Roosevelt Administration and Isolationism

ISOLATIONISM AND US FOREIGN POLICY UNDER ROOSEVELT

Until the genesis of the cold war a policy and practise of non participation in European crises and unilateralism played a heavy role in US Foreign Affairs. Co - existing with fits of expansionism and punctuated by participation in the First World War, Woodrow Wilson's internationalism, and engagement in World War Two, the high tide of US isolationism washed over US society in the mid 1930s, during the Roosevelt administration. Such sentiment persisted until the US was compelled to enter the war in December 1941.

Examining US Foreign Policy during the Roosevelt Administration Michael Leigh identifies two salient features. The first is that Franklin Roosevelt (FDR) never made any attempt to persuade the US public to a viewpoint other than that which the majority seemed to hold on issues relating to foreign policy.

This is particularly interesting given the enormous efforts he went to, especially with his famous fireside chats, in relation to various aspects of his domestic policies. Given Franklin Roosevelt's reputation for humanitarianism this begs the question of why he did not view flesh and blood refugees fleeing the Nazis as worthy of efforts made for abstract, mostly economic policies.

Was it because FDR, like many in Allied governments and armed forces believed that winning the war was the best way of saving both refugees, and the persecuted in Europe ?

Was this just a specious line to deflect those concerned about the fate of the persecuted anyway? These remain matters of scholarly contestation.

Was it more a result of the second notable feature of FDR's administration highlighted by Michael Leigh, its enormous preoccupation with public opinion ?

Leigh maintains that the US government under FDR followed rather than led public opinion in relation to foreign affairs, and sites a 1937 report from the then German Ambassador to the US, Hans Heinrich Dieckhoff to the head of the Political Section of the German Foreign Office declaring the same belief.

Concluding discussion on this matter Michael Leigh notes that the body of scholarship is largely divided between those who think that Roosevelt and the elite in his administration were not isolationist, but did not wish to confront or resist public opinion; and those who believed Roosevelt and his administration were genuinely isolationist in their worldview, and tailored foreign policy, including that in relation to refugees accordingly. The fact the FDR never as President publicly advocated any formal US commitment to the League of Nations is usually the basis of the latter claim.

Wayne Cole disputes both of these contentions. Instead, in his widely accessible Roosevelt and the Isolationists 1932 -45, argues that Roosevelt was not an isolationist, but a pragmatist presiding over a stridently isolationist society. According to Cole, US foreign policy shifted from isolationism to international engagement under FDR not only due to international circumstances, but also as a result of FDR's leadership and initiatives. Franklin Roosevelt only fought fights he could win. His public efforts to discredit isolationists by portraying them as helping the Nazi cause were, in Cole's view, incompatible with any notion of Franklin Roosevelt as either an isolationist or mere follower of public opinion.

This matter is far from settled.