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The Historical Alternation of Moods in American Foreign Policy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2011

Frank L. Klingberg
Frank L. Klingberg
Affiliation:
Southern Illinois University
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Extract

There seems little doubt that the defense and strengthening of the “free world” in our time depends largely upon American leadership. Confidence that America will continue to play this role in world affairs is weakened by the memory of America's political isolation following World War I, and by certain currents of American opinion noted by observers since World War II.1 Barbara Ward warns the peoples of the West that “we shall certainly fail unless our effort is at once sustained, calm and supremely positive.”

Type
Research Article
Information
World Politics , Volume 4 , Issue 2 , January 1952 , pp. 239 - 273
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1952

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References

1 Almond, Gabriel, The American People and Foreign Policy, New York, 1950Google Scholar, Chap. 9. The author identifies five special types of “isolationists”: Communists, non-Communist “Wallaceites,” reactionary-nationalists, pacifists, and extreme internationalists (pp. 224–25).

2 Ward, Barbara, Policy for the West, New York, 1951, p. 81.Google Scholar

3 Many writers use the word “mood,” or its synonyms, to describe the “spirit” of a time. E.g., Dexter Perkins, in describing the British-American crisis of 1895, writes that “… the whole episode expressed a national mood for which it would be difficult to find a parallel at any time in the twenty years preceding.”—America and Two Wars, Boston, 1944, p. 7.

4 Ward, op. cit., p. 55.

5 In an article on “Tides in American Politics” (Yale Review, XXIX [December 1939], 217–30), Schlesinger tentatively predicted that the liberal mood of 1939 would be replaced by conservatism in 1946 or 1947. In his recent book, Paths to the Present (New York, 1949), he uses the year 1947 as the “turning point.” Schlesinger pointed out six liberal phases (averaging about 16 years each), alternating with conservative phases (about 15 years). His liberal phases began in 1765, 1801, 1829, 1861, 1901, and 1931; the conservative in 1787, 1816, 1841, 1869, 1919, and 1947.

6 Almond, , op. cit., p. 239.Google Scholar See also pp. 53–55, 66–67, 88–91. The author suggests, however, that “the era of great fluctuations in American opinion may have passed” (p. 239).

7 Richardson, James D., Messages and Papers of the Presidents, 1789–1902, Washington, 1904, I, 321.Google Scholar

8 Bailey, T. A., A Diplomatic History of the American People, New York, 1940, pp. 92–93.Google Scholar

9 Richardson, , op. cit., I, 540.Google Scholar

10 Ibid., II, 7, 10.

11 See, e.g., Rives Childs, J., American Foreign Service, New York, 1948, p. 4.Google Scholar

12 Graham, Malbone W., American Diplomacy in the International Community, Baltimore, 1948, pp. 87–88Google Scholar, 97–100.

13 Ibid., pp. 62–79.

14 Weinberg, Albert K., Manifest Destiny, Baltimore, 1935, p. 190.Google Scholar

15 Fish, Carl R., American Diplomacy, 4th ed., New York, 1923, p. 3.Google Scholar

16 Bailey, , op. cit., p. 426.Google Scholar

17 See Nevins, Allan, Hamilton Fish, New York, 1937, pp. 674Google Scholar, 689. Nevins expresses the belief that “had the event occurred twenty years earlier, when the Southern slave-barons were in power, Cuba would immediately have been conquered.”

18 Bailey, , op. cit., p. 443.Google Scholar

19 Coolidge, Archibald Cary, The United States as a World Power, New York, 1908, p. 39.Google Scholar See also pp. 132–33, 325. For analogies to the late 1840's, see Curti, Merle, The Growth of American Thought, New York, 1943, p. 670.Google Scholar S. F. Bemis, however, has referred to the annexation of the Philippines as “the Great Aberration,” and Beard, Charles A. decries the action as a “breach with the past” in his Foreign Policy for America, New York, 1940, p. 61.Google Scholar

20 Schlesinger, Arthur M., Paths to the Present, New York, 1949, p. 257.Google Scholar

21 Quoted in Weinberg, , op. cit., p. 459.Google Scholar

22 Bailey, , op. cit., p. 596.Google Scholar

23 The editorials of the New Republic are an excellent source for this period. On the 1916 election, see Vol. IX (November 4, 1916), pp. 2 and 34. Many editorials, in 1916 and 1917, clearly presage the criticism of European power politics which led the New Republic, among others, to repudiate “Wilson's League” in 1919. Instability of the American mood at this time is suggested by the New Republic's claim that the “intellectuals” of the country had “willed American participation” in the war (X [April 14, 1917], 308–9). Republican opposition to Wilson began to mount following the address to the Senate on January 22, 1917, when Wilson appealed to the powers for a “peace without victory.” An editorial of February 3, 1917, criticized the Republican party as “the defender of American isolation” (X, 1–2).

24 Quoted in Weinberg, , op. cit., p. 470.Google Scholar

25 Bemis, Samuel F., A Diplomatie History of the United States, rev. ed., New York, 1942, p. 879.Google Scholar

26 Stimson, Henry L., “The Challenge to Americans,” Foreign Affairs, XXVI, No. 1 (October 1947), 7.Google Scholar

27 Donovan, John C., “Congressional Isolationists and the Roosevelt Foreign Policy,” World Politics, III (April 1951), 316.Google Scholar

28 The events listed were taken in particular from Bailey, op. cit.; Bemis, op. cit.; Richardson, James D., Messages and Papers of the Presidents, 12 vols., Washington, 1904Google Scholar and 1908; and Lula Caine's comprehensive study from government documents, entitled “Conditions Underlying the Minor Wars and Interventions of the United States,” doctoral dissertation, University of Chicago, 1929.

29 The Presidential messages were found in the following sources: Richardson, op. cit.; 52nd Congress, A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents of the United States, 18 vols., New York, 1922; Coolidge, Calvin, Foundations of the Republic, Speeches and Addresses, New York, 1926Google Scholar; Myers, William Starr, ed., The State Papers and Other Public Writings of Herbert Hoover, 2 vols., Garden City, N.Y., 1934Google Scholar; The Public Papers and Addresses of Roosevelt, Franklin D., 1933–1940, 9 vols., New York, 1938–1941Google Scholar; Zevin, B. D., ed., Nothing to Fear, The Selected Addresses of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 1932–1945, Cambridge, Mass., 1946Google Scholar; other messages in Congressional Record, newspapers, and separate official pamphlets.

30 Data on party platforms, up to 1924, came from Porter, Kirk H., National Party Platforms, New York, 1924.Google Scholar Later party platforms were found in the campaign books or textbooks of the parties, or in the proceedings of the national conventions. Election statistics for President and Congress were found in Cousens, Theodore W., Politics and Political Organizations in America, New York, 1942.Google Scholar

31 Sources of annual naval expenditures: U.S. Bureau of Supplies and Accounts (Navy Dept.), Statement of Appropriations and Expenditures of the Naval Establishment from July 1, 1876, to June 30, 1921, Washington, 1925 (all figures before 1876 were also included); figures from 1918 to 1948 from U.S. Bureau of the Census, Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1944–45, 1947, and 1949; for the year 1949, New York Times, January 10, 1950, p. 19.

32 See Dewey, E. R. and Dakin, E. F., Cycles, The Science of Prediction, New York, 1947.Google Scholar

33 Wright, Quincy, A Study of War, 2 vols., Chicago, 1942, I, 227–32.Google Scholar

34 Bean, Louis H., How to Predict Elections, New York, 1948.Google Scholar

35 Toynbee, Arnold J., A Study of History, abridgment of Vols. I–VI by Somer-vell, D. C, New York, 1947, pp. 548–54.Google Scholar

36 Sorokin, Pitirim A., Society, Culture, and Personality, New York, 1947.Google Scholar All types of cycle theories are reviewed in Vol. IV of his Social and Cultural Dynamics, New York, 1941, pp. 289–583.

37 Sorokin describes the process as follows in The Crisis of Our Age (New York, 1941): “No single system comprises the whole of truth; nor is it, on the other hand, entirely false” (p. 104). “If, then, each system of truth is partly true and partly false, the oscillation from one system to another becomes comprehensible. When one of them tends to become monopolistic and drives out the other truths, its false part begins to grow at the expense of its valid part. … This drift leads to an increase of theoretical and practical difficulties for such a society” (p. 114).

38 As Wright, Quincy (op. cit., I, 230)Google Scholar summarizes it, “The warrior does not wish to fight again himself and prejudices his son against war, but the grandsons are taught to think of war as romantic.” Furthermore, young people often feel that the world of their parents is being run on an unsatisfactory basis (see Sorokin, , Social and Cultural Dynamics, op. cit., IV, 515).Google Scholar

39 ibid., p. 696; see also pp. 693 ff.

40 The terms “critical pressure” or “critical temperature” probably have social analogies. Walter Cannon, B. (The Wisdom of the Body, rev. ed., New York, 1939, Chap. 18 and pp. 303 ff.Google Scholar ) shows how the human body is protected against extremes through corrective or compensating factors, and he suggests that social oscillations may perform a similar function in promoting social stability.

41 In a broader context, Merton, Robert K., in his Social Theory and Social Structure (Glencoe, 111., 1949)Google Scholar, makes “tension” the key concept in explaining changes (p. 116).

42 Wright, Quincy (op. cit., II, 1318)Google Scholar calls attention to “the tendency of unsettled disputes to accumulate, aggravating the relations of states” and to “the lag of national policies and constitutions behind changing international conditions.”

43 Schlesinger, Arthur M., Paths to the Present, New York, 1949, pp. 91–92.Google Scholar

44 Toynbee, , op. cit., p. 253Google Scholar; see also p. 51.

45 Barbara Ward, for example, expresses her admiration for America's “free response” in meeting the challenge which gave rise to the “Marshall Plan” (op. cit., pp. 60–61).

46 Beard, , op. cit., pp. 52–55.Google Scholar

47 A number of significant depressions have occurred during introvert phases-as in 1827–29, 1837–38, 1842–43, 1873–79, 1884–85, 1921–22, and 1929–39; others have appeared in extrovert phasesas in 1819–21, 1857–58, 1893–97, and 1907–8. From “Business Booms and Depressions,” chart published by the Century Press, Toledo, 1950.

48 Using Schlesinger's dates for liberalism-conservatism and the introvert-extrovert dates of Table 1, the liberal periods show 32 introvert years and 48 extrovert; the conservative periods have 49 introvert years, and 44 extrovert.

49 It appears that Presidents Tyler and Franklin D. Roosevelt perhaps speeded the shift to extroversion, and that Cleveland slowed the change in 1893, but could not halt it; Woodrow Wilson was “broken,” in a sense, on the new tide which followed a quarter of a century of extroversion.

50 Toynbee, , op. cit., p. 63.Google Scholar

51 We proclaimed our neutrality in 1793, and continued in the introvert phase for five or more years. Our involvement in World War I seemed later to have intensified the introvert phase which followed it. But the extrovert mood has remained dominant since World War II.

52 Weinberg, , op. cit., p. 858.Google Scholar

53 The effect of modern technological changes on American attitudes is not yet clear. It is quite possible that the impact of the steamship and telegraph a hundred years ago was relatively as significant as the influence of the airplane and radio today. See, e.g., President Fillmore's message to Congress on December 6, 1852 (Richardson, , op. cit., V, 179–80).Google Scholar

54 For possible analogies from economic cycles, see Ise, John, Economics, New York, 1946, p. 319Google Scholar, and King, W. I., The Causes of Economic Fluctuations, New York, 1938, pp. 125Google Scholar, 162. King points to the spreading wave of optimism which helps promote the boom phase, while a contagious pessimism deepens the depression phase.

55 See Sorokin, , Social and Cultural Dynamics, op. cit., IV, 520.Google Scholar

56 Ibid., pp. 520–24.

57 Sorokin, , Society, Culture, and Personality, op. cit., p. 5.Google Scholar De Tocqueville believed that America's destiny was implicit in its early social forms and ideas (see Beloff, Max, “Tocqueville and the Americans,” Fortnightly, No. 1017 [September 1951], 575–76).Google Scholar

58 Gabriel, Ralph H., The Course of American Democratic Thought, New York, 1940, pp. 15Google Scholar, 19, 22. This actual moral emphasis in American policy is stressed by Prof. Hans J. Morgenthau, although he deplores what he regards as its overemphasis (In Defense of the National Interest, New York, 1951, p. 114).

59 Prof. R. M. Maclver characterizes our present position, in relation to the past, as follows: “Suddenly we are called to take the status of a world power”. We cannot evade it any more. It has become our manifest destiny; it is indeed the inevitable consequence of what we are, what we have achieved, what we possess (The Ramparts We Guard, New York, 1950, pp. 107–8).

60 Prof. Perry, Ralph Barton in his Puritanism and Democracy (New York, 1944)Google Scholar asserts that “democracy is compelled by its own universalistic-individualistic logic to seek the creation of an orderly and co-operative society in which the happiness of all is the duty of each” (p. 602). Prof. Tannenbaum, Frank W., in an article entitled “The American Tradition in Foreign Relations” (Foreign Affairs, XXXGoogle Scholar, No. 1 [October 1951], 31–50), presents convincing evidence to support the thesis that America's “permanent” foreign policy is based on the idea of the “co-ordinate state”—on the promotion of the “independence of nations.” Prof. Dexter Perkins writes in the same vein about American foreign policy today (“Where the United States Stands Today,” Foreign Policy Bulletin [September 15, 1951], pp. 1–2).

61 White, William Allen, Some Cycles of Cathay, Chapel Hill, N.C., 1925, p. vi.Google Scholar

62 Ibid., p. 96.

63 Gabriel, , op. cit., p. 362.Google Scholar

64 Such power in the hands of one nation raises the possibility of “imperialist” domination as an aim. Herbert Feis is willing to state a “conclusive affirmation about American foreign policy: it is not imperialist in design, in fact, or in temper.”—“Is the United States Imperialist?”, Yale Review, XLI, No. 1 (Autumn 1951), 13.

65 It is quite possible that the major problem of this coming period will carry heavy moral implications-as in the case of the issue of slavery following the Revolutionary period (1776–1824). The aspirations of the people of Asia and Africa could well furnish the chief issue, along with special repercussions from America's own racial problem.

66 Merton, , op. cit., p. 179.Google Scholar

67 Ibid., p. 121.

68 Schlesinger, , Paths to the Present, op. cit., p. 85.Google Scholar

69 Although Kennan, George F. (like Prof. Morgenthau, Hans J.) deplores the “legalistic-moralistic approach” of “our past policy formulation” (American Diplomacy, 1900–1950, Chicago, 1951, p. 95)Google Scholar, he points out the probable powerful impact on world opinion, if it could receive “the news that America had shed the shackles of disunity, confusion and doubt, had taken a new lease of hope and determination, and was setting about her tasks with enthusiasm and clarity of purpose” (p. 146). Wise diplomacy is doubtless necessary to implement great moral purpose, but it can never be a satisfactory substitute.