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Congressional Isolationists and the Roosevelt Foreign Policy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2011

John C. Donovan
John C. Donovan
Affiliation:
Bates College
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Extract

In the 1950's, as in the 1930's, there are Congressional efforts to limit executive discretion in the conduct of foreign affairs. Senators Taft and Wherry have generated a debate over the President's authority to send armed forces abroad, which is reminiscent of the debate over the neutrality legislation of the earlier decade. The time has therefore come when a more just appreciation of President Roosevelt's leadership in foreign affairs may be possible and when such an evaluation may be useful.

Type
Research Article
Information
World Politics , Volume 3 , Issue 3 , April 1951 , pp. 299 - 316
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1951

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References

1 Neutrality, Peace Legislation and Our Foreign Policy: Hearings before the Committee on Foreign Relations, U. S. Senate, 76th Congress, 1st Session, 1939, p. 7.

2 Charles, A. and Beard, Mary, America in Mid passage, New York, Macmillan, 1939, pp. 452–53.Google Scholar

3 Ibid., p. 948.

4 Beard, Charles A., President Roosevelt and the Coming of the War, 1941, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1948, p. 584.Google Scholar For a detailed listing of the charges against President Roosevelt's conduct of foreign relations, see Chapter XVIII of the same book. A brief observation on Beard's charges may be in order. Professor Beard seems to assume that Franklin Roosevelt created all the precedents for the use of executive power in foreign relations. Actually when Corwin, Edward S. first published The President's Control of Foreign Relations (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1917)Google Scholar, thirty years before Beard constructed his criticism, he found “… an unlimited discretion in the President in the recognition of new governments and states; an undefined authority in sending special agents abroad, of dubious diplomatic status, to negotiate treaties or for other purposes; a similarly undefined power to enter into compacts with other governments without the participation of the Senate; the practically complete and exclusive discretion in the negotiation of more formal treaties, and in their final ratification; the. practically complete and exclusive initiative in the official formulation of the nation's foreign policy.” (Pp. 205–6.)

5 The most complete and carefully reasoned refutation of Beard's thesis to appear up to this time is Rauch's, BasilRoosevelt, From Munich to Pearl Harbor, New York, Creative Age Press, 1950.Google Scholar Rauch is convinced on the basis of his examination of the evidence that Beard's interpretation of the Roosevelt foreign policy is grounded on “omissions, distortions, and falsifications.” If this evaluation seems harsh, the writer can only add that his analysis of the 1935–39 period would support essentially the same evaluation of Beard's, American Foreign Policy in the Making, 1932–1940, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1946.Google Scholar See Donovan, John C., “Congress and the Making of Neutrality Legislation, 1935–1939,” unpublished doctoral dissertation, Harvard University, 1949.Google Scholar

6 299 US 304 at 320.

7 Ibid.

8 Sherwood, Robert E., Roosevelt and Hopkins, New York, Harper, 1948, pp. 132–33.Google Scholar

9 Carr, E. H., Conditions of Peace, New York, Macmillan, 1942, p. 6.Google Scholar