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Senator Gerald P. Nye and American foreign relations

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This 1962 book from Wayne Cole on the life and times of Senator Gerald P Nye illustrates why Cole is the doyen of the history of the isolationist movement. Well written and copiously researched it has neither hagiography or hate for it's subject or his main protagonist, FDR.

Nye belonged to a group now almost forgotten. He was a western Progressive Republican from North Dakota. A newspaperman, "friend of the farmer" turned Senator who went on to head the Munitions Industry Investigation in the 1930s. Nye led the Neutrality Acts movement and was a major player in America First's opposition to FDR's "all aid short of war" policy before Pearl Harbor.

The "Progressive" Republicans of the west mainly represented agricultural districts. Rivals to the more conservative "Old Guard" within the GOP, they had no qualms about advocating public ownership at a state level and were, as often as not, to the left of many pro-New Deal Democrats. Most had better liberal and progressive credentials than FDR himself, and unlike most liberal New Dealers they stayed truer to the older WW1 era pacifist and anti-war ideals. This was especially true after "Dr New Deal" changed to "Dr Win the War", and partisan pressures made liberal Democrats generally pro-war. By default the Progressive Republicans became the congressional backbone of the "isolationist" movement.

But to understand the story we need to go back earlier in the early thirties. Nye was chairman of the Senate's munitions investigations which in a sense was the forerunner of modern concerns of what Ike christened "the military industrial complex". Nye's committee detailed not just war profiteering but the escalating political process that took America into the Great War. The lessons learned from the committee drove Nye's later political actions. The neglect of the Nye Committee's historical role by the modern antiwar movement is itself telling. If they made mistakes presumably study could prevent repetition. However I suspect the neglect really reflects ideological partisanship as modern liberals desire to enshrine the legacy of Wilson and FDR, in much the same way as today's "neocons" desire to invest Reagan in valhalla.

The Munitions investigators found (but didn't publish) FDR's son, Elliot Roosevelt, was involved in a plan with Germany's Fokker to sell military aircraft to Russia. They argued that if manpower is to be drafted, war profits should too. This they believed would deterr pro-war lobbying. But it was not just "the merchants of death" who were in the committee's cross hairs. They came to find J P Morgan and the great financiers as 'at least' as responsible for war as armament manufacturers. Maybe more so. Neutrality, they argued, required not just limits on munitions exports but controls over lending to belligerent states. Much of this was supported at the time by the anti-capitalist left, however it was their critique of government that made them different. During the course of their 5 report investigations Nye, to his surprise, came to the view that the War Dept and Navy Dept were 'every bit as bad' as the "munitions trust".

Nye became increasingly concerned about the Executive branch's power to start war. Nye, at least until WW2 began, was a staunch liberal. He opposed Franco and, unlike FDR, believed the Neutrality Acts embargoes did not prevent US munitions exports to the Loyalist government. For the most part Nye welcomed the New Deal, despite some reservations about aspects of the NRA. He uncovered evidence (apparently not seriously disputed today) that Wilson knew of the Entente allies' secret treaties (at least) as early as 1917. The harsh treaties were not the Paris Peace Conference surprise Wilson's defenders maintained. When Nye mentioned his findings, he was hit by a barrage of outraged defenders of the dead president's reputation, even though Nye never actually accused Wilson of lying. The experience probably coloured his later dealings with Roosevelt.

Nye was skeptical of both the President's role in war making and the Chief Executive's ability to prevent the drift to war once it's 'economic preconditions' were in place. He noted that the arms trade and loans to combatants before 1918 wove into a powerful pro-war coalition few politicians could resist. To counter this Nye believed tough mandatory legislative controls to enforce neutrality and to curb lending and arms exports were required. Hence the Neutrality Acts. FDR, who originally supported them, sought a watered down version. Nye was careful, at least up to the outbreak of actual war in Europe, to couch his arguments in terms of "backing up" the President with 'legislative help' to resist pro-war forces. He was careful to take Presidential claims of peaceful intent at face value, at least in public.

Still the western progressives most serious split from the New Deal coalition had nothing to do with foreign policy. It was the `court stacking' issue. Interestingly, for these agrarians, constitutionalism was more important, than support for the Supreme Court's road blocking. They supported FDR's liberal appointments to the bench and urged a Congressional route to unblock the legislation, including constitutional amendment if necessary. This was preferable than damaging the machinery of the constitution, and in their enlightened self interest too. Cole points out that agrarian interests had more sway via state governments and thus the senate than they did through Presidents. Presidential centralism weakened their constituency.

Cole thus integrates his political and biographic exposition with 'economic' analysis. Agricultural states had the least to gain from war expenditure. Indeed North Dakota was the state with the smallest slice of the Pentagon pie until the 1960s. Cole sees the western progressives as heirs of American agrarianism, a tradition that embraced both Jefferson and Bryan. Foreign policy isolationism was part and parcel of a wider domestic agrarian radicalism that located the source of farmers' woes in the East.

Cole speculatively develops this theme. He discusses how the growth of a great urban megapolis along the eastern seaboard, comprising over 17% of the US population, shifted the centre of political geography from isolation to intervention. Indeed to sharpen the focus, from about 1936 on FDR no longer needed the support of western progressives and his administration, and the Democratic Party itself, became more urban in orientation. This shift coincides with both the `second New Deal' and a turn to foreign intervention.

Cole further speculates that in the modern world a new North Atlantic urban - industrial bloc comprising the US North East and Western Europe exercises the same dominance over the world that the East held over America's west. In a sense, the agrarian radicals and neutralists of "the Third World", an emerging force in the early "pre-Sunbelt" 1960s when Cole wrote, had parallels in the agrarian radicals of the US.

Just as the Munitions Investigations led to the Neutrality Acts, the fight to maintain those acts was behind the America First Committee, an organization Nye spoke for but never joined. Nye believed FDR's "all aid short of war" policy would lead to war. And it did. Or so Nye quite logically believed. Indeed history might suggest that even the legislative shackles Nye sought to forge were too weak to constrain a concerted war drive. Like most isolationists, once war was actually declared they saw their political battle as lost, at least until military victory restored sanity. The isolationists were limited by wartime loyalty from responding forcefully to "the Brown Smear", attempts by administration partisans, to paint opponents as pro-fascist. Cole makes the telling observation that the smears really emerged in 1944, an election year.

Nye became increasingly conservative during the war and ultimately lost his seat. Although he held fast to the correctness of his prewar actions he never became prominent in the post-WW2 "Old Right" opposition to the new Cold War. By then he was more of an Eisenhower than a Taft Republican. Nye's older radicalism had mellowed, more due to domestic issues, as he came to see organized labor, previously an ally, as a threat to farmers. At the same time America's country and city were being saturated by the same media, the older particularism was in decline, along with rural votes. Still I suspect Cole would see echoes of Nye in the 2008 GOP primary campaign of country doctor Ron Paul.

Cole's able treatment illuminates a poorly understood period of 20th century history and relates it back to tendencies that emerged early in the American republic. The reader can easily relate it forward to contemporary developments on their own. Fully indexed with detailed and scholarly chapter notes, this remains a cleanly written book. I found it something of a "page turner" too. Highly recommended.

This 1962 book from Wayne Cole on the life and times of Senator Gerald P Nye illustrates why Cole is the doyen of the history of the isolationist movement. Well written and copiously researched it has neither hagiography or hate for it's subject or his main protagonist, FDR.

Nye belonged to a group now almost forgotten. He was a western Progressive Republican from North Dakota. A newspaperman, "friend of the farmer" turned Senator who went on to head the Munitions Industry Investigation in the 1930s. Nye led the Neutrality Acts movement and was a major player in America First's opposition to FDR's "all aid short of war" policy before Pearl Harbor.

The "Progressive" Republicans of the west mainly represented agricultural districts. Rivals to the more conservative "Old Guard" within the GOP, they had no qualms about advocating public ownership at a state level and were, as often as not, to the left of many pro-New Deal Democrats. Most had better liberal and progressive credentials than FDR himself, and unlike most liberal New Dealers they stayed truer to the older WW1 era pacifist and anti-war ideals. This was especially true after "Dr New Deal" changed to "Dr Win the War", and partisan pressures made liberal Democrats generally pro-war. By default the Progressive Republicans became the congressional backbone of the "isolationist" movement.

But to understand the story we need to go back earlier in the early thirties. Nye was chairman of the Senate's munitions investigations which in a sense was the forerunner of modern concerns of what Ike christened "the military industrial complex". Nye's committee detailed not just war profiteering but the escalating political process that took America into the Great War. The lessons learned from the committee drove Nye's later political actions. The neglect of the Nye Committee's historical role by the modern antiwar movement is itself telling. If they made mistakes presumably study could prevent repetition. However I suspect the neglect really reflects ideological partisanship as modern liberals desire to enshrine the legacy of Wilson and FDR, in much the same way as today's "neocons" desire to invest Reagan in valhalla.

The Munitions investigators found (but didn't publish) FDR's son, Elliot Roosevelt, was involved in a plan with Germany's Fokker to sell military aircraft to Russia. They argued that if manpower is to be drafted, war profits should too. This they believed would deterr pro-war lobbying. But it was not just "the merchants of death" who were in the committee's cross hairs. They came to find J P Morgan and the great financiers as 'at least' as responsible for war as armament manufacturers. Maybe more so. Neutrality, they argued, required not just limits on munitions exports but controls over lending to belligerent states. Much of this was supported at the time by the anti-capitalist left, however it was their critique of government that made them different. During the course of their 5 report investigations Nye, to his surprise, came to the view that the War Dept and Navy Dept were 'every bit as bad' as the "munitions trust".

Nye became increasingly concerned about the Executive branch's power to start war. Nye, at least until WW2 began, was a staunch liberal. He opposed Franco and, unlike FDR, believed the Neutrality Acts embargoes did not prevent US munitions exports to the Loyalist government. For the most part Nye welcomed the New Deal, despite some reservations about aspects of the NRA. He uncovered evidence (apparently not seriously disputed today) that Wilson knew of the Entente allies' secret treaties (at least) as early as 1917. The harsh treaties were not the Paris Peace Conference surprise Wilson's defenders maintained. When Nye mentioned his findings, he was hit by a barrage of outraged defenders of the dead president's reputation, even though Nye never actually accused Wilson of lying. The experience probably coloured his later dealings with Roosevelt.

Nye was skeptical of both the President's role in war making and the Chief Executive's ability to prevent the drift to war once it's 'economic preconditions' were in place. He noted that the arms trade and loans to combatants before 1918 wove into a powerful pro-war coalition few politicians could resist. To counter this Nye believed tough mandatory legislative controls to enforce neutrality and to curb lending and arms exports were required. Hence the Neutrality Acts. FDR, who originally supported them, sought a watered down version. Nye was careful, at least up to the outbreak of actual war in Europe, to couch his arguments in terms of "backing up" the President with 'legislative help' to resist pro-war forces. He was careful to take Presidential claims of peaceful intent at face value, at least in public.

Still the western progressives most serious split from the New Deal coalition had nothing to do with foreign policy. It was the `court stacking' issue. Interestingly, for these agrarians, constitutionalism was more important, than support for the Supreme Court's road blocking. They supported FDR's liberal appointments to the bench and urged a Congressional route to unblock the legislation, including constitutional amendment if necessary. This was preferable than damaging the machinery of the constitution, and in their enlightened self interest too. Cole points out that agrarian interests had more sway via state governments and thus the senate than they did through Presidents. Presidential centralism weakened their constituency.

Cole thus integrates his political and biographic exposition with 'economic' analysis. Agricultural states had the least to gain from war expenditure. Indeed North Dakota was the state with the smallest slice of the Pentagon pie until the 1960s. Cole sees the western progressives as heirs of American agrarianism, a tradition that embraced both Jefferson and Bryan. Foreign policy isolationism was part and parcel of a wider domestic agrarian radicalism that located the source of farmers' woes in the East.

Cole speculatively develops this theme. He discusses how the growth of a great urban megapolis along the eastern seaboard, comprising over 17% of the US population, shifted the centre of political geography from isolation to intervention. Indeed to sharpen the focus, from about 1936 on FDR no longer needed the support of western progressives and his administration, and the Democratic Party itself, became more urban in orientation. This shift coincides with both the `second New Deal' and a turn to foreign intervention.

Cole further speculates that in the modern world a new North Atlantic urban - industrial bloc comprising the US North East and Western Europe exercises the same dominance over the world that the East held over America's west. In a sense, the agrarian radicals and neutralists of "the Third World", an emerging force in the early "pre-Sunbelt" 1960s when Cole wrote, had parallels in the agrarian radicals of the US.

Just as the Munitions Investigations led to the Neutrality Acts, the fight to maintain those acts was behind the America First Committee, an organization Nye spoke for but never joined. Nye believed FDR's "all aid short of war" policy would lead to war. And it did. Or so Nye quite logically believed. Indeed history might suggest that even the legislative shackles Nye sought to forge were too weak to constrain a concerted war drive. Like most isolationists, once war was actually declared they saw their political battle as lost, at least until military victory restored sanity. The isolationists were limited by wartime loyalty from responding forcefully to "the Brown Smear", attempts by administration partisans, to paint opponents as pro-fascist. Cole makes the telling observation that the smears really emerged in 1944, an election year.

Nye became increasingly conservative during the war and ultimately lost his seat. Although he held fast to the correctness of his prewar actions he never became prominent in the post-WW2 "Old Right" opposition to the new Cold War. By then he was more of an Eisenhower than a Taft Republican. Nye's older radicalism had mellowed, more due to domestic issues, as he came to see organized labor, previously an ally, as a threat to farmers. At the same time America's country and city were being saturated by the same media, the older particularism was in decline, along with rural votes. Still I suspect Cole would see echoes of Nye in the 2008 GOP primary campaign of country doctor Ron Paul.

Cole's able treatment illuminates a poorly understood period of 20th century history and relates it back to tendencies that emerged early in the American republic. The reader can easily relate it forward to contemporary developments on their own. Fully indexed with detailed and scholarly chapter notes, this remains a cleanly written book. I found it something of a "page turner" too. Highly recommended.