The foreign policy of the United States was controlled personally by Franklin D. Roosevelt during his first and second and then third and fourth terms as president of the United States from 1933 to 1945. He depended heavily on Henry Morgenthau Jr., Sumner Welles, and Harry Hopkins. Meanwhile, Secretary of State Cordell Hull handled routine matters. Roosevelt was an internationalist, while powerful members of Congress favored more isolationist solutions to keep the U.S. out of European wars. There was considerable tension before the Attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941. The attack converted the isolationists or made them irrelevant. The US began aid to the Soviet Union after Germany invaded it in June 1941. After the US declared war in December 1941, key decisions were made at the highest level by Roosevelt, Britain's Winston Churchill and the Soviet Union's Joseph Stalin, along with their top aides. After 1938 Washington's policy was to help China in its war against Japan, including cutting off money and oil to Japan. While isolationism was powerful regarding Europe, American public and elite opinion strongly opposed Japan.
The 1930s were a high point of isolationism in the United States. The key foreign policy of Roosevelt's first term was the continuation of Hoover's Good Neighbor policy, in which the U.S. took a non-interventionist stance in Latin American affairs. Foreign policy issues came to the fore in the late 1930s, as Nazi Germany, Japan, and Italy took aggressive actions against other countries. In response to fears that the United States would be drawn into foreign conflicts, Congress passed the Neutrality Acts, a series of laws that prevented trade with belligerents. After Japan invaded China and Germany invaded Poland, Roosevelt provided aid to China, Britain, and France, but public opinion opposed use of the military. After the Fall of France in June 1940, Roosevelt increased aid to the British and began a very rapid buildup of air power. In the 1940 presidential election, Roosevelt defeated Republican Wendell Willkie, an internationalist who largely refrained from criticizing Roosevelt's foreign policy.
Unlike his first two terms in office, Roosevelt's third and fourth terms were dominated by war issues. Roosevelt won congressional approval of the Lend-Lease program, which was designed to aid allies warring against Germany and Japan. After Germany declared war on the Soviet Union, Roosevelt extended Lend-Lease to the Soviet Union as well. In Asia, Roosevelt provided aid to the Republic of China, which was resisting a largely successful invasion by the Japanese. In response to the July 1941 Japanese occupation of southern French Indochina, Roosevelt expanded a trade embargo on Japan. After attempting to reopen oil exports, Japan launched an attack on the U.S. fleet stationed at Pearl Harbor. The United States became belligerent in December 1941 after Congress responded in kind to declarations of war by Japan, Germany, and Italy. The leading Allied Powers were the U.S., Britain, the Soviet Union, and (by courtesy) China. The Allies agreed on a Europe first strategy, but in practice the American war effort focused on Japan before 1943."Indeed throughout 1942, more US forces were deployed against Japan than against Germany, despite continued formal agreement to the Europe-first approach" states Mark A. Stoler, "George C. Marshall and the" Europe-First" Strategy, 1939-1951: A Study in Diplomatic as well as Military History." Journal of Military History 79.2 (2015) online at p. 299 n 18.
Britain and the U.S. began the campaign against Germany with an invasion of North Africa in late 1942, winning decisively in May 1943. Meanwhile, the United States won a decisive victory over Japan in the Battle of Midway and began a campaign of island hopping in the Pacific Ocean. In 1943, the Allies launched an invasion of Italy and continued to pursue the island-hopping strategy. The major Allied leaders met at the Tehran Conference in 1943, where they began to discuss postwar plans. Taking up the Wilsonian mantle, Roosevelt also pushed as his highest postwar priority the establishment of the United Nations to replace the defunct League of Nations. Roosevelt expected it would be controlled by Washington, Moscow, London, and Beijing, and that this Big Four would resolve all major world problems. By the time of Roosevelt's death in April 1945, Germany and Japan were collapsing rapidly. Both soon surrendered and became the responsibility of the Foreign policy of the Harry S. Truman administration.
First term foreign policy Four basic principles undergirded Roosevelt's foreign policy approach when he took office. As Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. explains: One was TR's [Theodore Roosevelt's] belief in the preservation of the balance of world power. A second was Wilson's dream of concerted international action to keep the peace. The third was the conviction that peace and political collaboration rested on commercial harmony among nations and therefore required a freely trading world. The fourth principle was the imperative necessary in a democracy of basing foreign-policy on domestic consent. The first three principles were inevitably qualified and compromised by the fourth.Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., "Franklin D. Roosevelt's Internationalism" in
Having served as the Assistant Secretary of the Navy in World War I, Roosevelt had a deep understanding of naval affairs and knew many of the senior officers. He kept abreast of naval issues and appreciated the doctrines of Alfred Thayer Mahan on the need for naval superiority.J. Simon Rofe, " 'Under the Influence of Mahan': Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt and their Understanding of American National Interest." Diplomacy & Statecraft 19.4 (2008): 732-745.
Good Neighbor Policy and trade
Roosevelt's first inaugural address contained just one sentence devoted to foreign policy, indicative of the domestic focus of his first term.George C. Herring, From Colony to Superpower; U.S. Foreign Relations Since 1776 (2008), p. 484. The main foreign policy initiative of Roosevelt's first term was what he called the Good Neighbor Policy, which continued the move begun by Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover toward a non-interventionist policy in Latin America. American forces were withdrawn from Haiti, and a new treaty with Panama ended its status as protectorates, while continuing American control of the Panama Canal Zone.John Major, "FDR and Panama." Historical Journal 28.2 (1985): 357-377. Roosevelt wanted to disengage from Cuba, but his first ambassador, Sumner Welles, became enmeshed in the selection of a Cuban president. By late 1933 Roosevelt had appointed Jefferson Caffrey as the new ambassador. In January 1934 Carlos Mendieta, who was approved by Caffrey, formed a government that was quickly recognized by Washington. The United States then did disengage, and did not protest when it was overthrown by Fulgencio Batista in 1934.Irwin F. Gellman, Roosevelt and Batista: Good Neighbor Diplomacy in Cuba, 1933–1945 (1973)
In December 1933, Roosevelt signed the Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States, renouncing the right to intervene unilaterally in the affairs of Latin American countries.William E. Leuchtenburg, Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal, 1932–1940 (1963) pp. 203–10.Graham Stuart, "The Results of the Good Neighbor Policy In Latin America' World Affairs 102#3 (September, 1939), pp. 166-170 online After the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Haiti, the only U.S. military forces remaining in the Caribbean were stationed in the Panama Canal Zone and the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base.David M. Kennedy, Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945 (1999) pp 391–392. In 1934, Congress enacted Cordell Hull's key program, the Reciprocal Tariff Act. It allowed the president to negotiate trade reciprocity treaties with other countries. Over the next six years, the U.S. signed agreements with 21 countries, primarily in Latin America. resulting in a significant reduction of tariff levels. online Thanks to the reciprocal tariffs and the new Export–Import Bank, trade between the U.S. and Latin America more than tripled between 1931 and 1941.
Mexico
During the presidency of Mexico's revolutionary general Lázaro Cárdenas del Río, controversy over petroleum arose again. Standard Oil had major investments in Mexico and a dispute between the oil workers and the company was to be resolved via the Mexican court system. But the dispute escalated, and on March 18, 1938, Cárdenas used constitutional powers to expropriate foreign oil interests in Mexico and created the government-owned Petroleos Mexicanos (PEMEX). With unemployment very high during the Great Depression in the United States, Washington implemented a program of expelling Mexicans from the U.S. in what was known as Mexican Repatriation.
Under President Cárdenas, in 1934-40 Mexico expropriated three million acres of agricultural land owned by 300 Americans. Its worth was a matter of debate: between $19 million and $102 million, but nothing was paid. Roosevelt settled the matter in 1938 quietly. He refused to aggressively intervene in Mexican agrarian disputes in order not to disrupt trade. He was sympathetic to Cárdenas's agrarian reform program, as was ambassador Josephus Daniels, but Secretary Hull was antagonistic.John J. Dwyer, "The End of US Intervention in Mexico: Franklin Roosevelt and the Expropriation of American-Owned Agricultural Property." Presidential Studies Quarterly 28.3 (1998): 495-509. onlineJohn Dwyer, The agrarian dispute: the expropriation of American-owned rural land in postrevolutionary Mexico (Duke UP, 2008). American Catholics—a major component of the New Deal coalition—were outraged at anti-Catholicism in Mexico. Ambassador Daniels worked quietly to convince the Mexican government it was essential that they minimize the conflict.E. David Cronon, "American Catholics and Mexican Anticlericalism, 1933-1936." Mississippi Valley Historical Review 45#2 (1958): 201-230. online Finally, in 1941, Mexico agreed to pay $40 million for American land losses in the 1910s, not including the oil issue.Karl M. Schmitt, Mexico and the United States 1821-1973 (1974) pp 168-85.
After Pearl Harbor, relations became much better. Mexico abandoned its neutrality. The two nations set up a Mexico-United States Defense Board that focused on defending the Baja California peninsula against Japanese threats. On June 1, 1942, Mexico declared war on Germany, Italy and Japan. In August, the Bracero program began, and the first 75,000 farmworkers arrived in California at the end of September. A steady flow provided the labor needed to expand California's agricultural output to meet wartime demands. Other problems were resolved, such as a long conflict over the water of the Colorado River, with a February 1944 treaty that met Mexico's water needs.Michael Mathes, "The Two Californias during World War II," California Historical Society Quarterly (1965) 44#4 pp 323-331.
Recognition of the Soviet Union