Neutrality for the United States

In 1937, Yale Professor Edwin Borchard, published a book with remarkable foresight. Turning away from its traditional neutrality policy would bring the USA no peace. Only more war.

[Source: “Conclusion” in: Borchard, Edwin M., and William P. Lage. 1937. Neutrality for the United States. New Haven: Yale University Press.]

(…). Just as Great Britain turned from her traditions with the ill-fated entente with France and Russia of 1904, so the United States broke with its fundamental principles by the unprecedented decision to participate in a European war and send troops to cure Europe of nationalistic wars and autocratic governments. The results of that adventure, which have helped neither Europe nor the United States, are likely to be far-reaching. For not merely American neutrality, but American independence, may be "a thing of the past."

Our subjection began in August, 1914, and there has been little recovery from that depression. There are no longer many principles in American foreign policy. Having flouted the wisdom of those who charted America's course, we now respond easily to temptations to enforce policies formulated in other countries without our participation. The American people, having falsely been told that our effort to preserve our neutrality got us into the war, have been driven in their perplexity to heterodox measures, such as the 1937 Pittman Act, which are designed to insulate the United States from all contact with belligerent powers, but which are likely to have quite different effects.

(…)

The retreat from American traditions has been stimulated by the provocative interventionist policy of the League of Nations, whose devotees have continued to befuddle the American people with the argument that neutrality is immoral and that in a European war the United States cannot remain neutral.

Without knowing the identity of the combatants or the issues of the war, we are blandly informed that the United States has no choice but to participate. The argument is humiliating to American independence which, indeed, is the inevitable victim of the assault. But it has encouraged European nations to seek to enlist us in the name of the Higher Morality in their perpetual feuds, and Kellogg Pacts open a ready door to involvement.

(…)

Thus the United States fell into the toils. When a strong neutral fails to stand firm on neutral rights, he betrays not only himself but all neutrals and the law as well. He assists in his own undoing. A strong neutral is the trustee for civilization in a shell-shocked world. The United States, which may justly be proud of its contributions to international law and neutrality down to 1913, has lost its eminence as a leader in the law and now turns in confusion either to coercive measures to " enforce peace" or to a timorous retreat from legitimate relations with belligerents. This renunciation is less likely to assure our peace than an intelligent administration of well-established rights under international law. For not only does the withdrawal from the defense of neutral rights encourage belligerent excesses, but the very fact that the Pittman-Nye policy of 1937 makes the resources of the United States by our own legislation available only to the belligerent that controls the sea, will probably provoke measures of retaliation which will in their turn expose us to hosstilities.

(…)

The prewar system of international relations, imperfect though it was, was denounced as " international anarchy" which was to be replaced by a new world order in which right and justice alone would prevail. Yet we learn that today, even in France, all classes of the people look back to the stability of the prewar years with nostalgia. Under the system of that time at least facts were faced and long decades of peace and tranquillity blessed Europe and the world; and

if war occurred, the effort of other nations was not to participate in it and assume the impossible task of acting as a judge of its merits, but by limiting its area to shorten the conflict and to exert on both parties the beneficent influence of the mediator and reconciler of grievances.

Under that system, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Europe and the world achieved an advance in material and spiritual endowments probably unequaled in history. To characterize such a period and the law under which it grew, however defective, as anarchy, is sadly to depreciate the achievements of the past and, by misconceiving them, to misappraise the " new order." (…).

In spite of the quest for formula, there does not seem to be any short cut to peace. That is a condition which must be carefully nurtured in the soil of contentment, confidence, and mutual respect. The effort to organize collective armed intervention for peace can never achieve peace. To engender peace by the threat of force is inherently incongruous. World coöperation is to be found in ameliorating the underlying causes of friction and in the adoption of the time-honored, homely virtues of simple decency, fairness, and reconciliation of conflicting interests, in the adjustment of grievances, and in strengthening, not weakening, the rules of law. This is the type of world coöperation that is likely to produce measurable peace, and there is in it no threat to use force.

The 1919 " peace" doctrines and the machinery for carrying them into effect have been tried and found wanting. This ought now to be clear enough. There is danger in further relying upon a novel remedy conditioned upon a change in human and international relations which is nonexistent. That way can lead only to disappointment and despair. The Hague Conferences were closer to reality than the postwar machinery, and in their modest way achieved practical successes which the more ambitious demand for wholesale regeneration cannot record.

Carried away by enthusiasm for noble ends, the United States rushed to Europe in 1917 to make the world " safe for democracy," to fight a " war to end war."

In that period the golden age of rhetoric and phantasy in these matters was inaugurated.

But in the light of the results achieved, the enterprise must be regarded as a ghastly failure. Europe is today less peaceful in time of peace than she has ever been.

The " international government " which was established at Geneva has not brought unification or political coöperation, but on the contrary has widened the rifts between the countries of the continent. The concert of Europe has rarely been less harmonious. Democracy is not in high renown and dictatorships of a kind not dreamed of in the nineteenth century mar wide areas of the landscape. Collective and individual insecurity is nearly universal.

These phenomena are not accidental. They are the result of ill-considered policies which could not have lasted as long as they have without the coöperation of the United States in giving the countries of Europe the impression that we could be counted on to do again what we had just done. The least that can now be done is to avoid similar ineptitude in the future. By intervention in European quarrels we can make the situation worse, but never better. The road prepared for us by the coercive peace machinery of Geneva, which has proved so alluring to some of our statesmen, can lead only to deeper involvement. Europe must work out its own problems; it understands them better than we ever can.

It is inevitable that the temptations to " coöperate " with the "peace-loving" nations of Europe will destroy our objectivity and neutrality and by making the United States the particular friend of some Powers make us necessarily the enemies of others.

The sound advice of George Washington which opens this book was based on a profound knowledge of human nature. By cultivating friendly relations with all nations, developing with each the highest possible degree of trade, by bargaining off the international debts as part of the terrible price paid for a bitter lesson, by using the great gifts and resources which nature has placed in our keeping to set the world an example of contented living, we may again demonstrate the American capacity to manage American affairs.

There is no improvised formula to insure abstention from war and yet maintain national dignity. Neither the taking of sides nor widespread embargoes marks the road to peace. Far more important are an honest intention to remain aloof from foreign conflict, a refusal to be stampeded by unneutral propaganda, a knowledge of the law and a capacity to stand upon it, meeting emergencies and problems not romantically but wisely.

The cultivation of sagacity in these matters, of detachment, of moderation, of toleration, of the spirit of live and let live, and the renunciation of the psychology and policy of "enforcing peace" by hostile measures probably present the only tangible hope for preserving peace in broad areas of the world.

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Source: “Conclusion”, in Borchard, Edwin M., and William P. Lage. 1937. Neutrality for the United States. New Haven: Yale University Press.