Topic 7.11 Notes – Interwar Foreign Policy

What Interwar Foreign Policy Was

This period only makes sense if you keep one idea in mind. Isolationism did not mean total withdrawal.

• After World War I, the Senate rejected the Treaty of Versailles and the League of Nations because many feared collective security would weaken Congress’s power to decide on war.
• The U.S. still acted like a major power. It was the world’s leading creditor nation, had a strong navy, held Pacific and Caribbean interests, and cared about the Open Door in China.
• The best label for the 1920s is unilateral internationalism. The U.S. wanted influence abroad, but on its own terms.

Attitudes you need to tell apart

How the United States Tried to Shape the World in the 1920s

Rejecting the League did not end cooperation. The U.S. made a separate peace with Germany and debated joining the World Court, which showed many Americans accepted cooperation if it did not bind the country automatically.

Harding’s return to normalcy meant stepping away from Wilson’s crusading idealism, not abandoning foreign policy.

Arms limitation and peace diplomacy

The clearest example was the Washington Naval Conference, which tried to reduce naval rivalry and manage tensions in the Pacific.

Pacific imperial holdings

• Five-Power Treaty set naval ratios at 5:5:3:1.75:1.75 for the U.S., Britain, Japan, France, and Italy.
• Four-Power Treaty said the U.S., Britain, France, and Japan would consult over Pacific disputes.
• Nine-Power Treaty supported the Open Door policy and China’s territorial integrity.

The Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1928, written by Frank Kellogg and Aristide Briand, renounced war as national policy. Its weakness was obvious. It had no enforcement, so it did nothing to stop Manchuria, Ethiopia, or later German expansion.

Economic diplomacy

The U.S. also tried to stabilize Europe through money.

1. U.S. banks loaned money to Germany.
2. Germany paid reparations to Britain and France.
3. Britain and France repaid war debts to the U.S.

The Dawes Plan started this cycle, and the Young Plan revised it. The whole system was shaky because it depended on constant American lending and was hurt by high U.S. tariffs.

Intervention in the Western Hemisphere and the Good Neighbor Shift

Even during “isolationism,” the U.S. kept intervening in Latin America.

• U.S. occupation of Haiti lasted until 1934.
• U.S. involvement in Nicaragua lasted from 1912 to 1933.
• In Nicaragua, resistance was led by Augusto César Sandino.

Under Franklin Roosevelt, the Good Neighbor Policy changed the method.

• At the Montevideo Conference in 1933, the U.S. accepted nonintervention.
• The U.S. withdrew from Haiti in 1934.
• A 1934 Cuba treaty ended most of the Platt Amendment, though Guantánamo stayed.
• When Mexico nationalized oil in 1938, the U.S. negotiated instead of invading.

This was a real shift, but the goal stayed the same. The U.S. still wanted stability and influence in the hemisphere.

Why Nonintervention Stayed Strong in the 1930s

Aggression was rising fast. Japan took Manchuria in 1931, leading to the Stimson Doctrine. Italy invaded Ethiopia in 1935. Hitler’s Germany moved into the Rhineland, Austria, the Sudetenland, and then Czechoslovakia. Japan expanded deeper into China after 1937.

Many Americans still opposed war because of World War I trauma, unpaid debts, the Great Depression, and the Nye Committee, which blamed “merchants of death.”

Neutrality Acts

• 1935 banned arms sales to belligerents.
• 1936 added a ban on loans and credits.
• 1937 applied to civil wars and allowed limited cash-and-carry for nonmilitary goods, which mattered in the Spanish Civil War.
• 1939, after Germany invaded Poland, allowed arms sales on cash-and-carry, helping Britain and France most.

The problem was that neutrality treated aggressors and victims the same.

Roosevelt’s Shift from Neutrality to Aid and Pearl Harbor

Roosevelt moved carefully because public opinion was split. His Quarantine Speech in 1937 hinted that aggressors should be isolated, but many Americans disliked that idea. The USS Panay incident the same year showed how close conflict in Asia could come to the U.S.

After the fall of France in 1940, helping Britain looked more urgent. The debate sharpened between the America First Committee and Charles Lindbergh, versus the Committee to Defend America by Aiding the Allies.

Major steps short of war:

• Destroyers-for-Bases Agreement in 1940
• Selective Training and Service Act in 1940, the first peacetime draft
• Roosevelt’s arsenal of democracy speech
• Lend-Lease Act in 1941 for Britain, later the Soviet Union and China
• Atlantic Charter with Winston Churchill
• undeclared naval fighting after the USS Greer incident

Against Japan, the U.S. used sanctions and an oil embargo after Japan occupied southern French Indochina. Negotiations failed over China and East Asia. The attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, brought the U.S. into the war.

USS Arizona burning at Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941

Jeannette Rankin cast the lone vote against war.