Originally published May 2008.
Historians of neutrality and the "great debate" over intervention commonly argue that, until the Pearl Harbor attack, the "isolationists" successfully blocked U.S. efforts to aid the Allied nations. Americans broadly, over the years, have claimed to regret this supposed success. "Isolationism," a misnomer to begin with, became a catch-all for any tendency of Americans to shirk their grand mission of saving the unfree, non-"American" world from itself or, during the Cold War, the evil Soviets. While, since Vietnam, the "isolationism" tag gets applied to those on the left more often than those on the right, "isolationism" in the Thirties is characterized as right-wing, which only makes most histories of anti-interventionism and its parent movement, Neutralism, doubly wrong. Indeed, the notion of there being both an anti-interventionism and a Neutralism, distinct from each other despite their conjoined fates, is itself not heard. But in fact, the neutrality legislation and public opposition to intervention was, at least until the very brink of U.S. involvement, largely a manifestation of liberal, radical, and otherwise-reformist individuals and groups. This Neutralist movement, as we will see, was motivated by more than the mere hope of remaining neutral in the event of another global war. Rather, it possessed the ambitious, radical goal of convincing the nation, though still mired in the Great Depression, to forswear the profits that would come from militarization of the economy.
The myth of "isolationism," and the more-implausible myth of its success, largely rests upon general ignorance of, or lack of interest in, Neutralism's failure. And indeed, like many reform movements, Neutralism certainly did fail. The Neutralists in Congress had the upper hand in the period, 1935-1937, but as Franklin Roosevelt devoted an increasing amount of his political and rhetorical energy toward foreign policy he quickly retook the advantage. The two major neutrality laws, passed in 1937 and 1939, the former of which finalized an embargo on arms sales to belligerent nations which had been enacted temporarily in both 1935 and 1936, the latter replacing the embargo with the "cash-and-carry" policy, both saw the Neutralists fail to convince the Congress to approve more-radical approaches.
In contrast to the notion of "isolationism" as an unfortunate tendency the entire nation slipped into, Neutralism was a political movement with particular intellectual defenders based upon the Congressional activism of particular statesmen from Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Nye's state of North Dakota. In other words, it was a region-specific ideological movement that threatened the nation's development as an imperial power from within (as compared to a threat from without: say, a national-liberation movement opposed to the continued rule of a colonial power). But it was not a regionalist movement. Despite the specificity of its geographic origins and the prevalence of Norwegian Americans among the ranks of progressive political forces in the three states in question, Neutralism derived from long-standing beliefs in the nation's purpose in global affairs. That purpose was to help push the world toward the non-imperialist, democratic, free-market way of life, even so far as to put forth direct challenges to the extant European empires who denied an "open door" to the products and schemes of ambitious Americans.
Neutralism, though, was also the culmination of a distinct, radical variant of this broad current of anti-imperialist thought and action. Nationalist Anti-Imperialism, as I term it, began in 1898 with the founding of the Anti-Imperialist League. The League first put forth the notion that the U.S. had in fact made a decisive move away from its fundamental purpose of serving as anti-imperialist force for democratic good on a global scale. In turn, further anti-imperialists, up to and including Henry A. Wallace in 1948, would similarly focus on a supposed turn for the worst, a fatal betrayal of the nation's principles. Though the League dwindled in membership and influence with the winding-down of the U.S.-Philippines war, it continued until 1921 to demand Filipino independence and a general rejection of imperialist policies. Some of its members, including Moorfield Storey and Oswald Garrison Villard, joined the Haiti-Santo Domingo Independence Committee in the Twenties and otherwise voiced their opposition to the increasingly-misadventurous foreign policy their nation had embarked upon, especially in Central and South America, but also pertaining to other issues, such as the refusal to recognize the U.S.S.R. Gradually throughout the Nineteen-Teens and Twenties a select number of western progressive Republicans emerged as anti-imperialist spokesmen within the government itself. Their ranks included Robert La Follette, William Borah, George Norris, Smith Brookhart, Lynn Frazier, and Burton Wheeler. While not as respected or influential as La Follette or Norris, nor as powerful (at times) or controversial as Borah and Wheeler, Gerald Nye, a younger nationalist anti-imperialist, arguably had the greatest impact, as the principal antagonist of and spokesman for the Neutralist movement.
The Neutralist movement emerged, in an unlikely fashion, out of the "munitions inquiry" led by Nye from 1934 to 1936. Though Nye, being a western progressive, tended to believe that U.S. foreign policy since 1898 had been inimical to the creation of a better American society and a peaceful world order, in the beginning the munitions inquiry had modest political goals, as it had not emerged from the efforts of progressive politicians. Rather, it represented an odd union of pacifists and self-proclaimed patriot, namely, the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, led by Dorothy Detzer, and the American Legion. The former had led the charge for an inquiry into the munitions industry. The latter had demanded that taxation and regulations be used to hinder the amassing of large fortunes by private interests during wartime--"take the profit out of war." Since the revival of nationalist anti-imperialism depended upon the munitions inquiry, indeed, depended upon Nye, two other Senators who sat on the committee (Homer Bone of Washington and Bennett "Champ" Clark of Missouri, both Democrats) and Stephen Rauschenberg, the inquiry's chief investigator, the Neutralist movement essentially lacked the broad base of support any political movement needs to enact radical change opposed by the powers that be.
Once past their studies of the munitions industry, which led to calls for nationalization of arms production in order to negate the pernicious influence of private arms-makers on the political process, the committee delved into the problem of neutral shipping rights. In so doing, they encountered the difficulties that arose from non-belligerent nations attempting to trade with belligerent nations; and came to the conclusion that the very idea of "freedom of the seas" should not guide a neutral nation's economic and political relations with foreign nations at war, that "freedom of the seas" had already been rendered null-and-void by the progression of modern armed conflict toward "total war," with its lack of a distinction between the military and the civilian population. Though the initial object of their inquiry had been a few, elite, secretive private interests who supposedly pushed nations toward war for the sake of profit, the committee members had come to realize that, in a highly industrialized nation with an important place in the international market, the benefits of militarization and of production for, and trade with, belligerents extended to much of the population.
A 1935 memorandum sent by Nye and Clark to Key Pittman, the Nevada Democrat who chaired the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, explaining their recently-submitted neutrality proposals shows Neutralism's radical critique of U.S. foreign policy. The resolutions included an embargo on munitions, loans, and credits to belligerent nations and the denial of passports to U.S. citizens wanting to travel in war zones or on belligerent ships. The most radical proposal, though, came from the need to address "'neutral' rights" (as Nye and Clark derisively inscribed them) to sell and transport non-munitions goods. The same resolution that called for an arms embargo also requested laws "compelling exporters of all goods declared to be contraband of war by any belligerent to ship at their own risk, or at the risk of the warring country." In other words, the U.S. should allow belligerent nations to define what constitutes contraband and refuse protection to Americans who risk trading in such products. This idea represented a dramatic shift away from tradition conceptions of neutrality.
Nye and Clark explained the rejection of neutral rights by presenting a portrait of a lawless state of international relations and focusing on changes in the conception of contraband wrought by modern warfare. They claimed that there was no "understanding between the principal maritime powers on freedom of the seas or the definition of contraband." Instead, during the Great War, Britain had enforced its own standards, using its superior naval power to stop the transfer of an increasingly-expanding list of contraband goods to Germany. Neutralists believed that the dominant naval powers determined the extent of freedom of the seas enjoyed by neutrals; thus, "in a modern war[, where] almost everything is contraband," the United States would have to become a belligerent because in order to defend its right to trade. The memorandum extensively quoted Charles Warren, an Assistant Attorney General in the period before U.S. entrance into the First World War and at the time a leading academic advocate of the nationalist approach to neutrality Nye and Clark now proposed. Warren described how the U.S. argued that Britain violated its neutral rights during the war. But U.S. leaders left the controversies unresolved because they were unwilling to challenge Britain's interpretation of international law.
The solution to the dangers of the international market in wartime, though, was not to challenge, or ally with certain nations against, Britain, but rather to abstain from trade with belligerents. Warren proposed that the U.S. should "be planning [...] in advance of war, how it might adjust itself to the new conditions of warfare, and may obtain some benefit without making a direct challenge of the lawfulness of belligerent nations." Nye, rhetorically at least, rebuked the notion of Americans seeking any benefit from wartime trade; otherwise, including Warren's analysis in the memorandum was appropriate. Warren wanted the U.S. to refuse to challenge belligerent nations over freedom of the seas, that is, not to participate in armed conflict with leading maritime nations in hopes of becoming the dominant influence in the global marketplace and thus in the formulation of international law. Though he argued from a position of weakness vis-à-vis Britain, he does not do so with anger or resentment. Nye also refused an aggressive stance against Britain. At this point, the anti-British rhetoric that would characterize Nye's speeches later in the Thirties was not present. Instead, neutralists presented an ideological and moral critique of international relations and stubbornly refused to acquiesce to U.S. involvement. They also did not consider that their nation might already be deeply involved in imperialist competition over markets, before and beyond disputes which might arise over neutral rights.
Toward the end of the inquiry, the Neutralists began to dwell upon America's failure to stay out of the First World War, which for them proved the arguments they were making regarding the problem of freedom of the seas in the modern world. Woodrow Wilson's attempted neutrality served as a history lesson Americans needed in order to grasp the necessity of a new approach to neutrality. The narrative offered by Nye and the neutralists, as well as "revisionist" historians like Harry Elmer Barnes, generally proceeded as follows. Wilson had attempted a traditional approach to neutrality, allowing Americans to trade with belligerents. But Britain's naval superiority closed off German markets from U.S. goods. Despite American misgivings about Britain's actions and William Jennings Bryan's stricture against loans and credits to belligerents, a profitable war-related trade developed between the U.S. and Britain in the period, 1914 to 1916; it coincided with increases in military spending incited by the supposed need for "preparedness," thus ending a recession and bringing general prosperity to the country. Soon, the administration, especially because of the influence of financiers on Robert Lansing, Bryan's replacement as Secretary of State, moved away from its initial disapproval of the financing of belligerent purchases and, as a result, the nation became inexorably tied to Britain's fate.
The First World War narrative showed the need for proactive neutrality, a central argument in the neutralist cause. Since the war had already begun when he decided upon a policy of neutrality, Wilson could not change policy without acting in an unneutral manner. When U.S. officials, wanting to make the situation more equitable for Germany, considered using "the bargaining power which we possessed to force Britain to allow shipments of food to Germany," they discovered that any means used to stop "Britain's illegal interferences with our neutral trade"--such as embargoes--"would have been detrimental to our inflated munitions trade." The very geopolitical position of the U.S. in the international market, as well as its desirable agricultural and industrial goods, provided for a war-related boom that threatened to pull the nation into armed conflict. Thus, as Nye and Clark asserted in the memorandum and on numerous occasions elsewhere, neutrality legislation must be accomplished quickly, because "it cannot be improvised after the war breaks out." Since the United States had no neutrality law, the onset of a major war among the European powers would put the United States "in much the same situation as in 1914," when, because of its lack of preparation, "the United States found itself deeply involved in a one-sided trade in war materials with the Allies, American bankers were advancing large loans[,] and the government was involved in serious controversy with both the Allies and the Central Powers over alleged violation of 'neutral' rights."
The rejection of the traditional conception of "freedom of the seas," and their interest in the lessons offered by the problems encountered during the First World War, goes to show just how deeply involved in foreign-policy matters, and how far-sighted, the Neutralists were. Moreover, Neutralism recognized the major role the U.S. had to play in international events. Again, the contrast with mainstream views of "isolationism" is great. One of the more famous quotes of the "isolationists" was that of William Borah, in 1940, saying that war would not come anytime soon. Yet, Nye said with surprising certainly in 1934, at the onset of the munitions inquiry, that another global war appeared to be on the horizon. In addition, the U.S. did not just rely on militarization to get out of the Great Depression. In 1948, as European (especially British) demands for a military alliance against the "Red menace" in the East increased in the wake of the Berlin crisis of that year, U.S. leaders understood that a sort of permanent war, created via re-militarization quickly on the heels of the immediate de-militarization of 1946-1947, would be an economic boon. So it was, for both the U.S. and West Europe. Stalin was not seriously considering a westward invasion; yet U.S. leaders acted as if he were, and so we got NATO. Of course, the year before Truman had laid the groundwork for the Cold War with his Doctrine, which striped of its rhetorical flourishes essentially said that the U.S. would spend a lot of money to meet imagined threats. Granted, Stalin at the same time was enacting a reign of terror throughout East Europe, having essentially taken the place of Hitler as an unwelcome imperial overlord. Still, he was doing so as a defensive maneuver, an unnecessary one, but as such only doing the same thing his opponents were. The Americans and British had decided not to the take the high road with regard to military and imperial policy, even as they further democratized their societies and helped rebuild West Europe. Stalin, in turn, upped the ante. The attempt to starve West Berlin, as callous and ineffective as it was, arguably suggests a logical conclusion to the division of Germany, which the Americans and the British encouraged if not instigated. Why maintain a divided Berlin in the midst of Soviet-controlled East Germany? The Americans simply did not want to look like push-overs; their sympathy and fears for the Berlins (and their jelly doughnuts) was secondary. Again, Stalin went on the aggressive, in his still-defensive way, in approving the North Korean invasion of South Korea. Another excuse for the Americans to over-react and push their nation toward further ideological extremes and militarization schemes.
Hard not to say then, that Neutralism was a courageous last stand of anti-imperialism in U.S. politics. A review of the belabored process by which the neutrality legislation took shape only goes to show the daunting task they faced. The first stage in the process, leading to a temporary law passed in 1935, immediately made clear the problems the neutralists would have regarding non-munitions trade. As proposed in the initial resolutions, the simplest answer to the problem--the government forswearing defense of its citizens on the open seas--meet a swift rebuff in Congress. The Neutralists, though, had already considered other options. As a draft of a speech in Nye's personal papers suggests, the senator originally considered introducing neutrality legislation when the new Congress met in January. The text discussed a plan to place quotas on the export of essential war materials when trade in such products to a belligerent increased abnormally. The quotas were not to be higher than the average sent to the belligerent in question over the five-year period preceding the outbreak of war. Moreover, on at least a couple of occasions Nye broached the concept of "cash-and-carry," originally conceived by Bernard Baruch, which will be discussed in detail below.
In contrast, the other two features of neutralism: embargoes on the sale of munitions and on the granting of loans and credits to belligerents, Nye and the other Neutralists consistently supported. They were also received well relative to requests for broader trade restrictions. The arms embargo was the most significant aspect of the 1935 law. The ban on loans was achieved in 1936, the ban on credits in 1937. However, before the neutrality issue had come to the fore, the Johnson Act of 1934 had prohibited loans to governments in default of First World War debts, thus including several of the nations that were the obvious potential belligerents of the time.
By the time the 1935 law was due for revision in January 1936, Nye and Clark came prepared with stronger claims about militarization and trade with belligerents. Both now emphasized the supposed lessons of the Wilson administration's attempted neutrality, which the munitions committee, soon to finish its work, had dealt with during its final phase. As in 1935, the neutralists proposed that the government simply cease to protect those who traded in contraband but for practical reasons explored other options regarding non-munitions trade. Roosevelt at first went with what Nye had considered in 1935: the limitation of the export of certain war materials to pre-war levels, but wanted the president to have discretion in deciding when to impose the quotas and which goods to subject to such restrictions. Nye and Clark wanted Congress to decide in advance the list of goods that would be put under an embargo and the precise change in the level of trade that would trigger the use of quotas.
The 1936 revision also marked a crucial turning point in the history of neutrality when, as another way to regulate contraband, the neutralists formally introduced for consideration the concept of cash-and-carry. Though still unacceptable to "belligerent isolationists," not to mention most internationalists, it forced the government to take responsibility for trade with belligerents by restricting its citizens' economic activity, instead of allowing them to trade as they wanted without government protection of shipping rights. It required that the sale of contraband goods take place in cash and within the U.S. Roosevelt and the neutralists, though, failed to find common ground on the issue of non-munitions trade and another temporary law was passed. The principal difference from the previous law was, as noted above, the inclusion of the ban on loans, which of course implemented the "cash" part of a potential cash-and-carry plan. The neutralists again hoped for greater success, this time with a new Congress that would meet in 1937. The 1936 election arguably gave neutralists good reason to expect more. With Roosevelt on the attack against conservative critics of the New Deal, and seeking to appease the numerous leftist dissenters of the time, Neutralism was but one cause, alongside progressive taxation and the protection of organized labor, which seemed to be on the rise.
Alas, the permanent neutrality law finally passed in 1937, despite apparent successes for the neutralists, stands as a largely unsuccessful one too. Having introduced the idea of cash-and-carry in 1936, the neutralists were confronted with Franklin Roosevelt's deft rerouting of nationalist proposals toward internationalist ends, as they had been in 1936 with his appropriation of the idea of quotas. The 1937 law, as approved by Congress, gave the president the authority to decide when American products that may be used as strategic materials by belligerents were to be sold only on a cash-and-carry basis. The efforts of Nye, Clark, Bone, and others to defeat presidential discretion failed. Unlike the 1936 revision, the new measure was permanent and as such did not suggest that the neutralists had much chance for greater success in the future. The ban on the sale of arms and on granting loans to belligerents remained, with the addition of a ban on credits, but cash-and-carry, as controlled by Roosevelt, would ultimately hurt the neutralists more.
As much as the Neutralists strained to enact a true neutrality--that is, before war actually began--they could not predict all the obstacles that would come their way. First and most important of all, the neutrality legislation simply obliged the president to implement its provisions when a state of war was known to exist. Much of the debate over neutrality had ignored this issue, and thus obscured the inherent advantages the Roosevelt had, and would have had even in the case of Nye's ideal neutrality law. The Sino-Japanese War insured that this problem would no longer be obscure. The war had not been officially declared, giving Roosevelt the excuse he needed not to implement the neutrality law. Second, the Spanish Civil War quickly presented its own conundrum, as the Neutralists realized they had not taken into account the possibility of a civil war involving foreign nations to such a degree that it might explode into a larger, international conflict. Thus, Nye's hope of having neutrality legislation in place before a significant war broke out, so that the U.S. could not play favorites, was now moot. In 1937, Nye and the Neutralists supported a specific arms embargo for Spain, which had first been put in place by Britain and France. But Germany and Italy, of course, did not go along. The embargo thus obviously helped the Fascist side of the Spanish conflict. Nye considered various ways to change the situation, including extending the embargo to Germany and Italy or instead, in a surprising concession on his part, ending the embargo on munitions sales to Spain in favor of cash-and-carry restrictions. He thus found himself on the same side of leftist, internationalist critics of Roosevelt, if not for the first then certainly for the last time. In doing so, Nye contradicted his own stated hope that the purpose of the neutrality law was to keep the U.S. out of war, not necessarily to discourage war among foreign nations. Though the Neutralists knew, and desired, for U.S. neutrality to have a positive effect globally, the nationalist anti-imperialists generally had argued that active efforts to promote global peace only hurt more than they helped. In short, these two wars, respective precursors to the Second World War's two principal theatres, enabled Roosevelt, via public sympathy for China and the murky diplomacy of both situation, to shift the tenor of foreign-policy debate, at least among the left, almost entirely toward an internationalist perspective.
In 1939, with the replacement of the arms embargo with cash-and-carry, the Congress finally rejected the Neutralist idea of refusing to profit from the arms trade. The cash-and-carry restrictions were stricter than those of 1937, being mandatory for all trade with belligerents (except for European colonies outside a proscribed north Atlantic war zone, which could receive non-munitions trade without hindrance). Even Neutralist opposition to presidential discretion received vindication, as Roosevelt was only given the authority to delineate certain combat zones and designate them as off-limits to all American persons, ships, and planes, whether they sought to travel to belligerent or neutral ports. In other words, he had the discretion to make neutrality policy stricter, not more lenient. Nonetheless, the rationale behind the repeal of the arms embargo completely rejected Nye's demand that America forego the profits of war production in order to ensure peace. Key Pittman, for example, pointed to the country's economic woes as a reason why the embargo had to go. Most important, the cash-and-carry concept, as Baruch originally saw it, implicitly rejected the claims of the neutralists. Baruch believed that embargoes on non-munitions trade, which neutralists put forth as ideal, were antagonistic and would lead to belligerent responses. Nonetheless, the conditions of modern warfare, which pitted entire economies not just militaries against each other, still concerned Baruch. Cash-and-carry was his solution; it merely obliged Americans to avoid the destruction of property and the loss of life that came with the financing and shipping of goods purchased by belligerents. Neutralist demands to forswear even the trade cash-and-carry would allow, however, fell by the wayside, as did warnings that wealthier, maritime nations had inherent advantages in attaining goods through the new system.
In wake of Neutralism's defeat, Nye more and more found himself allied with conservative critics of the Roosevelt administration, both because of the political situation in his home state of North Dakota and in the bifurcation of the national polity, ideologically speaking, along strictly partisan lines (which is to say, that progressive Republicans found it harder to stake a position for themselves independent of both the conservative leadership of their party and the Democrats). In his speeches, he focused on the mendacity of interventionist rhetoric, Roosevelt's deceptive ways and increased dominance over foreign policy, and the false hopes of the Wilsonian Liberal Internationalism that provided a larger framework for the interventionist cause. As he saw less and less hope for the U.S. remaining a neutral nation, he placed the blame on Roosevelt and his most ardent supporters, not on Congress or the voting public. Nye expressed a considerable amount of resentment and hostility toward his opponents as the Thirties came to a close. Especially after the passage of the Lend-Lease act, with which Roosevelt aimed to "eliminate the dollar sign" in the nation's assistance to Britain--in other words, it repealed the "cash" part of the cash-and-carry policy--Nye was convinced that military intervention was near. He thought that Lend-Lease paved the way for dictatorship, especially because of the ambiguity of the law, which allowed Roosevelt to grant any "defense article" to any nation whose defense he deemed crucial to the nation's interests.
Despite the negative tone of many of his speeches during the period, 1937-1941, Nye managed to put forth a compromise of sorts: a unilateralist vision of limited imperialism on the U.S.'s part that represented an acquiescence to empire and yet a refusal to accept the ambitious goals of liberal internationalism. This compromise between Neutralism and Liberal Internationalism took on a moderate, reform-minded cast when compared to similar compromises made by conservative foes of Liberal Internationalism like Arthur Vandenberg and Robert Taft. Like most anti-interventionists, Nye focused on U.S. predominance in the Western Hemisphere, which he acknowledged early in the neutrality debate and continued to do so. In fact, since the 1936 neutrality law, the Americas had been excluded from the restrictions on trade in belligerent nations. After the 1935 law was passed, opponents of Neutralism had argued that the Monroe Doctrine had essentially been repealed, a meaningless but rhetorically-effective claim. Thus, from 1936 onward, any potential war between an American nation and a non-American nation presumably would involve the U.S., neutrality rendered a non-issue. Neutrality did apply, though, to inter-American wars, such as the Chaco War between Paraguay and Bolivia.
However, East Asia presented problems, much like the Japanese invasion of China presented complications for the neutrality legislation. The Japan issue did not attract Nye's attention as much, and as such undermined his compromise between Liberal Internationalism and Nationalist Anti-Imperialism. The existence of a lone competing imperial power in East Asia is the crucial factor to consider here. The Neutralists and anti-interventionists never thought that Germany might pose an immediate threat to the U.S.; they were not so obdurate regarding Japan. Nye understood, for example, that the Philippines represented a strategic liability and fretted that Japanese expansion necessitated increased military outlay for the colony. Thus, following the Nationalist Anti-Imperialist line, he wanted Filipino independence. Meanwhile, the European powers, once so concerned with dividing up China and stopping a single nation from dominating the region, could not respond to Japanese expansion. The U.S., not yet preoccupied with the European war, could. Its actions against Japan, unlike those against Germany, would not be lost in the morass of formal neutrality and informal alliances which characterized U S policy toward the European war. The Pearl Harbor attack made this all too clear, and ended the Europe-centric debate over intervention in a way that few had predicted.
It too eventually ended the careers of the Neutralists in Congress. Though North Dakotans remained unconvinced of Liberal Internationalist nostrums, Nye lost re-election in 1944 because of infighting among the state's progressives. The same year, Bennett Clark also lost re-election and Homer Bone chose not to run. In 1946, Burton Wheeler and Robert La Follette, Jr, failed in their re-election bids. At that point, the number of Nationalist Anti-Imperialists left in Congress was negligible. And the possibility of the U.S. taking a non-imperialist course had finally been utterly eliminated.
As for assessing the validity of the Neutralist and anti-interventionist arguments, especially regarding Europe, which the "great debate" itself focused on, one could say that as much as Americans arrogantly dismiss the struggle and sacrifice of the Russian effort against the German invasion, as much as Americans over-value their own contribute to the Western theatre, nonetheless, toward the end of the conflict, from the "Battle of the Bulge" through the immediate-post-war period, especially with the Marshall Plan, the U.S. made invaluable, positive contributions to the eventual peace and prosperity of West Europe. But the effects of militarization, both the post-1939 and the post-1947 (not to mention those which came under Kennedy and Johnson; Reagan; and W. Bush) have been horrendous, both in its direct effect on U.S. society and politics, and in its indirect effect on the countless unnecessary, poorly-planned, and mendaciously-justified interventions in nations that meant no harm to us. The words and thought of the Neutralists offer solace when pondering the history of the U.S. since 1939. Though they hardly have any present-day influence, if their ideas are kept alive, they may yet still.