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in Chief of the Army and Navy and as Chief Executive, a
President, if he is disposed to do so, may at times contribute
to the endangerment of the peace of the country. In the
performance of his duties in carrying on the foreign relations
of the country, he may so conduct them as to cause anger and
resentment on the part of other governments and thus in a
measure jeopardize the peace of the country.

We also know, on the other hand, that in the discharge
of his normal functions under the Constitution he may, and
usually does, pursue a policy which is calculated to preserve
the peace of the nation. .

MR. CONNALLY. The Senator said that ever since the Government began we had Presidential control of our foreign relations. Is it not true, however, that under the Confederation and during the Revolution the Continental Congress undertook to exercise the function of carrying on our foreign relations, and made a lamentable failure of it, and that is one reason why we vested such large powers in the Executive?

MR. ROBINSON. Without doubt. It would be very difficult for my associates in the Senate and myself to carry on the foreign affairs of this Government effectively, however much confidence we may have in ourselves, and however much admiration we may feel for one another; and the difficulty would be augmented when we take into consideration the 435 other individuals at the other end of the Capitol who themselves have a measure of responsibility. . . . Many of our citizens believe, and some of our great writers express themselves as believing, that it is possible by passing a law through Congress to accomplish almost anything, and that it is possible by merely declaring neutrality to guarantee the peace of the country for all time to come... In my judgment, there is no way in which by law we can make it impossible for our people to be drawn into war. . . .

MR. CONNALLY.. I wish to dissent from the expression of the views of the Senator from Michigan [Senator Vandenberg] that we can and should anticipate by legislation every conceivable situation, and have a mandatory act to enforce our edicts, and to compel the President to sit up in the White House merely as an automaton to register the will of Congress with regard to international situations which we cannot foresee, which nobody ever has foreseen, and which never will be foreseen.

It is sound to invest the President, as the Constitution
does invest him, with a very large discretion with regard to
international affairs.14

But these voices were not heeded, and Congress enacted one neutrality law after another.
In May of 1939, a desperate President Roosevelt and Secretary of State Cordell
Hull urged Congress to repeal the neutrality laws, but public opinion was strongly in favor

14 81 CONG. REC. 3945-46 (1947).

of peace and isolationism and Congress agreed to only minor revisions. In a fit of anger, Secretary Hull told Congress that the coming war in Europe would not be just "another goddam piddling dispute over a boundary line," but of "vital" concern to the United States. The neutrality laws, he said: "substituted a wretched little bobtailed, sawed-off domestic statute for the established rules of international law" and in the process were encouraging the aggressors.15

When Secretary Hull predicted war in Europe by the end of summer, 1939, Senator William Borah, the Chairman of this Committee, contradicted him—implying that he had more reliable sources of information about events in Europe than was possessed by the State Department. 16 Even after the War began in Europe, Congress refused to give the President the authority he requested to strengthen the United States and assist the victims of Nazi aggression.

Presidential "Lawbreaking"

Finally, in frustration, when Churchill appealed to Roosevelt in July 1940 for the loan or lease of forty or fifty old World War I-vintage U.S. Destroyers—which were tied up in US shipyards and not in active service-Roosevelt decided to ignore Congress and provide the ships. He entered into an executive agreement with Churchill, and in return for fifty Destroyers the U.S. received certain military basing rights in Bermuda and Newfoundland. Isolationists in Congress charged that the President had "broken the law," and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch asserted in a headline: "Dictator Roosevelt Commits an Act of War." Does this sound familiar to anyone?

Mr. Chairman, I don't doubt the sincerity of the Senate isolationists who helped bring us World War II. They were simply mistaken about how best to preserve peace. But their "mistakes" had tragic consequences for the cause of world peace. As Stanford Historian Thomas Bailey has observed, "[t]he storm-cellar legislation of the 1930's presumably encouraged the dictators by serving notice that their victims could expect no aid from the rich Uncle Sam. . . . Such legislation... tended to accelerate World War II, into which the United States was ultimately sucked."17 Put simply, your predecessors forgot that war can result from the actions of foreign countries as easily as from those of an unconstrained American president; and in tying President Roosevelt's hands they removed

15 A. DECONDE, A HISTORY OF AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY 576 (2d ed. 1971).

16 Id.

17 BAILEY, supra note 1 at 703.

one of the few incentives which might have led Japan and Germany to have second thoughts about continuing their aggression.

WW II and the Shift to Bipartisan Internationalism

When the attack on Pearl Harbor established that placing a straight-jacket on the American president was scant protection against war imposed by foreign aggressors, Senator Nye and several other prominent isolationists fell victim to public outrage at the polls. Many of those who survived, like Arthur Vandenberg of Michigan, emerged from the experience with a far more realistic approach to world peace.

Indeed, Senator Vandenberg played a critical role in the negotiation and Senate approval of the United Nations Charter in 1945; and in the years which followed-as Chairman of this Committee-he worked closely with President Truman and Secretary of State Acheson in forging a successful bipartisan foreign policy. Abandoning the pre-war spirit of isolationism, the Congress gave strong approval in 1947 to the Truman Doctrine and helped serve notice to potential aggressors that the combined strength of the free world would confront further violations of the non-use-of-force provisions of the U.N. Charter.

War in Korea

In January 1950 Secretary Acheson made the mistake of announcing that South Korea was outside the American "defensive perimeter" in Asia, and this contributed to the North Korean invasion which followed five months later. Pursuant to a decision of the U.N. Security Council, President Truman-without seeking congressional approval— responded by sending combat troops to help defend South Korea. The initial public opinion polls showed that more than 80 per cent of the American people supported the commitment, and few in Congress questioned the President's constitutional authority to act immediately to meet the danger. 18 Indeed, a 1973 report from this Committee acknowledged that "[w]hen President Truman committed the armed forces to Korea in 1950 without Congressional authorization, scarcely a voice of dissent was raised in Congress. ..."19

One of the few isolationists who did question the President's constitutional authority was Republican Senator Robert Taft, of Ohio and even he acknowledged that

18 I discussed this period in greater detail in my prepared testimony before the House Subcommittee on Arms Control, International Security and Science, on August 4, 1988.

19 119 CONG. REC. 1406 (1973).

"if a joint resolution were introduced asking for approval of the use of our armed Forces already sent to Korea and full support of them in their present venture, I would vote in favor of it."20 Nevertheless, Taft and Representative Frederick Coudert of New York proposed a "war powers resolution" of sorts to give Congress some control over future commitments of U.S. troops abroad; but they were quickly attacked by prominent liberal historians like Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., and Henry Steele Commager.21 In a letter to the New York Times, Professor Schlesinger denounced Senator Taft's position as "demonstrably irresponsible," and argued:

From the day that President Jefferson ordered Commodore
Dale and two-thirds of the American Navy into the
Mediterranean to repel the Barbary pirates, American
Presidents have repeatedly committed American armed forces
abroad without prior Congressional consultation or approval.
.. Until Senator Taft and his friends succeed in rewriting
American history according to their own specifications these
facts must stand as obstacles to their efforts to foist off their
current political prejudices as eternal American verities.22

The subcommittee may wish to consider Professor Schlesinger's recent testimony of June 14-in which he told you that the theory behind President Truman's commitment of forces to the Korean conflict "rests doctrinally on an extravagant interpretation of the commander in chief clause" which was "an interpretation rejected by the Framers," in the light of his prior scholarly assurances to the contrary.

As an aside, I would note that I have far more concerns about the propriety of President Truman's actions in 1950 than Professor Schlesinger and most others expressed at the time. I find it an arguable case on either side, but believe in such a situation the President should have promptly gone to Congress for approval by joint resolution. Because he did not, when the public ultimately turned against the "no win" conflict, it became easy for members of Congress (especially Republicans) to denounce it as "Truman's War." Professor Alexander DeConde provides an accurate summary in his A History of American Foreign Policy:

20 Quoted in 4 THE DYNAMICS OF WORLD POWER 375 (A. Schlesinger, Jr. ed. 1973).

21 "Whatever may be said of the expediency of the Taft-Coudert program this at least can be said of the principles involved -- that they have no support in law or in history." Commager, "Presidential Power. The Issue Analyzed," New York Times Magazine, January 14, 1951, at 23-24. Like Schlesinger, Professor Commager later decided that Truman's use of troops was "if not wholly unprecedented, clearly a departure from a long and deep-rooted tradition." 119 CONG. REC. 1406 (1973).

22 New York Times, January 9, 1951.

At first the American people, and even Republican critics of the administration's Far Eastern policy, overwhelmingly supported Truman's prompt action. They approved the intervention, seeing it as a necessary effort to save a small country from Communist aggression and to show allies, or potential ones, that the United States would help defend them. . . . Later, as the war budget mounted and the casualties multiplied, critics denounced the President for allegedly usurping Congress' power to declare war and for involving the country in a perilous fight outside the national interest.23

The Vietnam Commitment

The belief that Acheson's statement that South Korea was outside the American "defense perimeter" was a major factor in the start of the conflict led to a renewed emphasis on collective security agreements. In 1955, with only one dissenting vote, the Senate consented to the ratification of the SEATO Treaty-which provided in article IV:

Each Party recognizes that aggression by means of armed
attack in the treaty area against any of the Parties or against
any State or territory which the Parties by unanimous
agreement may hereafter designate, would endanger its own
peace and safety, and agrees that it will in that even act to meet
the common danger in accordance with its constitutional
processes.24

An accompanying "protocol" to the treaty "unanimously designate[d] for the purposes of Article IV of the Treaty the States of Cambodia and Laos and the free territory under the jurisdiction of the State of Vietnam."

When the Senate was asked to consent to the ratification of this treaty, it clearly recognized that it was undertaking a major new commitment. Senator Mike Mansfield had been a part of the negotiating delegation, and this Committee's Report on the treaty stated:

The committee is not impervious to the risks which this treaty
entails. It fully appreciates that acceptance of these additional
obligations commits the United States to a course of action
over a vast expanse of the Pacific. Yet these risks are
consistent with our own highest interests. There are greater
hazards in not advising a potential enemy of what he can

23 DECONDE, supra note 15 at 706-07.

24 6 U.S.T. 81, 83 (1955).

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