ISOLATIONISM

U.S. isolationism has traditionally involved opposition to participation in war outside the Western Hemisphere, particularly in Europe; avoidance of binding military alliances; and refusal to participate in organizations of collective security. Above all, the isolationist desires to maintain the United States's freedom of action. Such people differ from pacifists, who withhold support for any conflict and renounce any war. Proponents of the isolationist position usually consider the label perjorative: As most oppose isolating the United States from either the world's culture or its commerce, they have long preferred such terms as "neutralist," "nationalist," "non-interventionist," or "anti-interventionist."

By the above definition, U. S. foreign policy was isolationist until the twentieth century. Only when President Woodrow Wilson sought entry into the League of Nations in 1919 did isolationism emerge as a distinctive political position. Moreover, only in the 1930s, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt sought discretionary power to aid victims of aggression, was the general isolationist consensus threatened. Opponents of Roosevelt's policies fought so successfully that the years 1934 to 1937 marked the high tide of isolationist legislation.

In April 1934 Roosevelt signed the Johnson Debt Default Act, introduced by Senator Hiram Johnson (R-Calif.), who had been prominent in the fight against the League of Nations. The Senate passed the measure without a recorded vote, the House without dissent. The bill prohibited private loans to nations in default of obligations contracted during World War I to the U.S. Government.

In January 1935 the Senate turned down Roosevelt's bid for U.S. entry into the World Court by seven votes. Founded in 1921, the Permanent Court of International Justice (as the court was formally called) was closely tied to the League of Nations. The League Assembly and Council had to approve all nominations; the World Court's budget was underwritten by the League; the League Covenant required the court to give "an advisory opinion upon any dispute or question referred to it by the Councilor by the Assembly." Contrary to myth, Roosevelt's defeat did not result from unscrupulous propaganda fostered by publisher William Randolph Hearst and radio priest Charles E. Coughlin. Rather it was due to Congress's hostile predisposition and Roosevelt's own lack of leadership.

In the spring of 1935, however, investigators for the Senate's Special Committee Investigating the Munitions Industry began to collect material concerning U.S. entry into World War I. During this time such revisionist works as journalist Walter Millis's Road to War: America, 1914–1917 (1935) portrayed the Great War as a futile crusade. Munitions committee chairman Gerald P. Nye (R-N.Dak.), together with his committee colleague Senator Bennett Champ Clark (D-Mo.), introduced bills for an impartial arms embargo against belligerents, a prohibition on loans to belligerents, and denial of passports to Americans wishing to enter war zones. When the Roosevelt administration, which was opposed to mandatory isolation, countered with a bill that would permit discriminatory embargoes, its proposal found little response.

In August 19, 1935, as Italy was poised to invade Ethiopia, members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee reported a joint resolution. "Arms, ammunition and implements of war" could not be sent to belligerents once the president declared that a state of war existed. (Roosevelt later defined "implements of war" to include airplanes, various chemicals, and armored vehicles, but not such items as cotton, oil, scrap iron, and trucks). Submarines of belligerent nations could not use U.S. ports. The president possessed discretionary authority to proclaim that Americans traveling on ships registered in belligerent nations did so at their own risk. Though the administration deplored the fact that its hands were being tied, it permitted the bill to pass, although it did secure an amendment limiting its term to six months. The legislation passed the Senate 77 to 2 and the House without a recorded vote.

When Roosevelt signed the bill on August 31, he warned that "the inflexible provisions might drag us into war instead of keeping us out" (Cole 1983, p. 178). He did not, however, want to jeopardize pending New Deal legislation, such as the regulation of the coal industry, over foreign policy matters. In addition, he thought the bill would probably injure the aggressor Italy far more than it would injure its victim. On October 6, three days after fighting broke out in East Africa, Roosevelt invoked the new bill. No munitions could be sold to either side.

Because the neutrality law was due to expire in February 1936, that month Congress passed the Neutrality Act of 1936. The House voted 353 to 27; the Senate took no roll call. The act was almost identical to the 1935 law, with the addition of one feature: it forbade the United States to lend money to belligerent nations, though exceptions were made for wars in Latin America. It did not, as Roosevelt had hoped, prohibit any trade with the belligerents beyond peacetime levels. Like the previous act, the new one was temporary, scheduled to expire on May 1, 1937.

This measure imposed more restrictions upon a president already opposed to mandatory legislation. Yet the president signed it without comment. Roosevelt feared that a fight would risk further stripping of his power, produce debate that could only comfort Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, and risk votes in the impending presidential race.

In July 1936 rebel forces in Spanish Morocco led by General Francisco Franco attacked the Spanish Republic, triggering a civil war that would last almost three years. Within a month the U.S. government announced a "moral embargo" on arms shipments to either side, but not until January 1937, on Roosevelt's recommendation, did Congress pass a nondiscriminatory arms embargo, with the Senate voting 81 to 0 and the House 406 to 1.

On May 1, 1937, the Neutrality Act of 1936 would expire. In return for sections forbidding Americans to travel on belligerent ships and prohibiting the arming of U.S. merchantmen, anti-interventionists accepted discretionary authority on cash-and-carry, a scheme by which nations at war could collect goods in U.S. ports and pay for them on the spot. The cash-and-carry provision would remain in force until May 1, 1939. The president could also ban shipment on U.S. vessels of commodities that he might specify, close U.S. ports to belligerent warships, and declare U.S. territorial waters off-limits to belligerent submarines and merchantmen. The measure kept the arms embargo and loan prohibition of the old law, and it applied to civil wars as well as international ones. On April 29, 1937, the new bill was passed, and was signed by the president a day later. Roosevelt offered no objection, undoubtedly because he realized that cash-and-carry favored Britain and France, two major sea powers, rather than the inland nations of Germany and Italy. Engaged in a dispute over enlarging the Supreme Court, which had struck down much New Deal legislation, Roosevelt sought no additional conflict. By remaining aloof from debate while quietly backing the congressional moderates, he was able to maintain some flexibility.

In January 1938, in the wake of a crisis in which Japanese forces in China sunk a gunboat, the Panay, the House considered the Ludlow Amendment. Congressman Louis Ludlow (D-Ind.) sought an amendment to the U.S. Constitution by which Congress's power to declare war would be restricted to cases of actual or imminent invasion of the United States or its territories or attack by a non-American nation on a state in the Western Hemisphere. In any other case, Congress must allow voters to choose, by means of a national referendum, whether they wished to go to war. On January 10, 1938, the House voted 209 to 188 to return the proposed amendment to committee. Just before the vote, House Speaker William Bankhead (D-Ala.) read a public letter from Roosevelt that claimed that the amendment would "cripple" the president's ability to conduct foreign policy and encourage other nations to "violate American rights with impunity."

Meanwhile, Roosevelt sought to revise the 1937 Neutrality Act. As the cash-and-carry provision of this law was scheduled to expire on May 1, 1939, the administration sought a new bill that would retain cash-and-carry while repealing the arms embargo. At the end of June the House, by a vote of 200 to 188, passed an amended bill that included cash-and-carry but also added an arms embargo introduced by Congressman John Vorys (R-Ohio). Because the Senate did not act, most of the 1937 law, including the arms embargo, remained in effect.

Once Hitler invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, isolationism declined. As the United States emerged from the Depression, Roosevelt defeated his foes on one issue after another. In November 1939 Congress voted for military sales to Britain and France on a cash-and-carry basis. In September 1940 it adopted military conscription, and supported extending the terms of army draftees less than a year later. In November 1941 it authorized the arming of U.S. merchant vessels and permitted them to carry cargoes to belligerent ports. Acting on his own authority, Roosevelt occupied Greenland and Iceland, froze Japanese asserts, issued a set of war aims with Britain, and entered into an undeclared naval war with Germany. Isolationism was over well before Pearl Harbor.

ISOLATIONISM

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