FOREIGN
POLICY:
NOT
JUST FOR YOU
BUT BY YOU AS WELL THIRD SESSION: U.S DEMOCRATIC FOREIGN POLICY 1921 - 1959 (7) The Kellogg-Briand
Anti-War Treaty
Isolationism was a powerful, at
times dominant, force in America from Woodrow Wilson's 1920 defeat over
the
League of Nations until late 1941 when Japan attacked the United
States. But there were some internationalist advances during the
administrtions 1921 - 1933 of Presidents Harding, Coolidge and Hoover.
The League of Nations Covenant did not make war illegal. It required members to pause and first try a number of cooling off procedures before going to war. But World War I had proven so terrible that man thoughtful persons also determined to abolish war. In March 1927 Professor James T. Shotwell, who had joined Wilson's "Inquiry" in 1917 told German policy makers in Berlin that 1914 - 1918 had demonstrated that war could no longer be a limited instrument of planned, rational national policy and should, therefore, be abolished. Later, while still in a private capacity, Shotwell peruaded French Foreign Minister Aristide Briand to set in motion a series of steps which led to the Kellogg-Briand Treaty. Outlawry of War
Popular opinion was simultaneously rallying behind an alternative to the League of Nations' willingness to enforce peace by collective arms. "Outlawry" of war became the current cry in important American circles. The concept had been formulated in 1918 by Chicago corporation lawyer Salmon Levinson. Outlawry's goal was to make make wars of aggression first illegal and then criminal under court-monitored international law. Outlawry's advocates argued that public opinion would then, without additional help, suffice to enforce the court's verdicts. War, as had duelling, would gradually wither away. In the Senate Republican William E. Borah of Idaho passionately championed outlawry. Initially opposed to a treaty containing ideas from both Shotwell and from Levinson, American Secretary of State Frank Kellogg gradually came around. Kellogg wanted a text so brief and so simple that all citizens could understand it: it would be America's first "reader friendly" treaty. Like the earlier Logan Act, the Kellogg-Briand Treaty abolishing aggressive war as an instrument of national policy is still the law of the land. It was invoked by Justice Jackson at the Nuremberg and Tokyo war crimes trials. With UN General Assembly advocacy, the Kellogg-Briand Pact has gradually won a certain place for itself in international law. Even without a military enforcement mechanism, outlawry of war resembles the Ten Commandments in having value whether anyone obeys them or not. The lesson of the League of Nations and the United Nations is that enduring peace must be organized, structured. But before it can be organized, it must be proclaimed in simple words that all men can understand. (8) The UN Charter:
Learning from Wilson's Mistakes
After making "900" speeches for
the League of Nations In 1920, Franklin Delano Roosevelt
was defeated as the Democratic party's candidate for Vice President.
From this experience FDR learned never again to get too far ahead of
American public opinion or the Republicans on international issues. As
President 1934 - 1945 Roosevelt and his Secretary of State, Cordell
Hull, patiently planned a world incorporating the grand design of
Woodrow Wilson while avoiding his overly elitist, partisan mistakes.
Unprecedentedly early, Hull began planning the peace to follow World War II: only two weeks after Hitler's invasion of Poland in 1939. Both FDR and Hull carried over from Woodrow Wilson and his "Inquiry" the idea that peace could and should be scientific, i.e., planned by qualified experts. At the same time the world should be re-created through a treaty co-planned and negotiated by Senators and members of the House of Representatives. Somehow a place could and should also be found for serious-minded American private voluntary associations: ecclesiastical and secular, representing labor and management, economic and non-economic points of view. In 1942 - 1943 Secretary Hull created a 45-member Presidential Planning Committee. It contained eight members of Congress, from both parties, and ten private experts, including Professor James T. Shotwell of Columbia University. The Department of State drew ideas systematically and steadily from six major and scores of lesser private American associations. The treaty which created the UN Charter was negotiated April - June 1945 in San Francisco by seven Ameican delegates on the ground. Only one was a member of the Administration: Secretary of State Edward Stettinius, who had replaced the ailing Cordell Hull. There were also two Senators and two Representatives from both major political parties. There were two private representatives of the public, including the first woman in a major trety negotiation, Dean Virginia Gildersleeve of Columbia University's Barnard College. Representatives of 42 selected private organizations served at San Francisco as official "Consultants" to the U.S. Delegation. They were joined by more than 200 other groups as officially recognized "Observers." The UN Charter (to the extent it in large part resulted from American efforts) was, therefore, a product not simply of Presidents Roosevelt and Truman and of the Department of State but also of Senators and Representatives, private experts, Rotarians, Lions, the National Federation of Churches of Christ in America as well as prepresentatives of Catholic, Jewish and many other groups. Every essentially private person associated with the U.S. Delegation, icluding John Foster Dulles, James T. Shotwell and the NAACP's W.E.B. Du Bois, made lasting, easily identified contributions to the text and spirit of the UN Charter. Private citizens, both as individuals and in groups, studied, educated, mobilized and facilitated easy Senate ratification of the treaty. The UN Charter experience became a textbook exemplar of the vision sketched in our first meeting on how to join private and governmental foreign policy-making. Englishman John Saltmarsh's mid-17th Century plea had finally been realized on another continent. For the American people did not simply submit to a United Nations organization imposed by a distant, non-consultative government. Rather the American people, to paraphrase John Saltmarsh, also consulted, debated, counseled, prophesied and voted. (9) Eisenhower's 1958
Campaign for Foreign Aid
In 1958 President Dwight David
Eisenhower mobilized public pressure on Congress for his foreign
economic aid bill. What he put together was a smorgasbord of earlier
participatory experiments. America's last weak Presidential nod to
consulting the people on foreign policy was a one-day blitz with
follow-up.
It began February 25, 1958 in Washington, D.C. as "The Conference on Foreign Aspects of U.S. National Security." Of those invited some 1,400 came: admirals and generals, CEOs, a hundred college presidents, publisher, journalists, 135 members of Congress, individual experts and representatives of private civic groups. The busy day's twelve events included a speech by former President Harry S Truman. Eric Johnston then created two follow-up groups: one to lobby Congress and one tax-exempt to educate concerned private Americans. It was a pale image of the glory days from 1916's League to Enforce Peace or 1945's Consultants and Observers at San Francisco. But remember it well. For it was the last. Since 1958 the American people have been increasingly unsought as contributors to and partners in our national government's foreign policy-making. -OOO- presented orally July 25, 1993 revisited and lightly edited for the internet 03/27/2004 Patrick Killough Black Mountain, NC |