Arthur H. Vandenberg - American Foreign Policy

American Foreign Policy

Vandenberg became a member of the United States Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1929. A modified internationalist, he voted in favor of United States membership on the World Court, but the situation in Europe moved him towards isolationism. Also his experiences during the Nye Committee hearings on the munitions industry, of which he was the Senate co-sponsor, convinced him that entry into World War I had been a disastrous error.

He supported the isolationist Neutrality Acts of the 1930s but wanted and sponsored more severe bills designed to renounce all traditional neutral "rights" and restrict and prevent any action by the President that might cause the United States to be drawn into war. He was one of the most effective of the diehard isolationists in the Senate. Except for advocating aid to Finland after the Soviet invasion of that country and urging a quid pro quo in the Far East to prevent a war with Japan over the Manchuria-China question, his position was consistently isolationist.

In mid-1939 he introduced legislation nullifying the 1911 Treaty of Navigation and Commerce with Japan and urged that the administration to negotiate a new treaty with Japan recognizing the status quo with regard to Japan's occupation of Chinese territory. Instead, Roosevelt and Secretary of State Cordell Hull used the resolution as a pretext for giving Japan the required six months' notice of intent to cancel the treaty, beginning the policy of putting pressure on Japan that led to the Attack on Pearl Harbor.