American Foreign Policy: Victory of Liberal Internationalism

Summary

The Hillsdale College Online Courses Podcast

Episode: American Foreign Policy: Victory of Liberal Internationalism
Date: September 24, 2025
Host(s): Jeremiah Regan, Juan Davalos
Guest Lecturer: Professor Anton

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Episode Overview

This episode, the fifth lecture in the "American Foreign Policy" series, examines the pivotal transition in U.S. foreign policy during and after World War II. The discussion explores the context and consequences of America's adoption of "liberal internationalism"—a sharp departure from the earlier founding tradition of non-intervention—highlighting the causes, conduct, and aftermath of WWII, including the onset of the Cold War. Professor Anton guides listeners through the philosophical, political, and practical changes in American policy and their lasting global impact.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Understanding Context: From Founding Principles to Progressive Foreign Policy

• Superficial WW2 Narratives:
  Many Americans simplify the cause of American entry into World War II as a direct response to Pearl Harbor. Professor Anton stresses the importance of looking deeper into context, including American actions and policy shifts preceding the attack ([00:12–01:13]).

• Non-Intervention vs. Internationalism:
  The Founders considered acts like embargoes or sending arms to belligerents as acts of war, reflecting a default policy of restraint. Progressive foreign policy, which gained prominence in the 20th century, redefined such actions as humanitarian aid rather than acts of war ([01:13–01:49]).

• FDR’s “Four Freedoms”:
  The episode features a reading from FDR’s 1941 speech, laying out a global vision based on:

  • Freedom of speech
  • Freedom of worship
  • Freedom from want
  • Freedom from fear
    This vision stretches New Deal ideas to an international scale ([01:49–03:18]).

"We look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms..."
— FDR, read by Jeremiah Regan ([01:32])

2. American Hesitance and Policy Shifts Pre-Pearl Harbor

• Public Opinion and Historical Memory:
  There was widespread reluctance among Americans to enter WWII due to the traumatic and seemingly fruitless experience of World War I ([04:02–06:10]).

• Unprecedented Actions by Roosevelt Administration:

  • Dramatic expansion of the defense budget
  • Instituting the first peacetime draft
  • Large-scale “Louisiana Maneuvers” war games
  • Engagement in undeclared naval conflict with Germany, notably via the Lend-Lease Act ([06:10–12:00])

"A peacetime draft had never happened before in American history. It's certainly a conscription on your liberty."
— Prof. Anton ([07:48])

• Lend-Lease Act:
  The U.S. “formally” maintained neutrality but actively supplied Britain, provoking German retaliation against American shipping ([12:00]).

3. The U.S. and Japan: Escalating Tensions

• Japanese Atrocities and U.S. Response:
  The “Rape of Nanking” horrified American and global opinion but was not enough to push the public toward intervention ([13:12–15:15]).

• Economic Warfare:
  The 1941 oil embargo—critical, as Japan’s industrial economy was dependent on American oil—pushed Japan into a corner, helping set the stage for Pearl Harbor ([15:15–16:54]).

"The Roosevelt administration essentially put Japan into a corner, made them feel that there was no possibility of any kind of peaceful resolution..."
— Prof. Anton ([16:45])

• Diplomatic Belligerence vs. Military Readiness:
  Anton criticizes FDR's strategy of economic pressure without simultaneous military preparedness in the Pacific ([16:54–18:03]).

• Pearl Harbor and Public Opinion:
  Pearl Harbor irrevocably shifted public sentiment, though Americans naturally prioritized war against Japan, while elites and the administration focused on defeating Germany first ([19:50–21:18]).

"Roosevelt never entirely played it straight with the American people... the war in Europe was clearly prioritized."
— Prof. Anton ([20:48])

4. Total War: Unconditional Surrender and the War's End

• Allied Strategy:
  WWII was prosecuted as a fight to unconditional surrender—no negotiated settlements as after WWI—resulting in total military, economic, and political domination of the Axis powers ([23:26–27:22]).

"At the Tehran Conference, the Allies settled on unconditional surrender... No armistice, no negotiations."
— Prof. Anton ([23:45])

• Atomic Endgame:
  The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki forced Japanese surrender, illustrating the horrific scale of modern “total war” ([26:39–27:37]).

"It is my earnest hope... that from this solemn occasion a better world shall emerge out of the blood and carnage of the past."
— Japanese Surrender Remarks ([27:45])

• Moral Consequences & Postwar Responsibility:
  With the utter defeat of the Axis, the Allies felt compelled to reconstruct the vanquished—encapsulated in the “Pottery Barn rule”: if you break it, you buy it ([27:59]).

5. Ascendancy of Liberal Internationalism

• Collapse of Isolationism:
  The war's end saw the marginalization of non-interventionism in American political thought. Both Democratic and Republican elites largely embraced internationalism ([29:00–30:20]).

• New Global Role:
  The U.S. takes up the burden of rebuilding Europe and Japan, setting the stage for its superpower status and the development of new international institutions.

6. The Murkiness of the Cold War’s Beginning

• Breakdown of Allied Unity:
  Immediate postwar conflicts arose, particularly with the Soviet Union, which began to violate accords and assert control over Eastern Europe ([31:35–33:58]).

• Notable Moment: Churchill’s “Iron Curtain” Speech:
  Churchill names the division of Europe and the new threat of Soviet expansion ([33:58]).

“An Iron Curtain has descended across the continent.”
— Winston Churchill ([33:58])

• Key Crises:

  • Soviet interference in Greece and Turkey
  • The Berlin Blockade and the Western response via the Berlin Airlift ([34:10–37:06])

• Rise of “Containment” Doctrine:
  George Kennan’s “Long Telegram” and the famous “X” article laid the intellectual foundations for America’s Cold War policy ([37:06–41:14]).

"His explanation boils down to two things: One is because they're Communists... The second is because they're Russians."
— Prof. Anton on Kennan’s analysis ([39:30])

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• FDR’s Four Freedoms ([01:32])
• Professor Anton on Liberty and the Draft:
  “What can be more constraining to your liberty than to be drafted into the army?... It certainly is a conscription on your liberty.” ([07:48])
• Lend-Lease as a Turning Point:
  “With Lend Lease, the United States maintained its formally neutral posture in the war, but it was obviously siding with Great Britain.” ([12:00])
• On the Collapse of Isolationism:
  “By the end of the war and really long before the end of the war, isolationism or non interventionism was considered to be a completely discredited ideology or point of view.” ([29:00])
• Churchill’s Iron Curtain:
  “An Iron Curtain has descended across the continent. Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of central and eastern Europe.” ([33:58])
• On the Roots of Soviet Conduct (Kennan’s Analysis):
  “One is because they're Communists... The second is because they're Russians.” ([39:30])

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Important Timestamps

• 00:12: Juan Davalos introduces the theme—context around WWII entry
• 01:13: Jeremiah Regan on founding vs. progressive policy, FDR’s Four Freedoms
• 04:02: Prof. Anton begins main lecture—public hesitancy about entering WWII
• 06:10: Shift to expansion of U.S. military and undeclared naval conflict
• 11:52: U.S. commitment to “arsenal of democracy,” i.e., Lend-Lease
• 13:12: Impact of the Rape of Nanking on public opinion
• 15:15: Oil embargo’s role in pressuring Japan
• 19:50: Pearl Harbor: shift in public opinion
• 23:26: Unconditional surrender policy explained
• 26:39: Atomic bombings and Japanese surrender
• 27:59: Postwar occupation and responsibility
• 33:58: Churchill’s Iron Curtain speech
• 37:06: The Berlin Blockade and Airlift
• 39:30: Kennan’s “Long Telegram” and containment
• 41:14: Cross-promotion and course information (end of substantive content)

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Tone & Style

The conversation maintains Hillsdale’s characteristic scholarly yet accessible tone. Professor Anton is clear, methodical, and occasionally wry, bringing history alive through memorable analogies (e.g., the Pottery Barn rule) and pop culture references (Casablanca). The hosts, Regan and Davalos, provide thoughtful framing and draw out connections between past ideas and today’s ongoing debates over American global engagement.

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Summary for the Uninitiated

This episode makes clear how America’s approach to the world fundamentally changed in the WWII era—moving from a narrow, self-contained “city on a hill” ethos to actively shaping the international order. The transformation, driven by both idealism (FDR’s “Four Freedoms”) and harsh necessity (total war, unconditional surrender), set the stage for the later confrontation with the Soviet Union, and influences debates in U.S. foreign policy to this day.

The discussion provides crucial background for understanding not only U.S. involvement in WWII but also the ideological roots of the Cold War and America’s ongoing role on the world stage.

Transcript

[Professor Anton]

Foreign.

[Jeremiah Regan]

Welcome to the Hillsdale College online courses podcast. I'm Jeremiah Regan.

[Juan Davalos]

And I'm Juan Davalos. We are back with American foreign policy lecture number five, victory of liberal internationalism. This is a particularly interesting lecture to me because anytime you study history, one of the most difficult things to do is to understand the context of something. And when we look at world war ii, I think that is just such a big event in world history that we have a tendency to gloss over that context. And so, you know, one of the things that we think, or at least a very superficial view of World War II, is that we were attacked in Pearl harbor, and that's why we joined the war. And I think Anton begins the lecture laying out a context to that and, you know, looking at ourselves a little bit on what are the things that we did that were actually a little belligerent in the world in the way that America acted that led to a series of events that ended us getting involved in the war.

[Jeremiah Regan]

In the old view, the founding view of foreign policy, things like embargoes, things like supplying money or material and especially weapons to belligerents in a war were considered active wars. But in the newer foreign policy view that came in with the progressives, those were not considered to be acts of war. They were considered to be acts of humanitarian aid or such like. And we see that today still. The causes of World War II are very interesting. And as Juan said, Professor Anton helps us understand what went into the things that happened before we were attacked. He also helps us understand what came from the war. And FDR gives us an idea of what he was aiming for in his 1941 speech, the Four Freedoms. I'll read an excerpt of that, and we'll see how the new deal for Americans in FDR's mind is going to be applied to the whole world. We look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms. FDR begins. The first is freedom of speech and expression everywhere in the world. The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way everywhere in the world. The third is freedom from want, which translated into world terms means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants everywhere in the world. The fourth is freedom from fear, which translated into world terms means a worldwide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor anywhere in the world. That is no vision of a distant millennium. It is a definite basis for a kind of world attainable in our own time and generation. And as our professors will often say, as Ivan Pongrasic says in our Marxism course, these are good goals. Of course. We want freedom and we want peace. The question is whether they're attainable in the way that FDR proposes. And Professor Anton helps us understand both the goals and what happens, and we'll see this in subsequent lectures when this type of world policy is attempted.

[Juan Davalos]

I'm so glad that you read that quote from fdr, because it paints a perfect it just makes the difference between the founding principles and the progressive principles extremely clear. And then you understand why we start becoming this internationalist power. If you're enjoying the course, we invite you to click that follow button wherever you're listening to us, whether either in itunes, podcast or Spotify, or on our website, click that follow button so that you can receive all the next episodes when they come out.

[Jeremiah Regan]

Now let's turn to professor anton with Lecture 5 of American Foreign Policy Victory of Liberal Internationalism.

[Professor Anton]

In the last lecture, we talked about an ongoing division between progressive foreign policy and its opponents, and that division is still around in the immediate run up to World War II, those immediate years in the late 1930s and even beyond, because remember, World War II starts in 1939, well over two years before the United States gets involved. Whether and to what extent the United States should be involved is the main foreign policy question facing the country. In those years, American public opinion was very against entering the war or even supporting combatants in the war by means short of war. And many look back on that and criticized the American people and certainly criticized the leaders who argued in favor of staying out of the war.

[Historical Figures (e.g., FDR, Churchill, Hirohito) or Narrator reading historical quotes]

Years ago, we decided to stay out of foreign wars. We must not waver now that the crisis is at hand.

[Professor Anton]

But try to think about it from the American people's perspective. They had been asked to intervene in World War I after being told for years that they wouldn't have to. In fact, a president campaigned for reelection, Woodrow Wilson, of course, in 1916, on the grounds that he had kept America out of the war and would keep America out of the war. And in April of the following year, scarcely a month after his inauguration, because remember, in those days, presidents were inaugurated in March, not in January. He announced that America would enter the war, and the American people rallied round the flag. As I said, they signed up in huge numbers, and many were drafted, to be sure, but still, more than 2 million Americans wore the uniform when overseas, and well over 100,000 of them gave their lives in what was supposed to be a war to end all wars. Now, barely 20 years later, another war was brewing. And almost exactly 20 years later, it had broken out.

[Historical Figures (e.g., FDR, Churchill, Hirohito) or Narrator reading historical quotes]

Poland, September 1939. The German foe begins its ruthless march of conquest and sets the stage for World War II.

[Professor Anton]

And the American people by and large thought, if this was supposed to be a war to end all wars, why are we having another war? Or why are they having another war is a better way to put it. And why do we need to be involved? We sacrificed enormously the last time and we're not sure why, what our country got out of it. What about the non interventionist principle of the American founders? We're way over here in the Western hemisphere. As bad as some of these regimes can be, we don't see them as a direct threat to us. How can they cross the Atlantic and threaten us? And even to the argument that intervention was required on some humanitarian grounds, some altruistic grounds, the American people somewhat understandably said, listen, if these Europeans can't stop fighting amongst themselves, that may be a tragedy, but we don't see why it has to involve us and especially our young men. That, as I said, is the backdrop or the main obstacle the Roosevelt administration faced in its attempt to be more internationalist and to side covertly and to some extent overtly with the Allies. Now, this issue would not be resolved until Pearl Harbor. After Pearl Harbor, American public opinion swung enormously in favor of intervention, although of intervention in the Pacific more so than in Europe. But before Pearl harbor, the Roosevelt administration took a number of extraordinary peacetime steps that had really never been done in American history before. The American defense budget expanded dramatically in the late 1930s and early 1940s before America's intervention in the war. It went up by a factor of almost five in a very brief period of time. That's something that had never happened before in American history. In 1940, the United States enacted a peacetime draft. That is, they started conscripting young men to become soldiers. Now remember what we talked about. One of the reasons the founder's principle of non intervention is not merely justified, but required is the domestic consideration that war constrains individual Americans liberties. And what can be more constraining to your liberty than to be drafted into the army? That's not to say I'm against the draft in all circumstances, far from it. Sometimes it's necessary, but it certainly is a conscription on your liberty. When one day you're either going to school or working in a mechanic's garage or whatever it is. You're doing toiling on a farm and the next day you're told you're in the army whether you like it or not. That's certainly a conscription on your liberty. And that fact has to be considered by the political leaders who want to constrain your liberties. How necessary is this? Well, a peacetime draft had never happened before in American history. Another unprecedented pre war action on the part of the United States were the so called Louisiana Maneuvers. These were large scale war games before American entry into the war in which the US army practiced what real battles would be like on a scale that hadn't happened since the army was mobilized to fight World War I. Another fact that has to be considered that's reasonably well known to historians and experts in the period, but that's still today less well known to the public, is that increasingly the United States began to fight an undeclared war in the Atlantic. Now remember, the Constitution says that only Congress has the power to declare war. Congress would eventually declare war in December of 1941, but absent a declaration of war, it's unclear exactly how much latitude a President has in foreign affairs. Well, FDR tested that latitude to the max in the orders he gave to the US Navy in the Atlantic. The backdrop here. We talked about this in an earlier lecture regarding World War I and the threat to shipping. Now you have to imagine that 20 years have gone by and submarine or U boat technology has advanced greatly. These are incredibly dangerous weapons of war that are sinking tons and tons and tons of merchant shipping, most of it carrying vital materials to Britain. The United States is not at war with Germany formally, but the FDR administration clearly favors the Allied side, the British side, and is doing what it can to ship materials to Britain. It's also under constraints passed by Congress, various neutrality acts that restrict what types of materials and how much the United States can ship to other countries without being considered a belligerent in the war. Well, the Germans are trying to disrupt this traffic to the extent possible. Now they're already at war with Britain since September 1, 1939. So even according to the laws of war, as understood at the time, any British ship is fair game to a German submarine. The question is what about American merchant shipping and what can the US Navy do in response to German U boats? But during this period before US Entry, it's just important for us to understand that the Roosevelt administration and the Navy was much more active in the Battle of the Atlantic than the average person might think. The Navy of a supposedly neutral power should have been perhaps the most significant action of the Roosevelt administration I think we can drop perhaps, I think we can say this was the most significant action of the Roosevelt administration prior to America's entry in the war was the so called Lend Lease act, sometimes referred to as Lease Lend. It almost depends on which side of the Atlantic you're on, what you call it. It was an agreement to lend Britain surplus US Navy ships in exchange for leases over British colonial possessions that the United States could use as bases.

[Historical Figures (e.g., FDR, Churchill, Hirohito) or Narrator reading historical quotes]

Our most useful and immediate role is to act as an arsenal for them as well as for ourselves.

[Professor Anton]

With Lend Lease, the United States maintained its formally neutral posture in the war, but it was obviously siding with Great Britain. The United States didn't sign any such agreement with Hitler, for that matter. That was pretty obvious to Hitler at the time. Which means that in response to Lend Lease, which was finalized in the spring of 1941, the Kriegsmarine, the German U boats, became much more active against all shipping, including American shipping in the Atlantic. Which means that the Navy, the US Navy increased its activity against the Kriegsmarine in the Atlantic throughout this period, which again, according to the Founders principles, would be fully justified. If a foreign hostile navy is attacking your shipping, you are absolutely justified in attacking back. The thing the Founders might have had a problem with though is that all this was happening in an undeclared way. I think they might have asked reasonably why at this point FDR didn't go to Congress and say our shipping is being preyed upon by a hostile foreign navy. I need a declaration of war so that I can fight back. And I think the reason he didn't is because public opinion was still enough against him that he thought he couldn't get that declaration of war, not at that time anyway. And the Founders might also say that while, yes, we understand it's true that a hostile foreign navy is attacking American shipping and that you need to respond to that. They might also have pointed out that one of the reasons that that hostile foreign navy is attacking your shipping is because you have more or less openly placed America on the side of a power that that hostile foreign navy is already fighting a declared war against. Now, meanwhile in the Pacific, the FDR administration, with some justification, was outraged and offended about Japanese expansionism and Japanese activities in mainland China and in the Western Pacific in particular. One event really shocked the world's conscience and turned public opinion, and especially elite opinion strongly against Japan. And that is the so called Rape of Nanking in 1937. I won't go into detail here. It's a brutal story that's hard to tell and even harder to read about, but it was essentially the sack of a city replete with brutal atrocities. It was widely reported throughout the world, not just in response to that, but in response to Japanese behavior all over the western Pacific. The Roosevelt administration began to tighten all kinds of strictures on Japan, the most famous of which of course, was a complete oil embargo against Japan in the middle of 1941. Now, what does that mean? An embargo means a refusal to sell something you have to a particular customer, in this case Japan, obviously. Now, Japan is a wealthy country. It's a sophisticated industrialized country, and was even then. But one thing it doesn't have is an abundance of natural resources, including fossil fuels, oil, especially the things that they need to operate their navy and their military. So they have to buy it on the open market or they have to find it in these colonial possessions. And in fact, Japanese expansion is in part driven by the need for natural resources. There's basically two ways that you can accumulate, well, three I should say ways you can accumulate natural resources if you are a country. One is you just have them in the ground and you develop your own industries to collect them and exploit them on your own territory. Another is you buy them on the open market, work with other countries in commercial relations to import what you need. And the other is you conquer places that have them. And that was the Japanese strategy, especially for much needed materials such as oil and rubber. They still didn't have enough oil. They were looking for oil, especially in what were then called the Dutch East Indies Islands that we would now think of as mostly Indonesia, but in that area north of Australia, south of the Philippines, they needed to buy oil from America. And it may be hard to remember from our vantage point, but back in the late 1930s or early 1940s, America was by far the largest producer of oil in the world and produced far more than it consumed, and so could sell it on the open market, but stopped selling it to the Japanese. Now here I'm just going to state a view. I'm not going to endorse it necessarily, but I'm going to state a view which holds the following, that the Roosevelt administration's rather belligerent diplomacy with Japan, especially in 1941, however justified by Japanese behavior, was strategically disconnected from any kind of long term notion of where they wanted US Japanese relationship to go. That is to say the following. The Roosevelt administration essentially put Japan into a corner, made them feel that there was no possibility of any kind of peaceful resolution of their disputes with the United States. And did so at a time when the U.S. pacific Fleet was very weak and vulnerable. We all remember Pearl harbor, one of the great atrocities of the 20th century. I take nothing away from the many brave sailors who died and the many other brave sailors who fought back. But it is a fact that the Navy that was all but destroyed in the harbor that day was a very antiquated and old Navy. It was first and foremost a battleship navy. And as it turns out, the battleship played a very limited role in World War II. World War II naval battles were decided by aircraft carriers then. Still not a brand new technology, but an up and coming technology underappreciated by naval leaders. All this is to say the the FDR administration pursued a policy of diplomatic belligerence without simultaneously pursuing a policy of military readiness. I mentioned 1937 and Nanking and the effect it had on American public opinion. Now it was 1937 and the war was still five years away and American public opinion still remained anti. Interventionist. But this event did make the American people turn them in an anti Japanese direction. Not enough to want to get involved, but broadly understood enough to support the President's anti Japan diplomacy embargoes and other restrictions. A much more consequential event on American public opinion was the fall of France in June of 1940. You know your history. The Germans invaded France May 10, 1940, and in about a month French forces had fallen, the government had fallen and the Germans occupied Paris, signed a treaty, divided France into two zones. An occupied zone occupied by German forces and an unoccupied zone with its capital at Vichy, which came to be known as a byword for collaboration. Remember that last scene in Casablanca where Louis, played by Claude Rains, decides that he's going to stop collaborating and he's about to take a drink of water from a bottle. The bottle says Vichy on it because Vichy is famous for its mineral waters. And he pours a little into the glass, looks down and sees the word Vichy, puts the glass on the table without taking a drink, and he throws the bottle in the trash can. That's meant to be a symbol of him siding with Free France. Well, the fall of France shocked American public opinion, especially elite opinion, even more than the Rape of Nanking. For the simple and understandable reason that Americans just have a lot more familiarity with France than they do with with China or Japan. Because Americans are much more likely to have visited Europe and seen France. And this again didn't make America pro intervention, but it did make them much more anti German and therefore prone to be pro intervention when the time came. But of course, the key event in all of this is Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941, and the subsequent declaration of war. Hitler foolishly declared war on the United States after Pearl harbor, giving them an excuse to declare war back on him and start planning for European operations. Now, in some ways, Roosevelt never entirely played it straight with the American people. The problem they had is that American public opinion, understandably stirred by Pearl harbor, wanted the United States to prioritize the war against Japan, whereas almost all American elites, pretty much everyone in the Roosevelt administration, wanted the United States to prioritize the war in Europe. In fact, it's fair to say that just about the only exceptions were the officers, the American general and flag officers responsible for the war in the Pacific, notably Chester Nimitz and Douglas MacArthur, who wanted to prioritize the war in the Pacific. Almost everyone else thought that the United States should prioritize the war in Europe. And that's exactly what the Roosevelt administration did. Without ever really telling the American people that they were doing that. They got away with the subterfuge, if we want to call it a subterfuge, by the fact that the war in the Pacific was fought constantly from Pearl harbor on. So there was no delay from the declaration of war until the army landings in North Africa in November of 1942. The U.S. navy was in action almost continuously, and in fact, two great battles, the Battle of the Coral Sea in March of 1942 and the Battle of Midway in June of 1940, which gave the appearance, and more than the appearance to the American people that the United States was fully engaged in a war against Japan. But as some analyses that I have read show, in terms of the amount of men and material committed to each theater, the United States put something like 90% of its resources into the war in Europe, versus around 10% into the war of the Pacific.

[Scott Bertram]

Hey there, it's Scott Bertram, host of the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour. On this week's episode, a special edition of the program, we honor the life and legacy of Charlie Kirk, founder and president of Turning Point USA and friend to Hillsdale College. We hear reflections from Hillsdale College President Larry Arne, also from Hillsdale students, professors, and we hear from Charlie himself, from a lecture he gave on behalf of Hillsdale College earlier in 2025. Together, we remember a voice that shaped a generation of conservatives and was silenced far too soon. This week, our special episode honoring the life and legacy of Charlie Kirk. Find it at Podcast Hillsdale Edu or wherever you get your audience. This show is a part of the Hillsdale College Podcast Network. If you like what you hear, please subscribe to your favorite. You'll get brand new episodes of all your favorite shows sent right to your device, and you'll help us know that you're out there listening. Never miss another episode by going to Podcast Hillsdale Edu subscribe. That's Podcast Hillsdale Edu subscribe or click the Follow or Subscribe button on Apple podcasts, Spotify or YouTube.

[Professor Anton]

Now, politically in Terms of policy. Because remember, the title of this course is American Foreign Policy. The big question is, what were the war aims to be? What were we trying to do? What were we trying to accomplish? How would this end? Now, World War I, in a way, ended like most traditional European wars ended. It ended with an armistice and the formal negotiation and signing of a treaty. But the leaders who led the armies of World War II and who held and led the political offices considered the resolution of World War I a mistake. The mistake was to leave another country essentially intact. Yes, there was a regime change. Yes, treaty conditions were imposed on it that limited the size of its military. Yes, it was forced to pay reparations. But remember, the German army was still intact on November 11, 1918. It hadn't been thoroughly beaten. Well, at a number of conferences the leaders of the Allies in World War II met the so called big three, that is to say FDR, Churchill and Stalin. At the Tehran Conference, the Allies formally agreed on their war aims and the phrase which I am sure is familiar to all of you, that they settled on was unconditional surrender. In other words, no armistice, no negotiations. If at any point one of the Axis powers wants to come to us and say I surrender unconditionally, you may do with my country and my military what you will. We will accept that. If you come waving a white flag saying you want to negotiate terms, we will refuse to accept that. This makes World War II a war to the end in Germany, a war until the occupation of the entire country, including street fighting, a bloody block by block battle in Berlin that reduced the city to ruin. And skipping ahead a little bit, I will say that that American officials feared the exact same outcome would be necessary to defeat Japan. I'm sure you've heard the famous names Iwo Jima and Okinawa. These are two Japanese islands south of Japan that the United States invaded in amphibious operations in 1945 and ended up being among the bloodiest battles in human history, both successful American conquests. But at Such high costs that American planners believed that if the invasion of the home islands of Japan were necessary to end the war and achieve unconditional surrender, the casualty counts would be staggering. If the Japanese army was willing to defend Iwo Jima, an island with almost no natural resources, with such ferocity, the viewpoint was, well, they're going to behave with even greater tenacity in defense of their own home islands, the four core large islands that make up the heart of the Japanese archipelago and the heart of the Japanese nation. That's what unconditional surrender would have demanded. A fight like the fight for Berlin, but worse. Now we all know what happened. An atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. August 9, 1945.

[Historical Figures (e.g., FDR, Churchill, Hirohito) or Narrator reading historical quotes]

At 9:15, the bomb is dropped.

[Professor Anton]

Another one was dropped on Nagasaki three days later. And three days after that, United States signals intelligence picked up the speech of Emperor Hirohito speaking to his people over the radio, which was the first time in the history of Japan that the Japanese people had ever heard any one of their emperor's voices ever telling them to stop fighting, that Japan was surrendering and the United States, which had plans to drop more atomic bombs if necessary. President Truman called a halt to all military operations.

[Historical Figures (e.g., FDR, Churchill, Hirohito) or Narrator reading historical quotes]

I deem this reply a full acceptance of the Potsdam Declaration, which specifies the unconditional surrender of Japan. The Allied armed forces have been ordered to suspend offensive action.

[Professor Anton]

And a little over two weeks later, Japanese officials formally signed the instrument of surrender on the deck of the battleship Missouri in Tokyo Bay.

[Historical Figures (e.g., FDR, Churchill, Hirohito) or Narrator reading historical quotes]

It is my earnest hope, and indeed the hope of all mankind, that from this solemn occasion a better world shall emerge out of the blood and carnage of the past.

[Professor Anton]

Now, what unconditional surrender meant was essentially that the Allies were now in control of these defeated nations. And let's be clear, these were thoroughly defeated nations. These were nations whose armed forces were either destroyed or what remnants of them were left had been disbanded. Their industries had been crushed by so called strategic bombing, I.e. aerial bombing, meant to destroy factories and make war production or any kind of production all but impossible. Whole cities had been wiped out by conventional firebombing. That's before you even get to the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. These were prostrate nations, economically broke and physically broken. Well, something that I heard in my time in the national security bureaucracy, we'll talk a little bit about some of my time later. You may have heard this phrase too. It's alleged to be the Pottery Barn rule. Goes something like, broke it, you bought it. Well, that same thought animated the Allies after World War II. Okay, we, we demanded unconditional surrender. Our armies have reduced these countries to ruin. We are now obligated to help them rebuild. I think it's worth at this point saying something about that old debate between the liberal internationalists and the non interventionists or isolationists. That debate was strong and thriving in the run up to World War II. And even the non interventionists, I think it's safe to say, had the upper hand. They didn't have the White House, that's for sure. And that means a lot when Article 2 of the Constitution gives the President extraordinary leeway to conduct foreign affairs. But they had public opinion strongly on their side. And I think they had, if not a majority, at least a plurality of American elites by the end of the war and really long before the end of the war, isolationism or non interventionism was considered to be a completely discredited ideology or point of view. And the internationalists were riding high. And that meant, of course, the Democratic Party was almost entirely converted to internationalism. But the internationalist wing of the Republican Party was ascendant over the non interventionist wing of the Republican Party. It's always a little arbitrary where to start one lecture and begin another. When it comes to a war, it's pretty obvious. Wars have a beginning date and they have an end date. In the case of World War II, September 1, 1939 to August 15, 1945. But with something like the Cold War, it's harder to say because the Cold War emerges out of a kind of confusion and in a way, murk. And I think we'll talk a little bit about the murk in this lecture and then we'll go into the Cold War more precisely in the next one. Now, the immediate problem should be obvious. The United States was an ally of the Soviet Union throughout World War II. The United States gave billions in material and munitions to the Soviet Union throughout the course of that war. Shared intelligence. The President of the United States met with the head of the Soviet Union in person twice during the course of the war. Churchill met with him more often, if for no other reason than it was just a much shorter trip for him. And yet tensions arose between the two sides, that is to say, the Soviet and the American side, or the Soviet and the remainder of the Allied side, the Anglo Americans plus the French in particular, very early on. Now, I mentioned earlier in this lecture the two conferences at which the big three met. The second one in Yalta in January of 1945. It was very clear at this point that the Allies were on the eve of Victory, that the war would be won at some point in the near future. And in fact, it would be one within five months. What they discussed at Yalta was the outlines of a post war settlement. And this was very important for the following simple reason. The Germans, as I said, invaded the USSR in June of 1941. The war on the eastern front was the largest armed conflict that's ever taken place in the history of humankind. And in the course of beating back the German invasion, the red army liberated a lot of territory along the way. Some of that territory belonged to countries whose governments had sided with the axis and who had even sent armies into the USSR in support of German armies. Other territories were countries that had been occupied against their will. At any rate, all of these, the Soviets claimed to have liberated. So when the war ends, what you have essentially is an allied Anglo American army. Not to discount the fact that there were other soldiers in that army, Canadian soldiers, free Poles, free French. But the vast majority were Anglo American. And a Soviet army meeting in the center of Europe and behind the Soviet lines were the nations of, among others, Poland, Hungary, Romania, Czechoslovakia, which was then a country not divided as it is today. At Yalta, the United States and especially Britain extracted concessions from the soviets about how these nations would be treated. And the soviets set about violating the terms of that agreement fairly early in ways that people who had always been skeptical of soviet intentions, such as Winston Churchill, did not find surprising. I'm sure you've all heard the term iron curtain. The iron curtain refers to that border that we just talked about, that western border that the red army established at the cessation of hostilities. Behind the iron curtain were the captive nations of eastern Europe. Winston Churchill coined that phrase in a famous speech he gave in Fulton, Missouri, in the presence of president Harry Truman in 1946.

[Historical Figures (e.g., FDR, Churchill, Hirohito) or Narrator reading historical quotes]

An Iron Curtain has descended across across the continent. Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of central and eastern Europe.

[Professor Anton]

Truman was, let us say, less sympathetic or less naive about the soviets than his predecessor Franklin Roosevelt, had been. But many people in the Truman administration, in the American government, and in the American elite were puzzled by Soviet behavior and by deteriorating relations between the United States and the USSR and wondered what to do. So I want to point to two other examples of soviet behavior, and then I'm going to, again, apologies in advance, have to talk a little bit out of sequence. One of the major concessions Churchill was proud to have extracted from Stalin at Yalta was a pledge not to interfere in Greece. Now, this was important because at that point, we all know where Greece is on a map. It's in the southern part of the Balkans, in the Mediterranean. But above Greece were countries that were either occupied by the Red army or countries with communist governments that were allied with Moscow. Greece was in a way, all alone down there, cut off, non contiguous with the rest of the free world. And Churchill extracted a concession from Stalin to respect the independence of Greece. Now remember, Churchill is out of power at this point because he lost, famously if somewhat tragically, by a landslide, the July 1945 general election in Great Britain. I mean, how's that for gratitude? You hold your country firm through its greatest crisis in perhaps its history. You fight on alone until you have enough allies to really start punching back. You end up winning the greatest war in human history. And a couple of months later, the voters, as Churchill put it, give you the order of the boot. Well, in any case, Churchill knew what was going on in Greece. That is to say, the Soviets were funneling in all kinds of money and agents in order to subvert the government of Greece and foment a communist coup or revolution. And American intelligence knew what was going on too. And the Soviets were doing the same thing in Turkey. A neutral power during World War II, but one increasingly allied with the west against the rising menace of a Soviet threat. Perhaps the most flagrant example of Soviet behavior that made their intentions all but unmistakable. The so called Berlin crisis. So Germany is divided into four occupation zones by the four the Americans, the British and the French and the ussr. The Soviet zone is basically the zone that the Red army liberated in combat operations at the end of World War II. That is, it is the northeastern quarter more or less of Germany, including the entirety of the city of Berlin. That is to say, it surrounds the city of Berlin. But Berlin itself is also occupied into four zones.

[Historical Figures (e.g., FDR, Churchill, Hirohito) or Narrator reading historical quotes]

For Berlin it was to be each power with its sector, but a city open to all the powers. Until Berlin could again assume her role as the capital of a new German state.

[Professor Anton]

Well, the Soviets decide, Stalin decides, because in a tyranny really, one man gets to decide that they want West Berlin. And they figure that the way to get it short of war is to besiege it, to starve it out, to cut off access so that the allies can't resupply or import any materials. And this sets up the Berlin crisis of 1948, which leads the Allied response as the so called Berlin Airlift. That is a massive effort by airplanes to resupply the city. And it works. And the Soviets back down and end the siege. But at this point, it's hard to escape the conclusion that friendly allied relations that prevail between the two countries in World War II are going to last much longer. A man named George Kennan, who was then serving as the number two man in the US Embassy in Moscow, writes a document known as the Long Telegram that this is a classified State Department cable that he sends to Washington. It essentially says, look, I understand you all are confused. You don't quite know what's going on, but let me try to explain to you why the Russians are behaving the way they are. And his explanation boils down to two things. One is because they're Communists, and as Communists, they see it as their role in the world and in history to export Communist revolution around the world, whether by propaganda, subversion, force, or some combination of the above. And the second is because they're Russians. And Russian grand strategy for hundreds of years has been to push Russia's frontier as far west as possible. Now, remember when I talked about buffer states in a buffer hemisphere in an earlier lecture? This border that the Red army established in the middle of 1945 was the farthest West Russian forces had ever been in Russian history. And Kennan's point was simply from a geostrategic perspective. That's a Russian goal that eclipses whatever particular regime or government is in power in Moscow. It could be a czar, it could be a Communist general secretary. It could be a democratically elected leader. It could be whatever Vladimir Putin is, to speak anachronistically. And Russia as Russia would still have the same basic goal. It's unreasonable to expect them to get that far west and to just give up and walk away. The people who read the Long Telegram were so impressed by it that they thought, the American people need to hear this. Now, they can't read this because it's classified and we'd have to scrub it. But what we can do is convince Mr. Kennan to write it up as a journal article, and we'll publish it in an elite journal. You know, this isn't something, again, the average garage mechanic in Peoria might want to read. They're busy doing other things. But it's something that we need American elites to read and understand. It's something that we need university professors and senior bankers and corporate executives, key religious leaders, to read. And so the Long telegram is turned into an article called the Sources of Soviet Conduct, formally authored by X. That's it. That's the only thing that appears is the person's name, X. But it's George Kennan. It's published in the highly prestigious magazine Foreign affairs in July of 1947, and it has the intended effect. It becomes a sensation, it's read by almost all American elites, and it gives people an intellectual framework to understand the emerging Cold War, a term that I might add was coined by Bernard Baruch, a kind of forgotten man, a grand old man of Wall street investor who was consulted by basically every living US President while Baruch was alive. I think that's a good place perhaps to stop this lecture at the nascent brewing Cold War. And when we begin the next time, we'll talk about the actual Cold War. That is, once policymakers figured out what was going on and put their minds to formulating a policy to deal with it, we have what we formally know the Cold War.

[Juan Davalos]

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