Neutrality vs. Sanctions

Report Outline
Roosevelt and the Chino-Japanese War
Mandatory Neutrality Legislation, 1935–37
Discretionary Neutrality and Sanctions
Traditional Neutrality as Peace Safeguard

Roosevelt and the Chino-Japanese War

Recent events have thrown into sharp focus a conflict over American foreign policy that has engaged public attention almost continuously since the summer of 1935. In neutrality legislation enacted at that time, and subsequently renewed and expanded, the views of adherents of a so-called mandatory policy prevailed over those of administration and other proponents of a discretionary policy permitting outright cooperation with other nations in attempts to restrain an aggressor. Notwithstanding the fact that Congress provided by law for mandatory application of non-discriminatory arms embargoes in the event of war between foreign states, the administration has followed a directly opposite course in the Chino-Japanese crisis. Not only has the President failed to invoke the law, despite the obvious existence of a state of war, but the State Department has issued a statement declaring that the action of Japan in China is violative of the Nine-Power treaty and the Kellogg Pact, thus officially branding Japan as the aggressor and inferentially conceding the existence of a state of war.

An address by President Roosevelt at Chicago on October 5, the day before the State Department issued its declaration, made plain the breadth of the gulf separating administration policy from that laid down by Congress in the neutrality act. The President declared that “the peace-loving nations must make a concerted effort to uphold laws and principles on which alone peace can rest secure,” and he suggested that lawless nations must be subjected to a quarantine by the peace-loving members of the international community. Departure from a course of strict impartiality toward foreign belligerents and participation in a system of sanctions against aggressors seemed clearly to be implied. While the President spoke more guardedly of foreign affairs in his fireside chat a week later, he asserted that we could not “view with indifference the destruction of civilized values throughout the world” and insisted that “peace must be affirmatively reached for.” Cooperation with the other signatories of the Nine-Power treaty in seeking an agreement for solution of the situation in China, he said, “would be an example of one of the possible paths to follow in our search for means toward peace throughout the world.”

Opposing Trends in Foreign Policy of United States

The contradictions in American foreign policy typified by the present struggle between the advocates of cooperation against aggressors and the adherents of an isolationist and strictly impartial policy go back to the immediate post-war period. In 1919 the United States refused to join the League of Nations even under reservations which would have relieved it of the obligation to preserve the territorial integrity of member states by cooperating in application of sanctions against an aggressor. Yet in 1922 it sponsored and subscribed to the Nine-Power treaty under which it agreed to respect, although not to preserve, the territorial integrity of China and to engage in full and frank communication with the other signatories whenever any situation arose involving application of the treaty.