly 300
miles from the shore) were to be freed from belligerént
activity. But there was no corresponding willingness to
take action to enforce this declaration, and in fact there
took place almost at once, in these waters, the first serious
naval action of the war, the destruction of the Graf Spee.
In this policy there was implicit the belief that, what-
ever the course of war in Europe, the territorial and
strategic status quo in the Americas was not in danger.
T h e Roosevelt administration and American public
opinion did not, indeed, display indifference to the
results of the war, but it was possible to believe before
May, 1940, that 'river stay away from my door' was a
practical policy.

European Possessions in the Western Hemisphere

T h e collapse of France made a long neglected aspect of
the Monroe Doctrine suddenly come to the front. Were
the spoils of France to include French possessions in the
western hemisphere? T h e American chargé d'affaires
informed the Germán government that the U . S . A . ' would
not recognize any transfer of a geographical región of the
Western Hemisphere from one non-American power to
another non-American power'. T h e Germán reply was
not comforting; it pointed out that the Monroe Doctrine
so interpreted 'would amount to conferring upon some
European countries the right to possess territories in the
Western Hemisphere and not to other European coun-
tries'. T h e American reply, in effect, agreed that this
3<D
AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY

was so; the Monroe Doctrine accepted the status quo of

1823, but that was all. It opposed any change in the
existing territorial system of the western hemisphere as
far as it affected the territories of European powers and it
was designed to 'make impossible any further extensión
to this hemisphere of any non-American system of
government imposed from without'. Germany would
not be allowed to step into the shoes of France, first
because European powers were regarded as mere life-
tenants of their American holdings, with no powers of
transfer and no non-American heirs, and because the
potential heir of France, in this case, was not merely
geographically but politically alien to America. Both the
territorial and the ideological sides of the Doctrine barred
Germán acquisitions in the Americas.
A generation before, the United States might have
undertaken to impose this ban by her own strength alone.
But although .now stronger, absolutely at least, she pre-
ferred to develop the 'good-neighbour' policy, and to
associate in a common policy all the American republics.
So the Act of Havana (29 July 1940) provided that' when
American islands or areas at present held by non-
American nations are in danger of becoming the subject-
matter of exchange of territories or sovereignty, the
American republics, having in mind the security of the
continent and the opinion of the inhabitants of such
islands or areas, may establish regions of provisional
administration'. There were provisions for the estab-
lishment of an 'emergency committee' to decide on
action, but with a prudent regard for the speed of events
it was laid down t h a t ' if necessity for emergency action be
deemed so urgent as to make it impossible to await action
of the committee, any of the American republics, indi-
vidually or jointly with others, shall have the right to act in
a manner required for its defence or the defence of the
continent'. And as an indication of the abandonment by
the United States of any aggressive tendencies she may
 3<D AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY

have had in the past, it was laid down that as ' the peoples
of this continent have a right to self-determination, such
territories shall either be organized into autonomous
territories, should they appear capable of constituting or
maintaining themselves in such a state, or be reinstated to
the former situation'.

Destroyers exchanged for Bases

This self-denying ordinance was not enough for some
ardent spirits who demanded the immediate seizure of
European possessions in the West Indies as payment of
the defaulted war debts or on general grounds of safety
first. T h e American government and public opinion
refused to imitate Hitler. But the dangers implicit in the
situation were not wholly met by a declared readiness to
prevent the seizure of Martinique. For the effective
defence of the western hemisphere necessitated the use of
the outer bastions of the continents. Fortunately for the
United States, all these bastions were in the hands of
nations either at war with Germany (Britain and Holland),
or occupied by Germany and helpless (like Denmark and
France). 1 These powers could not resist American
demands and, in the case of Britain and Holland, had not
the slightest wish to do so.
T h e acceptance from Britain of the right to build bases
in British territory in return for the transfer of fifty
American destroyers was a legitímate development of
American policy. T h e fortification of West Indian bases
was to the advantage of the United States and so was the
transfer of the destroyers, for they increased British power
of resistance and so, at the lowest estímate, gave the United
States time to prepare her new defensive positions. But
it was significant that the transfer was made by presi-
dential action, without consultation of either house of
1 1 have treated Greenland as politically part of the West Indies and

ignored the legally worthless protests of the Copenhagen Govern-

ment against the agreement made in Washington in 1941 by the Danish
ministef.
3<D
AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY

Congress. Critics of the transfer who confined their

criticism to this point, revealed their pedantry rather than
their wisdom, for no one doubted that the American
people wanted the transfer or that if it were put up to
Congress, the will of the people would only be carried
out after a long and dangerous delay. More substantial
was the criticism which insisted that the transfer was an
unneutral act. By American precedent it was. If it was a
breach of neutrality for the British government to ^llow
a prívate shipbuilding firm surreptitiously to build a war-
ship for the South in the Civil War, what was it for the
American government openly to transfer fifty of its own
warships? But it was realised that neutrality in the oíd
sense was gone; without any formal breach with Germany,
the United States was aiding Germany's enemies.
Whether this was or was not a belligerent act would
depend,*not on American, but on Germán policy—and
Germán policy would ignore American actions as long as
it suited Germán interests and Germán needs.
It is generally realized in the United States that until
the 'two-ocean' navy is built (which will not be before
1946), the power of the United States to implement the
Monroe Doctrine is limited. It is also realized that fleat-
building is a game that two can play at, and that Hitler, in
undisturbed command of the resources of Europe, could,
with his Japanese partner, outbuild the United States.
T h e Roosevelt administration and the majority of the
American people accept this truth and draw the con-
clusión that Hitler must not be allowed to get undisturbed
command of the resources of Europe, above all of Britain.
They support, that is, the extensión of aid to Britain to
carry on the war against Hitlerism as at worst the buying
of time and at best the buying of relief from this night-
mare. But although most isolationists deny the danger,
some are more candid and consistent. They admit that,"
faced with a victorious Axis, the United States could not
help China, or the Dutch East Indies, or even the great
3<D AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY

republics of South America. T h e United States would

be forced to retire within her new island barriers, make
the great economic readjustments necessary and, armed
to the teeth, make of North America a new ark, waiting if
necessary for generations before it would be possible to
send out the dove of peace and get something back other
than a heavy bomber.

The United States and the World Crisis

In their attitude to the developing crisis in Europe, the
American people revealed their belief that history could
and did repeat itself, but that it could be prevented from
doing so by skilful legislation. Over all American foreign
policy, from 1920 to 1933, lay the shadow of the national
disillusionment with the results of the war fought t o ' make
the world safe for democracy'. Being human, the
American people did not assess very objectively the share
their own refusal to enter the League of Nations had in
this break-down. They were easily made victims of the
same type of Germán propaganda against the territorial
settlement that had so great a success with the senti-
mental and ignorant of all classes in Britain. They Were
also impressed by the more reasonable criticism that was
directed against the economic results of the Peace of
Versailles—and, at the same time, reluctant to see that by
putting a stop to immigration, by going back to a system
of high tariffs and by insisting on the payment of Europe's
debts, the United States was contributing at least as much
to the economic misery and so to the political instability
of Europe as the peace-makers of Versailles had done.
Not only did the United States refuse to enter the
League, she refused (or the Senate refused to permit her)
to join the World Court, despite the recommendations of
every President from Harding to Roosevelt. Not until
the Roosevelt administration carne to office in 1933 did
she even risk joining the International Labour Office.
3<D
AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY

The War Debts

One of the chief línks uniting America to the post-war
Europe was that of the war debts. Altogether, the
United States lent its associates nearly $13,000,000,000,
a sum whose psychological importance may be grasped
when it is remembered that it is more than thirteen times
the total American national debt when the United States
entered the war in 1917. No attempt was ever made to
collect the whole sum, or to exact interest rates on an
actuarial basis. Congress authorized. the negotiation of
separate debt settlements with the various countries
involved, settlements based on ability to pay, a statesman-
like move which had, from the point of view of Britain, the
awkward consequence that she had to pay interest on 80%
of her debt, while, at the other extreme, Italy had only to
pay on 25% of her debt. Ñor was this all, Britain was a
debtor of the United States but a creditor of the other
Allies and, of course, a creditor of Germany for repara-
tions. T o British public opinion it seemed plain that all
these debts were Iinkéd, politically and economically, if
not legally. This point of view was put forward in the
unfortunately worded Balfour Note of 1922 which tenta-
•tively offered to forgive British debtors provided that we
were forgiven our debts. T h e Balfour note was angrily
received in America as an attempt to impose the odium of
debt-collecting on the United States. T h e American
attitude, summed up in the famous words of President
Coolidge,' they hired the money, didn't they?' was taken in
Britain to show American ignorance of the trae nature of
international trade and international debt and, especially,
the difference between debts arising from genuine com-
mercial transactions and those arising from so completely
uneconomic an enterprise as war.
T h e war debt settlement, based as it was on sixty-two
yearly payments, was as unrealistic as any other part of the
post-war settlement could be said to be. It assumed a
3<D AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY

political and economic fixity which the extraordinary

changes in the price-level, if nothing else, made it imposs-
ible to believe in. Indeed, while the last war-debt agree-
ments were being made, the United States was indirectly
sponsoring the first of the revisions of the economic terms
of Versailles, called, after the American ambassador in
London, the Dawes Plan. Five years later another and
'final' readjustment was again made which bore the ñame
of its chief American sponsor, the Young Plan. Ñor was
this all. Although the average American did not under-
stand what was happening, American capital was financing
the recovery of Europe or, more specifically, the recovery
of Germany, which borrowed in the United States all the
money she paid as reparations and a good deal more.
Other countries borrowed too.
In effect, the payments made by Europe, whether for
war or commercial debts, were transformed into new
loans to Europe until the boom and smash of 1929, by
cutting off supplies from America, brought about the
economic collapse of Germany. This became evident,
and President Hoover took the bold step in 1931 of
offering a suspensión of the current year's war-debt pay-
ments for a suspensión of the reparations payments for the
same period. This lifebelt was grasped at with eagerness
by Britain and Germany, with less enthusiasm by France,
and all European powers knew that reparations payments,
once suspended, would never be resumed. This truth was
admitted by the European creditors of Germany, but
with an election coming no American President or presi-
dential candidate could admit the corollary, evident to all
Europeans, that it was politically impossible for the late
associates of the United States to go on paying interest on
the war debts while the late enemy of the United States
was excused all reparations payments.
Under various disguises, the European debtors of the
United States ceased to pay, and American opinion was
further confirmed in its judgement that power politics was
3<D
AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY

a game in which it was bound to be swindled. T h e last

chance of restoring the oíd economic order in Europe, the
Economic Conference of 1933, was destroyed by the
refusal of the new Roosevelt administration to consent to
a general currency stabilization, and, with that refusal, the
last tie binding America to Europe's troubles seemed to
have been cut. T h e Johnson Act of 1934, forbidding the
raising of public or prívate loans in the United States by
the defaulting war debt powers, was intended not only as a
rebuke, but as a proof that, at last, the United States had
got free from the results of ' entangling alliances'.

America and Hitler

But the world in which this policy was realistic was
already dead. Herr Hitler carne into office two months
before Mr. Roosevelt. From the beginning American
opinion saw the Hitler regime as it was. It was not
misled (as British opinion was) by the testimony of doubt-
less well-meaning persons who were able to see the bright
side of the darkness that had descended on Germany.
T h e basic Germán doctrine of race loyalty was seen to be
profoundly dangerous for a country so mixed in origin as
America. If people of Germán or Italian origin owed a
special loyalty and duty to the country of their birth or
ancestry, the internal security of the United States was
threatened. Ñor was the true character of the Nazi
regime easily hidden from a people that had its own
gangsters. A t the most, the American 'appeasers' argued
that it was foolish to ignore the fact that Hitler was there
and seemed likely to stay; a prudent business man in
Chicago in 1930 had to deal with A l Capone; no nation
could aíford to keep too tender a conscience. Y e t even
this view was not widely popular and its exponents found
their motives misunderstood—or understood.
American opinion was bitterly hostile to Hitler, but at
first not willing to do much about it. For, to the Ameri-
can, the case was simplé. Largely thanks to American
3<D AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY

aid, the western powers had secured overwhelming

military superiority over Germany as a result of the first
world war. Now that Germany was palpably threatening
to renew the war, why not act while there was yet time?
As it became more and more evident that the western
powers would not act while there was yet time, American
opinion became pre-occupied with the problem of how to
keep America out of the war that was coming. Mr.
Roosevelt tried to prevent or delay, by diplomatic
pressure, the outbreak of war; Congress tried by legisla-
tion to prevent America getting into war if it carne.
A s is usual in human affairs, the motives for this policy
were mixed. Much was due to the human reluctance to
endure the risks and losses of another war. Although by
European standards, American losses in the last world war
had been slight, they had occurred far from home and for
a cause which the results of the war seemed to show had
been betrayed. T h e world had not been made safe for
democracy.

Isolationism and Neutrality Legislation

Propagandists, most of them honest and zealous, some
of them emotionally or personally linked with the Germán
cause or with the minority which had opposed entrance
into the last war, helped to spread the view not only that
America and the world had gained nothing from the last
war, but that the ostensible motives for American inter-
vention were not the real ones. A Senate committee
investigating the munitions industry not only discredited
the 'Merchants of Death' who were still active, but
attempted to show that it was as a result of the activities
of the munitions industry between 1914 and 1917 that
America had been led to the disastrous step of intervention
in a quarrel which was none of hers. It was the conten-
tion of Senator Nye that one of the main causes of
American intervention was the creation of a great vested
interest in Allied victory. T h e great crime of the Wilson
3<D
AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY

administration had been to allow American industry to

become geared up to the Allied war machine. If the
United States had not entered the war in 1917, so the
argument ran, the Allies would have been unable to con-
tinué their purchases and there would have been an
immediate and catastrophic slump. That this considera-
tion had any effect on Wilson's policy in the critical
months before the final breach with Germany is not only
not proved but, as far as a negative can be proved, is
disproved. But it should be noted that side by side with a
warm and, sometimes, sentimental appreciation of moral
ideas, there is present in the American mind a kind of
moral diffidence. T o admit that the United States
entered the last war for non-material interests would be to
admit that the United States is óften not narrowly realist
in her attitudes, and many Americans would rather appear
as dupes or cynics than as crusaders. Finally, it was to
the interest of those parties and sections which wished to
cause America to withdraw from European commitments
to belittle the moral claims o'f the cause for which the
United States fought in 1917 and 1918.
A practical consequence of this'hard-boiled' view of
the cause of American intervention in 1917 was the
adoption of legislative policies that were designed to
prevent America being dragged into a new war by the
same forces that, it was asserted, had dragged her into the
last world war.
If law laid down in advánce that America should not
supply belligerents with munitions, European powers
would not be encouraged to fight by the thought that they
could draw on America, and America would be saved, in
advance, from the temptation of the fairy gold of muni-
tions profits. Legisljation beginning in 1935 and given
final form in 1937 imposed an embargo on the export of
munitions when war broke out. Combined with the
Johnson Act of 1934, which forbade public or prívate
loans to countries defaulting on their war debts to the
3<D AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY

United States, this legislation was designed to keep

America out of war as far as destroying financial interest in
the success of one belligerent could do so. It ignored, of
course, the serious financial interest that the United
States might have in the victory of one belligerent rather
than the other, quite apart from war loans or munitions
contracts.
It was not this consideration, however, that shook
American faith in this legislation. T h e Spanish Civil War
provided the first test and, although the original legisla-
tion did not deal with civil wars, the Roosevelt adminis-
tration, following a British lead, induced Congress to
amend the law to apply the embargo to Spain. This was
an administration triumph that later plagued the victors,
but it was significant that some of the warmest supporters
of the general arms embargo did not wish it applied to
Spain. More serious was the growing realization that a
great crisis was coming in Europe or had, in fact, begun.
T h e mass of American opinion was in favour of ' standing
up to Hitler', was opposed to appeasement, was highly
critical of the Munich policy, and yet it was realized that
the readiness of the western powers to stand up to Hitler
was likely to be greatly increased if they could be sure that
they could rely on their superior naval and financial
strength to draw supplies, especially aircraft, from the
United States.
T h e Roosevelt administration made a determined effort
in the summer of 1939 to secure the repeal of the embargo
but unsuccessfully. Many Senators preferred to believe
Sehator Borah when he asserted that his information,
which was better than that of the President, showed that
there would be no war.

The 'Cash and Carry' Policy

When war carne, the President imposed the embargo
and again appealed to Congress for an alteration of the
law. After a lengthy and bitter debate, the Administra-
3<D AMERICAN F O R E I G N POLICY

tion scored a victory, but not an unconditional victory.

T h e new neutrality law was designed.'said a wit, 'to keep
the United States out of the war of 1914'. It allowed the
export of arms but on rigorous conditions. Before they
could be delivered to the European purchaser, every Ameri-
can claim on them must have been extinguished. This
was the so-called ' cash and carry' policy. Munitions had
to be paid for in cash (and the purchasing governments
under the Johnson act could not borrow). More than
that, no American ship could sail with any kind of cargo to
ports in the belligerent countries and the President was
authorized to extend the prohibited zone by naming
'combat areas'. Technically neutral ports cióse to the
actual belligerents were thus debarred to American
shipping. On the other hand, some technically belliger-
ent ports in America, Africa and Asia were not debarred
to American ships though they were not to carry
munitions to them. 1
American ships, since they would be kept out of areas
where fighting was going on, would be safe from attack.
American citizens in general were debarred from travelling
on belligerent ships. So, it was asserted, American ships
and American citizens would not be sunk or drowned and
the 'incidents' that had given a moral covering to the
economic commitments of the munition industry of
1914-1917 could not occur.
Against this was set the new freedom to export muni-
tions in belligerent vessels, a change in the law of the
United States which certain legal purists held was pro-
foundly unneutral. But this charge had no great effect on
the American public mind, for in 1939, unlike 1914, the
vast majority of the American people made up their minds
at once. Germany was the aggressor. A Germán defeat
was to the interest of the United States and the world. In
1914, President Wilson had asked the American people to
1 Certain Canadian ports were excluded from this relaxation of the

ban.
3<D AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY

be neutral in thought as well as in action. President

Roosevelt made no such appeal in 1939; neither he ñor the
majority of the American people concealed their prefer-
ences or their hopes.
Yet some illusions survived the outbreak of the war.
Its early character enabled the isolationists who had
declared that there would be no war, to declare that this
was a ' phoney' war. T h e invasión of Norway, followed
by the invasión of Holland, was a great shock to many
Americans, who had believed that neutrality was a happy
state to which any nation could attain by wishing for it.
It had long been asserted that in the last war, Holland ^nd
Norway had shown that, by a rigid neutrality, it was
possible to stay out of war. Each new aggression by
Hitler, down to and including the invasión of Russia,
drove deeper home the truth that neutrality was a state
that lasted as long as it suited Germany and not a day
longer.

Support to the Democracies

But even more important than the destruction of the
legal house of cards of neutrality was the collapse of the
strategic house of cards of American immünity. T h e
majority of the American people not only wanted the
Allies to win, but expected them to win. T h e collapse of
France suddenly brought them face to face with the
disturbing possibility of a Hitlerized Europe. It was
under the threat of this event that they accepted peace-
time conscription, that they disregarded the protests of
the purists against the transfer of destroyers to Great
Britain in return for the right to fortify bases on British
West Indian islands, that public opinion forced Mr.
Wendell Willkie on the Republican party as its presi-
dential candidate, and that breaking one of the most
sacred of American political tradition's, President Roose-
velt was elected for a third term.
Once re-elected, President Roosevelt cut loose from the
3<D AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY

timid legalities of the neutrality legislation and in his

' lease-and-lend' policy accepted the fact that the defence
of Britain was the defence of America. Industrial pro-
duction was speeded up, greater and greater power over
the national life was taken, more and more the American
people revealed its willingness to take whatever measures
were necessary to defeat Hitlerism. They still shrink
from war, but they realize that the decisión as to war and
peace is not necessaily in their hands, that at any time war
may be thrust on them by the ruler of Germany. And
they realize that now, as much as in the crisis of the Civil
War, on their action it depends whether 'government of
the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish
from the earth'.