Arms Embargoes and the Traffic in Munitions

Report Outline
Arms Embargoes and the Traffic in Munitions
Past Embargoes and Present Embargo Proposals
Arms Embargoes, Sanctions, and the Policy of Neutrality
The International Trade in Munitions of War
Private Vs. Government Control of the Manufacture of Arms

Arms Embargoes and the Traffic in Munitions

Roocevelt Conferences with Macdonald and Herriot

President Roosevelt, in his second radio report to the country, Sunday night May 7, put “first” among the objectives sought in his conferences with foreign statesmen “a general reduction of armaments, and through this the removal of the fear of invasion and armed attack.” In Europe, and particularly in France, this objective has usually been phrased the other way around: “Removal of the fear of invasion and armed attack, and through this a general reduction of armaments.”

Prime Minister MacDonald coupled security and disarmament in the new proposals he offered at Geneva, March 16, 1933, in an effort to save the Disarmament Conference which appeared at that time to be in imminent danger of collapse. Specific proposals for the limitation of land armaments were advanced, and at the same time the British prime minister put forward a plan for consultation among the signatories of the Kellogg anti-war treaty in case of a violation or threat of violation of that treaty. The Roosevelt administration is pledged by the Democratic platform of 1932 to a policy of consultation with foreign nations in support of the Kellogg pact and this feature of the MacDonald plan is believed to have provided the essential basis of the Roosevelt-MacDonald conversations on disarmament.

MacDonald announced in the House of Commons, May 9, that the United States was prepared to play a further part in tranquilizing Europe by agreeing, “if the Disarmament Conference comes to anything like a satisfactory issue,” to take its part in consultative pacts “the effect of which will be to increase the security of Europe and the safety of threatened nations against war.” The Roosevelt administration was prepared, he said, to make its obligations “quite definite and authoritative,” and an announcement could be expected from Washington when the question had been further considered and the details settled.