AMERICA: PACEMAKER IN PEACEMAKING

Chamberlin, William Henry

America: Pacemaker In Peacemaking By WILLIAM HENRY CHAMBERLIN EDITOR'S NOTE: This is the second of a series of articles on American foreign policy. In the first, which appeared last week, Mr....

...Great Britain and Russia have been very cooperative in unloading our Lend-Lease supplies...
...It was not referred to Congress...
...Isolationism did not and could not "fail," as is sometimes loosely asserted...
...To cooperate with all other peoples in the maintenance of peace is an ideal that appeals to most Americans...
...He had made 14 equal zero...
...The occupation'of Iceland by American troops, for instance, in July, 1941, and the declaration of a shooting war against Axis submarines in September of the same year...
...As Prof...
...By failing to pursue either of these policies consistently, England and France got the worst consequences of both...
...Congress had no voice in that...
...Now the illusion that an isolationism we never practiced is the principal cause of our own and the world's woes leads naturally to another illusion: that the rest of the world, enemy powers excepted, is all set for cooperation and is eagerly waiting on us...
...it reaffirmed this recognition in non-aggression treaties with these states which were concluded, at the initiative of the Soviet government, in the early '30s...
...Roosevelt is or was an isolationist...
...For it was never tried out, least of all in the decisive year 1941...
...It is certainly questionable whether American membership in the League would have altered the course of events in the big crises of the post-World War I and pre-World War II era...
...And this oharge becomes merely ridiculous if it is applied to our policy during the period between the outbreak of the war in Europe and the attack on Pearl Harbor...
...William Phillips, was not permitted to talk with the imprisoned Indian nationalist leaders, Gandhi and Nehru...
...Especially since Stalingrad, the Soviet government has shown itself quite uncompromising on the question of retaining the fruits of its earlier pact with Hitler, including the three Baltic Republics of Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia, together with about half of what was formerly Poland.and slices of Finnish territory...
...The Atlantic Charter of August, 1941, was based on an assumption of Anglo-American partnership in accomplishing the complete defeat of Germany...
...A survey of the voting in Congress after the beginning of the war in Europe shows that the isolationists, or non-interventionists, in Congress were defeated on every important issue— when Congress was consulted at all...
...All that is necessary is to have Congress pass resolutions and everyone will live happily ever afterward...
...No one in his right mind would suggest that Mr...
...Nathaniel Peffer, no sympathizer with isolationism, quite probably anticipated the judgment of future historians when he wrote, in a recent article in Harper's: "When, for example, the United States traded to Great Britain destroyers for bases, it was for all practical purposes entering the European war...
...The joke gained currency in Europe that Wilson had been awarded the Nobel Prize not for peace, but for mathematics...
...One could cite many similar declarations by Americans in responsible official posts before Pearl Harbor...
...England, Russia, and China in this war, like England, France, and Italy in the last war, are naturally glad to get the benefit of our manpower and supplies which now, as in 1918, may prove the decisive factor in turning the tide of the struggle...
...And recent experience with Germany and Japan inspires little confidence that there would be any finality about this process of swallowing up smaller and weaker states, once it had successfully begun...
...And disillusionment, with the anger, bitterness, and frustration which it generates, is a poor counsellor...
...A cynical friend once observed to me that when he hears a foreigner talk about America's responsibility he clutches anxiously and instinctively for his pocketbook...
...To underwrite certain foreign powers in programs of imperialism and annexation is a very different proposition...
...Wilson's 14 Points, honestly and impartially applied, might have laid the foundation of an orderly, peaceful, prosperous world where no Hitler and no Mussolini would have arisen to be a curse to their own peoples and to the world...
...The Lend-Lease Act was not what could reasonably be called an isolationist measure, and it was vigorously opposed by all the recognized isolationists...
...This is dangerous oversimplification of the problems involved in building up a world order reasonably free from the threat of war...
...It is in the light of this very important distinction that one must judge the various projects that have been put forward for American participation in the postwar settlement...
...In the case of Manchuria, Mr...
...When Mr...
...Our Money, Not Our Ideas I think it is important at this time for the American people to know the true record and not the legendary record of what we did, and what other countries did after World War I. For illusion, bred from false history, finds an inevitable climax in disillusionment...
...And it is only a very -cockeyed view of international responsibility that would find America to blame for the failure of Great Britain and France to take strong action when Hitler tore up the Locarno Treaty and remilitarized the Rhineland in 1936...
...Walter C. Langsam says (The World Since 191b, P. 774) "A considerable number of American citizens worked for the League as salaried officials, while many Americans headed boundary, railway, and river commissions, and some were chosen as judges of the World Court...
...I am instructed to pledge you the very fullest support today, tomorrow, and as long as the struggle lasts and until the ultimate victory comes...
...But our associates in World War I were chilly, to say the least, in their reception of our ideas about peace...
...Churchill and other Englishmen have exhorted us in sonorous terms to assume what they like to ?describe as our "responsibilities...
...THE PRINCIPAL BASIS for the legend that isolationism dominated our foreign policy during the years betweejj the two wars was our failure to join the League of Nations...
...And with respect to that act the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations had no more to say than a similar number of North Dakota wheat farmers...
...But there is a frequent and noticeable indisposition in foreign countries to grant America a vote in determining policy commensurate with the risks and sacrifices which its responsibilities involve...
...It was notified later by the President, but then the fact was accomplished...
...The Soviet government has not only recognized the independence of the Baltic Republics and the eastern frontier of Poland in freely negotiated treaties...
...There must be give as well as take in the relations of foreign powers with the United States...
...Ckamberlin discusses the "various projects"— Union Now, the Churchill-Dewey scheme for an Anglo-American alliance, Walter Lippmann's "nuclear alliance," the Culbertson Plan, and others—in the next article in this series which will appear in an early issue...
...Suppose that America had been a member of the League at that time...
...and Mr...
...Chamberlin showed how the United States, far from pursuing an isolationist course, intervened actively in world affairs in the two decades between world wars, exerting political and economic pressures, cooperating with other powers on a variety of issues, and playing the leading role in programs for relief and rehabilitation of peoples everywhere...
...Distorted and sometimes directly violated in letter and spirit, the 14 Points were degraded from the charter„ of a decent world to a slick bit of war propaganda...
...Up to the present time they have been rather less cooperative in accepting the full implications of our ideal of national self-determination, as applied, say, to India, or to Russia's small neighbor states...
...Is it likely, or even possible that American public opinion would have sanctioned strong action by this country when England and France, so much more directly threatened, preferred to remain passive...
...One may regard all these executive acts of belligerency or near-belligerency as impressive proof of Mr...
...These utterances show that the Congressional declarations of war in December, 1941, while provoked by the attack on Pearl Harbor and the German and Italian declarations of war, were only a belated recognition of a state of war with the Axis on which the Administration had been basing its actions for many months...
...The charge of isolationism must be dismissed as unproven for an era when America organized humanitarian relief all over the world, made a very active contribution to the financial and economic stabilization of Europe, assumed substantial diplomatic responsibilities in relation to China and made repeated efforts by- influence and example to promote disarmament...
...Roosevelt's prescient farsightedness, in view of our ultimate total involvement in the war...
...The British Colonial Secretary, Col...
...One could search in vain for any case when we thwarted or opposed a League attempt to promote peace or prevent war...
...Anglo-French Bungling The reason why Hitler was able to launch World War II under such favorable circumstances was not American isolationism...
...Roosevelt's influence oh the direction of our foreign policy was overwhelmingly decisive...
...But was our absence from Geneva such an important element in the growth of world disorder as is sometimes assumed...
...A series of forcible annexations, carried out by the Soviet government in violation of its own earlier voluntary engagements, would be a poor augury for a secure and peaceful world...
...But our former envoy to India, Mr...
...The British have welcomed our aid in the defense of India and in the prospective reconquest of their former colonies, Burma and Malaya and Hong Kong...
...Give As Well As Take This same attitude of appreciating our military aid, but not our ideas on the organization of world peace, is to be found in the Soviet Union...
...Similarly, when the President ordered the freezing of Japanese assets in this country in July, 1941, he was decreeing a state of war with Japan...
...Stimson did not lag behind the League, rather the contrary...
...Averell Harriman, recently appointed American ambassador to the Soviet Union, made his trip to Moscow in September, 1941, he said to Foreign Commissar Molotov: "Your success means everything to the people of America...
...Isolationism Was Not Tried One can recall other acts of similar character and significance, taken at the initiative and discretion of the President...
...It was the inability of England and France to choose clearly and firmly between the alternative policies of scotching Hitler promptly, when he was still weak, or allowing him to move eastward unchecked and shoot it out with Stalin...
...The United States made as earnest and persistent an effort to promote limitation of armaments as any power in the League...
...Oliver Stanley, has outlined a scheme, very ingenious from the standpoint of British imperial interests, under which, after the war, America would help to defend and finance British colonial possessions, while England would monopolize administrative rule...
...America made no attempt to interfere with the application of the feeble and ineffective sanctions imposed on Italy at the time of the invasion of Ethiopia...
...But it is childishly unfair to try to saddle isolationists with responsibility for this involvement when they had no effective influence on the shaping of our foreign policy for years before Pearl Harbor...

Vol. 7 • November 1943 • No. 48


 
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