Isolationists and American Foreign Policy:

Pearl Harbor Forever Ends a Failed Ideology

Michael Streich

November 11, 2011

 

On Monday, December 8, 1941, every U.S. Senator and representative except one, voted to go to war with the empire of Japan. Only Montana Representative Jeanette Rankin, a life-long pacifist, demurred. The Pearl Harbor attack united Americans and instantly converted the isolationists in Congress. Senator Arthur H. Vandenberg recalled his own immediate change after receiving a telephone call about the attack Sunday at four o’clock in the afternoon: “That day ended isolationism for any realist.”

 

Isolationism before the Pearl Harbor Attack

 

Isolationism is still used to describe the ideology of those not willing to intervene in foreign matters if the impact of such affairs affects U.S. security interests. In the years before Pearl Harbor, isolationists believed that the Pacific and Atlantic oceans were natural barriers, protecting the United States from the anti-democratic regimes creating havoc in Europe and Asia.

 

Extreme isolationists believed that any U.S. assistance either directly or indirectly would result in foreign entanglements inconsistent with Constitutional prerogatives. They pointed to World War I and deplored the prospect of sending American boys to fight in foreign wars.

 

Isolationists Represented Liberal and Conservative Views

 

Pearl Harbor and World War II changed the meaning of isolationism. Pre-war isolationists that criticized Franklin Roosevelt’s handling of the war were, often ironically, dubbed reactionaries and anti-interventionists despite their life-long liberal pedigrees. This included Democrat Burton Wheeler and Jeanette Rankin. Wheeler, in his memoirs, comments that, “Never before had the question of whether one was a liberal or conservative turned on his view of foreign policy.”

 

Isolationists like Vandenberg hated Communism and fascism as much as those eager to commit to war. On September 15, 1939 Vandenberg wrote in his diary, “…I decline to embrace the opportunistic idea…that we can stop these things in Europe without entering the conflict.” Isolationists viewed every White House attempt to assist Britain and France as a potential door through which the United States would step into a long and bloody conflict much like World War I.

 

Senator Gerald P. Nye’s committee hearings on World War I, culminating in a controversial report in 1936, provided some ammunition for isolationists and Americans favoring neutrality. Historian Wayne Cole states that, “It is significant that the particular controversy that ended the investigation in 1936 involved President Woodrow Wilson’s role in World War I – not the activities of munitions makers.” Like Wilson, FDR appeared to be maneuvering the nation into war, a perception that led to later conspiracy theories linking Roosevelt to the Pearl Harbor attack. Senator Tom Connally writes in his memoirs that, “…the most effective medium for channeling American public opinion into isolationism during this period was the Nye Committee investigation…”

 

Connally blamed Gerald Nye and “his cohort” Arthur Vandenberg for using the committee hearings to publish “half-truths” in order to further their isolationist agenda. According to Connally, this included a blistering indictment of Wall Street and U.S. bankers that “duped” the government “…into shedding American blood” in 1917. Connally also identified different “schools” of isolationism, equating, for example, Burton Wheeler with anti-British sentiments. Another isolationist viewpoint was attributed to William Borah who believed in the two-ocean defense idea and had been one of the chief opponents of Woodrow Wilson’s League of Nations.

 

Japanese Action Unites Americans

 

1941 was a crucial year for Britain as it struggled against what was perceived as an imminent invasion by Nazi Germany. In January 1941, as the issue of Lend-Lease was being debated in Congress, the New York Times stated that, given the scope of European affairs, the ideology separating isolationists from “interventionists” had become academic. According to the Times, “The Roosevelt Administration opposed ironclad isolation, insisting that a great nation must lift its voice against treaty violations and infringements of international law…”

 

Pearl Harbor ended the debate. A New York Times editorial, referring to the years of “Hamletlike irresolution,” concluded that the declarations of war “instantly united us” and brought a sense of relief to all Americans: “Their spirit was no longer troubled; their soul was no longer divided; they knew at last what they must do.”

 

The same sentiment had been expressed in Congress on December 8^th where one representative referred to the “war mad Japanese devils…” American hero Charles A. Lindbergh, a leader in the isolationist movement, volunteered to serve with the Army Air Corps. His acceptance was hailed as “a symbol of…newfound unity.”

 

Burton Wheeler’s early 1941 predictions that the “New Deal Triple A foreign policy [would] plow under every fourth American boy…” were not unfounded, but other observers compared the United States to 1917 when a declaration of war was almost too late. The Pearl Harbor attack, defended by General Tojo at his trial in 1947, forever ended isolationism.

 

The subsequent Cold War imposed an on-going interventionist policy supported by former isolationists like Arthur Vandenberg. The defense of democracy became a global imperative not by design but from the lessons of history and the impossibility of avoiding foreign entanglements.

 

References:

 

“America’s Role: A National Debate,” New York Times, January 19, 1941

Wayne S. Cole, Senator Gerald P. Nye and American Foreign Relations (The University of Minnesota Press, 1962)

Tom Connally, My Name Is Tom Connally (Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1954)

“The Lone War Dissenter,” NPR, December 7, 2001

Arthur H. Vandenberg, Jr., The Private Papers of Senator Vandenberg (Houghton Mifflin Company, 1952)

Burton K. Wheeler, Yankee from the West (Doubleday & Company, 1962)

[First published in Suitew101; copyright owned by Michael Streich. Reprints require written permission]