Empire Without Tears: America's Foreign Relations 1921-1933

Warren I. Cohen

Temple University Press

1987

Epilogue: Hoover's Legacy to Roosevelt

 

For twelve years, Republican statesmen worked closely with business leaders, of whom the most prominent was Lamont, to create a stable world order in which American interests, strategic and economic, would thrive. There was little disposition to use force to this end. A generation that had experienced world war had no appetite for further combat. An active peace movement was quick to rein in any administration that showed signs of lapsing. The government of the United States attempted to restrict other nations to peaceful means of preserving or expanding their interests, of resolving their differences. Washington's vision was of a world in which American influence, based on American financial power, spread quietly and benignly.

In the Republican era, the power and influence of the United States grew throughout the world. This expansion was most evident, most tangible, when measured in terms of economic interests. It was also visible in the efforts of the government to bring stability to Europe and East Asia, as well as to traditional areas of concern in Latin America. Directly or indirectly, Washington participated in nearly every important international meeting of the era, and acted responsibly—with considerable success in achieving American goals.

Before Hoover left office, however, income from international trade and investments had declined sharply. Trade barriers had risen everywhere. The Soviet Union had been the largest importer of American agricultural and industrial products in 1930 and 1931, but in 1932 Soviet leaders sharply educed purchases from the United States to gain leverage in their quest for American recognition. All over the world the informal empire built on American investments was in jeopardy as capital flowed back to the United States. A new system of international trade and finance would have to be erected on the wreckage of the old. Would it be based on the image of interdependence stressed by Lamont and the Wilsonians of the 1920s-or on economic nationalism and warfare as the jungle of the early 1930s indicated?

Politically, the world scene was no less grim. In Berlin, Hitler was in the Chancellery. Few foresaw the horrors that presence would entail, but it was clear to most of the world's leaders that Hitler was determined to resurrect German power, that the Versailles settlement would not hold—and that whatever their hopes to the contrary, war might be the outcome. In East Asia the worst seemed over, but no one could be sure when the appetite of Japanese imperialists would be whetted again. Even before he entered the White House, the new president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, found Stimson at his door, trying to persuade him to maintain and perhaps intensify pressure on Japan.

The breakdown of the peace system also threatened the formal American empire. Most obvious was the fact that the Philippines were at Japan's mercy, that the American navy was no match for the Japanese in the western Pacific. Congress tried to divest the United States of responsibility for the islands in December 1932, but Hoover's veto delayed that moment. Would the Japanese come after Guam, Wake, Tutuila, Midway? And what of the Hawaiian Islands they had so long coveted? Would a resurrected Germany once again constitute a threat to the hegemony of the United States in the Western Hemisphere? Would the Third Reich seek an empire in the Caribbean as had Kaiser Wilhelm?

Finally, American military forces were not adequate to protect the empire. Throughout the 1920s, in the absence of any serious threats to the overseas interests of the United States, its military power seemed superfluous. The will to preserve the empire by peaceful means seemed sufficient to preclude the need for force. The 1930s had begun on a different note. In this darker world the United States could not preserve its security and its broader interests without the willingness to enter into collective security commitments, without creating and using military power. In this darker world that Franklin Roosevelt inherited, there could be no empire without tears.