American foreign policy 1919 to 1939, including the rejection of the League of Nations, the Washington Conference, the Kellogg-Briand Pact, and the Neutrality Acts

What this dot point is asking

NESA expects you to give an integrated account of American foreign policy between 1919 and 1939. Strong answers integrate the Senate's rejection of the League, the Washington Naval Conference, the Dawes and Young Plans, the Kellogg-Briand Pact, the Nye Committee, the Neutrality Acts of the 1930s, and the Good Neighbor Policy. The key analytical point is that "isolationism" was political and military; American economic and naval engagement was sustained.

The answer

The rejection of the League

The Treaty of Versailles was signed on 28 June 1919. The American Senate, controlled by Republicans after the 1918 mid-terms, refused to ratify without the Lodge Reservations on Article X (collective security), to which Wilson would not agree.

The Senate voted twice. On 19 November 1919 the Treaty with the Lodge Reservations failed 39 to 55; the Treaty without them failed 38 to 53. On 19 March 1920 the Treaty with reservations failed 49 to 35 (seven short of the two-thirds needed). The United States made a separate peace with Germany under the Treaty of Berlin on 25 August 1921.

The United States never joined the League of Nations. It did join the International Labour Organization (1934) and unofficially participated in many League agencies. American observers sat on League committees on disarmament, opium, and refugees.

The Washington Naval Conference

President Harding's first major foreign policy act was the Washington Conference on the Limitation of Armament (12 November 1921 to 6 February 1922), chaired by Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes. Hughes opened by proposing the scrapping of 30 American capital ships and asked Britain and Japan to match.

The Conference produced three treaties:

• The Five-Power Treaty (6 February 1922) fixed capital ship ratios at 5:5:3:1.67:1.67 (United States, Britain, Japan, France, Italy) and imposed a 10-year construction holiday on battleships.
• The Four-Power Treaty (13 December 1921) between the United States, Britain, Japan, and France ended the Anglo-Japanese Alliance (1902) and committed signatories to consult on Pacific disputes.
• The Nine-Power Treaty (6 February 1922) committed all major powers to the Open Door in China and to respect Chinese territorial integrity.

The Five-Power ratio left Japan with a smaller fleet than was wanted by the Imperial Navy but with regional supremacy west of Hawaii (the United States agreed not to fortify Guam or the Philippines). The London Naval Treaty (22 April 1930) extended limits to cruisers and destroyers. Japan denounced both treaties on 29 December 1934.

Dawes, Young, and the war debts

American banks were the indispensable creditor of the post-war European economy. The reparations and war-debt arithmetic ran: Germany paid reparations to Britain and France; Britain and France serviced war debts to the United States; American banks recycled their dollars to Germany as private loans.

The Dawes Plan (16 August 1924), under American banker Charles G. Dawes, restructured German reparations (initial 1 billion gold marks, rising to 2.5 billion), reorganised the Reichsbank, and pledged 200 million dollars in American loans.

The Young Plan (June 1929), under Owen D. Young of GE, reduced the total German reparations bill to 112 billion gold marks and lengthened the payment period to 1988. The Bank for International Settlements (1930) was created to administer the transfers.

The Hoover Moratorium (20 June 1931) suspended both reparations and war debts for one year as the Depression made transfers impossible. The Lausanne Conference (July 1932) effectively ended German reparations. War debts to the United States were defaulted by every European debtor except Finland.

The Kellogg-Briand Pact

The General Treaty for Renunciation of War, signed in Paris on 27 August 1928 by Secretary of State Frank Kellogg, French Foreign Minister Aristide Briand, and representatives of 13 other states, "renounced war as an instrument of national policy" and pledged to settle disputes by "pacific means". Sixty-two states eventually ratified, including the future Axis.

The Pact had no enforcement mechanism. Critics dismissed it as moralism. It nevertheless gave Kellogg the Nobel Peace Prize (1929), formed a basis for the post-war crime of "aggressive war" prosecuted at Nuremberg, and articulated a normative position that the United States carried into the United Nations Charter (1945).

The Stimson Doctrine (7 January 1932), promulgated by Secretary of State Henry Stimson after the Japanese invasion of Manchuria (18 September 1931), refused American recognition of any territorial change effected by aggression. It was the practical American response to the inability of the Pact to deter aggression.

The Nye Committee and the war profits thesis

The Special Committee on Investigation of the Munitions Industry, established by Senator Gerald Nye of North Dakota and Senator Bennett Clark of Missouri, ran from April 1934 to February 1936. It investigated arms manufacturers (DuPont, Remington, J.P. Morgan and Co.) and concluded that war profits had drawn the United States into the First World War.

The Committee's findings (the "merchants of death" thesis) shaped the public mood. A Gallup poll in 1937 reported 70 per cent of Americans believed entering the First World War had been a mistake. The findings underpinned the Neutrality Acts of 1935 to 1937.

The Neutrality Acts

The Neutrality Acts attempted to insulate the United States from any future European or Asian war by prohibiting trade or financial assistance with belligerents.

• The Neutrality Act of 31 August 1935 imposed an embargo on arms sales to all belligerents. It was passed during the lead-up to the Italian invasion of Abyssinia (3 October 1935).
• The Neutrality Act of 29 February 1936 banned loans to belligerents.
• The Neutrality Act of 1 May 1937 continued the arms embargo and added "cash and carry" for non-military goods (foreign powers had to pay cash and transport in their own ships). The Spanish Civil War was included.
• The Neutrality Act of 4 November 1939, passed after the German invasion of Poland, lifted the arms embargo and applied "cash and carry" to all trade, the first crack in the framework.

The Acts had two perverse effects. They denied weapons to Republican Spain (1936 to 1939) while leaving Germany and Italy to arm Franco. They denied American support to China (Japan's enemy) without weakening Japan. By 1939 the framework was widely seen as obsolete.

The Good Neighbor Policy

Roosevelt's inaugural address (4 March 1933) pledged "the policy of the good neighbor". The Seventh Pan-American Conference at Montevideo (December 1933) saw Secretary of State Cordell Hull endorse the principle of non-intervention in Latin America.

The policy delivered:

• Withdrawal of US Marines from Nicaragua (January 1933) and Haiti (August 1934).
• Abrogation of the Platt Amendment on Cuba (29 May 1934).
• New treaties with Panama (1936) reducing American rights over the Canal Zone.
• Recognition of Mexico's 1938 nationalisation of American and British oil holdings, settled in 1942 by negotiated compensation.

The policy aligned Latin America with the United States in the run-up to and during the Second World War. By 1942 every Latin American republic except Argentina and Chile had broken relations with the Axis.

Historiography

Robert Dallek (Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy 1932-1945, 1979) is the standard study.

Robert Divine (The Illusion of Neutrality, 1962) is the foundational study of the Neutrality Acts.

Wayne Cole (Roosevelt and the Isolationists 1932-1945, 1983) is the standard study of the isolationist coalition.

Akira Iriye (After Imperialism, 1965) is the standard study of the Washington system.

Justus Doenecke and John Wilz (From Isolation to War, 4th edn 2015) is the standard textbook.

Common exam traps

Treating "isolationism" as withdrawal. The United States was actively engaged through the Washington system, the Dawes Plan, Kellogg-Briand, and the Good Neighbor Policy.

Forgetting the Nye Committee. It built the public mood that the Neutrality Acts codified.

Treating all four Neutrality Acts as identical. Each one made a different bet about what neutrality meant; the 1939 Act was a major shift.

In one sentence

American foreign policy between 1919 and 1939 was dominated by political "isolationism" (Senate rejection of Versailles on 19 November 1919, the Neutrality Acts of 1935, 1936, 1937, and 1939, the Nye Committee of 1934 to 1936) but combined with active engagement through naval limitation (Washington Conference of 1921 to 1922, Five-Power ratio of 5:5:3), reparations diplomacy (Dawes Plan of 1924, Young Plan of 1929, Hoover Moratorium of June 1931), the Kellogg-Briand Pact of 27 August 1928, and the Good Neighbor Policy of December 1933 onwards.