Defending
the Non-Interventionist Foreign Policy of Our Founders
by
John V. Denson
by John V. Denson
DIGG THIS
Whenever
I debate the original American foreign policy of non-interventionism
with an advocate of America’s 20th Century foreign policy
of interventionism I am confronted with the statement that World
War II occurred because America returned to its policy of "isolationism"
after World War I. They argue that our failure to adopt the Versailles
Treaty and to join the League of Nations allowed Hitler to come
to power and eventually conquer Europe after the appeasement of
Great Britain and France.
The best
response to this argument is that if America had been true to its
Founders’ non-interventionist foreign policy and had refused to
enter World War I there would have been a negotiated treaty in 1917
and no harsh Versailles Treaty forced on Germany. Without the harsh
Versailles Treaty, Hitler and Nazism would not have come to power.
If the war had ended in the early part of 1917, there would have
been no successful Russian Revolution and no successful birth of
Communism. In short, there would have been no World War II. Admittedly,
both of these arguments by the interventionists and the non-interventionists
are counter-factual arguments. However, you can call as your primary
expert witness in support of American non-interventionism none other
that Winston Churchill. He made a statement to William Griffen,
editor of the New York Enquirer in August of 1936 and it
was reported by Mr. Griffen as follows:
 America
should have minded her own business and stayed out of the World
War. If you hadn’t entered the war the Allies would have made
peace with Germany in the Spring of 1917. Had we made peace then
there would have been no collapse in Russia followed by Communism,
no breakdown in Italy followed by Fascism, and Germany would not
have signed the Versailles Treaty, which has enthroned Nazism
in Germany. If America had stayed out of the war, all these ‘isms’
wouldn’t to-day be sweeping the continent of Europe and breaking
down parliamentary government, and if England had made peace early
in 1917, it would have saved over one million British, French,
American, and other lives.
(See Military
History of the Western World by J.F.C. Fuller, vol. III,
p. 271, paperback edition published by Da Capo Press. Fuller is
one of the world’s foremost military historians.)
 The
above quotation has been hidden from the general public, as you
might expect, because a few years later Winston Churchill was conspiring
with Franklin Roosevelt secretly to get America back into the European
War which began in 1939. This 1936 statement by Churchill would
have been very damaging to their plans. It should also be remembered
that Churchill was one of the persons who acted secretly to get
America into World War I with the sinking of the Lusitania.
 For
centuries European politicians had been concerned with the "balance
of power" to keep one country from becoming a hegemonic power.
The stalemate reached during World War I in early 1917 showed that
this "balance of power" had kept the competing nations
from having a victor in the war which would have resulted in a negotiated
peace treaty if America had not entered the war. Instead, America’s
entry into the war destroyed this "balance of power" completely
and allowed America and its allies to force a very unfair and harsh
Versailles Treaty on Germany. I believe that World War I and World
War II were really one war with a twenty year recess and it was
the harsh and unfair Versailles Treaty which allowed Hitler to come
to power which then led directly to renewal of the war in 1939 in
Poland when the League of Nations failed to revise the treaty, which
it had the specific authority to do. Many people rightly condemned
the League of Nations for its failure to revise the treaty. This
failure of peaceful revision led directly to Hitler’s revision by
force and to World War II.
April
11, 2008
John
V. Denson [send him
mail] is the author of A
Century of War, and editor of The
Costs of War and Reassessing
the Presidency.
Copyright
© 2008 LewRockwell.com
John
V. Denson Archives
|
