BACK TO ISOLATION?

Korero (AEWS), Volume 2, Issue 3, 14 February 1944, Page 17

BACK TO ISOLATION?

By

Carroll Binder,

in Transatlantic

Will the United States continue to collaborate with the other United Nations after the war or will it revert to a policy of isolationism as it did after the last war ?

The answer to that momentous question is a secret locked in the minds of 48,000,000 men and women of diverse cultural levels, racial origins, and social aspirations scattered over 3,000,000 square miles of territory. They are the adult citizens who every two years elect all of the members of the Lower House of Congress and one-third of the ninety-six members of the Senate and every four years elect the President of the United States. They exercise ultimate control over the foreign relations as well as the domestic policies of the republic. Neither the chief executive nor the legislators can long disregard the will of this great sovereignty. Not even a war for survival suspends or adjourns the biennial holding of this decisive' national referendum, which will next occur in the first week of November,

1944. The most that one can do, therefore,

to help the citizens of another nation assess the prospects of continued American collaboration is to describe as faithfully as possible the present temper of his countrymen and point out factors likely to influence their voting.

That is not an easy task in any country. It is particularly difficult in the case of the United States because a very large

part of the electorate ordinarily is more influenced by domestic considerations than by foreign relations in choosing a President and members of Congress.

What a member of Congress does or attempts to do for the people of his constituency in the way of direct benefits -—such as agricultural subsidies, public works, tariff or other measures visibly affecting the prosperity of a local industry or some considerable element in the community—ordinarily exercises a larger influence on his political fortunes than his stand on international questions.

That explains the re-election in 1942 of many members of Congress whose extreme isolationism prior to Pearl Harbour might have been expected to lead to their retirement from public life by a disillusioned and reproving citizenry.

In some constituencies the sentiments, of a large and coherent national, racial, or sectarian bloc such as Poles, Irish, Jews, or Mormons may be decisive in the election of a Congressman or, in fewer instances, even a Senator. The Irish voters may be three generations, removed from Ireland and thoroughly American in all other respects, but the Congressman from a predominantly Irish, district cannot overlook the surviving

anti-English sentiments of his electors in voting on matters where American relations with Great Britain are prominently concerned.

These elements, however, are too small a minority in the nation as a whole to dictate national policy. Happily the prejudices and aspirations brought from the old world to the new are a diminishing factor in American political life.

Domestic issues usually influence the American voter’s choice of a President no less than his choice of a legislator. To the typical American voter, Franklin D. Roosevelt is not the great world leader perceived by people of other lands, but a politician whose efforts to reshape the political, social, and economic structure of the United States during the past decade have aroused the warm admiration of some sections of the electorate and the bitterest hostility of other sections.

Not even the President’s role of Com-mander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the United States in the greatest of all wars and embodiment of the Government in relations with other nations influences the foes of the New Deal to modify their opposition to “ that man in the White House.” These people are as determined to prevent Mr. Roosevelt from returning to the Presidency in 1944 as his admirers are willing to have him break precedent by taking office for a fourth term. (By tradition no other President has ever held office for more than two terms.)

The very fact that Mr. Roosevelt stands for a policy of collaboration with other nations prejudices the bitterer anti-New-Dealers against the policy of collaboration which, under other circumstances, some of them might view more favourably. Likewise some ardent New-Dealers who otherwise might be isolationists will support a policy of collaboration because their cherished leader favours it. * Such is the broad framework in which the American people will choose the men who will determine the character and the degree of the collaboration of the United States with other nations after 1944.

What do these electors think about their country’s relations with other nations — as they think about such matters at all ?

The thoughts of many of the voters are too vague and confused to be reduced to simple clear-cut expression, but one aspiration underlies nearly everyone’s thinking. They want this war to be won as quickly as possible in order that their sons, husbands, and brothers may return to their homes, never again to engage in foreign wars. The overwhelming majority of Americans take no delight in war and the military life. They expect no individual or collective benefits from the war except an opportunity to revert to the kind of lives they led before rampant Japanese, German, and Italian militarism forced them to take up arms.

A small minority of Americans may dream dreams of dominating the rest of the world. Another small minority may dream dreams of emancipating the rest of the world and leading it into the larger life. The great majority is not at all interested in either minority’s dreams and will do nothing to implement either dream. The majority of Americans found it hard to believe, prior to Pearl Harbour, that the Germans or Japanese actually cared so much about world dominion that they would deliberately fight the United States to achieve it. Once attacked, Americans of every viewpoint threw all that they cherish into the struggle to defeat those who would subjugate them. * American opinion is united in the aspiration to avoid involvement in future wars, but seriously divided as to .how to realize that aspiration.

One section believes that only through continued collaboration of the United Nations after the armistice can Japan and Germany be prevented from making fresh attempts to conquer the free peoples.

This school is prepared to make a considerable American military, economic, and political contribution to the policing and reconstruction of the world. Some holding this view are willing, to subordinate American sovereignty so far as

necessary to create an effective world order, while others believe peace can be preserved by teamwork in a new Holy Alliance of powers such as the United States, Great Britain, and Russia without modification of national sovereignty.

Another section of American opinion still believes that we became involved in the war only because we “ meddled in other people’s business ” and that our sole hope of avoiding future wars is reversion to a policy of isolation as quickly as possible after the armistice.

Between these two quite distinct views are ranged the great body of the people who have very hazy and somewhat contradictory ideas as to how to keep out of future wars and best safeguard the security and well-being of the nation.

The reader will be greatly mistaken if he assumes this middle group is uninformed and indifferent about events outside the United States. No people in the world, not excepting the English, reads and listens to so many reports and discussions of foreign affairs as the Americans. The newspapers and' the radio give an immense amount of attention to foreign news and opinion about foreign affairs. Organizations of women, small-town business and professional men, as well as metropolitan bankers and industrialists, gladly pay fees of from to (it takes a pre-prime-ministership Churchill or an H. G. Wells to command the latter fee !) for addresses on foreign affairs. They pay visiting lesser-known English, Indian, Chinese, French, and other lecturers generously for addresses for which in almost any other country the speaker would have to hire his own hall, if a hearing could be obtained at all.

It is much easier to get a large audience to listen to a lecture about Russia, Gandhi, or the future of the British Empire than it is to get attendance at a meeting discussing ways of improving municipal government or reducing taxes.

Millions of Americans have been abroad, and other millions prior to the war maintained contact with the lands from which they or their forebears came.

The reluctance of this great middle body of Americans, whose attitude will largely determine the role played by their country in post-war affairs, to decide to join with other nations in measures designed to prevent future wars and create a stable world order thus arises out of other factors than parochialism and ignorance.

One of those factors is an intense nationalistic independence, which cannot brook the thought of even severely limited subordination to other nations. This should not be difficult to comprehend by any one familiar with the long struggle to achieve national authority over the united individual American States. Even in war it is exceedingly difficult for Americans to accept military command by non-Americans, however superior the foreigners may appear to be in experience.

This objection to foreign authority may make politically difficult any arrangement for post-war policing which involves service for a considerable period by American naval or military units under other than their own commanders. An arrangement which gave the American units responsibility for a given sphere perhaps would be more readily accepted than a proposal involving joint participation. Englishmen who willingly accepted the supreme command of General Eisenhower may resent such a non-reciprocal American mood, but the existence of the mood should not be overlooked.

The histories studied by many Americans have fostered widely prevalent misconceptions as to the United States’ ability to keep out of foreign wars involving naval operations in the Atlantic and the security afforded by its geographical position. Few Americans realize that the numerous wars in which they have participated for the past 250 years were phases of struggles between the European powers rather than isolated conflicts.

Whether Colonel Lindberg and other pre Pearl Harbour isolationists will succeed in reconvincing any large section of the public that our geographical position will enable the United States to keep out of future conflicts in the light of contemporary air and sea warfare only time will tell. Already the

isolationists are attempting to use the airplane to sustain their thesis of a selfsufficient non-collaborationist America as the surest path to peace and security in the post-war world.

The more moderate pre Pearl Harbour isolationists are devoting all their efforts to the furthering of the war effort. Some of them have admitted a change of heart. Others, notably the McCormickPatterson families, which control newspapers with large circulations in Chicago, New York, and Washington, and William Randolph Hearst, who at eighty still directs the policies of a number of widely circulated newspapers, vigorously strive to restore the United States to a policy of isolationism at the earliest possible moment * The press in the United States, as in Great Britain, is free. The majority of American newspapers exercise this prerogative with the greatest discernment. There are many editorial advocates of post-war collaboration. The McCormick-Patterson-Hearst and other strongly isolationist newspapers, on the other hand, do not consider it unpatriotic to foster in the minds of their readers suspicions as to the good faith and future loyalty of our present British and Russian allies. They exploit the antipathy of a large section of the American electorate to Russian communism and atheism and delight in attacking what they consider to be the evils of the British Empire. Civilians experiencing shortages of meat, sugar, shoes, gasoline, and other rationed articles for the first time in their lives are given the impression by conspicuously featured news articles and editorials in the isolationist press that the allies are being lavishly supplied with what American Armed Forces and civilians otherwise might be enjoying. This propaganda, the unfairness and shortsightedness of which is understood and resented by the more thoughtful citizens, undoubtedly will be intensified if rationing is continued during the post-war period to assist the liberated peoples. The controversies between the Polish Government in exile and Russia over post-war boundaries, execution of the Polish labour leaders and treatment of Polish subjects in Russia, are exploited

with an obvious view to embarrassing present prospective collaboration between the United States and Russia.

Another isolationist tactic is to argue that Japan, not Germany, is America’s real enemy, and that the grand strategy of devoting most of America’s military effort at this stage of the war to fighting Germany serves British and Russian rather than American interests. Americans are warned that eventually they may be obliged to fight Japan without assistance from either Britain or Russia and that the failure to concentrate our strength against Japan now is highly perilous. The Chicago Tribune is the most vehement exponent of this view, but isolationist members of Congress also espouse it. * It should be understood in reading these disagreeable passages that more enlightened and accurate views of the relations between the Allies and of the long-term best interests of the United States are constantly being voiced by a majority of the newspapers, radio commentators, and members of Congress. Such extreme isolationists definitely are a minority to-day. There is no reason to assume that they may become a majority.

Their arguments, however, are being persistently placed before the voters, who have not thus far made up their minds as to how the United States can best safeguard itself after the war, and they cannot be disregarded in evaluating American trends.

The isolationists are endeavouring to capture the leadership of the Republican party and to win control of national policy in the 1944 elections or some subsequent election. Their efforts to date have made little apparent headway, but it is much too early to gauge their prospects.

It would be a mistake, however, to assume that the Republicans to-day are the party of isolation and the Democrats the party of collaboration with other nations. Senators Wheeler, of Montana, Clark, of Missouri, and Walsh, of Massachusetts, for example, are Democratic isolationists.

The New York Herald Tribune, at least as consistent a supporter of the Republican party as the Chicago Tribune, ably and vigorously supports a policy of collaboration. Wendell Willkie remains the titular head of the Republican party until someone else is nominated for the presidency. Willkie is a militant champion of collaboration. Willkie’s views are strongly supported by such Republican office holders as Governor Harold E. Stassen, of Minnesota (now Lieutenant-Commander on active duty with the U.S. Navy), who said recently “ the walls of isolation are down for ever,” and Senators Ball, of Minnesota, and Burton, of Ohio, who, in collaboration with two Democratic senators, have introduced in the Senate a resolution calling for the establishment now of a United Nations organization for post-war action. * The favourite candidate of the isolationists for the Republican nomina-

tion at the moment appears to be Governor John W. Bricker, of Ohio, who has been characterized as “an honest Harding.” Harding was the Ohio Senator who succeeded Woodrow Wilson in the presidency in 1920 by run- ’ ning on a

platform which some eminent Republicans commended to the electors as advocating American participation in a modified League of Nations while other eminent Republicans construed it as rejecting American membership in the League. After he had been elected by an enormous majority, Harding declared his election to be a repudiation of American participation in any form of international organization. ' In trying to estimate what the United States will do after the armistice it may

be well to remember that in 1920 a substantial majority of the Senators (two-thirds of whom must approve a treaty to make it effective) favoured ratification of the League of Nations project. A switch of seven negative votes on March 19, 1920, would have provided the necessary two-thirds majority and possibly would have profoundly modified the course of American and world history during the succeeding two decades.

In a speech on April 7 Governor Bricker revealed reluctance to commit himself to either the isolationist or the collaborationist view. “ America,’’ he said, “ is not, never has been, and never will be an isolationist nation. The term defines nothing. America must deal with the other nations of the world, and America must assume leadership. The term ‘ internationalist ’ is just as absurd. No sane man would think of wiping out national lines or of subordinating his own Government to a foreign authority. Isn’t that what the United Nations are fighting to prevent ? ”

Bricker and candidates like him probably will try to straddle until they sense clearly to what extent, if any, the majority of the American people, after the armistice, desire to contribute their military, economic, and political resources to joint efforts to police and rehabilitate the world. If the war has ended or victory appears assured in November, 1944, the candidates most likely to win electoral favour, are those who come nearest to convincing the majority of the electorate that what they do will involve the minimum risk of America getting into another war and won’t involve excessive personal hardships in the way of rationing or increased taxes.

Meantime organizations such as the newly-formed Non-Partisan Council to Win the Peace, which is a federation of groups advocating bold American collaboration, and newspapers and publicists sharing this view, are doing their best to convince the voters who have not thus far made up their minds that collaboration is the only course of enlightened selfinterest for the citizen and the nation.

There is no reason to assume that the United States will cease to collaborate after the war, although it would be a mistake to assume that such collaboration is inevitable. Continuance by the Government and people of Great Britain of their able and effective efforts to achieve the fullest measure of cooperation with the United States is

certain to strengthen the tendencies to collaboration in the United States. Weakening or abandonment of those British efforts would play into the hands of those elements in the United States bent upon recommitting the United States to a policy of isolation, which, in the writer’s opinion, would be suicidal.