War and American Foreign Policy: Justifications of Major Military Actions in the US 3030666948, 9783030666941

Citation preview

War and American Foreign Policy Justifications of Major Military Actions in the US David J. Lorenzo

War and American Foreign Policy

David J. Lorenzo

War and American Foreign Policy Justifications of Major Military Actions in the US

David J. Lorenzo College of International Affairs National Chengchi University Taipei, Taiwan

ISBN 978-3-030-66694-1    ISBN 978-3-030-66695-8 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-66695-8 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Timeline

1783 Treaty of Paris ends the Revolutionary War 1789 Beginning of the French Revolution 1794 Jay Treaty 1796 Washington’s Farewell Address 1798–1800 Quasi War against France 1801–1805 Actions against the Barbary pirates 1803 Louisiana Purchase 1812–1815 War of 1812 1819 Adams-Onis Treaty 1823 Proclamation of Monroe Doctrine 1835–1836 Texas War of Independence 1845 Texas Annexation: 1846–1848 Mexican-American War 1861–1865 Civil War 1868–1878 Ten Years War in Cuba February 15, 1898 Battleship Maine blows up in Havana Harbor April 21–August 15, 1898 Spanish-American War 1899–1902 Insurrection in the Philippines 1914, 1916–1917 US interventions in Mexico June 28, 1914 Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary assassinated July 28, 1914 Great War Begins May 7, 1915 Sinking of Lusitania May 13, 1915 First Note to Germany June 9, 1915 Second Note to Germany February 28, 1917 Publication of the Zimmerman Telegram v

vi 

TIMELINE

April 6, 1917 US enters Great War October 1917 Communists take power in Russia November 11, 1918 Great War Ends November 19, 1919 US Senate rejects Treaty of Versailles September 18, 1931 Mukden Incident (beginning of Japanese intervention in China) October 3, 1935–February 19, 1937 Italian invasion of Abyssinia July 17, 1936–April 1, 1939 Spanish Civil War September 30, 1938 Munich Agreement September 1, 1939 Beginning of World War II March 11, 1941 Lend-Lease Act approved December 7, 1941 Japanese Attack Pearl Harbor November 1943 Cairo Conference February 1945 Yalta Conference September 2, 1945 End of World War II March 1947 Truman Doctrine June 1948–May 1949 Berlin Airlift April 1950 NSC 68 May 1950 Chinese civil war ends in communist victory June 25, 1950 North Korea invades South Korea July 27, 1953 Armistice signed suspending war in Korea May 1954 France defeated at Dien Bien Phu, Vietnam August 1961 Berlin Wall erected October 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis August 2, 1964 Tonkin Gulf Incident August 7, 1964 Tokin Gulf Resolution passed March 1973 Last US combat troops leave Vietnam November 1979 Iranian takeover of US embassy in Tehran December 1979 Soviet Union intervenes in Afghanistan September 1980–August 1988 Iran-Iraq War November 1989 Fall of Berlin Wall August 2, 1990 Iraq invades Kuwait August 2, 1990 UNSC Resolution 660 demands Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait August 6, 1990 UNSC Resolution 661 imposes economic sanctions on Iraq January 16–February 28, 1991 First Gulf War December 25, 1991 Soviet Union ceases to exist March 23–June 11, 1999 NATO intervention in Kosovo

 TIMELINE 

September 11, 2001 9/11 Bombings October 7, 2001 US intervenes in Afghanistan March 19–April 30, 2003 Second Gulf War December 15, 2011 US withdraws troops from Iraq

vii

Acknowledgments

My thanks to my colleagues and students at the National Chengchi University for stimulating discussions of the issues addressed in this study. My thanks as well to the faculty and students at the Department of International Affairs, Hong Kong Baptist University; the School of Advanced Military Studies, US Army War and Staff College, Ft. Leavenworth; and the Department of Government and the Reiff Center for Human Rights and Conflict Resolution, Christopher Newport University. I am also grateful to the Miller Center at the University of Virginia for maintaining an invaluable electronic archive of presidential speeches and messages. Finally, my deepest gratitude to Tara and Wyatt for supporting me during the (too lengthy) time it took to complete this book.

ix

Contents

1 Discussions of War and the Necessity Standard  1 2 The Necessity Standard, Arguments, and Norms 13 3 The War of 1812 41 4 The War with Mexico 63 5 The War with Spain and the Insurgency in the Philippines 87 6 The Great War109 7 World War II131 8 Korea and the Early Cold War153 9 The War in Vietnam171 10 The First Gulf War197

xi

xii 

CONTENTS

11 The Second Gulf War217 12 The Necessity Standard in Recent Policy Discussions243 13 The Necessity Standard and Discussions of War in the US255 Index281

CHAPTER 1

Discussions of War and the Necessity Standard

Introduction What can we learn from analyzing official justifications of US wars? Do those justifications reveal anything more than efforts at emotional manipulation and rhetorical fireworks? Do they shed light on any standard officials might use to judge the case for war, and the types of arguments proponents of fighting a war employ? What might they reveal about American foreign, security, and military policies? I argue that a focused study of justifications, extending from the War of 1812 to the Second Gulf War, generates a considerable number of insights. Studying policy discussions of war and peace demonstrates that officials consistently seek to meet a standard that combines cultural assumptions, elements of the Rational Actor Model of decision-making, and parts of traditional jus ad bellum specifications. This standard (the Necessity Standard) holds that large-scale military force is to be employed in situations of conflict when there is no viable alternative available to protect vital interests and discharge duties. This is an exacting and powerful standard, with strong restrictive and imperative sides. If the determination is that viable alternatives are available, or that vital interests or duties are not involved, officials should not engage in war. If no viable alternative is available and an actor endangers vital interests, or duties are at stake, officials should go to war. Public invocations of and attempts to meet this

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 D. J. Lorenzo, War and American Foreign Policy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-66695-8_1

1

2 

D. J. LORENZO

standard, I argue, have important ramifications for the politics of war and peace in the US. This examination also reveals that officials invoke a diverse set of traditional norms and appeal to more than one way of understanding the international scene. We can identify realist, nationalist, and values-infused arguments in their conversations addressing issues of war and peace. Further, this study discloses that officials provide the public with outlines of the foreign, military, and security policies that they purport to follow. To elaborate, the expectation that officials justify war by referencing the Necessity Standard requires that they divulge their general approach to pursuing alternatives to the use of military force, including their patience with alternatives and flexibility in pursuing their bottom line. Officials must also delineate the scope of vital interests and duties they identify at stake in the crisis; thus, cumulatively they are compelled to disclose their policies on how quickly and under what circumstances they will employ military force on a large scale. We can fruitfully compare these policies over time to trace important changes and continuities in approaches to conflict and conceptions of vital interests. We also discern various orientations toward the utility of engaging in negotiations, employing other alternatives to war, and displaying flexibility in attempts to resolve differences without resort to war. Finally, when we supplement examinations of public justifications for war (or decisions to avoid a military confrontation) with analyses of documents recording internal conversations in the executive branch, we find that those discussions generally mirror those in which officials participate publicly. Further, their arguments usually differ only in emphasis rather than in kind. This evidence suggests that the Necessity Standard plays a role in decision-making processes within administrations, and indicates that the policies leaders articulate to the public are often roughly those they employ. If that is indeed the case, then important implications follow. Most importantly, the standard pushes against a general costs-benefits analysis in favor of a process in which absolutes govern decisions.1 Are vital 1  Those who oppose the use of military force often do reference the costs of war. Most, however, do not make costs the only or most important factor in their opposition. See my Debating War: Why Arguments Opposing American Wars and Interventions Fail (New York: Routledge, 2015) and “Democratic Peace Theory, the Problems of Pluralism, and the Opposition to the Use of Military Force in the US,” Democracy and Security, Vol. 14, No. 4 (Sept. 2018). I do not address all arguments for war, putting aside those that address patriotism and partisanship as reasons why citizens should support a war.

1  DISCUSSIONS OF WAR AND THE NECESSITY STANDARD 

3

interests or duties at stake, or not? Are alternatives to the use of force viable, or not? This tendency impels the decision-making process away from nuance toward broad analyses and sweeping conclusions, which in turn have important ramifications for attempts at conflict resolution and for public conceptions of war.2

Discussions of War, the Decision-Making Process, and the Necessity Standard In investigating the justifications officials in the executive and legislative branches have employed when they have decided to wage war, as well as some instances when they decided not to use military force on a large scale, I focus on the Necessity Standard as a rule. I pursue this project through a chronological examination of public discussions3 (in the form of speeches and statements) addressing each of the nine wars4 in which the US has engaged and, where available, records of private discussions and other internal documents. In addition to helping us understand generally the politics of war and peace, analyzing how policymakers discuss war can be relevant to understanding policies and policy decisions because those conversations are both part of and reflective of the decision-making process. Scott reminds us that the legitimation of policies is an integral part of that process and 2  Such truncated decision-making processes may be common across states. As Richard Lebow notes, “there is considerable evidence that the leaders considering challenges or the use of force often fail to carry out any kind of serious risk assessment.” See Avoiding War, Making Peace (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), pp.  192–3, and more generally Between Peace and War: The Nature of International Crisis (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1981). 3  Most of these justifications are contained in official presidential speeches and messages. Unless otherwise noted, references to these speeches are to those contained in the electronic archive of presidential speeches located at the Miller Center, University of Virginia, at https://millercenter.org/the-presidency/presidential-speeches. 4  This study does not address the Civil War or the wars against the Amerindian nations. It does examine some documents associated with the Revolutionary War. It only touches sporadically on smaller military actions. The latter are addressed at length in James Meernik, The Political Use of Military Force in US Foreign Policy (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2004). Meernik (pp. 3–4) distinguishes between wars and other uses of military force that fall short of war by holding that the former is a long-term use of military force that seeks to coerce another actor, while the latter is a short-term use of military force meant to persuade another actor by changing perceptions and costs/benefits calculations.

4 

D. J. LORENZO

helps link the various actors in the process (president, advisors, Congress, and the public).5 Khong has argued that foreign policy arguments that incorporate historical analogies perform important cognitive functions in identifying correct or desirable policies.6 Likewise, Dauber holds that “public debate influences decisions made in the United States over military intervention” by creating policy standards from historical reflections.7 On the bureaucratic side, former NSA director Michael Hayden has held that debates involved in the process of creating and vetting public speeches addressing the use of military force reflect and are an important part of the policy formulation process within the inner circles of the executive branch.8 Allison admits much the same when he observes, “major political speeches, especially Presidential speeches, force decisions.”9 Do presidents and other important policymakers employ a standard when they make and justify decisions addressing war and peace rather than only employing ad hoc arguments, rhetorical devices, or bare utility calculations? I argue that they do. Broadly speaking, it makes sense that government officials would use a standard or rule both to justify their decisions and to think through proposals to wage war. Jus ad bellum standards have a long history and are present in Just War Theory and in important international agreements (e.g., the UN Charter and the Kellog-Briand Pact).10 The Necessity Standard itself is rooted in American political culture and history, most importantly in the Revolutionary War and Early National periods. Presidents and members of Congress openly reference the 5  J.  M. Scott, Deciding to Intervene: The Reagan Doctrine and American Foreign Policy (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1996). 6  Yuen Foong Khong, Analogies at War: Korea, Munich, Dien Bien Phu and the Vietnam Decisions of 1965 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992). 7  C. Dauber, “Implications of the Weinberger Doctrine for American military intervention in a post-desert storm age,” Contemporary Security Policy, vol. 22, no. 3 (2001). 8  Bob Woodward, Plan of Attack (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004), p. 216. Woodward also references Colin Powell’s observation that G.H.W. Bush “tended to lay out at least some of his thinking in speeches and comments to the press. Sometimes the policy came out carefully and incrementally. Other times Powell discovered surprises.” Bob Woodward, The Commanders (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1991), p. 234. 9  Graham Allison, Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 1971), p. 168. 10  Richard Lebow has argued, “History indicates that wars rarely start because one side believes it has a military advantage. Rather, they occur when leaders become convinced that force is necessary to achieve important goals.” “Windows of Opportunity: Do States Jump Through Them?” International Security 9, no. 1 (1984), p. 149.

1  DISCUSSIONS OF WAR AND THE NECESSITY STANDARD 

5

s­ tandard in their public discussions. It is present explicitly in various memoirs of executive branch appointees, such as Richard Haas’s treatment of the merits of the two Gulf wars,11 in important memos and other papers, and in Congressional debates. This is not to hold that the Necessity Standard is the only relevant factor in discussions of war. Appreciations of public opinion and of military readiness also play important roles in understanding and applying the standard, as well as in evaluating policy options. This was particularly the case in the 1930s. Yet these are not determinative factors, as the War of 1812 demonstrates. It is also the case that cost-benefit analyses are sometimes present in discussions among executive branch officials; presidential aides, for example, employed such analyses during the Cuban Missile Crisis, as Allison documented. I focus on the presence and impact of the Necessity Standard first because it appears from preliminary evidence that it exists and officials have applied it. Second, I do so because it makes sense that officials would employ something like it given the discussions of war that took place during the formative period of American political culture. Third, I do so to gain a different insight into the policymaking process when it comes to issues of war and peace. The product of that analysis suggests that presidents do in part approach ultimate decisions regarding the waging of war by employing the Necessity Standard. This differs from analyses that suggest presidents primarily embrace a Rational Actor Model of decision-­ making.12 Allison holds that in this model, relevant policymakers evaluate and make choices through an examination of objectives, alternatives, and consequences by engaging in costs/benefits analyses. Objectives are “major” and importantly include security as well as other “national interests.”13 This study also differs from work that attempts to understand decisions to go to war by referring to the psychological tendencies of decision-­makers, to internal bureaucratic politics, to the politics of diversion, and to the pitfalls of information processing.14

11  See War of necessity, war of choice: A memoir of two Iraq wars (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2009). 12  For an overview of the general theory, see James D. Fearon, “Rationalist explanations for war,” International Organization 49, no. 3 (1995): 379–414. 13  Essence of Decision, pp. 32–4, 78–87, 162–77. 14  For a general synopsis, see Jack S. Levy, “The causes of war and the conditions of peace.” Annual Review of Political Science 1, no. 1 (1998), pp. 157–8.

6 

D. J. LORENZO

An objection to this project might come from the other side: given the ubiquity of the concept of necessity, doesn’t this approach embody a much-explored and common-sense interpretation of what happens when presidents propose the use of military force? Is there a need to belabor the point? I argue that there is a need. No one has studied the Necessity Standard, and there are good reasons for studying it. Important if subtle differences exist in how policymakers over time have interpreted and applied it that invite our attention. How have they identified and defined vital interests and duties? What do they say with regard to patience and flexibility in pursuing alternatives? What alternatives do they cite? What do differences in these discussions tell us about the security and military policies they reveal to the public? Moreover, the Necessity Standard is not the only candidate for institutionalization. In alternative scenarios, US policymakers could employ no standard at all and rely completely on ad hoc calculations that treat military force like any other tool, to be used if it is the most efficient means of attaining any type of national end. They could employ a militaristic standard: always and immediately reply with military force if national interests (widely understood) are threatened. They could employ a strictly pacifist standard: never use military force. They could employ a standard that resembles the UN Charter criteria by holding that military force is allowable only in response to an aggressor’s military attack on US territory, or with the sanction of the Security Council. They could more fully adopt the Rational Actor Model by always including cost/benefit analyses that explicitly compare the case for going to war with each alternative and explicitly address the benefits of war. They could fully employ any of the sets of criteria that war theorists have put forward. Given the existence of those alternative standards and the implications that would flow from their use, it is important that we explore the reality that US policymakers have applied the Necessity Standard, understand differences in how they have interpreted and applied that standard, and think through the impact and implications of that use.15 There exists no complete study of presidential discussions of major wars.16 A full treatment of such discussions is needed to trace crucial 15  The closest is R. Rubenstein, Reasons to Kill: Why Americans Choose War (New York: Bloomsbury, 2010). 16  Studies have scrutinized such materials in relation to particular wars or sets of conflicts, but not all major US wars. See for example Gary R.  Hess, Presidential decisions for war: Korea, Vietnam, and the Persian Gulf (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001); Michael Butler, Selling a Just War: Framing, Legitimacy, and US Military Intervention (New

1  DISCUSSIONS OF WAR AND THE NECESSITY STANDARD 

7

s­imilarities and differences among justifications for war and the military and security policies they reveal, and because we know that discussions and decisions addressing the possible uses of military force and the timing of such use can influence future decisions. While studies have examined American justifications of war in general, none has done so with attention to the Necessity Standard, nor have discussions of a jus ad bellum standard of any kind spanned the entire history of major American wars.17 Scholars have treated much of the material analyzed here—presidential addresses and messages to Congress—inconsistently, sometimes as mere window-­ dressing concealing ulterior motivations, sometimes as rhetoric by which actors maneuver through political space, and at others as transparent statements of policies.18 This study treats them as public descriptions and substantive defenses of decisions and policies, and as parts of the decision-making process. Further, no one has engaged in a comprehensive study of the military and security policies that one can glean from presidential discussions of war. Nor have scholars comprehensively examined such materials by attending to the emerging literature on democratic and liberal wars and the possible presence of a Democratic/Liberal security proposition.19

York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), Nicholas Kerton-Johnson, Justifying America’s wars: The conduct and practice of US military intervention (New York: Routledge, 2010), and Michael Beschloss, Presidents of War (New York: Crown Books, 2018). 17  Michael Walzer’s Just and unjust wars: A moral argument with historical illustrations (New York: Basic books, 2015) is a transparently normative enterprise. Eric Patterson, Just America Wars: Ethical Dilemmas in American Military History (New York: Routledge, 2019), examines only a handful of wars. Cori Dauber has identified the use of a more extensive standard since the 1980s but does not explore earlier uses of standards. Dauber, “Implications of the Weinberger Doctrine for American military intervention in a post-desert storm age.” 18  One example of a study which treats statements in all three ways is Richard Melanson, American Foreign Policy Since the Vietnam War: The Search for Consensus from Richard Nixon to George W. Bush (London: M.E. Sharpe, 4th edition, 2005). 19  For an examination of several wars in such light, see John Owen, Liberal Peace, Liberal War: American Politics and International Security (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997).

8 

D. J. LORENZO

Presidential Discussions of War: Discursive Institutionalism and Justifications This study analyzes justifications for war by situating them in their political environment. This approach is responsive to the scholarship that describes a pluralist American institutional and political landscape.20 That literature emphasizes the location of the officials who make decisions on the use of military force in two formal institutions (the Executive Branch and Congress), which are ultimately answerable to citizens who are often deeply divided on these questions. In this frame, policymakers who take decisions on questions involving war and peace must justify their position by appealing to a contentious elite and divided public in the context of a fragmented political system. Officials in the executive branch cannot implement substantial martial undertakings without support from Congress, and to gain that support they must persuade their fellow elites and the public to accept their decision. On the other side, opponents must appeal to elites and the public for support in blocking military projects in the face of the structural advantages and power of initiative that executive branch officials possess.21 Examining discussions of war within this broader political context requires a different method from those derived from a rationalist or psychological viewpoint. It must also go beyond societal level theories that hold that wars mainly play diversionary roles for leaders, or that leaders only use them to reinforce unity and identity.22 My approach posits that 20  B. Rathbun et al., “Taking foreign policy personally: Personal values and foreign policy attitudes.” International Studies Quarterly (2016); P. Gries, The Politics of American Foreign Policy: How Ideology Divides Liberals and Conservatives over Foreign Affairs (Stanford University Press, 2014); J.  Schroeder, Mr. Polk’s War: American Opposition and Dissent, 1846–1848 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1973); O. Holsti and J. Rosenau, “The Structure of Foreign Policy Attitudes Among American Leaders.” Journal of Politics 52(1), (1990); S.  Huntington, “American Ideals versus American Institutions,” Political Science Quarterly 97, no. 1 (1982); C. Kupchan and P. Trubowitz, “Grand Strategy for a Divided America,” Foreign Affairs 86:71, (2007); E. Wittkopf, “On the Foreign Policy Beliefs of the American People: A Critique and Some Evidence,” International Studies Quarterly 30, no. 4 (1986); T. Davis and S. Lynn-Jones,“Citty upon a Hill,” Foreign Policy no. 66 (Spring 1987). 21  See M. F. Elman, “Unpacking democracy: Presidentialism, parliamentarism, and theories of democratic peace,” Security Studies, 9(4), 2000; and S. Chan and W. Safran, “Public opinion as a constraint against war: Democracies’ responses to Operation Iraqi Freedom.” Foreign Policy Analysis 2, no. 2 (2006). 22  E.  Mansfield and J.  Snyder, Electing to fight: Why emerging democracies go to war (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2007).

1  DISCUSSIONS OF WAR AND THE NECESSITY STANDARD 

9

the Necessity Standard reflects historical and cultural attitudes toward war and that officials employ it substantively in decision-making processes as well as in public justifications meant to garner the required political support for a large-scale military action. However, understanding how officials employ this standard in the context of a pluralistic population presents a difficulty. Given the understanding of the American political landscape referenced above, how do we provide a convincing account of the grounds over which conversations over war and peace take place? What is the common terrain that undergirds conversations which take place within an institutionally divided government and a fragmented public such that officials can participate in a general discussion of war and peace that hinges on the standard rather than, for example, costs/benefits analyses? What makes the dialogue more than a disconnected set of assertions?23 Hunt addresses these questions by referring to temporally bounded episodes of consensus. Others like Davis and Lynn-Jones identify a common element in American foreign policy (exceptionalism) to argue that actors use that element in multiple ways to ground a variety of foreign policy positions.24 Still others in the communications field refer to generic tropes and rhetorical tricks by which leaders communicate with the public and each other. This study again takes a different approach. Because it conceptualizes the standard as a rule informed by historical and cultural elements, it addresses the problem of common terrain by turning to discursive institutionalism.25 Discursive institutionalism focuses on the ways actors operate within formal institutions to formulate policy by using ideas, concepts, and norms shared at a deep level by the general political community. However, it also emphasizes that those actors use those ideas, concepts, and norms flexibly and in ways that diverge, and they therefore do not necessarily reach agreement or come to pre-determined conclusions over policies. As a result, we will see that participants in the debate over war and peace constantly construct the meaning of the standard and understandings of military and security policies by reference to specific norms. These 23  I address these problems at greater length in “The Dialogue Over War and Peace in the United States: A Discursive Institutionalist Analysis,” World Affairs, Vol. 180, Issue 2 (Summer 2017). 24  T. Davis and S. M. Lynn-Jones, “Citty upon a Hill,” Foreign Policy 66, 1987. 25  V. Schmidt, “Taking ideas and discourse seriously: Explaining change through discursive institutionalism as the fourth ‘new institutionalism,’” European Political Science Review, 2, (2010), and V. Schmidt, “Discursive institutionalism: The explanatory power of ideas and discourse,” Annual Review of Political Science 11 (2008).

10 

D. J. LORENZO

constructions, in turn, reside at two levels in which important cognitive and normative elements are shared: at the uppermost level of policies in which the Necessity Standard has become institutionalized, and at the next level of underlying programmatic norms which have emerged from a common American political culture. It also takes place in the arena of administrative policymaking (which is part of what Schmidt terms the “coordinative” arena) and in public, or the “communicative” arena.26 Utilizing this methodology, I demonstrate how officials in their interactions with the public and with each other take for granted the Necessity Standard. Discussions addressing the possible use of military force operate by officials evaluating whether duties and vital interests are at stake. Officials identify those duties and interests by interpreting underlying norms—what I call the Security, Constitutional, Values, and General Welfare Norms—that are central to American political culture. If vital interests and duties are determined to be at stake, policymakers then translate them into war aims. Policymakers also assess whether viable alternatives are available to discharge those duties and protect those interests by reference to those norms and employing a restricted set of traditional arguments.

Results The results of this study sometimes confirm and sometimes push against conclusions present in the extant literature. First, as discussed above, they illustrate that American presidents may not be fully rational actors in making decisions to go to war as such actors are defined by the relevant literature. It does generally support the depiction of supporters of war as 26  “Discursive institutionalism,” p. 310. Hunt asserts that political figures use arguments they know are acceptable to the public. M. Hunt, Ideology and American Foreign Policy, 2nd ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009), p. 15. My understanding is also similar to that of Krebs. For Krebs, important policy arguments involve attempts to employ argumentative coercion—the attempt to use commonly accepted arguments and judgments to back opponents into a corner, forcing them to accede to a policy because they have no counter to those arguments. Thus, he holds, arguments do not persuade opponents to agree to the policy; rather, they compel them to do so. See R. Krebs and P. Jackson. “Twisting tongues and twisting arms: The power of political rhetoric,” European Journal of International Relations 13, no. 1 (2007): 35–66, and R. Krebs and J. Lobasz. “The sound of silence: Rhetorical coercion, democratic acquiescence, and the Iraq War,” American Foreign Policy and the Politics of Fear: Threat Inflation since 9/11: Threat Inflation Since 9/11 (Routledge Taylor & Francis Group, 2009), pp. 117–34.

1  DISCUSSIONS OF WAR AND THE NECESSITY STANDARD 

11

activists27 in comparison with opponents of war but underlines the point that “activism” in military and security terms has meant different things to different proponents at different times. It also paints a different picture of the case that presidents make to the public to justify war. When faced with an often-splintered American public and leadership on questions of military action, we see that presidents go beyond primary appeals to patriotism,28 and generally do not appeal to the prospects of success29 to justify their decisions. In turn, we also find that while officials can be disingenuous in making public arguments,30 the arguments they deploy in private policy discussions most often match those they make in public discussions. These results should also lead us to reexamine some understandings of the intellectual and cultural foundations of foreign policy discussions. It only loosely supports Hunt’s historical description of American foreign policy.31 The goals presidents have identified in relevant eras are more complex than Hunt implies, as is the policy debates in which they engage. We shall also see that the conceptual vocabulary presidents use contains important realist elements and arguments, a contention Mead appears to dismiss.32 Finally, this study confirms and pushes forward descriptions that 27  J. Kertzer, “Making sense of isolationism: Foreign policy mood as a multilevel phenomenon.” The Journal of Politics 75, no. 01 (2013): 225–40; S. Brooks et al., “Don’t Come Home, America: The Case against Retrenchment,” International Security, Winter 2012/13, Vol. 37, No. 3; T. Davis and S. M. Lynn-Jones, “Citty upon a Hill.” 28  J. Hutcheson et al., “US national identity, political elites, and a patriotic press following September 11.” Political Communication, 21, no. 1 (2004); R. Johannsen, To the halls of the Montezumas: The Mexican War in the American imagination (Oxford, 2015); S.  Brewer, Why America fights: Patriotism and war propaganda from the Philippines to Iraq (Oxford, 2011). 29  J. Weston, Selling Intervention: The President, the Media and the American Public (The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005) and C.  Gelpi, P.  Feaver and J.  Reifler, Paying the Human Costs of War: American Public Opinion and Casualties in Military Conflicts (Princeton University Press, 2009). 30  J. Schuessler, Deceit on the Road to War: Presidents, Politics, and American Democracy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2015). 31  M. Hunt, Ideology and American Foreign Policy. 32  On the absence of a realist tradition, see W. R. Mead, Special providence: American foreign policy and how it changed the world (New York: Routledge, 2013). For a representative view that US foreign policy is exceptional in that it persistently combines realist understandings with references to democracy and other values to create different concepts, see Strobe Talbott, “War in Iraq, revolution in America.” International Affairs 79, no. 5 (2003): 1037–43; also see Tony Smith, America’s Mission: The United States and the Worldwide

12 

D. J. LORENZO

depict US leaders as often combining realism with values and that they sometimes do so by employing a Democratic/Liberal security proposition.33

Layout of the Book Chapter 2 analyzes the content and origins of the Necessity Standard and identifies relevant arguments and norms. Chapters 3 through 11 investigate presidential discussions of wars from the War of 1812 to the Second Gulf War. Each of these chapters organizes its discussion of presidential justifications by referencing the two questions the Necessity Standard poses: what are the vital interests and duties at stake which make war an allowable policy prescription (Why War?), and why are no viable alternatives available (Why War Now?). Each of these chapters also includes a discussion of the contexts of the war, other relevant uses of the Necessity Standard (including Congressional usages), and an outline of the military and security policies each president reveals in the course of his justification. Chapter 12 discusses contemporary applications of the standard by the Obama and Trump administrations. Chapter 13 concludes by discussing various conceptions of wars, different policies governing the pursuit of alternatives, and implications of the use of the Necessity Standard for decision-­making and the public.

Struggle for Democracy in the Twentieth Century (Princeton, NJ: Twentieth Century Fund/ Princeton University Press, 1994). 33  M. Desch, “America’s liberal illiberalism: The ideological origins of overreaction in US foreign policy.” International Security, vol. 32, no. 3 (2008). See also Owen, Liberal Peace, Liberal War.

CHAPTER 2

The Necessity Standard, Arguments, and Norms

The Concept of Necessity This study explores how presidents and others employ the Necessity Standard. To reiterate, this standard holds that officials are to employ large-scale military force in times of conflict when there is no viable alternative available to protect vital interests and discharge duties. It consists of two parts. First, officials must identify vital interests and/or duties by reference to the norms we discuss below—the Security, Constitutional, Values, and General Welfare Norms. They may do so broadly or narrowly. Second, the standard draws on general political culture to require officials to determine the viability of alternatives to war (such as negotiations, boycotts, sanctions, and military measures short of war). Viability refers to the capacity of an alternative to protect the vital interests or discharge the duties at stake in the crisis. How officials assess viability depends importantly on their patience with alternatives, their latitude in accepting a variety of alternatives, and their flexibility in fixing the bottom line. To flesh out our understanding of this standard, this chapter compares the concept of necessity used in this standard with other understandings of necessity, explores an analogous standard in the realm of American constitutional law, surveys the historical origins of the standard, and then identifies relevant norms and common arguments.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 D. J. Lorenzo, War and American Foreign Policy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-66695-8_2

13

14 

D. J. LORENZO

Differences with Similar Concepts The use of “necessity” in the Necessity Standard differs importantly from understandings of necessity found in diplomatic language and in usages of realpolitik. The latter understandings construct necessity in ways that set aside norms and standards. In diplomacy, a position that invokes necessity frees actors from the shackles of international law to pursue otherwise forbidden courses of action. In realpolitik, a position that invokes necessity dispenses with the norms of ordinary politics. It allows state actors to ignore the tenets of morality, violate internal and international norms, break agreements, and generally take actions considered outside the bounds of civilized behavior to achieve certain goals. Thus, in diplomatic and realpolitik usages necessity cancels out rules or norms, allowing states to shrug off the restrictions inherent in them and act in an unconstrained fashion.1 The Necessity Standard differs in two ways from these conceptions. First, the Necessity Standard has its origins in domestic culture and implicates domestic stakeholders. Second, it does not dispense with norms. Instead, domestic norms ground it, and proponents of the use of military force when using it generally do not argue that international norms or agreements be set aside. As such, the Necessity Standard in both its restrictive (force should not be used if viable alternatives are available or vital interests or duties are absent) and imperative aspects (military action should be taken in a conflict when viable alternatives are not available and vital interests are threatened or duties are present) is informed by domestic norms. This, of course, is not to say that officials never violate norms in practice. Rather, it is to say that when officials use the Necessity Standard to discuss the use of force, they argue that their actions are in accordance with, and impelled by, norms. Nor is it to say that the standard promotes the frequent use of major military force. The historical discussions and domestic norms presidents and others draw upon do not overtly

1  The diplomatic concept of necessity is the “doctrine that a breach of international law is justified if it is imperative for self-preservation, the defense of a vital interest, or to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe.” The Palgrave Macmillan Dictionary of Diplomacy, 3rd ed., ed. G.R.  Berridge and Lorna Lloyd (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012). The realpolitik understanding of necessity relies upon prudential calculations to judge whether a state or ruler occupies a position that requires action. For an example, see Alex Bellamy, Just Wars: From Cicero to Iraq (New York: Polity Press, 2006), pp. 60–61, 91.

2  THE NECESSITY STANDARD, ARGUMENTS, AND NORMS 

15

encourage militaristic policies and generally imply that wars should be exceptional activities. The Necessity Standard is also not the same as the concept of military necessity found in the law of war. Defined as “the principle that justifies the use of all measures needed to defeat the enemy as quickly and efficiently as possible that are not prohibited by the law of war,”2 this concept is part of jus in bello—rules pertaining to how wars are fought and is operative only after military operations have begun. In contrast, the Necessity Standard relates to jus ad bellum— rules pertaining to the initiation of war.3 As noted above, the Necessity Standard also differs from the Rational Actor Model. In Allison’s discussion, the analysis associated with the Rational Actor Model is more extensive than what is contained in the Necessity Standard. Converted into a standard, the Rational Actor Model holds that military force is to be used when in comparison with all other alternatives, it is a superior means of discharging duties and protecting vital interests as determined by a costs/benefits analysis. The assessment that flows from this standard, Allison notes, is both comparative and utilitarian. It involves the costing of all possible courses of action and an evaluation of the likelihood of success, then a comparison of success and costs. The result is a choice based upon “value maximizing.”4 In contrast, applying the Necessity Standard does not require an assessment of costs of war, nor a comparison of costs or reference to success. When its imperative side is invoked, there is generally no costing of war, only that of alternatives and of maintaining the status quo. Necessity implies a requirement to go to war despite its costs and to pursue victory and success as the only thinkable outcome, value maximizing calculations notwithstanding. Those who invoke its restrictive side are more likely to refer to the costs of both alternatives and the use of military force and to discuss (dismissively) the likelihood that war will discharge of duties or protect vital interests. Yet they, too, are not likely to make a comparison between war and its alternatives based on costs. When they hold that war will not succeed, they 2  Law of War Manual (Washington, DC: Office of the General Counsel, Department of Defense, 2016), p. 52. 3  For a discussion of controversies over the permissive or restrictive nature of military necessity as it was articulated in the Lieber Code, see Burrus M. Carnahan, “Lincoln, Lieber and the Laws of War: The Origins and Limits of the Principle of Military Necessity,” 92 Am. J. Int’l L. 213 (1998), passim. 4  Graham Allison, Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 1971), p. 34.

16 

D. J. LORENZO

do so in the context of arguing in an absolute sense for the viability of alternatives or the absence of duties or vital interests, with discussions of costs included as an allusion to the wasteful or immoral consequences of using military force. If peaceful endeavors are viable, war is ruled out even if the costs of pursuing military action are low and the chances of success high. For them as for those who invoke its imperative side, the application of the standard produces a principle rather than constitutes an exercise of value maximizing. If alternatives are viable and/or vital interests or duties are not at stake, then military force should not be used, value maximizing calculations again notwithstanding.5 There are also important differences between the Necessity Standard and other rules associated with jus ad bellum, including those contained in traditional Just War Theory. First, it is different from and does not include the principle of necessity contained in some formulations of Just War Theory. This principle requires a comparative evaluation of the effects of war and of all alternatives, and stipulates that, “war be pursued only if the alternatives are likely to be even worse in terms of the relevant benefits and harms.”6 Second, many renderings of traditional jus ad bellum criteria are not meant to be interpreted imperatively. They do not provide grounds for demanding that war be waged.7 Rather, they outline criteria for determining whether war is justifiable. Third, there are important differences of scope. Traditional just war criteria generally hold that wars may only be waged for just causes, with right intent, as a proportionate response, only 5  Herbert Tillema’s discussion of the nature of decision-making when it comes to military action may shed light on how the viability portion of the Necessity Standard operates in modern practice. In Tillema’s description, US policymakers break large decisions into smaller ones, and until they commit to the use of major military force make moves incrementally such that they may reverse any individual decision without major damage, and such that they can stop the movement toward the use of force if at any stage the alternative employed resolves the crisis. See Appeal to Force: American Military Intervention in the Era of Containment (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1973), pp. 31–2. 6   J.  Pattison, “The Case for Non-Ideal Morality of War: Beyond Revisionism vs. Traditionalism,” Political Theory 46, No. 2 (2018), p. 250. 7  However, some discussions of Just War theory and some interpretations of the duties of political leaders derived from Natural Law do appear to require military action in certain circumstances, as we shall see below. J. Johnson holds that the criteria of proper authority, just cause, and right intentions can provide an imperative to go to war given that they are deontological in character; that is, they outline duties which are incumbent on people to discharge. Such duties may include waging war. The War to Oust Saddam Hussein: Just War and the New Face of Conflict (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2015).

2  THE NECESSITY STANDARD, ARGUMENTS, AND NORMS 

17

if success is possible, and as a last resort. While the two parts of the Necessity Standard (viability of alternatives and reference to vital interests and duties) parallel last resort and just cause, we see that the Necessity Standard otherwise contains a truncated set of categories for assessing wars when compared with the latter. There is no specific injunction that war be waged with right intent, or that it be a proportionate response to a harm or threat (though the qualifier “vital” moves analysis in that direction). The standard’s viability criterion is also looser than the criterion of last resort, and its identification of goals as those associated with vital interests and duties is generally broader than the just causes classical just war theorists identify. Finally, no part of the Necessity Standard explicitly addresses success. Rather, either its application assumes success, or it generates an imperative to go to war that discards any consideration of success or failure. To address particular theorists, if we compare the Necessity Standard with the just war criteria of Thomas Aquinas, we see differences linked with levels of specificity. In Thomistic terms, wars can only be waged for a limited set of right reasons (to avenge wrongs and protect the innocent, to punish another party for not making amends for wrongs, or to restore what has been unjustly taken) and with right intent (it must not be waged for conquest or as part of a search for glory, and must embrace peace as the ultimate end).8 In contrast, Erasmus supplied criteria that are more general than those the Necessity Standard generates. In his view, deciding whether to wage war necessitates an assessment of the costs incurred by the community and the enemy from the act of waging of war, an assessment that sets the bar quite high for using military force. A ruler may defend the rights of a community through the use of military force only if the good that comes from protecting such rights is overwhelmingly more important than the harm the use of such force inflicts.9 Pufendorf’s understanding comes close to the Necessity Standard in both its general form and its applications, but is in some respects weaker in its restrictions. He argues that military force should not be used until other peaceful avenues for addressing the conflict have been attempted, and that such force can be used to protect the rights of a community, to obtain what is owed a community, as a response to an attack, or to prevent an attack if

8 9

 Summa Theologica, Second Part of the Second Part, Question 40.  Desiderius Erasmus, Dulce Bellum Inexpertis.

18 

D. J. LORENZO

diplomacy should prove to be dangerous.10 Hugo Grotius presented a more exacting standard: military force can only be used in response to an attack that has caused great harm and which is authored by a party that is likely to repeat such attacks in the future; but he also intimates in that in such instances leaders may be required to wage war in order to defend the rights of their citizens.11 Modern Just War theorists often provide frameworks that stipulate more complex judgments than the Necessity Standard requires. Jean Bethke Elshtain proposed a simultaneous consideration of classical jus ad bellum standards with jus in bello and jus post bellum criteria. Augustinan realism importantly influenced her views, and she initially construed justifications more narrowly than the Necessity Standard permitted. However, she later embraced interventions in response to genocides and ethnic cleansing, approved of the intervention in Afghanistan, the 2003 war against Iraq, and the Global War on Terror. She did stop short of upholding military action to defend a global order and was critical of the military operation in Bosnia on jus in bello and jus post bellum grounds.12 Michael Walzer generally approves of wars of self-defense (including certain pre-emptive wars), limited humanitarian interventions, counter-­ interventions in civil wars, and uses of military force, or threats thereof, to uphold a global system of international law. He is critical of last resort interpretations that require the exhaustion of alternatives, arguing that last resort is a “metaphysical” concept that humans can never achieve. The criterion is better understood as “cautionary,” requiring officials to “look hard for alternatives” before resorting to war. More generally, however, he also argues that important elements of jus in bello and jus post bellum be incorporated in the course of jus ad bellum deliberations. As a result, he approves of a narrow range of war aims, specifies a vague, and possible weaker, viability criterion, and overall would have officials make decisions and justify those decisions on many more, inter-related, grounds. He was critical of initiating the military action in Bosnia and opposed the Second Gulf War by rejecting the goal of regime change and arguing that weapons

 Samuel Pufendorf, On the Duties of Man and Citizen.  Hugo Grotius, De Jure Belli ac Pacis. 12  “Just War and Humanitarian Intervention,” American University International Law Review, Vol. 17, No. 1 (2001), p. 23. 10 11

2  THE NECESSITY STANDARD, ARGUMENTS, AND NORMS 

19

inspections, backed by the threat of war, could have attained Iraq’s disarmament.13 Eric Patterson employs an updated version of traditional Just War criteria. However, he is also skeptical of the “last resort” criterion in its literal sense, arguing instead that it means policymakers should determine whether “traditional diplomatic and other efforts [have] been reasonably employed to avoid outright bloodshed.” He, too, wishes to combine jus in bello and jus post bellum criteria into jus ad bellum deliberations, and is critical of some of the war aims that have been put forward to justify American wars. However, Patterson goes further than Walzer to argue that the “last resort” concept is not a first order criterion that can be used to assess the justice of a war, but rather a second order, prudential concern that ranks behind a first order duty of governments to defend their citizens and uphold an international order that contributes to that defense. He therefore proposes a complex and sometimes critical examination of the vital interests and duties officials identify, presumes that states have a responsibility to protect their citizens (and others if possible) globally, and treats the viability criterion as much less important than war aims.14 The National Council of Catholic Bishops resurrected classical Just War criteria to expand and intensify scrutiny of possible wars, setting the stage for opposing many wars that would be justifiable by any but the most traditional and strict interpretation of the Necessity Standard. Adopting a presumption against war, the Bishops proposed that wars be judged on the basis of the presence of just causes associated with “real and certain danger,” just intentions, last resort operationalized as “all peaceful alternatives must have been exhausted,” the probability of success, and proportionality (“the damage to be inflicted and the costs incurred by war must be proportional to the good expected by taking up arms”).15 The UN Charter, meanwhile, provides sparser, fuzzier, and in some respects less permissive criteria than does the standard. It enjoins members 13  See Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument with Historical Illustrations (New York: Basic Books, 1977, third edition), and “Inspections Yes, War No,” “The Right Way,” “So Is This a Just War?” and “The Triumph of Just War Theory (And the Dangers of Success)” in Arguing About War (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004). 14  Just America Wars: Ethical Dilemmas in American Military History (New York: Routledge, 2019), p.  43 and chap. 4, passim, and “Just War in the 21st Century,” International Politics, Volume 42 (2005). 15  God’s Promise and Our Response: A Pastoral Letter on War and Peace by the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, May 3, 1983.

20 

D. J. LORENZO

to settle disputes peacefully and to resort to various tools of conflict management and resolution, but it does not specify that such routes be determined as unviable in all circumstances before force can be used. It also holds that military force can only be used for purposes of self-defense in the face of aggression16 or to enforce UN Security Council mandates, a more restrictive understanding of ends and goals than the standard allows.17 In contrast, generally accepted criteria in international law governing the use of military force for purposes of self-defense do overlap with the Necessity Standard. Such criteria consist of the principles of proportionality and of necessity, the latter defined as a situation in which “no reasonable alternative to the use of force exists.”18 Necessity as a Standard It is important to understand the Necessity Standard as a standard or rule. To use an analogy, the Necessity Standard looks very much like the rigorous standard US courts employ to determine the constitutionality of a government policy that may impinge on fundamental rights. The Strict Scrutiny Test establishes that a policy is constitutional if and only if it pursues an essential governmental goal, it is the only way that goal can be reached, and it is not otherwise prohibited.19 Here the burden of proof is on the government to demonstrate that there is no viable alternative to the policy, and that the government is obligated to act to attain a policy goal, with that obligation derived from practical or normative duties, or both. Thus, this test only allows the government to employ a policy after subjecting that policy and its rationale to the closest possible inspection that initially assumes the policy is not permissible. Further, if the policy is found constitutional by the court, the implication is that the government is compelled to act. It cannot do nothing lest a vital goal be left unachieved or a mandatory duty unfulfilled, and it has already claimed that the policy is the only alternative left which will reach relevant duties or goals. Thus, 16  Aggression is defined as “An attack by one state on another that is unwarranted in any one or more of three respects: politics, law, and morality.” The Palgrave Macmillan Dictionary of Diplomacy, 3rd ed., ed. G.R.  Berridge and Lorna Lloyd (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012). 17  UN Charter, Chapter VI; Chapter VII, Articles, 48, 51. 18  See K.  Mueller, et  al., Striking first: preemptive and preventive attack in US national security policy. Vol. 375. (Rand Corporation, 2006), pp. 55–6. 19  Korematsu v. United States, 323 U.S. 214 (1944).

2  THE NECESSITY STANDARD, ARGUMENTS, AND NORMS 

21

the restrictive and imperative sides of this test are very strong. There is a high bar to pass to justify the policy, and officials are compelled by their own arguments to employ the policy once it is deemed permissible. Officials have no choice. When officials discuss the use of military force by means of the Necessity Standard, they justify their decision in much the same way as a government official would when arguing that a policy meets the Strict Scrutiny Test. Presidents, when they assess, explain, and justify a decision to use major military force against another state, hold that they are discharging duties and defending vital interests, and thus that they are compelled to act. They insist that alternatives to military action are not viable. In so doing, they emphasize the imperative part of the standard by identifying (and dismissing) a list of non-military policies, dwelling on the problems of inaction or delay in addressing crises, and identifying the relevant duties and vital interests which they are compelled to address. Conversely, when presidents or other officials communicate a decision not to use major military force against another state and explain why, they refuse to rule out alternatives and explicitly adopt one or more. They may also hold that the issues involved do not pertain to duties or vital interests. The Origins of the Necessity Standard While officials and critics have occasionally challenged the Necessity Standard, presidents since the beginning of the constitutional era have consistently applied it when deciding whether to wage war and justifying their decisions. The standard has its origins in both its restrictive and imperative aspects in ideas located in colonial political culture and in important founding documents—Revolutionary War pamphlets, the Federalist and Anti-Federalist Papers, the debates at the Constitutional Convention, the political discussions of the Founders, and ultimately the Declaration of Independence. S uspicion of Standing Armies, and References to the Negative Impact of War on Freedom and Republican Institutions The restrictive side of the Necessity Standard is grounded in Colonial, Revolutionary, and Early National understandings of liberty and republican/mixed governments. These understandings linked wars with standing armies, the strengthening of executives, dangers to liberties, and the degeneration of republics into tyrannies. The logic was that wars lead to

22 

D. J. LORENZO

standing armies, while standing armies encourage wars. In turn, both wars and standing armies erode republican institutions and culture. A standing army, the argument went, creates an imbalance in republican constitutions. Standing armies and associated wars simultaneously strengthen the executive by providing it with more power and independence from other elements of government and from the people. In turn, a strengthened executive will use a standing army to gamble the fate of the country on wars meant to enhance policymakers’ power, prestige, and wealth, as well as to intimidate other parts of the government and the people. In contrast, a state without a standing army can maintain a balance among its institutions. Legislatures and citizens will check executives, citizens must be willing to fight any wars that are proposed, and will have the power to resist the state if it is taken over by tyrants. By relying upon its citizen-soldiers and avoiding most wars and all conquests, republics retain their political character by preserving their structure and civic virtue. Cress traces this line of argument back to the development of Radical Whiggery in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Britain. He further argues that this body of thought inspired important figures such as John Trenchard, Thomas Gordon, and William Blackstone in Britain and that those figures in turn had an important impact on American colonial thinking, influencing such actors as Thomas Jefferson, John and Samuel Adams, Thomas Hancock, and Benjamin Franklin.20 In the Revolutionary and Early National eras, writers and speakers linked wars with standing armies, threats to freedoms, and the erosion of republics. Important political figures asserted that frequent wars are dangerous because they are associated with monarchs, who use armed conflicts to their benefit domestically and internationally while citizens suffer materially and bodily. Further, they held that standing armies are dangerous to the defense of liberties and the stability of balanced, mixed, or republican forms of government. Overbearing executives will also burden citizens with taxes to pay for the upkeep of professional soldiers. We find various allusions to these propositions in the Federalist and Anti-Federalist Papers. Brutus, in Anti-Federalist 8, quotes at length from a speech by a British Member of Parliament, who asserted that standing armies are alien 20  Lawrence Delbert Cress, “Radical Whiggery on the Role of the Military: Ideological Roots of the American Revolutionary Militia,” Journal of the History of Ideas 40, no. 1 (1979): 43–60. See also Bernard Bailyn, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2017), pp. 38–48.

2  THE NECESSITY STANDARD, ARGUMENTS, AND NORMS 

23

to a free people because they are organized under rules of obedience rather than freedom, and because they are used against the people to strip them of their liberties. The other countries in Europe have “already been enslaved” through them and, as Brutus quotes that MP, “it is indeed impossible that the liberties of the people in any country can be preserved where a numerous standing army is kept up.” Brutus comments on this analysis by holding that If this great man’s reasoning be just, it follows, that keeping up a standing army, would be in the highest degree dangerous to the liberty and happiness of the community—and if so, the general government ought not to have authority to do it; for no government should be empowered to do that which if done, would tend to destroy public liberty.21

It was not only the Anti-Federalists who took this line. The Federalists were equally adamant on the point, though they used the proposition to establish the dangers that would arise when the structures created by the Articles of Confederation fell apart rather than the perils of allowing a strong national government to gain too much power. In Federalist 8, Alexander Hamilton used the threat of standing armies as a point in favor of the tighter bounds of the future constitutional order as opposed to the creaky confederacy. If the latter were to collapse (as it likely would), he argued, the resulting small states, faced with extreme defensive needs in an atmosphere of anarchy, would be forced to turn to the tools monarchs and absolutist governments employ to ensure their security. Such tools were “The disciplined armies [which are] always kept on foot on the continent of Europe, though they bear a malignant aspect to liberty and economy.” He then drew further connections among wars, standing armies, and threats to republican forms of government: Frequent war and constant apprehension, which require a state of constant preparation, will infallibly produce them [standing armies]. The weaker States or confederacies would first have recourse to them. … They would, at the same time, be necessitated to strengthen the executive arm of government, in doing which their constitutions would acquire a progressive direction toward monarchy. It is of the nature of war to increase the executive at the expense of the legislative authority.

 Brutus, Anti-Federalist 8.

21

24 

D. J. LORENZO

James Madison had earlier made much the same argument by not only referencing the danger of war itself, but also wars that are too frequent: “In time of actual war,” a contemporary report held he argued at the Constitutional Convention, “great discretionary powers are constantly given to the Executive Magistrate. Constant apprehension of war, has the same tendency to render the head too large for the body.” Not only does this lead to the imbalances that the Radical Whigs had warned against, with the executive gaining dominance over the legislative branch, Madison argued, but it also endangers other qualities crucial to republics. “A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive will not long be safe companions to liberty. The means of defence agst. (sic) foreign danger, have been always the instruments of tyranny at home.”22 The threat of attack, either real or bogus, can be used to strip a people of their freedoms, and the maintenance of a standing army ostensibly for defensive purposes is a favorite tool absolutist governments employ to keep in power. Amid tensions with Great Britain, Madison later expanded on this observation in the mid-1790s: Of all the enemies to public liberty, war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended; its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds are added to those of subduing the force of the people.23

As we have seen, the Federalists and Anti-Federalists saw causality going both ways between wars and non-republican governments. Frequent wars create despotisms, and tyrannical governments (or governments sliding into tyranny) will frequently go to war. For John Jay, rulers who exercise power absolutely are free to pursue war for their own ends, being unrestrained. They will do so on the slightest pretext. Other non-republican states will also go to war if not prevented by internal curbs. The lure of power, ambition, and gain, he holds, leads political leaders to engage in war unless republican institutions and vigilant citizens check them. He  James Madison, Debates at the Constitutional Convention, Friday June 29, 1787.  “Political Observations,” 20 April 1795. Library of Congress at https://founders. archives.gov/documents/Madison/01-15-02-0423. 22 23

2  THE NECESSITY STANDARD, ARGUMENTS, AND NORMS 

25

implies that just reasons for going to war are few and concludes that a state that goes to war frequently will generally do so for unjust reasons unconnected with the good of the people. Leaders who advocate war should therefore be suspect, their reasons for going to war strictly scrutinized, and they should be subject to close restraints in martial affairs. “Nations in general,” he argued will make war whenever they have a prospect of getting anything by it; nay, absolute monarchs will often make war when their nations are to get nothing by it, but for the purposes and objects merely personal, such as thirst for military glory, revenge for personal affronts, ambition, or private compacts to aggrandize or support their particular families or partisans. These and a variety of other motives, which affect only the mind of the sovereign, often lead him to engage in wars not sanctified by justice or the voice and interests of his people. But, independent of these inducements to war, which are more prevalent in absolute monarchies, but which well deserve our attention, there are others which affect nations as often as kings; and some of them will on examination be found to grow out of our relative situation and circumstances.24

Taken together, these historical influences discourage the use of military force in any but exceptional situations. They also, by privileging neutral policies, encouraging understandings of national security that focus predominantly on the protection of territorial integrity, and supporting the paring back of military spending, help create policies and material conditions under which it is difficult to use military force on a large scale or project significant military power.  he Duty to Use Military Force to Defend Freedoms, Sovereignty, T Territory, and Trade Yet it was far from the case that members of the Revolutionary and Early National generations who railed against standing armies and frequent wars were pacifists. They were ready and willing to go to war. Indeed, they sometimes thought resort to war was imperative. What they considered the correct justifications for using military force and how they understood the nature of the ends which wars were to further are of special importance here.

 John Jay, Federalist 4.

24

26 

D. J. LORENZO

A. Foundations of the Revolutionary War: Perhaps the most important historical statements addressing the objects of war were those that justified the struggle against the British in the Revolution. The “Preamble and Resolution of the Virginia Convention” pointed to the need to defend the colonies in the face of ongoing hostilities, holding that despite their “decent representations and petitions” to the British government to resolve differences, Britain was already conducting a war against the colonists, and therefore the colonists must respond with force in order to gain independence and sovereignty.25 Thomas Paine argued for the use of military force to attain freedom from tyranny.26 A statement from the Continental Congress a year previous to approving the Declaration of Independence outlined a larger set of reasons for engaging in war, including the violation of individual freedoms, interference in self-government, threats to property, and the overall specter of tyranny.27 The Declaration of Independence is the most important statement revolutionary leaders provided which addressed the use of military force. It is not just a declaration proclaiming independence; given its appeal to the “Supreme Judge of the world,” it is also a declaration of war. The form and nature of its arguments will become familiar, as they anticipate the Necessity Standard. After a brief listing of grievances that it will later expand, the Declaration identified an immediate recourse to war as the only policy available if the colonists would undo the injustices they are suffering. All peaceful avenues for settling the conflict on acceptable terms have been exhausted. The colonists had asked for redress from the British government in approved forms. Those requests were “answered only by repeated injury.” Parallel appeals to non-governmental leaders and ordinary citizens had likewise gone nowhere, despite references to injustices, common ancestry, and common forms of government. Ordinary British citizens have “been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity.” 25  PREAMBLE AND RESOLUTION OF THE VIRGINIA CONVENTION, MAY 15, 1776, INSTRUCTING THE VIRGINIA DELEGATES IN THE CONTINENTAL CONGRESS TO “PROPOSE TO THAT RESPECTABLE BODY TO DECLARE THE UNITED COLONIES FREE AND INDEPENDENT STATES.” Library of Congress at https://www.loc.gov/resource/rbpe.17802000/?st=text. 26  Thomas Paine, Crisis #1, Dec. 19, 1776. Library of Congress at https://www.loc.gov/ resource/rbpe.03902300/?st=text. 27  A Declaration by the Representatives of the United Colonies of North-America, Now Met in Congress at Philadelphia, Setting Forth the Causes and Necessity of Their Taking Up Arms, July 6, 1775. Library of Congress at https://www.loc.gov/item/2005578051/.

2  THE NECESSITY STANDARD, ARGUMENTS, AND NORMS 

27

What, then, of the substantive reasons for war? One is physical security of the state and the property of citizens. “[T]he British have plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people,” the Declaration asserts. Also at issue were individual and political rights, self-government, and trade. These goods being threatened, the Declaration argued, they can only be protected by military force. The goals of the war therefore were security, trade, self-government, rights, the attainment of independence, and sovereignty. Given these reasons and goals, the Declaration noted that the colonists must “acquiesce to the necessity” of treating the British as enemies in war. War is not a choice. It is incumbent upon the colonists to engage in it. Why? Why do circumstances demand war when the conflict cannot otherwise be resolved? What is the foundation of this demand? The Declaration holds that the colonists have deep obligations to themselves as individuals and as members of a political community that had arisen out of the state of nature to protect natural rights. These rights, in turn, are located in Lockean natural law. Given that they are endowed with natural rights, Americans cannot give up those rights without a struggle and still be in obedience to natural law. Resistance and war are necessary because for Americans, defending natural rights, resisting the establishment of tyranny, and conserving national sovereignty “is their duty.” B. Post-Revolutionary Discussions. Important figures rehearsed such arguments after the Revolution as well. For James Madison, security was a goal worth fighting for. He argued at the Constitutional Convention that an important defect of Articles of Confederation was that they did not allow the national government to “secure against foreign invasion.” Indeed, he later argued in Federalist 41 that defending the nation against such events was not just an important or worthy goal. It was vital. “Security against foreign danger is one of the primitive objects of civil society. It is an avowed and essential object of the American Union.” But that was not the only interest he identified whose protection could trigger the use of arms. As he again noted in the debates at the convention, the national government had sometimes to do more than just preserve its security in a “primitive” understanding. Security and national interests were also served by international agreements and international norms. Thus, it was necessary that the national government have the authority and resources to use

28 

D. J. LORENZO

military force to see that “infractions of treaties or of the law of nations…be punished.”28 Thomas Jefferson also took up the concept of “punishment,” but not in relation to international law. In a private discussion of the importance of maintaining a navy to help protect commerce and to guard American interests in general, Jefferson wrote to John Jay that officials should use military force to deter other states and build a reputation for employing military force to defend those interests as a way of avoiding future problems: Justice indeed, on our part, will save us from those wars which would have been produced by a contrary disposition. But how can we prevent those produced by the wrongs of other nations? By putting ourselves in a condition to punish them. Weakness provokes insult and injury, while a condition to punish, often prevents them. This reasoning leads to the necessity of some naval force; that being the only weapon by which we can reach an enemy. I think it to our interest to punish the first insult; because an insult unpunished is the parent of many others.29

George Washington adopted the same position while president. In his discussion of the outbreak of war in Europe, Washington carefully outlined the neutral stance his administration had adopted and warned citizens to avoid becoming involved with either side. Yet he also insisted that neutrality did not mean that the US would not defend itself or supply itself with the means for waging war, nor that territorial security would be the only vital interest at stake. The US must also demonstrate that it is able and willing to defend itself in order to deter attacks: There is a rank due to the United States among nations which will be withheld, if not absolutely lost, by the reputation of weakness. If we desire to avoid insult, we must be able to repel it; if we desire to secure peace, one of the most powerful instruments of our rising prosperity, it must be known that we are at all times ready for war.30

 Debates at Constitutional Convention, Tuesday, May 29, 1787.  Letter to John Jay, August 23, 1785. National Archives at https://founders.archives. gov/documents/Jefferson/01-08-02-0333. 30  December 3, 1793, Fifth Annual Message; see also December 7, 1796, Eighth Annual Message. 28 29

2  THE NECESSITY STANDARD, ARGUMENTS, AND NORMS 

29

James Monroe took up a similar analysis in his private correspondence. He repeatedly recommended a policy of forcible response to international crises, arguing that America’s international reputation was affected by how it responded to challenges to its rights. As early as 1794, he argued that the US should take military action against Britain to force that nation to turn over the forts and territory awarded to the US by the Treaty of Paris. By invading Canada and Bermuda in support of those goals, the US would be “respected” by Europe and England because it would be “acting like a nation.” He later commented that the respect “which one power has for another is in exact proportion of the means which they respectively have of injuring one another with the least detriment to themselves.” By 1805, when ambassador to Great Britain, he stressed in his correspondence that the US must adopt “an attitude of menace and…determination” in protecting its neutral trading rights given that even “feeble” states like Spain would “insult us, encroach on our rights, and plunder us if they can do so with impunity.”31

Arguments and Norms As we have seen, the Necessity Standard has its roots in early American history. From the discussions in Chap. 1 as well as this brief survey, we also see that the same arguments justifying the use of military force re-emerge over time. After identifying and classifying these arguments, we can then identify relevant norms and recognize the functional relationship of arguments to those norms. Types of Arguments: How Proponents of War Construct Necessity We can organize our understanding of arguments addressing why the use of major military by categorizing them. We find three sets of arguments that draw upon the fundamental norms, and one proposition. One set of arguments links the use of military force to realist understandings of the state, citing security, deterrence, reputation, balances of power, and other concepts which situate the state in an international system in which power is the universal currency. A second set references the broader interests of the nation. These include safeguarding territorial security and the security 31  Monroe, quoted in Harry Ammon, James Monroe: The Quest for National Identity (Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 1996), pp. 128–9, 235, 250.

30 

D. J. LORENZO

of citizens, as well as sovereignty and trade. The third set links war to aims associated with protecting and furthering values, including freedom and democracy. The proposition, the Democratic/Liberal security proposition, links democracy and/or the adoption of liberal values with security. We will see that each president and those who support a president’s use of force construct necessity in their own way, using various mixtures of arguments to argue for war as a policy, and identifying a plethora of war aims. Realist Arguments There are many strands of realism, with variations differing in their understanding of state goals and understandings of agency. Some understand states to be power maximizers, others security maximizers. Some hold that domestic politics and policymakers are important to the behavior of states. Others hold that it is only the nature of relations among states, or the nature of the state system itself, which explains state actions. There are, however, broad similarities among these accounts in the form of background assumptions. In one influential account,32 realist understandings assume that war is a natural part of the international landscape because that landscape is anarchic, that is, there is no entity with enough power and/or legitimacy to enforce rules and settle disputes authoritatively. Consequently, seeing the world more or less in Hobbesian terms, a realist policymaker fears for the existence of his or her state, and believes relations among states are marked by mutual existential fear and shaped by power relations. That policymaker would also see security and power in zero-sum terms and fear the power of other states or groups of states. Persistent attempts to gain security or to maximize power leads to arms races and attempts to balance a powerful state or alliance through the creation of hostile alliances, and ultimately to conflicts, clashes, and war. A realist policymaker in general would understand that cooperation is possible, but have grave concerns regarding cheating and be obsessed with relative gains that are difficult to acquire through cooperation. They would not put much faith in attempts to create formal international institutions, or the institution of collective security mechanisms. They would see alliances as only temporary, and mainly strive to guarantee survival through self-help and the narrow incentive of self-interest. Because they 32  John Mearsheimer, “The false promise of international institutions.” International security 19, no. 3 (1994).

2  THE NECESSITY STANDARD, ARGUMENTS, AND NORMS 

31

are obsessed with either power or security, and because that obsession is driven by fear, they will also have no faith in the efficacy of international norms to keep order and guarantee security. While Mead discounts the presence of “continental realism” in the US, other studies document the presence of realist views and arguments in American debates over foreign policy and war. Hendrickson identifies Thomas Jefferson as someone who used a realist vocabulary to situate the US in the context of the Napoleonic Wars, documenting his use of the concept of a balance of power to describe his desire to allow no one state to be dominant militarily on land and at sea, and to have Great Britain and France check one another.33 In turn, Ammon illustrates how James Monroe employed realist understandings to establish that states must create reputations for a willingness to use force to defend national interest as a way of warding off attacks. Monroe repeatedly recommended a policy of forcible response to international crises, arguing that America’s international reputation was affected by how it responded to challenges to its rights.34 Other important realist arguments reference credibility and the domino theory.35 Nationalist Arguments Nationalist arguments privilege the US and its interests as a state possessed by its citizens. They may assume that the world is a dangerous place, but do not understand war in strictly realist terms. Rather, they construct necessity and connect events by placing the US as a political community in the center of their analysis. Here Mead’s discussion of Hamiltonians and Jacksonians is relevant. He identifies Hamiltonians as identifying commerce, freedom of movement on the seas, open markets abroad, and the protection of neutrality as primary national interests, the protection of 33  David Hendrickson, Union, nation, or empire: the American debate over international relations, 1789–1941 (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2009), p. 55. 34  Monroe, quoted in Harry Ammon, James Monroe: The Quest for National Identity, pp. 128–9, 235, 250. For an interesting contemporary discussion of reputation and credibility, see John Mitton “Selling Schelling Short: Reputations and American Coercive Diplomacy after Syria,” Contemporary Security Policy, 36:3, 408–431 (2015). 35  For discussions of the domino theory as an argument and concept, see Frank Ninkovich, Modernity and power: a history of the domino theory in the twentieth century (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), Keith Shimko, “Metaphors and Foreign Policy Decision Making,” Political Psychology 15, no. 4 (1994): 655–71, and Robert Jervis & Jack Snyder, eds., Dominos and Bandwagons: Strategic Beliefs and Great Power Competition in the Eurasian Rimlands (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990).

32 

D. J. LORENZO

which may justify the use of military force.36 The War of 1812, the Spanish War, and World War I were fought importantly on these grounds. Equally relevant is Mead’s description of Jacksonians. They, too, hold that the US is a special community. But their focus is on the preservation of that community, expressed as a focus on the defense of the immediate geographical territory of the US, the preservation of its citizens, and conservation of its sovereignty. Military force is to be used to defend the community, and everyone in the community given a threat to its existence should get behind the war with appropriate patriotic fervor.37 These reasons for war also characterize the orientations of those whom Wittkopf, and Holsti and Rosenau argue embrace “militant internationalism” in assuming a Hobbesian view of the world, focusing on immediate security concerns, and tending toward unilateralism.38 Values Arguments Discussions of war that place values in the center are also important. Some of these are Wilsonian in character; that is, they stress the importance of spreading and strengthening American political values throughout the world, particularly those associated with democracy and freedom. But Mead also identifies the presence of values in other traditions, including those that underline the importance of defending American values at home.39 Lind also documents arguments in which officials discuss wars as the means by which to promote and defend liberal values, including individual freedoms, self-government, and self-determination.40 We also find references to duties to act on humanitarian principles and to support international law and international institutions. It is easy to find examples of such arguments. Recent resolutions introduced in both houses of Congress to authorize the use of military force against ISIS (ISIL), for example, consistently combined references to 36  W.  R. Mead, Special providence: American foreign policy and how it changed the world (New York: Routledge, 2013), pp. 105–107. 37  Mead, Special Providence, chapter 7, passim. 38  E.  Wittkopf, “On the Foreign Policy Beliefs of the American People: A Critique and Some Evidence.” International Studies Quarterly. 30, 4, 1986; O.  Holsti & J.  Rosenau, “The Structure of Foreign Policy Attitudes among American Leaders,” The Journal of Politics. 52, 1, 1990. 39  Mead, Special Providence, passim. 40  Michael Lind, The American way of strategy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), passim.

2  THE NECESSITY STANDARD, ARGUMENTS, AND NORMS 

33

American security and the defense of allies with allusions to humanitarian concerns. Thus Representative Jim Banks used as justification not only the findings that al Qaeda, ISIS, and the Taliban “continue to represent a threat to the people of the United States and the national security of the United States,” and “conduct attacks against people of the United States and allies of the United States,” but also the accusation that they “systematically targeted, kidnapped, and killed innocent men, women, and children throughout Iraq and Syria.”41 Senator Todd Young’s parallel resolution similarly supplemented the contention that ISIS “poses a grave threat to the people of Iraq and Syria, the stability of the Middle East, and the national security interests of the United States and allies and partners of the United States” with an even more graphic description of ISIS’s crimes. Its members, Young reported, had committed genocide, despicable acts of violence, and mass executions against religious and ethnic minorities who do not subscribe to the depraved, violent, and oppressive ideology of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria … [and] targeted women and girls with horrific acts of violence, including abduction, enslavement, torture, rape, and forced marriage.42 Arguments Justifying War Realist Arguments Aggression: Military force is necessary to stop actors who use military force to gain their ends.

Nationalist Arguments Existing Hostilities: Military action is now necessary because an opponent is already at war with the US.

41  115th CONGRESS, 1st Session, H. J. RES. 89, To authorize the use of United States Armed Forces against al-Qaeda, the Taliban, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, successor organizations, and associated forces. IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, March 15, 2017; 115th CONGRESS, 1st Session S. J. RES. 31, To authorize the use of United States Armed Forces against al-Qaeda, the Taliban, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, successor organizations, and associated forces. IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES, March 2, 2017. 42  115th CONGRESS, 1st Session S. J. RES. 31, To authorize the use of United States Armed Forces against al-Qaeda, the Taliban, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, successor organizations, and associated forces. IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES, March 2, 2017.

34 

D. J. LORENZO

Arguments Justifying War Balance of Power: Military force is necessary to prevent the loss of territory, population, and other resources that would have a negative effect on the balance of power. Credibility: Military action in defense of a friend or ally is necessary to encourage allies and discourage foes through instances of promise keeping involving demonstrations of power and will. Deterrence: Using military action to resolve a conflict is necessary because a demonstration of power and will is required to persuade current or potential foes from attacking US interests. Diplomacy and Other Alternatives Are Futile: Military action is now necessary because further use of alternative ways of settling a dispute will not work, as demonstrated by the failure of prior efforts, or the nature or actions of the opponent. Domino Theory: Military action in defense of a friend or ally is necessary because the loss of one state will lead to further losses in the region. Forward Defense: The defense of American territories, borders, citizens, and interests cannot be achieved without venturing further into the world to confront and defeat threats using military force. Reputation: Military action is necessary to demonstrate that the US possesses the will to use military force to defend its interests.

Security: Military action is necessary because the American territories or citizens are or will be in danger. Sovereignty: Military force is necessary to protect national sovereignty. Trade: Military action is necessary to protect American trade and commerce. American Values Arguments Democracy/Self-Government: Military action is needed to defend and promote democracy or self-government in the world. Freedom: Military action is needed to defend and promote freedom in the world. Humanitarian/Duty to Protect: Military action is required to end a humanitarian crisis. International Order/Law/Norms: Military action is needed to create or support a rules-­based world order. Local Order Argument: Military action is necessary to provide local order. Peace: Military action is needed to stop a military conflict and bring peace. Self Determination: Military action is necessary to defend the right of all nations to determine their own affairs.

Variations of the Democratic/Liberal Security Proposition The proposition in question here is what I call the Democratic/Liberal Security Proposition. Investigations of Democratic Peace Theory and efforts to explicate Kant’s discussion of universal peace are of particular

2  THE NECESSITY STANDARD, ARGUMENTS, AND NORMS 

35

interest in understanding and identifying this proposition because they set forth reasons why democracies go to war. Kant suggests that leaders, whether of democracies or non-democracies, view the international landscape in the same manner. They are motivated by the desire to accumulate wealth, power, and glory, and will use war as the means for attaining those ends if they can. Democratic leaders, however, are restrained from going to war given the domestic constraints they experience. The general population opposes war, and leaders know they will lose power if they initiate wars. Otherwise they, too, would be just as aggressive, and for the same reasons (wealth, power, and glory) as non-democratic leaders. But being constrained, they will only go to war for defensive reasons (e.g., when the state is attacked). Important strands of the contemporary literature on the use of force by democracies contest this description on two counts, of which the second is of importance here. This strand questions whether citizens will constrain leaders from going to war in any but situations of pure self-defense. A significant portion of the democratic peace literature that consists of empirical tests of the proposition that democracies will be peaceful43 finds that democracies tend to have peaceful relations with fellow democracies but act aggressively toward non-democracies. This is due to several reasons connected with perceptions of non-democratic states on the part of both leaders and citizens in democracies. Geis and Wagner point to identity building and socialization. Non-democracies become the “other” against which democratic citizens define themselves, a process that easily can turn to demonization and identification of non-democracies as outside the bounds of ordinary treatment because they are uncivilized, or an existential enemy.44 Other studies suggest that democracies do not trust other types of regimes and find them security threats. Chan points to the mistrust between democracies and non-democracies based on perceptions 43  E.g., B.  Russett, Grasping the democratic peace: Principles for a post-Cold War world (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994); Z. Maoz and B. Russett, “Normative and Structural Causes of Democratic Peace, 1946–1986,” American Political Science Review 87, No. 3 (Fall 1993); J. Oneal, B. Russett, and M. Berbaum, “Causes of peace: Democracy, interdependence, and international organizations, 1885–1992,” International Studies Quarterly 47, No. 3 (2003). 44  Anna Geis and Wolfgang Wagner. “How far is it from Königsberg to Kandahar? Democratic peace and democratic violence in International Relations.” Review of International Studies 37.4 (2011).

36 

D. J. LORENZO

of different practices.45 Others hold that democracies fear that non-­ democracies will exploit or attack them. This fear takes the form of beliefs “that nondemocratic opponents will often resort to force and/or will refuse to negotiate in good faith,” a perception that is not held of other democracies, and which leads democracies to cut short negotiations, resort to force quickly, and target non-democracies for regime change.46 Further, this perception is alleged not only to lead to “extremism” in the form of war aims which are dominated by regime change, but also the lowering of the “threshold of acceptable means” for defending universal rights associated with democracy, “including military force.”47 Recent, though limited, work on the American opposition to war seems to confirm this understanding in the American context. It suggests that when it comes to possible armed conflict with other non-democracies, Security Arguments do play an important role.48 This is in line with the general literature on the topic of democracy-on-democracy conflict referenced above.49 In this understanding, democracies, and particularly the US, will often go to war against non-democratic or non-liberal regimes unconstrained by citizens because there is general agreement that such regimes are existential threats.50 Indeed, for some scholars such as Tony Smith, the mixture of values and security concerns that underlay what he terms “liberal democratic nationalism” has informed US foreign policy throughout much of US history, was the dominant strand of American

45  S. Chan, “In Search of Democratic Peace: Problems and Promise, “Mershon International Studies Review 41 (May 1997). 46  D.  Rousseau, C.  Gelpi, D.  Reiter and P.  Huth, “Assessing the Dyadic Nature of the Democratic Peace, 1918–88,” The American Political Science Review, Vol. 90, No. 3 (Sept. 1996), p. 514. 47  Christopher Daase, “Democratic Wars” in Anna Geis, Lothar Brock and Harald Müller, eds., Democratic Wars: Looking at the Dark Side of Democratic Peace (NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006). 48  M. Tomz, and J. Wees, “Public Opinion and the Democratic Peace,” American Political Science Review Vol. 107, No. 3 (August 2013). 49  R.  Jervis, “Theories of War in an Era of Leading-Power Peace, Presidential Address, American Political Science Association, 2001,” The American Political Science Review, Vol. 96, No. 1 (Mar., 2002) does hold that contemporary peace among democracies is based importantly on calculations of costs. 50  For a description of several US wars as motivated importantly by a Democratic/Liberal security proposition, see John Owen, Liberal Peace, Liberal War: American Politics and International Security (Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press, 1997).

2  THE NECESSITY STANDARD, ARGUMENTS, AND NORMS 

37

foreign policy during the twentieth century, and accounts for the wars the US fought during that time.51 I operationalize this understanding by identifying it as a Democratic/ Liberal security proposition: some presidents use arguments justifying the use of military force based on the following set of assumptions: (a) Democracies or liberal societies pose no fundamental threats to American security or other interests. They share and help spread and uphold American values and are often valuable allies. Their presence in the world makes it a more secure and peaceful place for the US; (b) Non-democratic or illiberal regimes pose fundamental threats to American security, being aggressive, revisionist,52 imperialistic, and desirous of creating regional or international hegemonies. They are hostile to American values and seek to quash them as threats. Their presence in the world makes it less secure and peaceful. (c) Therefore, America should be wary of non-democratic, illiberal regimes and not place full confidence in diplomacy as a way of managing the threats they pose. Leaders should assume they are security threats. Legitimate war aims in armed conflicts with nonliberal or non-democratic regimes include destroying their regimes to remove the threat they pose to the US; liberating their citizens and the citizens of other nations they have conquered by encouraging or imposing democratic practices, and defending the sovereignty and security of other republics when threatened by authoritarian regimes even when US security, trade, or sovereignty are not immediately threatened.

51  Tony Smith, America’s Mission: The United States and the Worldwide Struggle for Democracy in the Twentieth Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press/Twentieth Century Fund, 1994). Smith’s description of the heart of “liberal democratic nationalism” is substantially the same as my conception of a Democratic/Liberal security proposition. 52  A revisionist actor is an actor that attempts to change the status quo, either locally (by taking territory) or globally (by changing the existing world order).

38 

D. J. LORENZO

Identifying Norms The next task is to re-examine the arguments above to grasp the underlying norms they reference, and to understand how arguments function to legitimize or advocate martial policies by referencing norms. The most immediately identifiable group of arguments is reference security. Among proponents we find straightforward arguments holding that security is endangered, contentions that armed force is necessary because diplomatic efforts to resolve a dangerous conflict are useless, references to evidence that armed hostilities are already ongoing, discussions of deterrence and credibility, and propositions regarding the need to bolster a reputation for strength and willingness to use force in defense of national interests. Alternatively, the opposition sometimes refers to security dilemmas, blowback, and other ironic results of the use of military force which erode American security. This evidence points to the relevance of a Security Norm: policymakers have a duty to defend the territory, citizens, and interests of the US, and everyone has a duty to support leaders who are engaged in policies that further and protect American security.53 Another group of arguments refers to political procedures and related elements of the political environment. Many of these are found on the oppositional side. These include laments regarding the erosion of republican institutions and politics, accusations of interference by special interests, arguments that military force is opposed by citizens, and references to a distorted psychological atmosphere. On the proponent side, we see assertions highlighting the importance of protecting the sovereignty (and therefore the primacy of the constitutional order) of the country. These indicate the relevance of a Constitutional Norm: everyone has the duty to follow the procedures set out by the Constitution and to protect the constitutional, democratic, and liberal order of the US by protecting US sovereignty when formulating and implementing martial or peaceful policies.54 A third group of arguments references explicit American Values. On both sides we find references to need to respect, protect, and spread freedom, democracy, human rights, humanitarianism, and peace, including the rule that conflicts should be settled peacefully if at all possible. These

53  See the Preamble; Article I, section 8; Article II, section 2, and Article IV, section 4 of the Constitution. The Declaration of Independence also alludes to the duty of a government to provide security. 54  Article II, section 1; Article IV, section 4 of the Constitution.

2  THE NECESSITY STANDARD, ARGUMENTS, AND NORMS 

39

indicate the relevance of an American Values Norm: everyone has the duty to respect, implement, and further American values.55 A fourth group of arguments references the nation’s well-being in general. It is comprised of practical critiques of war policies (which hold that armed force is useless or counterproductive), and references to the need to use the resources that would be expended elsewhere (for national defense, social programs, to repay the debt, or to concentrate on political reform). Proponents of the use of force reference the need to protect trade and other economic interests, and the duty to protect citizens abroad. These all point to the relevance of a General Welfare Norm: everyone has the duty to defend and further the material interests of the US, including increasing and protecting its trade, protecting and enhancing the happiness and well-being of its citizens, and acting as a careful steward of its resources.56 I argue that these four norms fundamentally inform the dialogue over war and peace in the US.57 I identify their use in the arguments I survey below.

Conclusion Foundational elements of American political culture identified standing armies and wars as enemies of republics. The Founding generation embraced political views which took for granted the conclusion that permanent military establishments and frequent martial activities eroded virtues and distorted institutional structures. Those elements and activities were therefore to be avoided. Other documents and conclusions, reacting to contemporary events, held that some interests were so important that 55  Preamble; Article I, section 9; Article I, section 10; Article III, section 3; Article III, section 4; Article III, section 6; Amendments 1–10, 13–15, 24 and 26. Also the list of rights found in the Declaration of Independence 56  Preamble and Article I section 8 of the Constitution; the Declaration of Independence also contains language stipulating the duties of government regarding the general welfare. 57  These norms overlap the three “core interests” which Stolberg identifies (security, economic well-being, and democratic values) as traditional. See Alan G.  Stolberg, “Crafting National Interests in the 21st Century,” in J.  Boone Bartholomees, ed., US Army War College Guide to National Security Issues: Volume II: National Security Policy and Strategy (Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, 2012). Terry L. Deibel, “Strategies before containment: patterns for the future,” International Security 16, no. 4 (1992), also identifies security, general welfare, and values as enduring categories of vital interests.

40 

D. J. LORENZO

they must be defended by military force if threatened. War in some instances is a necessity. Further, the Constitution as well as the Declaration of Independence identify the categories of interests that must be defended by all available means. Those documents demand that officials safeguard sovereignty, security, values, and the general welfare of the American community. In turn, officials connect these norms to the events and conditions they encounter by invoking elements of a well-known set of arguments and a Democratic/Liberal security proposition as they debate whether large-­ scale military force should be applied in a specific situation. The following chapters trace the interaction of these elements through time primarily by analyzing presidential justifications of war and accompanying Congressional support for large-scale military activities, but also some instances when presidents decided against war. They locate justifications of war in contemporaneous debates and illustrate how the presidents, members of Congress, and others employed the Necessity Standard. These data reveal that officials, members of Congress, and others have interpreted and applied the Necessity Standard in a variety of ways, sometimes in the course of justifying the same war, but more importantly in examining issues of war and peace over time, such that wars that are justified at one time may not be justified at another, and vice-versa.

CHAPTER 3

The War of 1812 Using War as a Last Resort to Defend Trade, Territory, and Reputation and to Resist a Hostile World Order The Contexts of the War with Britain Problems with the British began soon after the Treaty of Paris of 1785 ended the Revolutionary War. Successive administrations dealt with a Britain that never fully kept the terms of that treaty when it came to the administration of territory in North America. The outbreak of Britain’s wars with France further inflamed tensions. The seizure of American cargo vessels carrying grain to France in 1793, coupled with reports of British support for the Amerindian nations harrying US frontier territories and Britain’s continued reluctance to respect the borders set by the Treaty of Paris, provided the first point at which the US gestured toward war against the British. Elements of the Washington administration initially defended the rights of American merchants to trade unhindered by the British war machine, citing what they took to be generally accepted principles of international law protecting neutral trade. However, the administration put off the use of military force when it approved the Jay Treaty, an agreement which, in the view of a twentieth-century critic, “not only surrendered the American definition of neutral rights, but…explicitly committed the United States to acquiescence in Britain’s arbitrary maritime practices.”1 1  Albert H. Bowman, “Jefferson, Hamilton and American Foreign Policy,” Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 71, No. 1 (Mar., 1956), p. 35.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 D. J. Lorenzo, War and American Foreign Policy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-66695-8_3

41

42 

D. J. LORENZO

During the John Adams administration, the Quasi War with France, again spurred by issues of neutral trade, prompted some political figures to make plans to cooperate with Britain if the French mounted an invasion of the US, or as part of a joint venture to free Spanish colonies in South America.2 However, that conflict ended with a diplomatic solution and without military cooperation with Britain. Problems of trade and frontiers continued to dog relations among the US, Britain, and France in the years ahead despite the Jay Treaty and other diplomatic fixes. These problems were exacerbated by Jefferson’s purchase of the Louisiana Territory from France, the continued flow of US citizens to the trans-Appalachian frontier, and the push by successive administrations to institutionalize definitions of neutral trade which they believed forbade Britain and France from interfering with American commerce with states, colonies, or territories associated with either side of the conflict in the absence of an effective military blockade. Britain and France in turn moved aggressively to clamp down on any attempt by neutral countries to trade with their enemies, while Britain pushed forward in its quest to create a buffer zone between the US and Canada by (it was alleged) surreptitiously backing indigenous peoples in their resistance to American expansion. Also at issue was the British insistence on checking crews of US-flagged ships for naval deserters or British subjects, and removing and impressing into the British navy anyone suspected of falling in either category. Incidents included a British warship attacking and boarding the US frigate Chesapeake off the US coast in 1807 in the name of conducting such searches. These events ignited indignation among the public, but the Jefferson administration opted to employ economic boycotts as an alternative to the use of military force. With the election of the expansionist War Hawks to Congress, policy began to change. The former pushed James Madison to discontinue the Jeffersonian approach to conflicts. Their support for the use of military force importantly reflected a desire to remove British obstacles to continued American movement westward. Their arguments also echoed the nationalist mood of some who saw American sovereignty threatened by a Britain that wished to recolonize the US.3 2  See John Harper, American Machiavelli: Alexander Hamilton and the Origins of US Foreign Policy (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004), chaps. 18–19. 3  Jasper Trautsch holds that a long line of arguments attributed to Britain an implacable desire to undermine America’s republican form of government, sovereignty, and indepen-

3  THE WAR OF 1812 

43

President Madison on the War with Britain Why War? Duties and Vital Interests Madison identified current and future territorial security, trade, sovereignty, reputation, and the impact on the US of an uncongenial world order as duties and vital interests at stake in the conflict with Britain. In acting on this agenda, Madison argued that it was imperative that the US employ military force to remove Britain’s malignant influence from the frontier territories as well as its interference with American citizens and American ships, both commercial and military. There was a basic duty, he held, to halt those activities.4 However, Madison viewed the conflict more broadly than would a pure nationalist. Following up on a history of American complaints regarding British treatment of American commerce, he placed the US squarely in international contexts of norms and generally accepted practices. When insisting that Britain made the world a hazardous place for American economic ambitions and interests in general, he invoked the Values Norm to allege that the seizure of American ships, cargo, and citizens were violations of international norms and of Britain’s own claims to free trade. Further, when he argued that his administration must defend neutral trade militarily by construing attacks on commerce as de facto acts of war, he further argued that such acts upheld vital interests in defending international norms governing relations among states and the conduct of war. These connections are important, for Madison also leveraged this equation of interference with trade as an act of war to invoke and expand readings of the Constitutional Norm to identify another set of relevant British threats. He foreshadowed the first threat at the beginning of his war message when he complained, “the conduct of [Britain’s] government presents a series of acts hostile to the United States as an independent and neutral nation.” The sum of British actions, he alleged, endangered American sovereignty just as deeply as would a larger and more explicit attempt at a physical takeover of American territory. When one adds together all the incidents on the high seas that interfered with American trade and commerce, he complained, as well as the attacks on the frontiers, dence. “‘Mr. Madison’s War’ or the Dynamic of Early American Nationalism?” Early American Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal 10, no. 3 (2012), pp. 634, 638. 4  Message to Congress, June 1, 1812.

44 

D. J. LORENZO

the arrogance of British officials in treating everyone as if they were subjects of the British crown, and the British failure to negotiate in good faith, the inescapable inference to draw is that Britain wished to eliminate the US as an autonomous international actor by dictating its boundaries as well as its trade policies. Madison further developed this contention by insisting that the British threat extended beyond random and annoying attempts to obstruct American trade and harry its borders. He emphasized the centrality and meaning of the incidents that are most closely associated with the war in retrospect—the activities of the British navy. British warships, he held, systematically and illegally harassed American shipping, comprehensively interfered with American trade, and persistently and unlawfully removed sailors from American ships. To what purpose? The British cannot rightfully connect those aggressions with their ongoing war with France, he argued, because those actions were not part of any legitimate belligerent activity associated with lawfully declared and effectively enforced blockades of foreign ports.5 They did not take place off the coast of Europe, but on the high seas and more troubling off the US coast and even in US harbors. The answer, he argued, was an attempt by Britain to install an international order that would allow British merchants and the British state to dominate world trade and political relations, crush America economically, and render American sovereignty moot.6 The purpose of the war ultimately is to frustrate this British program. In support of this contention, Madison critiqued British attempts to legitimize their actions by reference to the law of war. British officials asserted that they were acting in lawful retaliation for French moves, including France’s closure of European ports to British trade, when they harassed American shipping, and that they would cease to engage in these activities when the French opened continental ports to British commerce. Madison rejected that rationale as meaningless and contrary to the law of war itself. First, Madison argued that the British could not claim the sanction of international law governing economic warfare because they failed to establish the effective blockade of ports the law required. Moreover, they were raiding American ships far from those ports. Second, he queried 5  War Message, June 1, 1812. He repeated this argument in his later “Message on the Special Congressional Session—State of War and Diplomacy” of May 25, 1813. 6  These and similar references on the part of others who supported the war exactly parallel accusations levied at France in 1797. See Harper, America’s Machiavelli, pp. 182–7.

3  THE WAR OF 1812 

45

the connection between French policies and American attempts to engage in trade. Not only do those policies arise out of purely French politics and aims; US officials had roundly denounced them as contrary to neutral rights. Justifying blatant British military interference with American trade by referring to the French closure of European ports, an action that also burdened American interests, he argued, makes no sense from the standpoint of international norms. British explanations are merely a cynical smokescreen. The real reasons for British actions are located elsewhere. The British were using the war as an excuse to drive all competitors from the seas. He accused Britain of attacking American shipping “not as interfering with the belligerent rights of Great Britain; not as supplying the wants of her enemies, which she herself supplies; but as interfering with the monopoly which she covets for her own commerce and navigation.”7 Greed, arrogance, and the pursuit of global economic and political hegemony, not martial necessity, inform the British predations, he asserted, and the US must thwart those actions by force if it is to escape fatal entanglement in Britain’s tyrannical aspirations.8 These vital interests and duties were on one level nationalist given that they feature the defense of trade, borders, and sovereignty. This judgment is reinforced when we consider Madison’s discussion of how the war would be waged: it would be waged alone (indeed, his war message included a section dealing with the less than satisfactory relations the US enjoyed with France) and would be won due to the presence of important American advantages and assets. It is also important to note that while he described British actions in ways that resemble how presidents later depicted those of authoritarian regimes, and he and his fellow party members viewed Britain as illiberal and lacking in republican institutions of self-government, Madison made no reference here to the logic associated

7  While Madison viewed impressment as a dangerous infringement on American security, some argue that its use as a rationale for war was both more nationalistic and liberal. See P. Gilje, “‘Free Trade and Sailors’ Rights’: The Rhetoric of the War of 1812,” Journal of the Early Republic, Vol. 30, No. 1 (Spring 2010), pp. 1–23. 8  These arguments form an interesting contrast with American arguments in favor of an American empire, among the advocates of which Immerman includes Benjamin Franklin and John Quincy Adams. See Richard Immerman, Empire for Liberty: A History of American Imperialism from Benjamin Franklin to Paul Wolfowitz (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010), chap. 3.

46 

D. J. LORENZO

with a Democratic/Liberal security proposition.9 But when we place his references to international norms alongside his contentions that Britain was attempting to institute a hostile world order, we see that he also pointed beyond purely nationalist understandings to signal his support for a pluralist, conventionally Westphalian world order constituted importantly by norms which protect national sovereignty, establish the nature of trade relations, and demand non-intervention. Why War Now? The Absence of Viable Alternatives Madison’s justification for opting for war initially rested upon a large cluster of realist and nationalist grounds that drew upon traditional understandings. In his discussion, a viable alternative to the use of force must be capable of defending American trade, borders, sovereignty, and security in a situation in which the British were already employing military force. By June of 1812, Madison contended that no such alternative existed despite the patience and flexibility his administration displayed. First, as noted above, he cited as casus belli attacks on America’s frontiers, interference with neutral trade, and violations of international rules governing such trade in times of war. Britain operated outside the boundaries of ordinary relations among countries at peace with one another, as well as outside the boundaries of customary international law. It was, in effect, an outlaw. Madison then collected these events and labeled them acts of war, holding that hostilities existed.10 In his 1812 war message, he linked maritime events (such as the Chesapeake Incident) with confrontations on the frontier involving Native Americans and associated British actions and intentions with both. He noted of the incidents on the frontier that “It is difficult to account for the activity and combinations which have for some time been developing themselves among tribes in constant intercourse with British traders and garrisons without connecting their hostility with 9  John Owen, Liberal Peace, Liberal War: American Politics and International Security (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997), chap. 3, argues that the Republicans did see Britain as a non-liberal entity, and thus dangerous due to its political makeup. 10  In Bas v. Tingy, 4 U.S. 37 (1800), Justice Moore used “war” and “hostilities” as equivalents to define “enemy,” arguing that an enemy is an opponent in a situation characterized by “hostilities or war.” Justice Washington used hostilities to mark various types of war (imperfect vs. perfect). Perfect wars are formally declared and involve the whole nation, while imperfect wars indicate “hostilities may subsist between two nations more confined in its nature and extent, being limited as to places, persons, and things.”

3  THE WAR OF 1812 

47

[British] influence…” The combination of British actions on land and at sea demonstrates that Britain was already subjecting the US to military attacks that constitute war. “We behold, in fine, on the side of Great Britain, a state of war against the United States, and on the side of the United States a state of peace toward Great Britain.”11 Madison further asserted that the use of diplomacy and related tools was futile when it came to Britain, and therefore war was a last resort. As he later noted in his Fourth Annual Message, the war “was preceded by a patience without example under wrongs accumulating without end, and that it was finally not declared until every hope of averting it was extinguished.”12 He made this case in several ways. First, he recounted at length the attempts the US had assayed to persuade, negotiate with, economically coerce, or conciliate the British. He cited not one approach, but many: the boycotts, diplomatic missions, and appeals to customary international law which his and the previous administrations had employed, all of which had failed. Alternatives were exhausted in terms of sustained efforts, types of approaches, and allowable flexibility. This argument served as a riposte to the opposition Madison faced in moving militarily against the British amid the complexities of the Napoleonic Wars. The New England states painted his policies as excessively aggressive toward Britain and advocated reconciliation with the British government at the expense of France, while such critics as Congressman Samuel Taggert would continue to insist that peaceful avenues were not exhausted.13 In his war message of 1812, Madison set the stage for rebutting such objections by noting the lengths to which the administration had gone to resolve problems amicably with the British, with no results to show for those efforts. It had not rushed to war at the first set of provocations nor insisted solely on its own terms, but instead displayed great patience and significant latitude in its efforts and willingness to broker a deal with the British to revoke their maritime policies. It had gone so far as to promise that the US would go to war with France if 11  Message, June 1, 1812; also Third Annual Message, Nov. 4, 1811. Trautsch maintains that Madison asked for war because “a rising tide of nationalism reduced the diplomatic options of the Madison administration such that the president felt he had to ask Congress for a declaration of war to take control over American nationalism.” It was widely assumed, Trautsch argues, that diplomacy was futile. “‘Mr. Madison’s War’ or the Dynamic of Early American Nationalism?” pp. 634, 638. 12  Fourth Annual Message, November 4th, 1812. 13  “With Good Advice Make War,” Alexandria Gazette, June 24, 1812.

48 

D. J. LORENZO

the British ceased its harassment of US shipping, Madison noted.14 Nothing had come of these efforts. Another way Madison established the futility of alternatives was to point to the belated conclusion that diplomacy had never been a viable alternative to the use of military force given the hazards of dealing with the British. He asserted that his administration had discovered that Britain manipulated negotiations to damage America’s internal unity and order. He recalled that Britain at one point had seemed amenable to a diplomatic solution, and one of its representatives had gone so far as to outline a tentative settlement. However, in looking back, he held, it is apparent that this was nothing but a sham. British officials designed these diplomatic encounters to lull American officials to sleep while the British pursued a secret plot against American sovereignty, a plot whose sinister nature revealed the true depth of British hostility and deceit. Britain was and remained an actively hostile state that could not be trusted.15 Madison concluded this part of his analysis by connecting negotiations with the British under current circumstances with another threat, the encouragement of further British ambitions. He indicated that peaceful approaches to resolving the conflict could not protect the US in the future even if they would have yielded short-term benefits. “Our moderation and conciliation have had no other effect than to encourage perseverance [in harmful activities] and to enlarge pretensions.”16 American restraint, he asserted, only emboldens the British and whets their appetite. What is needed is military action that would also serve as a future deterrent, not conciliation. Finally, Madison made a different point when he retrospectively argued that continued diplomatic efforts in the face of the conditions which held in 1812 would have severely damaged the US. Echoing in part Jefferson’s 1785 assertion regarding the need to punish insults as well as Washington’s and Monroe’s views on reputation, he held in 1813 that to have backed down in the face of the British would have destroyed America’s status in  Third Annual Message, Nov. 4, 1811; War Message, June 1, 1812.  “…the disavowal proceeded from a spirit of hostility to the commercial rights and prosperity of the United States; and it has since come into proof that at the very moment when the public minister was holding the language of friendship and inspiring confidence in the sincerity of the negotiation with which he was charged a secret agent of his government was employed in intrigues having for their object a subversion of our government and a dismemberment of our happy union.” War Message, June 1, 1812. 16  War Message, June 1, 1812. 14 15

3  THE WAR OF 1812 

49

the eyes of both its citizens and other international actors. The US could not have continued to refrain from war, he insisted without breaking down the spirit of the nation, destroying all confidence in itself and in its political institutions, and either perpetuating a state of disgraceful suffering or regaining by more costly sacrifices and more severe struggles our lost rank and respect among independent powers.17

Congressional Applications of the Standard The vote for war in Congress was close, with 79 in favor and 49 against in the House, and 19 in favor and 13 against in the Senate. One might argue that the fundamental split that characterized the nation for the previous decade accounts for such an outcome, but it is also noteworthy that despite their efforts to portray the war as an existential affair, Madison and his War Hawk allies proved incapable of swaying the mainly northern Federalists or important contingents of Republicans to favor war. Their arguments were successful in attaining assent to war, but only barely so. We find important expressions of support for Madison in the text of the House Report on British Activities published in June of 181218 and in the writings of Representative Henry Clay.19 Madison premised an important part of his discussion of his war policy by associating trade with American sovereignty. The House Report paralleled these efforts.20 It cited attacks on American merchant ships as well the foreign agents acting on behalf of Britain to whom Madison referred. In fleshing out those complaints, the Report supplied a representative example of how supporters of a war policy can mix a variety of arguments to construct necessity by dismissing alternatives to the use of force. They combined Futility and Existing 17  Second Inaugural Address, March 4, 1813. He also provided a belated argument in favor of the US’s chances in the war in this message, referring to the US population, economic output, and patriotic spirit as sufficient to take on the British. 18  Report, or Manifestoe, Of the Causes and Reasons for War with Great Britain, Presented to the House of Representatives by the Committee of Foreign Relations, June 3, 1812 (Washington: A&G Way, 1812). For a general discussion of the role of Henry Clay and the politics of this report, see D.  Hickey, The War of 1812: A Forgotten Conflict (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2012), chap. 2. 19  “War Should be Declared,” Washington National Intelligencer, April 14, 1812. 20  The Report also observed that citizens had long been clamoring for a definitive solution to the problems Britain posed and implied that in proposing war, it was supplying that solution. Daniel Webster contested this point. Speech Delivered in Congress, December 9, 1814.

50 

D. J. LORENZO

Hostilities arguments to identify that the time was ripe to abandon diplomacy and engage the British on their own terms. In holding that the war had been “forced” on the US, the Report’s authors argued that it was Britain, not the US, which was the author of events that created conflicts between the two countries. Britain not only left the US no alternative but war to address ongoing conflicts satisfactorily given that it refused to settle differences through negotiations; the British had already engaged in war against the US while the latter sought peaceful solutions to the conflict. Prefacing its long discussion of diplomatic efforts, the Report contrasted the attitudes and policies of the US and Britain on the topics of war and peace to that end, and in doing so repeated Madison’s fundamental point regarding American patience and British aggression: If a long forbearance under injuries ought ever to be considered a virtue in any nation, it is one which peculiarly becomes the United States…. Forbearance has ceased to be a virtue. War on the one side, and peace on the other, is a situation as ruinous as it is disgraceful.21

The Report then referenced the futility of pursuing alternatives. It went to great lengths to underline prior American patience and previous attempts to negotiate differences with the British. Such efforts were exhausted. By emphasizing the nature of the British in establishing futility, this approach ultimately elevated the Security above the Values Norm (with its emphasis on peace) to form additional Reputation and Deterrence Arguments. Echoing and expanding on Jefferson’s and Washington’s association of insults with future problems, as well as Madison’s analysis, the Report insisted that continued hesitation in using military force against the British would inflict substantial damage on the US now and invite attacks from the British and others in the future. This argument was the culminating and perhaps most important point the House committee made in its examination of the conflict. For reasons of security, the Report intimated, the US must reject the use of negotiations to pursue vital interests at any point when interlocutors do not reciprocate. Continuing to employ diplomacy in the face of an intractable foe identifies the US as an easy mark, inviting rather than heading off conflict and attacks.22

 Report, or Manifestoe, Of the Causes and Reasons for War with Great Britain, p. 3.  Report, or Manifestoe, Of the Causes and Reasons for War with Great Britain, p. 6.

21 22

3  THE WAR OF 1812 

51

The conclusion to this argument, as with Madison’s, construed deterrence and reputation both in direct security terms and by reference to status among the society of nations which, the Report implied, is relevant because security is tied to demonstrations of comparative power and will. Rather than continue to avoid war, as many Federalists demanded, the Report insisted that the US must use military force to “vindicate [its] rights and honor,” “support [its] character and status among the nations of the earth,” and avoid “shameful degradation.” Such demonstrations signal to current and future aggressors that the US is not afraid of military action and neither coercive diplomacy nor hostile actions will compel it make concessions. This position asserts that, given the importance of power within the international system, current officials have reached the point at which they must demonstrate their refusal to tolerate threats to American interests and security. No other action, particularly diplomacy, is sufficient to meet those obligations to safeguard American territorial security and trade now and in the future. The House Report obviously had in mind an end to British predations on American commerce as a primary war aim and employed nationalist trade arguments to invoke the General Welfare Norm. In discussing trade, the Report combined its nationalist focus with a realist analysis. Like Madison, it placed commerce in an international context and associated it with the use of military force—it is not just a matter of Americans deciding to trade and blithely operating in a naturally open and safe system. Trade rights must be established and defended, not only by diplomatic means routinely but also by military action when the severity and frequency of attacks on them threaten their existence. In making this argument, the authors of the Report echoed Madison’s immediate rationale while rejecting Jefferson’s belief in the power of economic boycotts and the Federalists’ faith in diplomacy when dealing with Britain. US trade would never be safe, they insisted, unless the US forcibly dissuaded Britain from interfering with its shipping. Like Madison, the Report expanded on this point to characterize Britain’s untrustworthy actions on matters of trade as evidence of larger and more dangerous economic ambitions, a position the Federalists were again unable to accept. Repeating Madison’s dismissal of British contentions that their actions were defensible extensions of military blockades, it held that Britain did not consider the US an equal, but either a rival or a subordinate. British leaders would not stand for the US to be the former and would not rest until they reduced the US to the latter. The attack on

52 

D. J. LORENZO

trade was only part of a larger assault. “The dominion of the ocean was completely usurped by [Britain],” it held, “all commerce forbidden, and every flag driven from it, or subjected to capture and condemnation, which did not subserve the policy of the British government by paying it a tribute and sailing under its sanction.” Agreeing again with Madison, the Report held that American officials must meet such dangerous ambitions with an armed response if the US is to survive and thrive. Preventing Britain from attaining a maritime monopoly was necessary for survival, and thus was a duty. The Report further concurred with Madison’s nationalist assertion that attacks on American interests were not piecemeal, but systematic, added up to an assault on American sovereignty and independence, and thus activated duties the Constitutional Norm generates. It pointed to the actions of British agents who operated against American interests and the duty to secure the nation against them in the interests of protecting sovereignty. The use of such agents, it argued, was part of “The attempt to dismember our union, and overthrow our excellent constitution by a secret mission.” This revelation, it held, disclosed the truth about Britain’s intentions toward the US, as it “affords full proof that there is no bound to the hostility of the British government towards the United States: no act, however unjustifiable, which it would not commit to accomplish their ruin.”23 It also held that while British impressment of American sailors continues, “it is impossible for the United States to consider themselves an independent nation.” Given the crimes the British committed, an “impartial world” would conclude, “the contest which is now forced on the United States, is radically a contest for their sovereignty and independence.” The US was not just fighting a glorified trade war in the Report’s estimation. It was fighting for its very survival as a separate political community.24 The Report’s references to Britain as a hegemon also implied larger nationalist and realist points that echoed Madison and further contrasted with the Federalists’ faith in Britain and diplomacy. It held that the US must resist the efforts of a nation that sets itself up as a dominant power because such actions present an intolerable threat to the ordinary workings of the international order. The aspirations of the British, it held, were unlimited. They exhibited a “mad ambition, the lust of power and  Report, or Manifestoe, Of the Causes and Reasons for War with Great Britain, p. 12.  Report, or Manifestoe, Of the Causes and Reasons for War with Great Britain, pp. 11, 16.

23 24

3  THE WAR OF 1812 

53

commercial avarice.”25 In gathering hegemonic power, Britain has run roughshod over international rules. If it consolidates its dominant position, Britain would be unstoppable. As the Report concluded. The British government might, for a while, be satisfied with the ascendency thus gained over us, but its pretensions would soon increase. The proof which so complete and disgraceful a submission to its authority would afford of our degeneracy, could not fail to inspire confidence, that there was no limit to which its usurpations, and our degradation, might not be carried.26

The Report suggested here that in fighting Britain and heading off the specter of British hegemony, the US would support the operation of an international system, which in its ordinary and traditional workings is ultimately beneficial to American interests because power is dispersed and everyone abides by generally accepted rules. It therefore implied that the US must fight Britain for the same reason Britain argued it had to fight France—to uphold the Westphalian settlement and customary norms. The War Hawk Henry Clay supplied arguments that echoed Madison and the House Report in two ways.27 First, he insisted that a war policy was now necessary because further diplomacy was futile. The choice to go to war, he held, is simple because the alternative of further negotiations will not serve to protect American interests. Using diplomacy in pursuit of a peaceful settlement would not work short of surrendering crucial American interests to the British. The US had exhausted viable alternatives in terms of both patience and latitude. It appears in his understanding that force should be a last resort, a condition that the US had now reached. “[A]ll hope of honorable accommodation is at an end,” he remarked. The price of tolerating the status quo was also not acceptable. The crisis was upon the US, and “it is by open and manly war only that we can get through it with honor and advantage to the country,” he argued. Clay then moved, like the House Report, to identify future problems a refusal to use military force would generate. He insisted that the continued employment of diplomacy was not viable because diplomatic efforts could not uphold and protect America’s international reputation. “Any further discussion, any new attempt at negotiation, would be …  Report, or Manifestoe, Of the Causes and Reasons for War with Great Britain, p. 3.  Report, or Manifestoe, Of the Causes and Reasons for War with Great Britain, p. 17. 27  Washington National Intelligencer, April 14, 1812, p. 3. 25 26

54 

D. J. LORENZO

dishonorable,” he held. Note again that this argument does not only reference a loss of esteem or respect, but also the loss of a reputation for defending vital interests. No state in future would take the US seriously when it conveys its resolve to defend its interests if it now tries to negotiate, he argued; its reputation would be in tatters until vindicated by expending blood. Clay fleshed out this argument into a full-blown security policy that built on and extended the related discussions Madison, the House Report, Jefferson, and Washington had supplied. Describing the situation as much more dangerous than portrayed by those who placed faith in America’s geographical isolation, he insisted that in a world filled with states eager to exploit opportunities presented by weaknesses, a failure to face overt and transparent attacks on vital interests with military power would invite further attacks, encroachments, and injustices. No state would reverse its policy due to American threats. Shirk war, he insisted, and any future references to American rights and sovereignty or attempts at deterrence will excite contempt abroad, and mortification and shame at home. Should any of our vessels be hereafter seized and condemned, however unjustly, and that all will be seized and condemned may be confidently expected, we must be silent, or be heard by foreign powers in the humble language of petition only.28

In addition to the goals of establishing American reputation and deterring future attacks, Clay also followed Madison in grafting references to British hegemony onto concerns regarding trade to identify the vital interests and duties at stake in the conflict. Given Britain’s extensive and unlawful interference with American ships, defending America’s commercial rights as a neutral was necessary, he argued. Yet Britain did not just interfere with American trade; again agreeing with Madison and the Report, Clay argued that Britain attempted to shut off all trade it did not control. The evidence indicated that British policy was a joint venture between English merchants and political leaders, both bent upon creating an international trade monopoly that would allow London to impose on the

28  Clay also made two other interesting arguments. First, he held that the public desired war. Second, he made comforting noises regarding the capacity of the US to defend itself and inflict decisive defeats on vulnerable British assets.

3  THE WAR OF 1812 

55

world its economic preferences. Halting that attempt is a duty, which the government must discharge by means of war.

The Standard in Related Policy Discussions The Republicans’ attitude toward war and events in Europe changed during the 25 years prior to the war, and in so doing affected how they applied the Necessity Standard. In the immediate post-Revolution era, Republicans initially sided wholeheartedly with France. However, after Jefferson attained the presidency, they adopted an aloof political position toward the French, rejected close connections with a conservative Britain, and (when either side interfered significantly in trade or otherwise appeared to threaten American interests) judged boycotts an effective alternative to the use of force and pursued that tool relentlessly and rather inflexibly. This approach, partly defensive in its reciprocal nature and partly offensive in its attempt to change the character and behavior of other nations to harmonize them with American preferences, fit the Republican’s desire to see the transformation of other states into the American image and its reluctance to engage in large-scale military actions even as they identified trade as a vital interest.29 The Federalists, in contrast, consistently privileged industry and commerce and saw boycotts as ironic in their tendency to damage American interests. Unlike Republicans, they viewed France in the aftermath of the French Revolution with great suspicion, and looked to Britain for congenial, hierarchical, models of political organization.30 They also respected British strength. For Alexander Hamilton, the world was a realist place characterized (in Hunt’s description) by the centrality of “power, self-­ interest, and passion,” factors which would not respond to the feeble efforts of weak states like the US to change their interlocutors or prevail through the use of military or economic weapons. His policy held that in the context of conflicts in Europe, the alternative of bandwagoning31 with 29  First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1801; Annual Message to Congress, March 17, 1803; Michael Hunt, Ideology and American Foreign Policy, 2nd ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009), pp. 22–3; R. Tucker and D. Hendrickson, “Thomas Jefferson and American Foreign Policy,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 69, No. 2 (Spring 1990). 30  For a lengthy discussion of the differences between Federalists and Republicans on relevant questions, see Owen, Liberal Peace, Liberal War, chap. 3. 31  To bandwagon means to follow the policies of a stronger power rather than attempt to contest those policies or establish an independent position even though following this course

56 

D. J. LORENZO

rather than warring on Britain was the best solution to problems of security for the US attempting to build strength through economic means. Washington’s Farewell Address,32 though influenced by Hamilton, presented a potential third way that both Adams and Madison appeared to have partially embraced. For Washington, security policy must safeguard American sovereignty, independence, and unilateral policy freedom. This meant that resisting attempts to subordinate the US was an essential duty, but his attitude suggested that instances requiring the large-scale use of military power to discharge that duty are rare. In keeping with other traditionalists, he held that officials should pursue peaceful approaches to resolving conflicts with vast patience and flexibility. More generally, Washington outlined a policy position that the US, for reasons of external independence, internal unity, and general weakness, would refuse to attach or align itself with either side of the European divide. Neutrality rather than a martial policy would be the preferred course, achieved through the assiduous avoidance of measures that would provoke either side to attack while also defending the state from outside interference.33 However, as noted above, Washington had also gestured toward additional ways of defending independence that echoed Jefferson’s 1785 remarks and pushed policy in the direction of viewing reputation as a vital interest, attacks against which should be met quickly with military force. Advocating in his Eighth Annual Message for naval funding adequate to the task of protecting neutral trade from states at war, as well as to respond to the general harassment that American merchants and citizens experienced abroad, Washington made explicit the necessity of militarily defending the nation’s reputation from insults by linking military retaliation for such acts with deterrence: But besides this, it is in our own experience, that the most sincere Neutrality is not a sufficient guard against the depredations of Nations at War. To secure respect to a Neutral Flag, requires a Naval force, organized, and results in the stronger power gaining more from the relationship. 32  September 19, 1796: Farewell Address. 33  See, for example, Harper’s discussion of the Address in American Machiavelli, chap. 14. Lind understands this policy as one of isolationism, which would inform both the strategy of refusing to interfere with the balance of power struggles in Europe and the drive to acquire territory in the Americas to allow the US to dominate the continent and rule out the division of the territory into small states characterized by a balance of power set of relations. Michael Lind, The American way of strategy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), pp. 56–61.

3  THE WAR OF 1812 

57

ready to vindicate it, from insult or aggression. This may even prevent the necessity of going to War, by discouraging belligerent Powers from committing such violations of the rights of the Neutral party, as may first or last, leave no other option.

Thus, as Loveman notes, in advocating actions that were understood to “vindicate” the nation’s honor, Washington “believed in deterrence through military strength.”34 The Adams administration’s decision to abandon alternatives and engage in the Quasi War with France in the late 1790s was another important influence on Madison’s decision. Like the war with Britain, this conflict involved disputes over trade between the US and France in general, and with neutral trade in the West Indies in particular.35 Between 1798 and 1800, Congress cleared the way for American military actions against France by passing various laws suspending commerce with France, authorizing the president to take action against armed French ships, charging the president with responsibility for defending American shipping, and abrogating existing treaties with France on the grounds that France was engaged in warlike actions against the US.36 Taking this cue, the Adams administration, employing the Necessity Standard, depicted American military actions as response to a French policy, noting that French actions affected US vital interests by damaging its trade and threatening its sovereignty. The policy informing the decision to use force was complex: the US desired peace, engaged in “preparation for war” that was meant to sustain peace through deterrence, but finally employed military force when France subjected the US to warlike actions.37 34  Brian Loveman, No higher law: American foreign policy and the Western Hemisphere since 1776 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2010), p. 12. 35  For a complete discussion of the grievances of both sides leading up to the conflict, see Peter P.  Hill, “Prologue to the Quasi-War: Stresses in Franco-American Commercial Relations, 1793–96,” The Journal of Modern History, Vol. 49, No. 1, On Demand Supplement (Mar., 1977). 36  For this legislative history, see J.  Gregory Sidak, “The Quasi War Cases  – And Their Relevance to Whether Letters of Marque and Reprisal Constrain Presidential War Powers,” 28 Harv. J.L. & Pub. Policy 465 (2005), pp. 481–2. Sidak brings to our attention the related case of Bas v. Tingy 4 U.S. 37 (1800), in which several members of the Supreme Court deemed the situation between the US and France at the time to be a state of war, though an “imperfect war” given the lack of a formal declaration and its limited nature. “The QuasiWar Case,” p. 484. 37  December 8, 1798: Second Annual Message.

58 

D. J. LORENZO

Adams continued to discuss military and security matters in this vein throughout his time in office. It was the policy of his administration, Adams held, to avoid the wars raging in Europe, but to do so in a manner that preserved American sovereignty. This policy could require measures that extended beyond reliance upon America’s physical isolation from Europe and a policy of neutrality. The US would actively defend a short, nationalist list of vital interests by military means if subjected to warlike actions, which it would view as decisive casus belli. This policy did not extend to forward defense, but rather focused on defending trade and the homeland, requiring the creation of land fortifications to defend key harbors and “a navy adapted to defensive war, and which may in case of necessity be quickly brought into use.”38 Thomas Jefferson’s report to Congress in 1801 on the navy’s military action in the Mediterranean against Tripoli in defense of American commerce characterized military action that took place further afield.39 Describing the conditions which prevailed when US naval forces arrived on the Barbary Coast as ruling out alternatives, he asserted that “The bey had already declared war in form…. and had permitted itself to denounce war, on our failure to comply before a given day.” Jefferson did not mention diplomacy here; the fact that “war” had commenced in the form of attacks on commerce made such efforts moot. An immediate turn to military action is the only correct response. In turn, Jefferson reiterated that the defense of trade was a duty. Americans were going about their lawful business in pursuing trade when the government of Tripoli interfered with them, acted belligerently, and failed to conform to accepted international norms. Because the US did not accede to its demands, “Our commerce in the Mediterranean was blockaded, and that of the Atlantic in peril.” The navy rightly and successfully responded to these developments, he argued, to defend the right of American citizens to engage in commerce anywhere in the world. When the war with Britain was engaged in 1812, Madison’s discussion of his foreign policy in private communications used the language of the standard and echoed his communications with Congress. He held that the US had exercised great patience and latitude with alternatives but was pushed into a war by intolerable threats to trade, sovereignty, and a desirable world order. In writing to South Carolina legislators, he asserted that 38  November 22, 1800: Fourth Annual Message; also December 3, 1799: Third Annual Message. 39  December 8, 1801: First Annual Message.

3  THE WAR OF 1812 

59

he had “omitted no pacific effort” in his attempts to moderate British behavior toward US citizens.40 To Jefferson, he wrote that British officials “prefer war” rather than change their policy, and thus “We have nothing left, therefore, but to make ready for it.”41 In responding to a missive from New Jersey legislators, he likewise alluded to having “had no choice” but to go to war. “…[A]ny endeavor short of [war],” he insisted, “had not only been fruitless, but had been followed by fresh usurpation, aggression.”42 In that same communication, he outlined the vital interests and duties which, being threatened, mandated a military response. War, he held, was preferable to “the greater evil of a surrender of our Sovereignty.” To acquiesce to British policies would be to agree to “principles degrading the U States from the rank of a sovereign independent Power.” Further, it would be to knuckle under to a generally hostile, British-dominated world order that would regulate US trade and exercise “dominion” over the oceans. The intolerable result would be that “her laws, not the law of nations, which is ours as well as hers, are to regulate our intercourse with the rest of the world.”

Madison’s Application of the Standard and Policy To which military and security policies did Madison’s public application of the Necessity Standard allude? Several constructed elements were important to Madison’s stance in 1812. First was the conclusion derived from an accumulation of actions and events that diplomacy and other alternatives were not working and were dangerous given the British character. He problematized diplomatic and other non-military policies in that context by directing attention to the intolerable cost to be paid if the US did not now use military force given the discovery that Britain had no intention of resolving differences peacefully with due respect to US vital interests. Second was the related decision that American reputation and capacity for further deterrence was now at stake given the nature of British actions. Unlike previous situations in which the Madison gave status reports which outlined the failure of specific diplomatic efforts and even referred to 40  June 8, 1812, To House of Rep. of the State of South Carolina, in Gailard Hunt, ed., The Writings of James Madison (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1900), 9 Vols, Vol. 8. 41  Letter, May 3, 1812, in Hunt, The Writings of James Madison, vol. 8. 42  “To House of Rep. of the State of South Carolina,” June 8, 1812. In Hunt, The Writings of James Madison, vol. 8.

60 

D. J. LORENZO

“warlike” actions,43 his war message drew the conclusion that such efforts were no longer viable because their continuation would erode a reputation for forcefully defending interests upon which the US relied to protect trade, territorial security, and sovereignty through negotiations, threats, and deterrence. Third was the conclusion that the sum of Britain’s actions created a hostile world order. Several key markers informed the military policy Madison communicated to the public. In similar contexts, Madison implied, the US would exercise large amounts of patience with alternatives and exercise equally large amounts of latitude in pursuing them, but would abandon them in favor of war in the following contexts: when multiple peaceful tools have been tried and failed in the face of threats to vital interests; when an actor continually uses military force directly or by proxy against US vital interests, which include trade, territory, borders, and sovereignty; when an actor demonstrates its incorrigibility by its character and actions; when an actor, over a long period of time, engages in the construction of a hostile world order, and when an actor’s provocations are so great that, in failing to meet them with military force, America’s reputation and deterrence capacity would be significantly damaged. While these factors were not exhaustive of reasons to resort to force and in other hands could individually prove sufficient to justify military force, Madison’s treatment suggests that all were required to justify war in 1812. This discussion clearly exhibits the influence of the restrictive side of the standard, and the effort required to overcome its preference for non-­ military solutions. In Madison’s justifications, the US went to war as a last resort as defined by the convergence of many factors. The traditional suspicion of war, probably coupled with comparative American weakness and the split in the American public, led Madison to articulate a policy of substantial patience and significant flexibility in the face of perceived provocations. However, Madison’s discussion of the purposes of the war extended some way beyond the traditional, nationalist list of vital interests and duties that the Colonial and Revolutionary eras established. A significant element is the importance he attached to contesting a power bent on changing the international order to narrowly suit its own interests. He portrayed Britain as using its struggle with Napoleon not to free the world of the latter’s imperial pretensions, but to subjugate competitors (including the US) while jousting with the French for global domination. He insisted that the US must go to war to prevent Britain from achieving those aims.  Second Message, Dec. 5, 1810; Third Message, Nov. 5, 1811.

43

3  THE WAR OF 1812 

61

Madison’s understanding of world affairs in these discussions was neither purely nationalist nor purely realist. Despite his location of the US in a world system significantly informed by power, Madison ultimately posited the war as one to protect the US as a community of various actors—frontiersmen, those who ply the seas in pursuit of trade, patriots—bound together by a national spirit and interest and largely uninterested in alliances. Tellingly, he refused to label the war an intervention on the French side of the European conflict. Nor did he employ Balance of Power Arguments. His references to international norms also document his conception of the US as a defender of an order that diverged from a realist system. His long and detailed discussions of the law of nations as it applies to neutral trade, blockades, and war situated the US within an order animated by a set of customary and practical rules sovereign political communities develop rather than within a realist system based on power and alliances. Madison concluded that while the US inhabited a world partly understandable through realist concepts, a US which followed a realist policy of bandwagoning with the British (or French) or engaging in a pure balance of power maneuver could expect no favors, while a US that depended solely upon neutrality and economic tools to defend its interests from large states would likewise be abused. All these policies would invite continuous attacks on vital interests. Madison advocated instead a muscular form of nationalist self-help to defend American interests and prevent a change in the world order, even though he pursued this line through policies that were very patient with alternatives and flexible in terms of their pursuit. This stance distinguished him from both the Northeastern Federalists and the southern Jeffersonians. In turn, while Madison was just as nationalist in his security strategy and understandings of vital interests as the War Hawks, he was more interested than that group in upholding international norms and a traditional world order. Ultimately, this position made the policy he revealed an aggressive form of Washingtonianism.44  This conclusion differs from many depictions of the war. For example, Lind argues it was a war of territorial acquisition. Mead holds that it was mainly a war of national honor only tangentially related to trade or reputation. Owen understands it at least partly as a manifestation of Jeffersonian suspicion of Britain as an illiberal state. Loveman, meanwhile, holds that it was a balance of power war which sought variously to “expand or consolidate the United States’ Western Hemisphere bastion or to dislodge the European presence in North America.” See Michael Lind, The American way of strategy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), pp. 61–2; W. R. Mead, Special providence: American foreign policy and how it changed the world (New York: Routledge, 2013), p. 250, Owen, Liberal Peace, Liberal War, chap. 3, and Loveman, No Higher Law, pp. 29, 31. 44

CHAPTER 4

The War with Mexico Using Military Force Expeditiously to Protect American Territory, Citizens, and Reputation

The Contexts of the War with Mexico The dispute that triggered the war between the US and Mexico had its origins in the 1830s and involved a variety of issues. These included the American annexation of Texas, the adjustment of borders between the US and Mexico given that annexation, and compensation for losses American citizens suffered in Mexico. Severe political instability at the top of Mexico’s political system after its successful war of independence in 1821 contributed to the failure to settle those issues peacefully, as did the US preoccupation with territorial security and expansion. The most important source of friction was Texas. Although the US had agreed in the Adams-Onis Treaty to abandon the claim that Texas was included in the Louisiana Purchase, President Andrew Jackson’s attempt to buy that territory in 1829 signaled continued American interest. Subsequently, having attracted considerable migration from the US, in 1836 Texas fought for and gained its independence from Mexico. While General Santa Anna acceded to the Texans’ demands for independence at San Jacinto, the Mexican national legislature repudiated that agreement, leading to a permanent conflict between Mexico and its former province. As the dispute ground on, it was not lost on either the Mexican leaders who took office after Santa Anna, or the leadership of the new republic, that many of the settlers at the heart of the independence movement were (or had been) US citizens. For Mexico, this meant that the entire project © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 D. J. Lorenzo, War and American Foreign Policy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-66695-8_4

63

64 

D. J. LORENZO

of Texas independence was a ruse by the US to grab Mexican territory, a point made by Mexican officials and civic leaders in both Mexico and Washington. For Texans, their standing as former or current US citizens led them to believe that they had a strong claim on the US government for protection and assistance. Aside from the issue of independence, the boundaries of the Texas territory were disputed. At the least, Mexico claimed that the boundary should be at the Nueces River, leaving sections of what are now Texas, New Mexico, and Colorado under Mexican control no matter the status of Texas. Texas (and later the US), held that the boundary was the Rio Grande. As Texas began contemplating joining the US, the dispute over boundaries became critical. Not only was the US attempting to grab Texas, Mexican officials believed; it was also trying to snatch land that was not administratively included in that territory. The Polk administration’s approach to the exiled General Santa Anna with a proposal to purchase California and New Mexico if the general found his way back into power further inflamed the issue. Mexico issued an ultimatum in 1843 that it would go to war if the US attempted to annex Texas. The issue of compensation for injuries suffered by Americans in Mexico was of long standing and also formed a significant source of the conflict.1 It was constituted by the reported abuse of American citizens doing business in Mexico and claims for damages those citizens lodged against the Mexican government for damage inflicted on their property, persons, and reputations.2 1  The subject of reparations for harms inflicted on American citizens and their property, particularly ships and cargo seized on various pretexts by foreign governments, formed an important part of American diplomacy prior to the Mexican War. A vast portion of Andrew Jackson’s Seventh Annual Message (December 7, 1835), for example, was taken up with the long and complicated history of his administration’s attempts at gaining compensation for losses to American citizens inflicted by French forces going back to the 1790s. Loveman notes this aspect of American security policy in Brian Loveman, No higher law: American foreign policy and the Western Hemisphere since 1776 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2010), pp. 58, 116, 163. 2  Citizens of other countries experience similar difficulties. France solved the problem by declaring war, with Mexico quickly backing down. Great Britain reached an agreement to resolve the claims through a joint commission. An agreement between the US and Mexico in April of 1839 also arranged to settle claims through a joint commission. The results were mixed. The project eventually awarded claimants a bit over $2 million out of total claims totaling more than $11 million, but claimants remained unhappy. Further complicating the matter was the fact that Mexico initially failed to pay the claims that were awarded, and even

4  THE WAR WITH MEXICO 

65

Tensions between the US and Mexico dramatically increased in 1844. The US and the government of Texas signed a treaty agreeing to annexation on April 12 of that year. Mexico responded by cutting relations with the US. The treaty was approved by the Senate on March 1, 1845 and by the Texas legislature on June 23. Texas officially joined the Union in December of 1845. Responding to Mexican threats of military action, President Polk sent American troops under Zachary Taylor to Corpus Christi in the summer of 1845, and simultaneously deployed more warships to the Gulf of Mexico. Polk then dispatched representatives to Mexico with a set of proposals to resolve all aspects of the dispute: the US would buy parts of California territory for as much as $25 million, and the matter of Texas’s border would be resolved in the favor of the US in exchange for the US taking over the payment of its citizens’ claims against Mexico, plus an additional $5 million. Otherwise, the US would consider resorting to war to settle the matter. Mexican officials refused to meet with Polk’s representative. A military clash became more likely when, in January of 1846, Taylor’s military unit was sent to the Rio Grande to confront Mexican troops that had marched to the area. On April 23, 1846, President Paredes of Mexico declared war on the US, and on April 24, Mexican troops attacked a detachment of Taylor’s troops. Taylor responded, winning several victories over Mexican forces at the Battles of Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma on May 8 and 9.

President Polk on the War with Mexico Why War? Duties and Vital Interests Polk identified immediate and future territorial security issues, deterrence, the interests of private citizens, and the protection of trade as the vital interests at stake. In defending those interests by aggressively using military force, Polk rejected the cautious, purely defensive posture the Whigs and others advocated. In his War Address and his Second Annual Address, he held that it was his administration’s duty not just to remove the after a new agreement was reached in 1843 that allowed Mexico to pay the claims in installments, it rendered only a fifth of the money owed before it stopped payment, pleading poverty and other pressing needs. See Peter M. Jonas, “William Parrott, American Claims, and the Mexican War,” Journal of the Early Republic 12, no. 2 (1992), pp. 224–5, 227, 229.

66 

D. J. LORENZO

immediate Mexican menace to American territory and citizens, but also to punish Mexico for its aggression, discourage it from attacking the US again, restore the trade that had been “annihilated” due to Mexican mistreatment of American merchants, and successfully obtain compensation for the reparations Mexico owed US citizens. His formulation was to deploy military force well beyond the border and for more than strictly defensive purposes. This strategy was necessary, he argued, because the only way to defend vital interests is by mounting a military invasion of Mexican territory, defeating Mexico’s armies comprehensively, and forcing its leadership to yield, thus guaranteeing that they would refrain from attacking American territory, restore normal trading relations, and provide the compensation they owed American citizens. Other complementary aims also emerged. Polk invoked the Values and Security Norms through a Democratic/Liberal security proposition to justify something new, regime change in the name of US security. This argument followed up on Polk’s suggestion that the authoritarian character of the Paredes’ government was importantly to blame for the outbreak of the war and Mexico’s violations of friendly diplomatic relations. In his Second Annual Message, Polk denigrated that government as undemocratic and illiberal, accusing it of not only subverting the will of the Mexican people and oppressing them, but also of endangering the security of the US and other states in the Western hemisphere by plotting to invite autocratic European powers into North American affairs. Thus, he commented there was good reason to believe from all his [Paredes] conduct that it was his intention to convert the Republic of Mexico into a monarchy and to call a foreign European prince to the throne. Preparatory to this end, he had during his short rule destroyed the liberty of the press, tolerating that portion of it only which openly advocated the establishment of a monarchy. The better to secure the success of his ultimate designs, he had by an arbitrary decree convoked a Congress, not to be elected by the free voice of the people, but to be chosen in a manner to make them subservient to his will and to give him absolute control over their deliberations.

Polk justified using the war to force a change in Mexico’s government based on this analysis. He facilitated General Santa Anna’s (now, according to Polk, converted to the side of democracy and Mexico’s constitution) return to Mexico and subsequent coup against Paredes. Polk held

4  THE WAR WITH MEXICO 

67

that Paredes would continue the war indefinitely and never recognize the Texas annexation, whereas he hoped that Santa Anna would differ substantially on those points as well as in his governing style. Polk would be disappointed on all counts.3 Polk had initially disavowed any territorial ambitions or material returns in pursuing a military policy against Mexico. The Whigs and John Calhoun treated this claim with unabashed disbelief. Polk, of course, did not consider the acquisition of Texas to be a war aim. In his eyes, that territory had already been incorporated into the US; the ejection of hostile Mexican forces from Texas was a justification for the war. The settlement of citizens’ claims was also in his portrayal a matter of obtaining rightful compensation for harms and not a material reward.4 He did make offhand comments in his Second Annual Address regarding Mexican territories (such as California) occupied by American troops, holding that “conquered” territories must be administered by a victorious nation and that the inhabitants of those territories were being acclimated to a free government, thereby discarding objections that taking over territories inhabited by non-Anglo-Saxons would threaten the republic. However, his remarks on this topic conveyed a sense of ambiguity; even though his administration had earlier attempted to acquire Mexican territories by negotiating their purchase and threatening war if Mexico was not amenable to his offer, he was not prepared at that time to claim any Mexican possessions as a primary war aim. It was not until his Third Annual Address that Polk unambiguously acknowledged that the acquisition of Mexican territories (again excluding Texas) would be a product of the war, but then conceptualized this outcome as necessary to offset the monetary compensation Mexico had by treaty acknowledged it owed to US citizens, and act as reparations for the expenses of the war the US had fought to extract that compensation. These were not benefits but payment for debts. However, in a key passage he also referred to the necessity of obtaining those territories (particularly California) given the possibility that, should other nations acquire them, 3  Pinheiro also argues that the conflict was a “Jacksonian democratic war.” John Pinheiro, Manifest Ambition: James K.  Polk and Civil-Military Relations during the Mexican War (Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group, 2007), pp. 3–4, 7–8. 4  The Whigs generally ridiculed this war aim as well, holding that the states owed the federal government far more than Mexico owed US citizens. However, many critics eventually voted for war, including Calhoun.

68 

D. J. LORENZO

US security and well-being would be threatened due to the militarily and commercially desirable features they possessed.5 Why War Now? The Absence of Viable Alternatives For Polk, a viable alternative to the use of military force must first deal with the immediate threat posed by armed incursions into American territories by Mexican forces. Second, it must head off future threats to American territories that Mexico might mount. Third, it must prevent the possible introduction of European powers into the continent by an authoritarian Mexican government. Fourth, it must vigorously defend the interests of American citizens doing business outside the US, and restore trade with Mexico. He communicated to Congress that he had pursued alternatives with a moderate but limited amount of patience, and a like amount of flexibility and latitude. Polk established first that hostilities already existed. He applied the label of “war” to Mexico’s military incursions into Texas, ongoing Mexican military preparations for crossing again into Texas on a much larger scale, and Mexican attacks on American commerce. Had such actions occurred at sea, he insisted, no one would have doubted that a state of war existed and a military response required. All Congress now need do is recognize that a condition of war exists: Mexico has passed the boundary of the United States, has invaded our territory and shed American blood upon the American soil. She has proclaimed that hostilities have commenced, and that the two nations are now at war.6

Polk elaborated on this point in his Second Annual Message by highlighting the contention that the territory in Texas on which American forces 5  Second Annual Message to Congress, December 8, 1846; Third Annual Message, December 7, 1847. The eventual territorial gains derived from the war were less than Polk had instructed his delegate to obtain, and much less than other supporters desired. See David Hendrickson, Union, nation, or empire: The American debate over international relations, 1789–1941 (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2009), pp. 171–2, 180. 6  Message to Congress, May 11, 1846; Second Annual Message to Congress, December 8, 1846; Third Annual Message to Congress, December 7, 1847. For a critical examination of Polk’s methods and motives in approaching the war, see J.  Schroeder, Mr. Polk’s War: American Opposition and Dissent, 1846–1848 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1973), chap. 1.

4  THE WAR WITH MEXICO 

69

engaged the Mexican army was not disputed ground, but irrefutably US soil. Mexican actions constituted acts of war against the US, not trivial incidents or lawful acts of self-defense on the part of the Mexican government, as critics held. Mexico in this description was a dangerous enemy already acting upon its intentions to invade and take over American territory.7 Like Madison, Polk faced criticism that he was acting hastily and aggressively, and like Madison he resolutely deployed Futility Arguments to rebut those contentions. He referred to such arguments repeatedly in his three messages to Congress that dealt with military affairs and Mexico,8 most probably in response to the Whigs who argued that Polk had made unrealistic demands on the Mexican government and was now rushing to war without giving diplomacy a chance to work. Their position interpreted the Security Norm narrowly, emphasized the restrictive part of the standard, and highlighted the preference for peace contained in the Values Norm: the US must defend its border against the attacks the administration had provoked, but go no further, cease provocations, and do its utmost to resolve the dispute through negotiations. In his messages on the war, Polk used Futility Arguments in four ways to rebut these critics, discard diplomacy as an option, and further establish military action as the only viable policy available. First, he implied that the onus was on Mexico to reciprocate America’s peaceful gestures, an obligation which Mexico had failed to meet. He outlined a long history of efforts on the part of American officials to resolve outstanding problems by diplomatic means and insisted that the US had provided Mexico numerous chances to sort out the problems that afflicted their mutual relations. His own administration had exercised at least some patience with Mexico. Rather than rushing to arms, it had pursued alternatives in the face of provocation. “Long before the advance of our Army to the left bank of the Rio Grande,” he argued, “we had ample cause of war against Mexico.” His administration had also displayed flexibility. It had offered to “adjust our boundary and other causes of difference… on such fair and equitable 7  Louis Fisher argues that these statements were factually untrue, and that Polk later implicitly acknowledged this by backing away from the assertion that the clash occurred on American territory, instead stating it occurred on territory both sides claimed. See Louis Fisher, “The Law: When Wars Begin: Misleading Statements by Presidents,” Presidential Studies Quarterly, Vol. 40, No. 1, Ethics and the Presidency (March 2010). 8  Message to Congress, May 11, 1846; Second Annual Message to Congress, December 8, 1846; Third Annual Message to Congress, December 7, 1847.

70 

D. J. LORENZO

principles as would lead to permanent relations of the most friendly nature.” It had even agreed to withdraw naval forces from Vera Cruz at Mexico’s request. Nevertheless, Mexican leaders failed to respond and displayed no indication of change. He thereby held that diplomacy had reached an end in the sense that it showed no promise based on past results. Second, Polk pointed to the generally untrustworthy character of Mexican officials. They ratified treaties (specifically those dealing with indemnities to US citizens) but failed to honor them. They took advantage of American leniency to gain unlawful advantages. They attacked American territory despite ongoing negotiations or offers to negotiate on the part of the US.9 Military force, Polk insisted, was necessary given that repeated efforts to pursue peaceful alternatives had come to nothing in the face of Mexico’s truculent, aggressive, and dangerous behavior. Third, Polk gestured toward another reason why such efforts were fruitless and war necessary. In his war address, he referred to the military character of Mexico’s new government led by General Paredes. Here, Polk utilized a Democratic/Liberal security proposition to identify the danger of authoritarian governments posed to the US. He commented that the current government of Mexico (which refused to meet with his envoy) had attained power through a “revolution [that] was accomplished solely by the army, the people having taken little part in the contest” and that “the supreme power in Mexico passed into the hands of a military leader” and linked those characteristics to Mexico’s obstinacy.10 Fourth, Polk set off in a different direction when elaborating on the dangers of continued diplomacy. Instead of mixing Futility with Existing Hostilities and Security Arguments to focus on the present while accepting an initial resort to diplomacy as obligatory in accordance with the Values Norm, he instead used Reputation and Deterrence Arguments to insist that in some circumstances the Security Norm must trump the Values Norm and the preference for peace. As evidenced by the current situation, the price of not going to war was the high probability of 9  In his Second Annual Message, Polk reminded Congress of its own role in formulating a military response to Mexico. The administration’s approach, he argued in consequence, was the result of a martial policymaking process in which “the executive and legislative departments concurred.” 10  For references by other backers of the war to Mexico’s non-democratic government, see John Owen, Liberal Peace, Liberal War: American Politics and International Security (Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press, 1997), pp. 123–4.

4  THE WAR WITH MEXICO 

71

continued or future attacks and other hostile actions. Building and further expanding on Jefferson’s reading of the Security Norm which produced the “punish insults” policy, and anticipating twentieth-century arguments condemning appeasement, he insisted that in confronting “untrustworthy” opponents such as Mexico, diplomacy must not be exhausted, but rather quickly abandoned as an opening gambit. He castigated previous administrations for lingering over negotiations rather than vigorously dealing with Mexico’s leadership. When faced with belligerent and devious foes, the correct policy is to resort speedily to military force, not only to attain vital objectives in the short term, but also to realize future objectives in the form of deterrence and the creation of a reputation for strength and willingness to use military force in the face of threats and provocations. Polk made this point in his war address by noting that the pursuit of negotiations and a general reluctance to use military force in the past (a policy that the Whigs still advocated) had created the current set of complications: Our forbearance has gone to such an extreme as to be mistaken in its character. Had we acted with vigor in repelling the insults and redressing the injuries inflicted by Mexico at the commencement, we should doubtless have escaped all the difficulties in which we are now involved.11

He followed up these contentions in his Second Annual Message by retrospectively throwing doubt on previous diplomatic interactions with Mexico that touched on territorial and related disputes.12 He reiterated the allegation that Van Buren’s and Tyler’s policies had created the current crisis and made addressing it more problematic. America’s earlier indulgence in the face of Mexican provocations emboldened Mexico’s leaders and abetted their belligerence, Polk charged, because that policy cast the US as weak and spineless. American persistence in fruitlessly negotiating encouraged Mexican authorities to abandon their commitments and resort casually to violence as preferred policy options. Remembering America’s soft reaction in the past, they counted on the US responding with diplomatic niceties rather than military force or the credible threat thereof. Military coercion was not only the correct policy in 1846. It had been so for some years:  Message to Congress, May 11, 1846.  Second Annual Message to Congress, December 8, 1846.

11 12

72 

D. J. LORENZO

Had the United States at that time adopted compulsory measures and taken redress into their own hands, all our difficulties with Mexico would probably have been long since adjusted and the existing war have been averted. Magnanimity and moderation on our part only had the effect to complicate these difficulties and render an amicable settlement of them the more embarrassing.

We see even more clearly the connection between this and similar understandings of security and Jefferson’s dicta when Polk again noted in his Second Annual Address that America’s historical forbearance regarding Mexico, including its willingness to put up with the insults, bordered on dishonor. Such insults had to be addressed to “preserve American character” as well as the nation’s “self-respect” in the eyes of the world. These references to reputation reinforced the point that immediate military action was the correct policy, this time due to the perceptions of policies in the larger world. Polk assumed that only aggressive moves by states to secure their borders and protect their citizens are effective. Diplomacy employed repeatedly and unsuccessfully cannot provide such defenses and invites attacks.

Congressional Applications of the Necessity Standard On May 11, Polk asked for a declaration of war. Despite vigorous complaints by the Whigs and John Calhoun, as well as deepening divisions over slavery, Polk prevailed rather easily, winning by a margin of 40 to 2 in the Senate, and 174 to 14 in the House. The contrast with the close vote for war in 1812 is stark. Critics’ complaints of war fever provide evidence of the general popularity of the conflict. As did Polk, Representative H.A. Haralson13 dismissed alternatives to war by recounting a history of warlike relations between the US and Mexico. His purpose was traditional, in that he pinned responsibility for the war on the opponent and generally argued that a martial policy would be a reciprocal action. He stressed here the presence of Mexican forces in American territory as the main casus belli. US citizens had also been killed and imprisoned, and diplomats physically accosted by Mexican nationals 13  Speech, House of Representatives, July 16, 1846. Haralson was a four-term Congressman from Georgia.

4  THE WAR WITH MEXICO 

73

or officials. Mexican consuls had threatened war and made libelous remarks. Mexican nationals had seized and robbed commercial vessels. He further emphasized the point that Mexican authorities had told their military commanders that they were at war with the US even before Polk had moved US troops to the Rio Grande, so it was not that action that started hostilities or provoked the Mexicans into believing that the US posed a threat to their security, as some critics argued. Polk’s dispatch of military units to confront the Mexican army was a basic defensive measure made necessary by any reasonable concern for security. Haralson then supplemented this position with Futility Arguments. The outbreak of current hostilities, Haralson urged, was the culmination of a long series of problems that demonstrate that diplomacy does not work with Mexican governments and everyone should consider it exhausted. Here Haralson differed from Polk in his discussion. Rather than arguing that the US should have much earlier responded militarily, Haralson used his discussion of diplomacy as a pivot to contend that this and previous administrations had done their duty to the Values Norm by delaying use of military force. Drawing a sharp contrast between a patient, peace-loving US and a dangerous, untrustworthy, and recalcitrant Mexico, he responded to critics of the war who depicted the US as aggressively hounding a weak neighbor. It is Mexico, not the US government, which is warlike, which attempts to gain territory illicitly, and which seeks out every opportunity to use military means to settle disputes, he argued. In Haralson’s depiction of events, Polk followed his predecessors’ example by building on their efforts to deal with Mexico peacefully and implementing martial measures only after all other avenues had proven failures. He did not reinforce Polk’s argument that a quick resort to arms is the best policy. Rather, he established the existence of a kinder and gentler approach of using military force only as a last resort, and portrayed Polk as a president who was pushed to war only after the preferred, patient policy of diplomacy, negotiations, and conciliation had failed after extensive and lengthy efforts. Haralson understood the war as an action that protected American security in the short and long terms: a successful war would mean that Mexico would no longer threaten American territories and would be deterred from doing so again. However, he went further in a nationalist direction by invoking the General Welfare and Security Norms. He held that the war furthered the larger enterprise of Manifest Destiny by tying it to the acquisition of Texas. Nevertheless, he also held that the Texas

74 

D. J. LORENZO

annexation only came about after a long period of evaluation and in the face of increasing interference by other nations. It was not a hasty, thoughtless, and illegitimate land grab as opponents described it, nor was militarily defending that annexation an act of aggression. Instead, the annexation was a necessary, prudent, and justifiable measure that reflected the will of those in Texas to join the Union. It was a peaceful act of expansion fully in keeping with America’s political values and form of government that Polk must now defend militarily.14 Representative Lewis Cass15 provided in contrast an aggressive and realist defense of the war. Like Haralson and Polk, he dismissed alternatives by providing an Existing Hostilities argument. He emphasized the presence of Mexican troops on American soil as an act of war. The importance of this argument lies in its sharp, critical edge that pointed to a defense policy driven by the executive branch rather than Congress. Cass held that acts of war render moot Congressional deliberations and Congress’s authority to declare war. Here Cass not only expanded upon arguments Hamilton supplied earlier in the century, but also looked forward to later positions which will emphasize the military powers of the executive as well as the need for executives to take military action in similar circumstances. This discussion is also important because it shines light on Cass’s preferred military and security policies. Cass started with labeling, simply holding that the movement of Mexican forces into American territory constitutes an act of war that requires a military response given the duty to protect American territory and lives. Lecturing Polk’s critics on the nature of war, he addressed those who queried whether rightful Mexican officials authorized the incursion (and therefore counseled restraint) by insisting that such considerations are beside the point—the Mexican army was involved in military activities on American soil. That action constitutes 14  McDonough describes other popular justifications that advocated the annexation not only of Texas, but all of Mexico as well. Matthew McDonough, “Manifestly uncertain destiny: the debate over American expansionism, 1803–1848,” (PhD diss., Kansas State University, 2011), pp. 260–4. 15  “War Against Mexico,” 29th Congress, 1st Session, May 12, 1846, Appendix to the Congressional Globe. While at the time a member of Congress, Cass had also been governor of the Michigan Territory, Secretary of War, Secretary of State, ambassador to France, US Senator from Michigan, and a presidential candidate. In Hendrickson’s description, he was an “ardent expansionist.” David Hendrickson, Union, nation, or empire: The American debate over international relations, 1789–1941 (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2009), p. 178.

4  THE WAR WITH MEXICO 

75

war, and the US military must meet it with arms. The government must immediately respond militarily. Cass next lambasted critics (e.g., John Calhoun) who argued on procedural grounds that war does not exist until Congress speaks, and therefore that the president cannot constitutionally employ the military until and unless Congress authorizes him to do so. Cass insisted that wars stem from events as well as political processes. Here Cass addressed the same issues as had Bas v. Tingy. The Constitution, Cass contended, created procedures and powers that recognize only two conditions: peace and war. War can result from a policy decision that Congress makes in the absence of an attack on the US, or it can exist as a fact on the ground when an enemy attacks US territory or citizens. In the latter condition of hostilities, the decision to use military force is transparently a necessity and duty, and leaves behind Congress’s role as a deliberative and policymaking body by activating the president’s military powers. It is not correct to try to preserve some decision-making power for Congress in this situation, as did some of Polk’s critics, by carving out an intermediate situation in which hostilities exist, but there is not yet war. The presence of hostilities means that peace does not hold and the US is at war.16 There is no room for maneuver, no useful substantive discussions to be held, no choices to be made. Congress is reduced to merely recognizing an existing state of affairs that the executive is constitutionally required and empowered to address. In other words, Cass understood the imperative side of the Necessity Standard as automatically operative when hostilities exist, thereby authorizing the president to act. A combination of realist and nationalist duties and vital interests informed Cass’s military goals. While bare territorial security in an immediate sense was central, he supplemented that goal by invoking realist concepts to ground the necessity of adopting an aggressive strategy for dealing

16  This position appears to have been asserted in response to arguments on the House floor supplied by Calhoun and other skeptics such as John Macpherson Berrien (a Whig from Georgia), who made a series of assertions that Cass directly attempted to rebut here. See R. McCrary, “Georgia Politics and the Mexican War,” The Georgia Historical Quarterly, Vol. 60, No. 3 (Fall, 1976), p. 213. For a modern view which supports the distinction between events and Congress’s power over military affairs, see Louis Fisher, “The Law: When Wars Begin: Misleading Statements by Presidents,” Presidential Studies Quarterly, Vol. 40, No. 1, Ethics and the Presidency (March 2010).

76 

D. J. LORENZO

with the crisis.17 Cass premised this invocation on an unflattering description of Mexico. This move, as was Haralson’s attempt to establish the futility of diplomacy, was not a matter of bluntly demonizing Mexico as the “other” in terms of identity; rather, both uses had precise purposes. In Haralson’s case, the purpose was to establish that a military rather than conciliatory policy was necessary given a history of unsatisfactory interactions. In contrast, Cass built on this description to contend that a dangerous outside world requires a military policy that extends beyond static or reactive defense. Cass urged the adoption of a war policy that identified a vital interest in building a martial reputation and establishing deterrence. His preferred policy in the short term entailed employing military force to hit the Mexicans so hard and to demonstrate American will so successfully that the latter not only would retreat from their present course of action; they would permanently refrain from adopting similar policies in the future. Cass argued on these grounds that American military forces cannot stop at the Rio Grande. Rather, they must take the fight to Mexican soil and eliminate the threat by soundly defeating and dispersing Mexico’s forces. The administration’s war policy would be deemed successful only if military force is used to teach Mexico a lesson, degrade Mexico’s military capabilities, and generally weaken Mexico’s will such that it cannot again pose a threat. This argument rebutted two sets of Polk’s critics. The first were those who would only support the use of military force in purely defensive operations meant to repel the Mexican forces resident on American soil. They did not want to enter Mexican territory because of the risks and expenses involved and assumed that this action would be sufficient to finish off the threat. For them, the Security Norm demanded that the government employ all available resources to guard US territory. Cass rejected this approach as impractical. Mexican forces would continue to be a threat even if repelled.18 The second were those (like Henry Thoreau) who rejected the very notion of military action. The Polk administration, they argued, was assaulting a peaceful Mexico and in proposing to invade that country had decided to dismember it. Cass rejected this critique by 17  “War Against Mexico,” 29th Congress, 1st Session, May 12, 1846, Appendix to the Congressional Globe. 18  This also appeared to have been the position of Thomas Hart Benton. See The Diary of James Polk During his Presidency, 1845–1849, ed. M.M. Quaife (Chicago: A.C. McClure & Co., 1910), Vol. 1, 11 May 1846, p. 390.

4  THE WAR WITH MEXICO 

77

­ ainting Mexico as an aggressor that had consistently threatened the US p and harmed its interests. The Values Norm was not in play. That Cass was making larger Deterrence and Reputation Arguments to reach an expansive interpretation of the Security Norm is evident from the direction he pushed this discussion. Mexico, we discover, was not the only target Cass had in mind when he cajoled fellow elites and the public to back a vigorous military approach. In responding to its neighbor’s provocations, he argued, the US must address audiences and governments beyond Mexico. It must be vigorous in its treatment of territorial intrusions to gain respect because such is the burden of every state in the international system. The conflict with Mexico is a realist proving ground for the US. Cass supported this contention by again establishing two points. First, he held that it is particularly important for the US to make an example of an aggressive Mexico because nations begin their assessment of America’s capacities by questioning its form of government. They observe that it is a democracy and incorporates a system of checks and balances; on that basis they automatically and negatively judge its capacity to defend itself.19 For Cass, America’s exceptional form of government is a handicap in the cut-throat world of power politics. Aggressive states consider it weak, an inviting target. He echoed Polk’s contention that current problems with Mexico stem in part from a past reluctance to use force against it and pointed to the need to rehabilitate America’s reputation for defending its interests but moved beyond that position. Treat Mexico gently now by pulling punches when using military force, he argued, and you will reinforce a perception of weakness on the part of everyone in the international system. Deal forcefully with Mexico by implementing a vigorous war policy, and you will not just see off that country; the nature of the latter’s military chastisement will settle any doubts regarding American will and power, thereby deterring other nations from attacking the US or encroaching on its territory. This contention led to the second point. Whereas Polk initially pushed aside the proposition that the war was about gaining territory and only supported that goal on security grounds late in the game, Cass embraced the notion from the beginning, taking for granted that the war involved 19  James Monroe had commented similarly on the challenges presented by the conflict contained in the war of 1812, noting “It had been said that our Union, and system of government, would not bear such a trial.” Quoted in Harry Ammon, James Monroe: The Quest for National Identity (Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 1996), p. 344.

78 

D. J. LORENZO

the project of Manifest Destiny by setting out its defense and furtherance as an explicit war aim. The US must defend the annexation of Texas and the acquisition of additional territory because doing so is crucial to forestalling the larger proposition that nations can and should check US territorial expansion in North America, he argued. The US will lose ground in disputes over territories if it refrains from demonstrating the requisite resolve by militarily facing down Mexican objections to the annexation of Texas. Specifically, he held that failure to deal with Mexico over Texas in a sufficiently muscular fashion will embolden the British in the Northwest and endanger the entire project of building a trans-continental America. Such a development would constitute a further threat to American security and general welfare.

The Standard and Related Policy Discussions Unlike Cass’s and Haralson’s contributions, Polk both publicly and privately characterized the war as a defense of security, national reputation, and citizens, thus as a defensive war rather than the military pursuit of an expansionist project. We can situate that discussion alongside previous discussions, beginning with James Monroe’s address on the Monroe Doctrine. In expounding on this policy in 1823,20 Monroe preemptively identified conditions that the US would consider hostile by establishing a defense perimeter that extended beyond its geographical boundaries and insisting that the autonomy of the newly established republics of the South was vital to American safety and prosperity. Any move by European powers to regain control of their former colonies or to conquer other territories in the Americas as part of new colonial ventures was a threat to American security and could be met by military force. In making this controversial argument,21 he signaled that the US would follow a security policy that depended proactively upon maintaining geographical distance from enemies (rather than passively depending on geography) and was much more open to the use of military force than had traditionally been the case. While Polk’s military action was local rather than hemispheric, he  Seventh Annual Message, December 2, 1823.  For a discussion of arguments contesting propositions that the newly independent colonies were republics and that the US should intervene on their behalf, see David Hendrickson, Union, nation, or empire: The American debate over international relations, 1789–1941 (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2009), pp. 80–1, 83–9. 20 21

4  THE WAR WITH MEXICO 

79

adhered to those parts of Monroe’s security policy that emphasized the need to project power to counter and eliminate security threats rather than passively defending American territory. Polk also referenced Monroe’s linkage of republics with US security, a linkage that suggested that republics present no security challenge to the US while non-republics do. This concept was new and constituted the first clear post-Revolutionary presidential reference to a Democratic/Liberal security proposition in the context of a war. As such, it is an appeal to the Security Norm. Its underlying rationale for using military force is not primarily to safeguard the democratic character of other states, but to defend American security by protecting those ostensibly friendly states from hostile outside takeovers.22 In contrast, Polk’s discussion was not strictly in keeping with John Quincy Adams’ references to traditional understandings of duties and vital interests that emphasized the restrictive side of the standard.23 In his famous exhortation on the meaning and lessons of the Declaration of Independence and the grounds for war, Adams held that the US will fight for its own freedom and independence, but dismissed the proposition that spreading and defending liberal or democratic values when it came to other states should be the object of war, or of the expansion of US territory. The fact that the principles of free government are applicable to all humans in his analysis did not mean that the US held a duty to see that all others enjoy them. Nor did he suggest he accepted a Democratic/Liberal security proposition. In turn, he held that policies of encouragement and example are available and viable when it comes to the general defense of freedoms and self-government. Further, Adams echoed the founders’ skepticism of war by arguing that military actions pose a real threat to the capacity of governments to fulfill the duties they owe their own citizens to respect freedom and implement the principles of self-government. Using military force to defend and promote values abroad, or to conquer territories, would have ironic effects. As we saw above, Polk treated with skepticism previous, restrictive applications of the Necessity Standard to Mexico, including President 22  While one important impetus for this declaration was the desire to support republics, Monroe had consistently resisted recognizing them in advance of their recognition by European powers on grounds that such an action might well provoke an unwelcome European intervention. For Monroe, when security and values collided, security won. 23  Speech to the US House of Representatives on foreign policy, July 4, 1821.

80 

D. J. LORENZO

Martin Van Buren’s actions. Van Buren had described his negotiations with Mexico as involving a “variety of events touching the honor and integrity of our Government,” items which Polk included in the list of duties and vital interests that would merit military action. Nevertheless, Van Buren held that it was the desire of his administration, his predecessors, and Congress to find a solution to those problems through peaceful means. Van Buren described a policy featuring a determined quest to exhaust alternatives to the use of military force in the hope that they would prove viable. Congress, he held, had concluded that the seriousness of the matter and the lack of progress in resolving it had created a situation such that “any mode of redress known to the law of nations might justifiably be used.” Yet, Van Buren continued, policymakers had refused to sanction military solutions. They, like his own administration, continued to explore diplomatic solutions. “It was obvious…” Van Buren remarked, that Congress believed with the President that another demand should be made, in order to give undeniable and satisfactory proof of our desire to avoid extremities with a neighboring power.24

Polk’s public statements, in contrast, appear deeply indebted to previous and contemporary understandings of vital interests that identified as primary hazards to American security those outside powers interested in North America, any entity that threatened US international trade, and the Amerindian nations which attacked American settlers. While the onset of independence movements throughout South and Central America and the beginning of the retreat of the Spanish Empire from the hemisphere activated the Monroe Doctrine, Andrew Jackson and Polk advocated that more energy also be put into providing security closer to home. Russia and Mexico eventually joined Spain, France, and Great Britain on the list of dangerous rivals who might merit military attention because they threatened to interfere in US activities in North America. Applications of security policy from the later 1810s to the 1840s focused on this understanding. The US would remove potential rivals and foes, by means of diplomacy first but by military action if unfriendly acts or insults were proffered. More specifically, the policy was to turn quickly to military coercion to force the Amerindian nations from their territories and to pursue inflexibly 24  December 5, 1837: First Annual Message to Congress. It is these negotiations and Van Buren’s failure to follow up with military action that Polk later so harshly condemns.

4  THE WAR WITH MEXICO 

81

Great Britain, Russia, Spain, and France in disputes over territories and boundaries in the North American heartland. At stake were land, natural resources, coasts, and harbors, all of which were labeled vital to American prosperity and security. For many, allowing other states to control parts of the North American core became increasingly unthinkable. One way of implementing such understandings combined diplomacy with military force. When the US negotiated the Adams-Onis Treaty in the aftermath of Andrew Jackson’s invasion of Florida, it justified that military venture by invoking the concept of self-defense against aggressors who take refuge in empty or uncontrolled territory, thereby creating justifications for removing the Spanish from the area because they could not control their possessions.25 The eventual agreement which divided the Oregon territory between the US and British Canada was also typically preceded by warlike gestures, including militant campaign slogans during the 1844 presidential election. As Polk put it in 1845 when discussing the ongoing tensions with Great Britain over control of the Pacific Northwest and referring to allegations that the British and others wished to construct “a ‘balance of power’ on this continent to check our advancement,” the US “can not in silence permit any European interference on the North American continent, and should any such interference be attempted will be ready to resist it at any and all hazards.”26 While Polk ultimately settled the dispute peacefully, many in his party pushed hard to use military force in response to British claims and actions. In a letter to Polk in 1846, Alfred Bach cited the Necessity Standard’s imperative side in the name of security and reputation, arguing Every wise statesman will do all he fairly can to avert from his country the calamities of war. But, no wise statesman will ever sacrifice the honor of his country by a recreant surrender of its undoubted and righteous claims.27

This policy required a simultaneous reading of the Security, Values, and General Welfare Norms. To equate security with the control of territory 25  For a useful discussion of the background to this treaty, see Loveman, No Higher Law, pp. 31–7. 26  First Annual Message, December 2, 1845. See also John O’Sullivan, “Annexation,” United States Magazine and Democratic Review 17, no. 1 (July/August 1845). 27  Letter from Alfred Bach, 16 February 1846, in Wayne Cutler, ed., The Correspondence of James K. Polk, Vol. XI, 1946 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2009), p. 80.

82 

D. J. LORENZO

importantly meant associating conflict and threats with proximity. It also meant understanding security as ultimately attained by controlling resources and building economic and productive capacities. What is good for the US economically in the context of North America is good security-­ wise and vice-versa. As for the war with Mexico, we find reinforcing evidence in the pages of Polk’s diary for his public discussions of alternatives and identification of duties and vital interests as they pertained to that conflict. Polk and many in his administration expressed only limited patience with diplomacy. Polk privately expressed his unwillingness to continue pursuing negotiations to wring payments to US citizens from Mexico and was pushing for war well before the incursions of Mexican forces into US territory. Yet he was hesitant to enter hostilities until he could demonstrate to others that alternatives were not viable. In February of 1846, he noted his intent to go to Congress for the power “to take redress into our hands by aggressive measures” if Mexican leaders would not receive his personal representative and look favorably on the demands he made for reparations to American citizens.28 He went further in April to hold that alternatives were not viable, telling his cabinet on the 21st that “the state of relations with Mexico could not be permitted to remain in status quo.” On April 25 he held the same, arguing that “We must take redress for the injuries done us into our own hands, that we had attempted to conciliate Mexico in vain, and had foreborne until forbearance was no longer either a virtue or patriotic.”29 By May 8, John Slidell, Polk’s Minister to Mexico, held definitively that “but one course towards Mexico was left to the US, and that was to take the redress for the wrongs and injuries we had so long borne from Mexico into our own hands and to act with promptness and energy.”30 Meanwhile, on May 11, James Buchanan, then Secretary of State, replied to a statement holding that “war should not be declared without full discussion” by insisting that “war had already existed by act of Mexico herself & therefore it did not require much deliberation.”31 Polk referenced the same set of vital interests and duties privately as he did publicly. Citizens’ interests (in the form of reparations) and reputation constituted an important part of his bottom line that constrained the  Diary of James Polk, Vol. 1, Cabinet Meeting Feb. 17, 1846, pp. 233–4.  Diary of James Polk, Vol. 1, Cabinet Meetings April 21 and 25, 1846, pp. 348, 354. 30  Diary of James Polk, Vol. 1, May 8, 1846, p. 382. 31  Diary of James Polk, Vol. 1, May 11, 1846, p. 392. 28 29

4  THE WAR WITH MEXICO 

83

pursuit of alternatives. In response to Thomas Hart Benton’s expression of a “decided aversion to a war with Mexico” in early May, Polk agreed that he was “anxious to avoid” an armed conflict, but also that “we had ample cause for war” and that any attempt to avoid war must be done “honourably and consistently with the interests of our injured citizens.”32 In contrast, he was privately more interested, and interested much earlier, in territorial matters than his public statements indicated. However, as with his public arguments, security considerations rather than a simple understanding of Manifest Destiny characterize those private statements. This orientation informed his discussions of negotiation with Britain over the Oregon Territory33 and the expression of his fears that European powers would install “a Foreign Prince on a throne in Mexico.”34 His private conversations addressing the retention of Mexican territory made clear not only that such acquisition would be the only way in which Mexico could pay reparations to US citizens and to the US government for the cost of the war, but that such territories were also vital to US security. When Secretary of State James Buchanan informed him that a refusal to disavow any intention to acquire Mexican territory as a result of the war would likely trigger a new war with Britain and France, he exploded, recording in his diary his intemperate reply that he intended to “meet the war which either England or France or all the Powers of Christendom might wage…. Neither as a citizen nor as President would I permit any intermeddling of any European Power on this Continent.”35

Polk’s Application of the Standard and Policy Polk began his justification of the war with Mexico with traditional tenets. His application of the Necessity Standard resembled in part Madison’s treatment of the viability of alternatives. An important part of that resemblance was Polk’s refusal to characterize the war as one with territorial ambitions, a stance which distanced him from contemporary controversies over territorial expansion. Instead of pitching the war as one of Manifest Destiny, and thus an inevitability, Polk underlined the failure of peaceful attempts to settle differences in general and to turn away Mexican actions  Diary of James Polk, Vol. 1, Conversation with Col. Benton, May 3, 1846, p. 376.  Diary of James Polk, Vol. 1, February 27, 1846, p. 256. 34  Diary of James Polk, Vol. 1, April 9, 1846, p. 326. 35  Diary of James Polk, Vol. 1, May 13, 1846, pp. 397–8. 32 33

84 

D. J. LORENZO

that threatened what he believed to be American territory. He discussed diplomatic projects at length, and held that despite his “[determination] to leave no effort untried to effect an amicable adjustment with Mexico,” his efforts to settle ongoing disputes and discourage the Mexican government from dispatching forces across the Rio Grande had failed. Throughout his war message, he insisted that he had pursued diplomacy to the end of its usefulness, returning repeatedly to his peaceful attempts to settle differences until Mexico attacked. Like Madison, he underlined the constraints imposed by the restrictive side of the standard. While this initially appears to be a policy of last resort, that conclusion would be mistaken. Polk departed from Madison’s patience by chastising previous administrations for their laxness in dealing with Mexico and arguing that sufficient justification for war existed in Mexico’s refusal to pay American citizens for their mistreatment. He ultimately indicated that in these or like circumstances, the government should pursue alternatives with only limited patience and flexibility. He did express himself willing to make border adjustments; however, Texas was not up for negotiation, nor his desire to acquire more sections of Mexico’s northern territories, even if those acquisitions would ultimately be paid for.36 Polk thereby invoked the proposition that force should be used quickly given particular types of actions or situations rather than waiting for diplomacy to be exhausted, or the US attacked. Going forward, presidents should have little patience and should quickly employ large-scale military force in the face of insults to citizens and threats to borders even if no actual attack had taken place. Next, when Polk turned to duties associated with security and reputation, he generally assumed a realist view of the world. He depicted the deployment of Mexican military forces at the Rio Grande as aggressive and provocative rather than, as did his critics, defensive in nature. Like Madison, he asserted that it was his duty to use military force to send a message beyond Mexican authorities. He argued that the US had to fight rather than negotiate, and in so doing project power beyond its borders because only the use of military force in such fashion protects America’s vital interests. Officials must understand those interests in the context not only of Mexican attitudes, but also of the dynamics of the international system in which weakness is an invitation to aggression and intervention. 36  By the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, the US paid Mexico $15 million dollars for the territories it acquired (including California, New Mexico, Colorado, Nevada, Utah, and Wyoming), plus took over responsibility for paying Mexican indemnities to US citizens.

4  THE WAR WITH MEXICO 

85

He did supplement this view, however, with a version of the Liberal/ Democratic Peace proposition. The military and security policies Polk articulated in his public discussions therefore consisted of the following. The US would as a rule exercise some patience with alternatives and pursue them with some flexibility when citizens’ interests were threatened, or the acquisition of territory for security reasons was at stake, but would resort to military force if a short history of pursuing alternatives was not be reciprocated in good faith. It would also abandon alternatives quickly and move to military force when interacting with a military government or dictatorship, or one that threatened to introduce a European power into the subcontinent. It would again move expeditiously to military force when faced with military provocations that would erode its reputation for defending its vital interests if left unaddressed. It would immediately turn to military force in response to warlike actions, including incursions across American borders and attacks on American armed forces. Polk indicated that all these conditions applied at the onset of the war. However, he privately held that lack of progress in obtaining compensation for injuries to citizens was alone sufficient. This set of policies differentiated Polk from Madison as well as from his immediate predecessors. Madison held that 1812 was the right time to go to war despite the fact that Britain (in his view) had been implicated in attacks on American territory and shipping for years. Flexible exercises of diplomacy must be completely exhausted and the consequences of not moving militarily must be plainly evident before he turned to war. Polk suggested less patience and flexibility. In particular, Polk held that once Mexican forces attacked American territory, he pulled the military trigger. However, his application of the Necessity Standard and the policies he publicly outlined were more narrowly tailored to the Security Norm than an infatuation with Manifest Destiny would suggest. He refused to justify the war in terms of the acquisition of territory per se. Instead, he embraced contemporary modifications of traditional understandings of vital interests that privileged territorial security, reputation, deterrence, and citizens’ interests. It is in this broader understanding of security policies and immediate past practices that we should locate Polk’s public position on this war.

CHAPTER 5

The War with Spain and the Insurgency in the Philippines Moving Reluctantly to Discharge Humanitarian Obligations and the Duty to Create Local Order Contexts of the War with Spain Presidents in the aftermath of the Civil War identified threats to vital interests as arising from the following. Actors outside North America who intrude into the hemisphere in pursuit or defense of colonies and who, in addition, might attack American coastal cities. Actors in the Americas unable to order their own territories or discharge their international obligations, thus endangering resident American citizens and destabilizing the security of the hemisphere by inviting the attentions of outside powers. Actors who attempt to order the world but do so in a clumsy manner that creates humanitarian and security problems. Finally, actors who interfere with American trade routes. Some scholars have argued that, as a result, by the mid-1890s bipartisan support existed for the development of more powerful and updated navy, and a more active, interventionist role in the Americas. This approach held that the US could and should “intervene, unilaterally, anywhere in the hemisphere, at any time it chose, if it decided its interests might be affected.”1 1  Brian Loveman, No Higher Law: American Foreign Policy and the Western Hemisphere since 1776 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2010), p. 161. Loveman lists more than 50 uses of the US military outside US boundaries between the Mexican war and the war with Spain (pp. 90–91; 200–201). As part of this discussion, Loveman docu-

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 D. J. Lorenzo, War and American Foreign Policy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-66695-8_5

87

88 

D. J. LORENZO

The US had a long-standing interest in Cuba, though plans for its acquisition had not borne fruit. American officials at the turn of the nineteenth century had expressed confidence that the US would eventually annex it. Strategists later expressed concern that it might end up in the hands of a more powerful European entity than Spain, while slaveholders feared its independence. President Millard Fillmore dealt with the aftermath of a failed private filibuster in aid of Cuban insurgents. Later, President Polk attempted to purchase it from Spain for $100 million, American adventurers schemed to seize it in the 1850s, and the authors of the Ostend Manifesto offered to buy it on the grounds that a Spanish or free Cuba posed a threat to US security.2 Cuba in the late 1890s was undergoing another in a series of rebellions against Spanish rule. Previously, the “Ten Years War” had damaged trade and commercial interests in the US while raising humanitarian concerns; however, while acknowledging popular outrage, President Grant’s ruminations in the 1870s on a possible US intervention came to nothing. This later conflict, like its predecessor, was notoriously vicious and destructive, with both sides engaging in a form of economic warfare that devastated crops and infrastructure and decimated the civilian population. Civilian misery increased even further in this round of fighting due to Spanish strategies and mismanagement, as the colonial and military leadership responded to the guerrilla tactics of the Cuban resistance by rounding up civilians from the countryside and forcing them to remain in camps and towns. Highly stressful as such machinations were for the populace, the Spanish multiplied problems by systematically failing to provide adequate provisions, resulting in widespread sickness, hunger, and death. Reports to

ments US interventions in the interest of local order and related purposes before the official promulgation of the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine. “Instances of Use of United States Armed Forces Abroad, 1798–2020,” Congressional Research Service (July 2020) provides another list with descriptions of the purpose of intervention. 2  For an excellent if old overview of the relations between Cuba and the US before the war with Spain, see D. S. Whittlesey, “Geographic Factors in the Relations of the United States and Cuba,” Geographical Review, Vol. 12, No. 2 (1922): 241–256. For a discussion of the domestic controversies over the possible acquisition of Cuba, see David Hendrickson, Union, Nation, or Empire: The American Debate Over International Relations, 1789–1941 (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2009), pp. 83–86. For the Ostend Manifesto, see Loveman, No Higher Law, p. 77. James Buchanan also asked Congress to consider purchasing Cuba. See December 6, 1858: Second Annual Message.

5  THE WAR WITH SPAIN AND THE INSURGENCY IN THE PHILIPPINES 

89

the president, Congress, and the public in 1897 and 1898 underlined the depth and extent of these problems.3 Such developments were troublesome, but other factors also drew policymakers’ attention. The first were observations that the situation was not going away. Reports from Cuba outlined the political and military stalemate that existed. Neither side could force the other to capitulate, and neither side displayed any sign that it would back away from its political objectives. The fighting would, it appeared, go on endlessly.4 Second was the economic effects of the conflict. American corporations had heavily invested in sugar production on the island, and hostilities damaged those investments. Trade between the US and Cuba in agricultural products and natural resources had also grown immensely in the decades prior to the 1890s and due to the rebellion, its volume dwindled dramatically at a time when the US was already undergoing a serious economic depression. This led some in the business community to argue for war to restore trade, though other business interests displayed less enthusiasm.5 More generally, American policymakers were in a quandary over Cuba’s ultimate fate. There was general agreement that it would be best if Spain left the scene, and that no other European power controlled the island. The problem was in the alternatives. If it was not to be a European colony, it must become either an American possession or a free country. There was strong opposition to annexation on a variety of grounds, including the nature of its population. But as the text of the Ostend Manifesto demonstrated, many opposed allowing Cubans to exercise sovereignty given beliefs that they could not govern themselves. President McKinley reacted to these events by intervening through diplomatic channels, offering his services as mediator, and otherwise seeking to settle the conflict. He further authorized attempts to bring aid to the civilian population and threatened to recognize the Cuban rebels as belligerents (opening the way for the US to allow arms shipments) as a way of pressuring Spain to give the rebels concessions. At the same time, McKinley and others in his administration were skeptical that the Cubans

3   John L.  Offner, “McKinley and the Spanish-American War.” Presidential Studies Quarterly, Vol. 34, No. 1 (2004): 50–61. 4  Offner, “McKinley and the Spanish-American War,” p. 54. 5  Offner, “McKinley and the Spanish-American War,” pp. 51–54.

90 

D. J. LORENZO

were capable of self-rule, particularly if the rebel leadership were to take political control.6 By January of 1898, matters were coming to a head. The Spanish persisted in their military efforts to put down the rebellion and continued to corral the civilian population away from the countryside but were unable to maintain order. The outbreak of serious riots led McKinley to dispatch the Maine to protect American citizens on the island. On February 15 of that year, the Maine blew up in Havana harbor. Official US reports alleged that Spanish personnel had attacked it using an external explosive device. The US press was now intensely interested in the situation, and many influential papers clamored for war. McKinley continued to explore diplomatic options, confronting along the way several attempts by European powers to inject themselves into the situation. By April, McKinley had launched yet another diplomatic initiative to settle the crisis, finally pressuring Spain into making a set of concessions that still fell well short of rebel demands. McKinley wished to persist in these efforts, but pent-up pressure in Congress made real the possibility that Congress would declare war without him, and so on April 11 he made the formal request for authorization to use military force against Spain. Despite threats from Congress to move without him, McKinley’s arguments in favor of war initially faced a mixed reception in that body. Congress, in what has been deemed an ultimatum to Spain,7 passed a joint resolution declaring Cuba free, demanding Spain remove its military forces from the island, and authorizing the use of force against Spain.8 The Senate approved the measure by a surprisingly small margin (42 to 35), while the House was much more supportive, producing a vote in favor of 311 to 6.9 The subsequent formal declaration of war, passed on April 25, was approved on a voice vote.10 McKinley’s unwillingness to guarantee Cuban self-rule prompted Congressional action to pass the Teller Amendment to rule out annexation. The solution to the problem of  Offner, “McKinley and the Spanish-American War,” p. 60.  Jennifer Elsea and Matthew Weed, “Declarations of War and Authorizations for the Use of Military Force: Historical Background and Legal Implications” (Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, January 11, 2013), p. 2. 8  FIFTY-FIFTH CONGRESS. SESS. II, RES. 24. April 20, 1898. 9  http://www.loc.gov/rr/hispanic/1898/chronology.html. At least some of the opposition to the resolution stemmed from unhappiness that the administration refused to recognize the insurgency. 10  FIFTY-FIFTH CONGRESS, SESS. II, H.R. 10086, April 25, 1998. 6 7

5  THE WAR WITH SPAIN AND THE INSURGENCY IN THE PHILIPPINES 

91

Cuba’s disposition was to nominally give it its freedom, but for the US to maintain significant control over its foreign affairs and possession of a military base on the island, as per the Platt Amendment.11 While Cuba was the central arena of the conflict, the strategy of placing maximum pressure on Spain led to attacks on its other colonial possessions. American victories in the Philippines, Guam, and Puerto Rico left the US in physical control of those territories. The question then became their future disposition. Cuba, despite McKinley’s misgivings, was freed. Guam and Puerto Rico were retained. Filipino patriots demanded the same treatment given the Cubans. US officials disagreed and took over the administration of the Philippines even though Emilio Aguinaldo (who had accompanied Commodore Dewey to the islands) had declared an independent Philippines republic. Failing to receive satisfaction of his demands, Aguinaldo deployed the loosely organized Filipino revolutionary army to fight for independence, resulting in a long and confused struggle that lasted from 1899 to 1902. The debate to approve the Treaty of Paris, which freed Cuba and ceded the Philippines to the US, was a proxy for the war in the latter territory and resulted in the Senate approving the treaty by a vote of 57 to 27, barely above the two-thirds threshold necessary for ratification.

President McKinley on War with Spain and the Filipino Insurrection Why War? Duties and Vital Interests McKinley specified humanitarian issues, trade and commerce, and immediate security problems as the duties and vital interests that drove the war with Spain. In opting for war, McKinley steered a path among Mahanian realism, Theodore Roosevelt’s global projects for spreading Western civilization, and traditional neutralism, ending broadly within Madison’s views on hemispheric intervention. He publicly discarded the narrow understanding of security that anti-imperialists and traditionalists embraced. His emphasis on the duty to protect trade and commercial interests was traditional, but his introduction of humanitarian duties underlined newer policies, while his concern with providing local order  The Platt Amendment to the Army Appropriations Bill, March 2, 1901.

11

92 

D. J. LORENZO

referenced interests that had previously animated smaller military interventions. McKinley’s discussion of vital interests and duties fell into four parts. He first referenced an early form of the Duty to Protect doctrine, thus invoking and expanding on the Values norm. This argument painted intervention as a duty demanded by the values McKinley had previously acted upon when providing and coordinating aid. By removing Spanish forces from the island, the US would address a humanitarian disaster.12 Thousands were dying or being killed in Cuba due to Spanish measures, he alleged, particularly their implementation of reconcentration. It was not just the war, but also the way in which Spanish forces operated in Cuba that was shocking to American consciences. The US, he insisted, therefore has an important obligation to put an end to the barbarities, bloodshed, starvation, and horrible miseries now existing there, and which the parties to the conflict are either unable or unwilling to stop or mitigate. It is no answer to say this is all in another country, belonging to another nation, and is therefore none of our business. It is specially our duty, for it is right at our door.

The second rationale also expanded the Values Norm while touching on the duty to protect American citizens. It did so by characterizing the intervention as discharging the duty to provide local order. Cuba’s people and foreigners alike were unprotected by any organized government. Here McKinley furnished a long narrative which drew the Spanish as incapable of controlling Cuba, unwilling to give Cubans the self-government and independence they demanded, powerless to protect American citizens and their property, and unable to fight insurgents without inflicting appalling injuries on non-combatants. Spanish incapacities meant that everyone in Cuba suffered. Given that Spain refused effective mediation and given that no government could operate in Cuba to maintain law and order, the only choice available to the US as a responsible neighbor was to intervene as a neutral to push out the Spanish, impose peace, and restore order. The US would free Cuba from an incompetent, if not cruel, colonial overlord. Here the US would act as a surrogate state, providing to the Cubans (and resident foreigners) the stability and rule of law which neither they nor the Spanish could supply. Consequently, McKinley’s proposed resolution did  Message to Congress, April 11, 1898.

12

5  THE WAR WITH SPAIN AND THE INSURGENCY IN THE PHILIPPINES 

93

not call for recognition of Cuba as an independent state, nor recognition of the “Republic of Cuba” then claimed by the insurgents. Instead, he asked for authority to secure a full and final termination of hostilities between the Government of Spain and the people of Cuba, and to secure in the island the establishment of a stable government, capable of maintaining order and observing its international obligations, insuring peace and tranquility and the security of its citizens as well as our own.

The third rationale, which McKinley deployed to identify American goals not only in Cuba, but also in the Philippines at the expense of overcoming an insurgency, prominently featured nationalist arguments which invoked the General Welfare Norm to identify commerce as a vital interest. Spain’s ongoing interference in Cuba completely disrupted a lucrative trade, he argued, leading to large economic damages to American businesses as well as losses of capital investments in Cuba. However, it was not just that goods could not reach or leave Cuba, or that capital investments were lost due to the war. The situation was much worse and extended beyond Cuban territory and waters. War, he held, is necessary because “the lives and liberty of our citizens are in constant danger and their property destroyed and themselves ruined; where our trading vessels are liable to seizure and are seized at our very door by war ships of a foreign nation.” An environment in which commerce is possible, trade is safe, and investments secure is a vital interest the administration must protect. Finally, McKinley identified the general dangers Spain posed to American security and military preparedness. First, he contended that Spanish military forces menaced US security by operating in immediate proximity to American borders. That presence required the expenditure of considerable time and energy. Second, the presence of Spanish forces on Cuba invited the intervention of private American parties. Preventing them from intervening by enforcing neutrality regulations required the positioning of significant military and other assets along the coast and in territorial waters, thus weakening American military preparedness.13 In sum, McKinley held that the attempt by Spain to maintain itself militarily 13  Frederick Funston, who fought against the Spanish as a guerrilla, then fought against Filipino guerrillas as a member of the US army, describes US government attempts to prevent him from fighting in Cuba before the official US intervention. See Memories of Two Wars: Cuban and Philippine Experiences (New York: C. Scribner’s Sons, 1911).

94 

D. J. LORENZO

as an empire in the Americas created a security threat that the administration was required to terminate. It could not continue to run the risk of Spain attacking US assets, nor could it afford to fritter away vital resources blocking American filibusterers. He capped this analysis by invoking the destruction of the Maine as evidence of the threat Spain potentially posed.14 These last two war aims came from Realist and Nationalist sources. Removing Spain from the region would jettison a burdensome actor that interferes with or endangers security and trade, McKinley insisted. The US would liberate itself from the effects of that country’s deeply problematic behavior. Yet, McKinley had also held from the beginning of the conflict that the war was not an exercise in annexation despite his simultaneous insistence that he would not recognize the Cuban insurgency. Annexation was contrary to American values; it would be a manifestation of “criminal aggression” to take over Cuba.15 Armed intervention was the last step in a long process in which the US had exhausted other humanitarian and political endeavors, he argued. American motives in fighting the war were obvious, principled, and benevolent: “If it shall hereafter appear to be a duty imposed by our obligations to ourselves, to civilization and humanity to intervene with force, it shall be without fault on our part only because the necessity for such action will be so clear as to command the support and approval of the civilized world,” he proclaimed. McKinley was cagier regarding the fate of the Philippines. While he ultimately decided that, like Puerto Rico and Guam, the US must retain them, he initially offered only passing and tepid arguments for this policy. In official papers, the government held that the continued occupation of that territory after the conflict with Spain ended was not an original war aim, but that the contingencies of war led to the military conquest of the islands. That development placed duties and obligations upon the US to assist the Filipino population and presented such commercial possibilities that it was in the interest of the US as well as its duty to administer the

14  Note he made this reference as a way of underlining a security threat, not to invoke a patriotic rallying cry. 15  The Teller Amendment gave legal force to his pledge, holding that “the United States hereby disclaims any disposition of intention to exercise sovereignty, jurisdiction, or control over said Island except for the pacification thereof, and asserts its determination, when that is accomplished, to leave the government and control of the Island to its people.” FIFTYFIFTH CONGRESS. SESS. II, RES. 24, approved April 20, 1898.

5  THE WAR WITH SPAIN AND THE INSURGENCY IN THE PHILIPPINES 

95

Philippines in a guardianship role.16 In his later interactions with citizens and in the face of organized opposition to his policies, McKinley was more expansive in taking up this line, repeating the argument that while the islands had not originally been a target of acquisition, once the navy had wrested control of them there were no alternatives to at least temporary annexation. He went on to cite economic interests, insisting that he could not return the islands to Spain. Referencing the cutthroat arena of world trade, he further insisted that independence was not a real option. If the US were to free the islands, they would merely fall into the hands of a European power that would act as a “commercial rival” of the US in Asia.17 Similar to his discussion of Cuba, McKinley underlined the goal of providing effective governance and local order to the Filipinos in these discussions. The difference between the two was that the situation in the Philippines was even worse, he alleged. In the latter, it was the US and its martial activities that created disorder by removing the Spanish government from power. McKinley assumed the prior Spanish government had provided order, and the Filipinos would be unable to discharge the tasks of governing and ordering themselves even under an American protectorate. Filipinos were “helpless” and faced the prospect of “chaos” rather than opportunities if allowed self-government and sovereignty. McKinley therefore held in December of 1898 that the US must take up the burden of governing the islands and continue physically and politically controlling them for the near future: If, following the clear precepts of duty, territory falls to us, and the welfare of an alien people requires our guidance and protection, who will shrink from the responsibility, grave though it may be? Can we leave these people, who, by the fortunes of war and our own acts, are helpless and without government, to chaos and anarchy, after we have destroyed the only government they have had? Having destroyed their government, it is the duty of the American people to provide for them a better one.18 16  See “The Acquisition of the Philippines,” U.S. Department of State, Papers Relating to Foreign Affairs, 1898, pp. 904–908. 17  For an extensive overview of concerns over foreign trade and the role of economics in American foreign policy of the time, see Matthew Jacobson, Barbarian Virtues: The United States Encounters Foreign Peoples at Home and Abroad, 1876–1917 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2001), Chap. 1. 18  “Speech at Banquet of Board of Trade and Associated Citizens, Savannah, Georgia, December 17, 1898” in Speeches and Addresses of William McKinley From March 1, 1897 to May 30, 1900 (New York: Doubleday & McClure Co., 1900), p. 174. While Smith argues

96 

D. J. LORENZO

To sum up, until McKinley began grappling with the problem presented by the Philippines, his discussion of interests and duties was mainly of a limited Nationalist-Values variety, with some gestures toward Realist analysis. He generally equated war aims with removing economic, security, and humanitarian problems close to American shores. Pushed by Congress to address the Cuban dilemma, he adopted a martial stance while rejecting expansionary projects. It was the large geographical reach of the war that led him to inflate his conception of interests and duties and forced him to keep company with those who identified larger Nationalist-Values (and possibly Realist) projects, even if he did not go down the policy routes more committed internationalists outlined. Why War Now? The Absence of Viable Alternatives McKinley held that a viable alternative to the use of force must end the humanitarian crisis in Cuba by stopping the fighting and instituting order, remove the problems that Spanish activities posed to US security, restore trade, and safeguard the commercial investments of American entities. He indicated that in pursuit of those ends he had engaged diplomacy and related alternatives with great patience while operating flexibly to attain his desired results, though there were limits to that flexibility. In holding that no alternative could attain those ends, McKinley, like his predecessors, faced opposition from critics who held that the US was too impatient and aggressive. Why use military force now rather than continue negotiations to settle the conflict with Spain and iron out the problems in Cuba? Despite possible misgivings on his part, McKinley held first that a military intervention was necessary because all other methods of resolving the crisis were either inadequate, or had been tried and failed.19 He explicitly dismissed three alternatives. His discussion of the first two revealed the limits of his latitude. Early in the crisis, he considered but rejected the policy of recognizing the Cuban insurgents as belligerents, which would open the way to supplying them with the arms and other military goods necessary to defend themselves against the Spanish, but not that the war with Spain and the takeover of the Philippines was a turning point in that it ultimately drew the US into a full-scale democratization project abroad, he acknowledges that democratization was not an original war aim. Tony Smith, America’s Mission: The United States and the Worldwide Struggle for Democracy in the Twentieth Century (Princeton, NJ: Twentieth Century Fund/Princeton University Press, 1994), pp. 37–40. 19  Message to Congress, April 11, 1898.

5  THE WAR WITH SPAIN AND THE INSURGENCY IN THE PHILIPPINES 

97

involve the US in hostilities with Spain. This approach ostensibly possessed the virtues of promoting Cuban self-help and assisting the Cuban people cheaply. McKinley rejected this move, referencing with approval President Grant’s characterization of it as probably sparking an unintended war, as well as citing problems with international law. Only an intentional war, rather than a strained attempt to aid Cubans while also maintaining a traditional policy of neutrality, would allow the US to discharge the duties it recognized as operative in the situation. Later in the crisis, his envoy to Spain proposed another alternative by resurrecting the old plan of buying Cuba. McKinley did not take up this proposal.20 Third, McKinley rejected continued negotiations due to Spain’s actions and character. Diplomacy is futile and must be considered exhausted, he argued, because US officials have found Spain to be incorrigible both in its refusal to allow outside assistance to reach the Cubans, and in its persistence in hanging on to Cuba no matter the cost in lives. McKinley backed this contention by documenting how US envoys over the course of several administrations had employed diplomatic measures to resolve the conflict, or at least to significantly ease the humanitarian crisis on the island. McKinley underlined patience and flexibility here. He recounted how he himself had repeatedly offered to facilitate talks and provide good offices as a means for ending the conflict based on compromise, and thus terminate a situation which generated major frictions between the US and Spain. However, the Spaniards were intractable, he argued. They would be satisfied with nothing but the complete capitulation of the Cuban insurgents and the re-imposition of a coercive political regime. Spain would not stop unless it was defeated or it crushed the Cubans, and neither was going to happen anytime soon. Related to this point was McKinley’s observation that the duration, effects, and intractability of the crisis on Cuba made immediate and effective intervention necessary. The conflict between the Spanish colonial authorities and Cuban insurgents had persisted for years (not counting earlier outbreaks). Its effects, particularly humanitarian, but also commercial, had over time reached unendurable dimensions. The price for opting for the status quo could be counted in the pain and misery the Cubans would continue to suffer, the loss of trade and investment US business 20  Mr. Woodford to the President, Madrid, March 18, 1898  in Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, with the Annual Message of the President Transmitted to Congress (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1901), p. 690.

98 

D. J. LORENZO

would endure, and the security threat the US would continue to confront. The US must intervene now. Finally, McKinley referred to the sinking of the Maine. Given the official position that Spanish authorities in Cuba were responsible for the disaster, this is a reference to hostilities and an attempt to establish that Spain, by committing war-like acts, was already at war with the US.

Congressional Applications of the Standard The Report of the Senate Committee on International Relations21 supplied reasons for going to war with Spain which overlapped importantly with those McKinley provided, but its discussion of the conflict was critical of the president for his dilatory conduct of affairs and his refusal to state explicitly that Cuba was to be freed. It held in a Futility Argument that it had been clear for some time that the US could not influence Spain through diplomacy, in part because Spanish leaders violated established treaties. It therefore unambiguously called for the use of arms to put an end to Spain’s control of Cuba. According to Senator Foraker, this language was meant as a criticism of McKinley’s continued use of diplomacy, given the conclusion that such measures had had long since been exhausted, and thus gestured toward a policy of limited patience with diplomacy.22 The Report also set out other grounds for immediate military action. First was an implied Existing Hostilities argument. It went to great lengths to establish that Spanish hands had sunk the Maine. Policymakers should place this event within a context of clear Spanish hostility toward the US. The Report supplemented this reference to the Maine with assertions that Spain had more generally “failed to perform her treaty obligations and other international duties to the United States.” Its government and officials had mistreated, imprisoned, and killed US citizens. Spain, in effect, waged war on the US. Next, the Report invoked values. It held that it was no longer possible for the US to stand aside and allow the Spanish to continue inflicting atrocities on the Cuban population. To do nothing or pursue diplomacy would only guarantee the loss of additional innocent lives, given the

21  Report on Joint Resolution S.R. 149, Congressional Record, Vol. 31, part 4, Senate, April 13, 1898, pp. 3773–3776. 22  Congressional Record, Vol. 31, part 4, Senate, April 13, 1898, p. 3777.

5  THE WAR WITH SPAIN AND THE INSURGENCY IN THE PHILIPPINES 

99

judgment that Spain would never completely defeat the Cuban insurgents nor voluntarily give up Cuba: The war, then, must go on, and the misery which has shocked the civilized world must continue and increase unless it is terminated by the triumph of Cuba or Spain or by the interposition of the United States.

These and the other conditions referenced above, the Report held, “can no longer be endured,” and therefore neither negotiations nor the status quo was viable. Substantively, the Report provided five war aims that identified a variety of duties and vital interests. First, it held that the US would prevent Spain from committing further atrocities in Cuba. These actions, having taken place “so near to our own borders, have shocked the moral sense of the people of the United States” and are a “disgrace” to “Christian civilization.” The Spanish had despoiled the Cuban countryside, targeted civilians, and violated the laws of warfare by killing prisoners, the wounded, and medical personnel. The overall impact of its unsuccessful attempts to control the island, the Report argued, resulted in Cuba’s depopulation— in sum, the Report accused the Spanish of committing genocide and argued that the US had a duty to stop them. The Report went on to hold that the US would intervene in Cuba to eliminate a threat to American security. The US could no longer tolerate the presence of Spanish military forces in the hemisphere. This threat had culminated in the destruction of the Maine and Spain’s refusal to take responsibility for that act. Next, the Report held that the fighting on the island impacted the US in other tangible ways which involved the General Welfare Norm. The conflict resulted in the destruction of vast amounts of American property, as well as taking a heavy toll on trade between US and Cuba. US intervention would protect remaining property and help re-­ establish trade. Finally and most importantly, the Report called on the US to intervene to guarantee Cuban independence. This invocation of values focused on promoting and defending sovereignty and self-government. The intervention would discharge a “duty” to ensure the rights of the Cuban people to be “free and independent.”

100 

D. J. LORENZO

When Senator George F. Hoar23 took the floor of the Senate, he did so to support the resolution, previously passed by the House, empowering the president to use force if necessary to create order in Cuba and halt the atrocities being committed there. As such, he acted as a supporter of the president24 in conceptualizing the intervention as one of creating order rather than supporting the insurgency and immediately recognizing Cuban independence. An important part of Hoar’s discussion was a rebuttal of a previous speech given by Senator George Turner of Washington. In his remarks, Turner castigated McKinley for his slowness in dealing forcefully with the Spanish given the importance of immediately ending the Cuban atrocities and assisting the Cubans to gain their freedom. Turner acknowledged the importance of attempting a diplomatic solution but deployed a Futility Argument in which he accused McKinley of incompetence. McKinley was unclear in his aims, outmaneuvered by his opponents, and had exercised far too much patience with alternatives. The time for military action had long since arrived because the possibilities for a diplomatic solution had long since dwindled to nothing. Efforts at diplomacy need not be exhausted to arrive at this conclusion.25 Hoar likewise employed a Futility Argument to reject further negotiations, but defended McKinley against Turner’s attacks.26 His defense alluded to the importance of following the restrictive side of the Necessity Standard until it is clear that the imperative side is operative. To this end, Hoar argued that US officials could only now deem the use of military force against Spain in Cuba necessary because McKinley had gone the extra mile and “exhausted every effort” at resolving the matter peacefully and thus “the function of diplomacy…seems to have ended.” In this understanding, McKinley’s faults were not at issue, but rather his virtues. Hoar approved of McKinley’s “holding back and striving with all his power for a peaceful solution of this business” and “holding out for peace so long as there was a hope that peace could be had with honor.” McKinley 23  Hoar, a Republican from Massachusetts, served in the House from 1869 to 1877, and the Senate from 1877 to 1904. 24  However, he would break with McKinley over the military response to the insurgency in the Philippines. 25  Congressional Record, Vol. 31, part 4, Senate, April 14, 1898, pp. 3827–3830. 26  This initial request for authority to use force rather than for a declaration of war was the subject of intense discussion that foreshadowed those over the similar request by President George H.W. Bush in relation to the First Gulf War.

5  THE WAR WITH SPAIN AND THE INSURGENCY IN THE PHILIPPINES 

101

had done his duty to resolve the situation without war. Here Hoar inserted a newspaper editorial which praised McKinley for not rushing to war and holding that this delay has likewise enabled the President to exhaust as it was his duty to employ and exhaust, the resources of diplomacy in order to bring about, if possible, an honorable and satisfactory settlement without resort to arms.

Hoar founded this duty to use military force only as a last resort, after the complete and demonstrable exhaustion of diplomacy, on recognition of the heavy costs of engaging in armed conflict. Hoar insisted that he did not like wars, nor “what follows wars.” War means the deaths of Americans, and it would be the Cubans, not the Spanish, who would suffer more in the short run by American armed intervention. War would be costly in a material sense as well. That is why America’s greatest leaders, from George Washington through John Adams to Abraham Lincoln, exhibited “sublime self-restraint” in holding back the martial ardor of the populace when their blood was up in response to foreign provocations. War is not the first response, but the last. Yet, given the failure of diplomacy in the face of “a great wrong” and “a great insult,” he argued, “the time has come when the armed forces of this nation are to be summoned to assert themselves.” In keeping with McKinley’s position (and contrary to those like Senator Turner who advocated an immediate recognition of the Cuban insurgents), Hoar outlined a limited set of war goals informed by the Values norm. The US would intervene to stop the atrocities by ending the conflict between the insurgency and the Spanish government. Hoar held that while Spain was responsible for the bulk of those atrocities in both engaging in activities outside the law of war and in waging war against a people who rightfully desired their freedom, the insurgents were also to blame because they were the first to employ tactics that put civilians in harm’s way. In turn, Hoar argued that ending the conflict and stopping the atrocities would discharge two further duties. First, as McKinley argued, the US must create order. It was under this rubric that he addressed the Maine incident. While that act, the responsibility for which he attached to Spanish officials, impinged upon American honor, honor alone was not enough to justify the use of military force. Nor should a spirit of revenge or “eye for an eye” justice motivate any military action. In this case, military action should be part of a larger attempt to cure an underlying condition. The fate of the Maine was a manifestation of the fact that, in a variety of ways,

102 

D. J. LORENZO

the Spanish were unable to keep “order and civilization.” The US intervention would bring those goods to the Cubans. Second, the US must drive the Spanish out of Cuba. Their presence and actions were at the heart of the Cuban problem; they could not remain. While Hoar ruled out recognition of the insurgents before intervention and made no demands that the US recognize them afterward, he hinted that expelling the Spanish would go a long way toward providing Cuba with self-determination. There was, he insisted, no one in Congress or the executive branch who had expressed a “desire to subjugate and occupy Cuba for the purposes of our own country.” The refusal of the administration to recognize a Cuban government before intervention was not evidence of a desire to take over that island, but of the goal of gaining the sympathy of European states (and denying such sympathy to Spain) by following international law, given that the insurgents did not meet the criteria necessary for recognition as a government. Nonetheless, even in those circumstances, he held, the US bore a duty to the Cubans to remove the Spanish colonial presence.

The Necessity Standard and Related Policy Discussions An important point of comparison with McKinley’s approach to the Cuban conflict is President Grant’s discussion of Cuba in the mid-1870s. The latter presented both a change and continuity in military and security policies from his predecessors. The continuity involved a determination to abide fully by the restrictive side of the standard even given growing evidence of diplomacy’s ineffectiveness in the case of Cuba. Grant would follow tradition in exhausting diplomacy and exploring all alternatives flexibly. The difference involves Grant’s construal of vital interests and duties. Whereas events on Cuba had previously only elicited American interest in buying the island, now Grant contemplated a military intervention on much the same substantive grounds of duties and vital interests as will McKinley, that is, for humanitarian and economic reasons. Grant took up the ongoing rebellion in Cuba on several occasions. In 1875,27 he highlighted the important effects of the conflict on the US and 27  December 7, 1875: Seventh Annual Message. For another instance involving Cuba and a failed filibustering expedition, see Millard Fillmore’s discussion in his Second Annual Message of December 2, 1851. For a discussion of the Neutrality Act of 1794 which formed

5  THE WAR WITH SPAIN AND THE INSURGENCY IN THE PHILIPPINES 

103

the general material stakes the US had in Cuban affairs. The turmoil in Cuba negatively affected a significant trade and further pointed to other damage sustained by Americans, he argued, emphasizing the fact that “the property of our citizens in Cuba is large, and is rendered insecure and depreciated in value and in capacity of production by the continuance of the strife and the unnatural mode of its conduct.” Grant, like McKinley, also referenced the Values norm. The Spanish, he held, fought outside the “laws of civilized warfare and the just demands of humanity.” He argued that such actions outraged public opinion in general, holding that they have “called forth expressions of condemnation from the nations of Christendom.” Again like McKinley, he argued that no solution appeared forthcoming on the battlefield when it came to the clash between the Spanish and the insurgents. A stalemate promised no end to the murderous and damaging situation. Grant then surveyed options and discarded one possible alternative. He rejected calls for recognizing the rebels as insurgents or as an independent government. Grant held that the rebels did not control sufficient territory, held no harbors, nor had created any organization which performed governmental functions, including discharging international obligations. More importantly, he argued that recognition of insurgency, because it would allow US citizens to sell military equipment to the rebels, would give Spain rights to search American vessels and otherwise supervise traffic in the area in ways that “could scarce fail to lead, if not to abuses, certainly to collisions perilous to the peaceful relations.” In other words, even recognition of insurgency was likely to lead to war between the US and Spain. Grant went on to report that he had offered mediation on part of the US.  Spain had declined his offer. He held out hope that Spain would accept such offers from other states, or if not, that other states might intervene. He would also hold open his offer to mediate. He refused to rule out neutrality and diplomacy as viable alternatives and continued to push the existing non-interventionist policy to its limits and diplomacy to the point of exhaustion. However, Grant also stated that relatively soon, US patience would run out if nothing changed. He would have to take other measures. These measures appear to include military intervention,

the basis for Fillmore’s position, see J.  Lobel, “Rise and Decline of the Neutrality Act: Sovereignty and Congressional War Powers in United States Foreign Policy,” Harvard International Law Journal, Vol. 24, No. 1 (1983).

104 

D. J. LORENZO

or at least the recognition of Cuban insurgency that he had earlier held would carry significant risks of warfare with Spain: Persuaded, however, that a proper regard for the interests of the United States and of its citizens entitles it to relief from the strain to which it has been subjected by the difficulties of the questions and the wrongs and losses which arise from the contest in Cuba, and that the interests of humanity itself demand the cessation of the strife before the whole island shall be laid waste and larger sacrifices of life be made, I shall feel it my duty, should my hopes of a satisfactory adjustment and of the early restoration of peace and the removal of future causes of complaint be, unhappily, disappointed, to make a further communication to Congress at some period not far remote, and during the present session, recommending what may then seem to me to be necessary.

There appears to be no change in policy here between McKinley and Grant. Both held that alternatives must be completely and demonstrably exhausted, war considered the last resort, and humanitarianism alone an insufficient basis for waging war.28 Grant never concluded that these conditions were met; McKinley eventually did. Documents from members of the McKinley administration generally reinforce McKinley’s public application of the Necessity Standard, though there is evidence that the influence of the Maine incident had a greater impact on internal deliberations than McKinley’s public statements indicated. This is apparent in the memoirs of Secretary of War R.A. Alger and the diary of John Davis Long, Secretary of the Navy. The latter expressed concern that the Congressional reaction to the Maine incident would propel the US into war “without exhausting all means of a peaceable settlement.”29 Alger speaks of the Maine in detail, while elaborating on McKinley’s patient attempts to attain a settlement, his determination to reach war only as a last resort, as well as the pessimistic conclusions the cabinet drew from those efforts. He underlines McKinley’s “honest and persistent efforts” at negotiations and asserts McKinley was “sincerely anxious to avert war.” He also noted, however, that diplomatic efforts in 28  Secretary of War Alger attributes this last policy to both the Cleveland and early McKinley administrations. R.A. Alger, The Spanish-American War (New York and London: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1901), p. 1. 29  America of Yesterday: As Reflected in the Diary of John Davis Long, ed. L.  S. Mayo (Boston: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1923), p. 175.

5  THE WAR WITH SPAIN AND THE INSURGENCY IN THE PHILIPPINES 

105

Madrid were “fruitless of practical result.” Alger attributed this outcome to the “characteristics of the Spaniard… whereas he is always fruitful of alluring promise, he is invariably barren of performance.” Alger finally ascribes the war to the general perception, held by officials and the public alike, that all viable alternatives were exhausted because “the arts of diplomacy had been vainly exerted.”30 Stewart Woodford, McKinley’s ambassador to Spain, likewise recorded the contents of a communication from Washington that informed him the president would soon take action in response to the situation in Cuba and the Maine incident, “having exhausted all diplomatic agencies to secure peace in Cuba.”31 The same documents also record many, though not all, of the vital interests and duties McKinley reported as at the heart of the war. Aside from the Maine incident, Alger discusses the “shocking” effect of reports from Cuba, which documented the “absolute barbarity” and “inhuman cruelties” of Spanish practices. Responding to these atrocities, he noted, formed part of the “responsibilities to civilization and to itself” which the US bore and which it “could not postpone indefinitely.”32 When Woodford broached the possibility of the US buying Cuba, he provided the Spanish with a set of concerns that more completely reflected McKinley’s public discussions. These included humanitarian issues, problems of trade, the expenditure of American resources in preventing filibustering, and the more general sentiment that “we cannot as a free people permit those to suffer whose worst crime is that they fought to be free.”33

McKinley’s Application of the Standard and Policy It is easy to ascertain the Necessity Standard’s impact on McKinley’s discussion of these policies. He employed its restrictive side to delay military action as long as he could by alluding to the viability of diplomacy, mediation, and the provision of aid. This position contrasted with the more martially minded, who early on invoked the standard’s imperative side by  Alger, The Spanish-American War, pp. 3, 5.  Cable to Woodford, Minister, Madrid, March 20, 1898, and Mr. Day to Mr. Woodford, March 19, 1898, in Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, with the Annual Message of the President Transmitted to Congress (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1901), pp. 693–695. 32  Alger, The Spanish-American War, pp. 1–3. 33  Mr. Woodford to the President, Madrid, March 18, 1898, in Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, p. 690. 30 31

106 

D. J. LORENZO

insisting that Spanish actions and character compelled an immediate US intervention and referenced a broader set of goals, including a duty to provide Cubans with their independence. When McKinley, reluctantly, did ask Congress for authorization to use military force against the Spanish, and then for a declaration of war, he invoked all four norms to ground his own invocation of the standard’s imperative side. He limited his justifications to arguments that drew on Monrovian views, pitching the war as necessary because American borders and territorial waters were threatened, American trade disrupted, American property in Cuba destroyed, order and government absent in Cuba, and in a new argument, that American humanitarian sensibilities were offended. He did not, however, make use of the Democratic/Liberal security proposition and avoided claims that the US had a duty to provide order or civilization to the world, as his soon to be Vice President, Theodore Roosevelt, advocated. McKinley provided the public with a comparatively unambitious conceptualization of the war, perhaps due to his reluctance to go to war, his skepticism of Cuban competency, and his generally limited views on American obligations to others.34 His Security Arguments were sophisticated, but implicated a narrow set of interests. Aside from noting the Maine incident, he could not produce any concrete threats to American borders or property outside Cuba. Instead, he alluded to the mere presence of Spanish armed forces in Cuba and surrounding waters as posing a threat to American security, as well as the need to expend American military assets in ensuring American neutrality in the face of buccaneering filibusterers. This stance represented a continuation of previous policy that held that the US would not tolerate the presence of strategic competitors in the Americas. More potentially radical was his expansion of the Values Norm to construct part of his rationale for war on duties to protect and to provide order, though the latter was built upon the established policy of forestalling extra-hemispheric intervention and protecting American citizens by means of minor military interventions. The Philippines presented McKinley with a different justificatory project. There, his novel construal of American duties extended beyond 34  Offner takes this position, contending that McKinley was more sensitive to opposition in the business community than has been recognized and wished to continue diplomatic efforts, but was pushed to war by Congress. See “McKinley and the Spanish-American War,” particularly pp. 59–61.

5  THE WAR WITH SPAIN AND THE INSURGENCY IN THE PHILIPPINES 

107

liberation to the benevolent provision of the order which the war had destroyed and which the Filipino people allegedly could not yet produce. However, he did not explicitly cite any duty to provide to those people the blessings of American civilization or training in self-government. The US would furnish bare order in this initial discussion. McKinley’s invocation of General Welfare came in the form of references to trade; it is here that his outline of interests returned with a vengeance to an American agenda. Indeed, he was willing publicly to sacrifice Filipino self-determination at the altar of trade after he finally acknowledged Cuban liberation as an important war aim. It was also in his construction of trade as a vital interest that McKinley hinted at a more expansive understanding of the war’s implications. In holding that the retention of the Philippines was essential to the protection of American trade routes to Asia, he placed American trade and military efforts to defend it in the context of the wider world. McKinley provided the public with military and security policies that entailed the exercise of large amounts of patience with alternatives. The administration would pursue these alternatives with a significant amount of flexibility, but there were some alternate avenues (declaring the rebels belligerents, buying Cuba) that he declined to take up. He would abandon the alternatives he did pursue when the passage of time and expenditure of significant effort demonstrated that they were not feasible; when the character of the interlocutor demonstrated that alternatives had little effects on their actions; when an ongoing humanitarian crisis which shocked the nation’s conscience and fell within the US sphere of influence would not otherwise end, and when another state’s military activities close to US borders were considered a security threat. McKinley referenced the confluence of these factors. In McKinley’s portrayal, war was a last resort.

CHAPTER 6

The Great War Using a War Thrust upon the US to Guarantee American Security

The Contexts of the Great War The US did not formally enter the Great War until 1917. At the war’s inception and throughout its early career, much of its population and many policymakers viewed it as another regrettable episode in a long line of conflicts that demonstrated the violent and aggressive character of the Old World. They had no interest in European quarrels or far away violations of international law. Some understood the war as a scam meant to fill the pockets of bankers and arms manufacturers. Many favored a restrictive application of the Necessity Standard that featured a strenuous pursuit of alternatives and a focus on protecting the continental US. Simultaneously, strong sympathy for Germany existed among German immigrants, and strong antipathy for Great Britain among Irish immigrants. Other important elements were well-disposed toward the Allies, and still others viewed America’s relative military weakness with alarm. Pro-preparedness organizations fought for a hold on public opinion and influence in Congress against pro-peace groups of various hues. Due in part to these divisions, Wilson clung to a traditional neutral policy. An accumulation of events pushed Wilson to enter the war. Reports of alleged atrocities against civilians perpetrated by German armies sweeping over Belgium had spurred some early calls for intervention. Germany’s use of submarine warfare to isolate Great Britain from its international sources of supply reinforced that outrage and recalled the events of the late 1700s © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 D. J. Lorenzo, War and American Foreign Policy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-66695-8_6

109

110 

D. J. LORENZO

and early 1800s that spurred military action against Great Britain, France, and various pirates. The German navy’s practice of attacking non-military shipping, including American vessels, in the name of blockading Britain culminated in the sinking of the commercial liner Lusitania in 1915, killing 128 American passengers. This incident spurred a note from the Wilson administration to the German government protesting German actions. The note alleged German violations of international law, outlined American views on the rights of neutral vessels to ply the seas in pursuit of peaceful commerce and of neutral citizens to travel in safety, and promised to protect those rights against German infractions by means that might include military force.1 A subsequent note reiterated that position.2 Germany promised to abide more closely with the general customs of war, thereby avoiding a possible US entry into the conflict. There matters stood until a German submarine sank without warning a French passenger ferry, the Sussex, in March of 1916. In reply to Wilson’s ultimatum that any further transgressions of the laws of war would spur a break of diplomatic ties, Germany again pledged to abide more fully with international law when it came to its treatment of civilian vessels of any nationality. Though the pro-Allied and pro-war elements in the American polity grew in strength and the occasional forays by German submarines off the American coast in pursuit of Allied shipping created tensions, the US maintained the neutral status quo through 1916. Satisfied that his diplomatic efforts and military threats had curbed German attacks on civilian shipping and hoping that the war would end before the US was forced to enter, Wilson deemed mediation between the belligerents the preferred and still viable way of protecting US vital interests. The Allies’ growing dependence on American food, materials, and capital strengthened his bargaining position. However, despite German warnings that unrestricted submarine warfare might soon resume, he was loath to undertake a new 1  Note to German Government, William Jennings Bryan, Secretary of State, May 13, 1915, Foreign Relations of the United States (Government Printing Office: Washington, DC, 1915), Supplement, pp. 393–4. This note is considered an ultimatum; however, its threat of cutting off diplomatic ties in case of non-compliance is, in Lauren’s analysis, a relatively lowlevel threat uttered for the defensive purpose of deterring the Germans. See Paul Lauren, “Coercive Diplomacy and Ultimata,” in A.  George and W.  Simons, eds., The Limits of Coercive Diplomacy (Boulder, Co: Westview Press, 1994). 2  President Wilson’s Note to the German Government, June 9, 1915, in reply to the German Response by Foreign Minister Gottlieb von Jagow, 28 May 1915 to the First Note, Foreign Relations, Supplement, 1915, pp. 436–7.

6  THE GREAT WAR 

111

mediating mission before the elections in November of 1916.3 Wilson’s belated public suggestion that both sides set out their peace terms, published on December 21, 1916, was undercut by a previous (and rejected) German offer for peace talks which hinted at unacceptable territorial concessions, by Wilson’s ill-judged equation of the war aims of the two sides, and by the actions of his own Secretary of State.4 Later responses from both sides did convince Wilson that there was a consensus to construct a “concert of power” following the war which, by replacing a balance of power system “will make it virtually impossible that any such catastrophe should ever overwhelm us again.” He also stressed the importance of human rights, sovereignty, and self-determination to the prospects for future peace.5 On February 1, 1917, Germany resumed a policy of unrestricted submarine warfare, threatening to sink any vessel, military or civilian, Allied or neutral, which entered specified war zones. In response, the Wilson administration broke diplomatic ties with Germany on February 3 and later, on February 26, Wilson asked Congress to authorize the arming of commercial vessels. He defended that policy in his Second Inaugural, holding that events had made Americans “citizens of the world” and that immersion in the world required that the US take up arms, even in the context of neutrality, to defend its rights and discharge important duties.6 Germany’s foreign ministry, meanwhile, put out feelers to Mexico. Should the US enter the war, Germany would provide financial help if Mexico attacked the US and would back Mexican claims to Texas, Arizona, and New Mexico at the conclusion of a successful war effort. It also hinted at soliciting Japanese cooperation. The British sent Wilson the decoded telegram containing this proposal (the Zimmerman Telegram) in late February. Wilson published its contents on February 28. Subsequently, after Germany continued to sink American ships, Wilson asked Congress on April 2 to recognize that a state of war existed with Germany.

3  See Justus Doenecke, Nothing Less than War: A New History of America’s Entry into World War I (Lexington, KY: The University of Press of Kentucky, 2011), p. 223–5. 4  Deonecke, Nothing Less than War, pp. 230–5. 5  Woodrow Wilson: “Address to the Senate of the United States: ‘A World League for Peace’,” January 22, 1917; Doenecke, Nothing Less than War, pp. 240–4. 6  Woodrow Wilson: “Inaugural Address,” March 5, 1917.

112 

D. J. LORENZO

President Wilson’s Case for Entering the Great War Why War? Duties and Vital Interests Wilson referred to trade, territorial security issues, the spread of democracy, and world order as duties and vital interests involved in the conflict with Germany. We see this mix of war aims first in the Fourteen Points, where Wilson deployed arguments describing a war project that extended well past traditionally defined duties. Importantly, he held that the war would be the first step in instituting a new world order. This order in his description would not be an umbrella for colonialism or be part of a drive to civilize the lesser parts of the world but, rather, would constitute a new iteration of the Westphalian project and the Concert of Europe based on the protection of self-determination and democracy and the implementation of collective security concepts. The Fourteen Points themselves were a collection of specific war aims, some easily graspable, others opaque. The first three specified that open treaties and covenants, freedom of navigation, and free trade among all nations should become binding international norms. The fourth demanded guarantees of a universal disarmament “to the lowest point consistent with domestic safety.” The fifth through thirteenth dealt with claims touching on colonial possessions, and the territory and sovereignty of various states and regions. The final point called for the creation of an international actor that, with refinement, would become the League of Nations: “A general association of nations… under specific covenants for the purpose of affording mutual guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity to great and small states alike.”7 At first glance, the Fourteen Points program does not appear to follow other parts of Wilson’s discussion of the war, namely his earlier complaints regarding German behavior. Those complaints implied that if Germany fights a dirty war outside the boundaries of the generally accepted rules of armed conflict, specifically those rules dealing with the commercial rights of neutrals, or threatens America’s territorial security, the US would not remain on the sidelines. This position suggests a narrow and rather unambitious war project—the US would enter the fighting to protect vital

7

 Address to Congress, January 8, 1918.

6  THE GREAT WAR 

113

interests implicated in neutral trade and territorial security, and to counter violations of international norms that protect those interests.8 However, that was not Wilson’s final position. He instead contended that there existed fundamental connections among Germany’s political character, how Germany fought the war in defiance of norms, the nature of the current international order, the origin of the hostilities between Germany and the US, and threats to American security. These connections highlighted important deficiencies in the current world order and the makeup of existing states. As he explicitly argued in his December 1917 address to Congress, German war crimes, acts of piracy, and violent brigandage on land were not random occurrences nor accidents. Germany’s behavior betrayed a basic problem that tied how it fought the war with reasons why it started the conflict, as well as with the weakness of the current order. Rightly understood, punishing Germany was not the fundamental reason for American belligerence in Wilson’s view, nor was defending American rights. Instead, as he noted in that December 1917 speech, it was the fulfillment of the values of peace and justice. What did this mean? Wilson’s position was that peace, justice, and an environment conducive to American economic interests and security would not come about merely by fighting Germany. Nor would it come with just a cessation of hostilities. Wilson argued that the connection between American security and the nature of the outside world as it then existed required that the US and its allies embark on a bigger, revisionist project that pursues more durable goods than merely dealing with current German transgressions, or even reinforcing current international norms. Without a successful conclusion to the war that sees Germany’s defeat, a lasting peace would not be possible, and without using that victory to transform Germany and the international system such that peace would be possible, American security would continue to be at risk. A negotiated end to the conflict that left the status quo in place would merely set the stage for new aggressions and a new war that would endanger the US. Germany would continue to break the peace and transgress against international norms until it is defeated, transformed, and constrained by a collective 8  References to German war crimes, particularly in Belgium, were prominent in popular accounts. See for example “Speech by a Four Minute Man,” in James R. Mock and Cedric Larson, Words That Won the War (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1939), pp. 123–124, as well as descriptions of similar scenes in propaganda films of the times in Susan Brewer, Why America Fights: Patriotism and War Propaganda from the Philippines to Iraq (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), pp. 64–8.

114 

D. J. LORENZO

security arrangement. As an autocracy, Germany is inherently aggressive and dismissive of international norms. Likewise, a vindictive peace that did not treat Germany fairly in the context of a new and just global order would also result in future conflict spurred by German outrage. Victory and the successful discharge of duties associated with the Values, Security, and General Welfare Norms, he insisted, must be assessed by a successful termination of the war marked by the creation of a different global system that is populated by different types of states, governed by improved international norms, and enforced by a collective security system. One key to this new, peaceful world would be an international norm which demands recognition of the rights of people everywhere—both in the lands that Germany occupied or militarily pressured, and in the Central powers themselves—to autonomy and self-determination. Here Wilson returned in part to the views that he articulated before the war. The people of each nation must control their own affairs without interference from foreign powers. This principle is part of the system of justice to which he had previously alluded, and it addressed important issues related to German conquests in Eastern Europe, the status of constituent nationalities in the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires, and the occupation of Belgium. However, there was more to this topic than merely self-determination. How states exercise self-determination was also crucial to understanding the peaceful world order the US would help construct after the successful conclusion of the war. This discussion moved him past his earlier position, particularly his self-congratulatory focus on his refusal to interfere politically in Mexican affairs (discussed below). Wilson depicted orientations toward security, trade, justice, and peace in terms of a Democratic/Liberal security proposition. Germany is aggressive, untrustworthy, and ultimately a threat to US interests not only due to the presence of a weak system of international norms and an ineffective security regime that relies upon secret alliances and self-help, but more fundamentally because it is an autocracy rather than a democracy. Therefore, the presence (or absence) of democratic countries in the international system implicates America’s security needs and general welfare. If a goal of the war is to protect those vital interests, the US must use the conflict to create a new, peaceful global order (backed by the “concert of power” to which he had previously alluded) constituted by a “partnership of democratic nations” which both

6  THE GREAT WAR 

115

internally and externally embrace as norms the values America already recognizes and practices.9 Note that Wilson assumed that a collective security apparatus would only be meaningful to the US if it were a joint project among free, democratic nations. While he underlined the importance of autonomy and self-­ determination as the freeing of nations from outside control, Wilson hinted that the Allies must temper their push for self-determination with the imperative to institute democratic governments. This point was consistent with his general use of the Democratic/Liberal security proposition and helped him address critics who held that unfriendly states could take over a “concert of power” and turn it against the US. Because democracies alone would constitute the post-war world, that threat would never materialize. Further, identifying and emphasizing the importance of democracies to peace and American security meant that Wilson assumed Kantian descriptions of a democratic peace by attributing to ordinary humans a pacific nature and stressing the importance of political structures that allow citizens to hold officials accountable. In so doing, he argued that the war was not a fight in defense of exclusively American values, but rather was a struggle for human values, the respect for which is intrinsically important for everyone. Such values carry with them (and are essential because of) important functional benefits for people both outside and inside the political communities in which they are practiced and respected. Ultimately, Wilson held that he would use the war to build a new world order based on a community of liberal democracies. This community would guarantee security and peace and uphold human rights both internationally and internally. The key to creating such an order is to fight and defeat Germany, then to ensure that the peace process that ends the war creates state structures that allow citizens to exercise popular control over their governments and enjoy individual freedoms. This scheme includes the Germans. Here, Wilson underlined the assertion in his War Message and in the Fourteen Points that the war did not target the German people. The goal was not to punish them, but to free them from their autocratic governors, to provide them the means for governing themselves. By characterizing the implementation of this set of values as a kind of liberation rather than imposition, Wilson sought to remove the friction between his embrace of self-determination as a war aim and his avowal that democracy and freedom must characterize post-war governments if the war was to be 9

 War Message to the Congress, April 2, 1917.

116 

D. J. LORENZO

worth fighting. These are universal values, he insisted, prized by and valuable to everyone. In turn, freeing the Germans and ensuring that the resulting regime is democratic would also mean freeing other people who suffer under the yoke of unrepresentative governments propped up by German autocrats. Autocracies, not democracies, conquer foreign lands and rob their inhabitants of autonomy and sovereignty. This emancipatory project would be a step toward vindicating all humans’ rights and by instituting democratic regimes create a community of nations which would exercise and enforce internationally “the same standards of conduct and of responsibility for wrong done … that are observed among the individual citizens of civilized states.” The US, by upholding and defending through military means “the rights of nations great and small and the privilege of men everywhere to choose their way of life and of obedience,” would create the conditions necessary for it to enjoy security and an enduring peace.10 Why War Now? The Absence of Viable Alternatives In Wilson’s discussion of the war, the definition of viable alternatives under the circumstances of the war in Europe emerged as follows. A policy must protect America’s trade, impress upon other states America’s right to engage in trade without interference, and deter and punish states that threaten American territorial integrity and security.11 The US would pursue alternatives (which took the form of diplomacy and the arming of merchant vessels) with significant patience but (given his penchant for issuing ultimata) little flexibility. In the spring of 1917, Wilson made the case that despite these efforts, nothing short of military force could achieve those objectives. In his address to Congress requesting that it recognize that a state of war exists,12 Wilson first referenced trade and the General Welfare Norm in admitting that his policy of armed neutrality was unworkable. This was both an admission of failure and a claim to flexibility in following alternatives, but it also referenced a bottom line in protecting trade he refused to  War Message to the Congress, April 2, 1917.  Before 1917, Wilson believed that the machinery of diplomacy rather than that of democratization was the route to peace in the short and long terms. Thus, he initially embraced the role of mediator rather than democratizer. M.  Ryan Floyd, Abandoning American Neutrality: Woodrow Wilson and the Great War, August 1914–December 1915 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, See Floyd, Abandoning American Neutrality, pp. 23–30. 12  Address to Congress Requesting a Declaration of War Against Germany (April 2, 1917). 10 11

6  THE GREAT WAR 

117

abandon. Following Madison, Wilson rehearsed the history of violent interactions with German ships on the high seas to argue that aggressive and intolerable German predations would continue until the US forcibly resisted. While the US had previously taken no active part in the armed conflict that plagued Europe, it had seen German privateers and other armed ships attack American-flagged freighters. The policy of arming merchant ships was ineffective because German warships and submarines were attacking armed American merchant ships as if they were flying the flag of an actively hostile belligerent. Maintaining a neutral stance in such circumstances was worse than war because neutral commercial rights did not extend to authorizing the pro-active measures required to safeguard American shipping against German submarines. A different approach is necessary because Germany refused to conform to the existing norms of warfare and commercial intercourse. In attacking American shipping, Germany was committing war-like acts. In another echo of Madison, Wilson then used additional nationalist arguments to reach the Constitutional Norm to clarify that military force was necessary because American sovereignty was now at stake. By rejecting America’s neutrality and neutral trade rights, Germany’s attacks cumulatively constituted an attempt to dictate to the US its trade and security policies. There could be no flexibility or compromise on this issue: There is one choice we cannot make, we are incapable of making: we will not choose the path of submission and suffer the most sacred rights of our nation and our people to be ignored or violated.13

Only by abandoning neutrality and implementing a war policy could his administration discharge its duty to defend America’s right to make policy decisions in the face of what he construed as a Germany bent on domination, he held. However, Wilson faced a serious problem in making these arguments. He had just run for reelection on a slogan boasting of his success in keeping the US out of the conflict in the face of an already established history 13  William Randolph Hearst’s New York American had laid out the same formula with regard to German predations on American shipping in 1915. See Doenecke, Nothing Less than War, p. 65. Floyd, Abandoning American Neutrality, argues that Wilson’s first iteration, which combined the goals of promoting democracy and trade, proved contradictory and ultimately abortive. See Introduction, pp. 4–5.

118 

D. J. LORENZO

of German interference with American commerce and sovereignty.14 Such boasts had established the viability of alternatives when pursued with patience. Attempting to account for this volte-face, some critics (such as Helen Keller and George Norris) held that special interests seeking to protect commercial and banking investments in Britain and France controlled his decision to enter the war. Others (such as Robert La Follette) held that any problems the US experienced with Germany was the product of Wilson’s overly aggressive interpretation of neutral rights that could be set right by stepping back. The vital questions remained: Why war now? How had circumstances materially changed? Wilson’s first gambit was to invoke the Security Norm, bluntly labeling current German actions—in the form of its new declaration of unrestricted submarine warfare and the promulgation of the policy described in the Zimmerman Telegram—as constituting hostilities. Wilson argued that in light of earlier German transgressions, these developments should be considered a de facto waging of war against the US.  Despite opposition, doubts, and previous attempts to pursue alternatives, he argued, Congress now has no choice in this matter. He requested Congress to note that the situation was now clear and recognize that German actions constituted a state of war. As he put it: Congress [should] declare the recent course of the Imperial German government to be in fact nothing less than war against the government and people of the United States; that it formally accept the status of belligerent which has thus been thrust upon it.

Wilson then shifted to an analysis indebted to a Democratic/Liberal security proposition. Using descriptions of Germany to link its character with its problematic actions, Wilson stressed that an autocratic state like Germany cannot be trusted to keep its word, or to restrain itself from engaging in aggression. Germany’s activities (its violations of international law, its broken promises to the US, its inducements to Mexico) have demonstrated that diplomacy and other alternatives are futile. It is not interested in peacefully settling disputes or living as a peaceful participant in an orderly world. More negotiations, while formally possible, would get the 14  For discussions and analysis of the Wilson administration’s attempt to preserve America’s neutral status while continuing to engage in international trade, see Floyd, Abandoning American Neutrality.

6  THE GREAT WAR 

119

US nowhere. Despite its professions of good will and pretended maintenance of normal diplomatic ties, Germany was innately aggressive and had turned its sights on the US. Wilson elaborated on these points through descriptions of American and German activities which echoed those Polk used to describe the US and Mexico, in that he characterized those actors as possessing opposing attitudes toward peace, normal relations, and good faith efforts in settling disputes. In doing so, he also demonstrated the lengths to which his administration had gone to pursue alternatives to war. He noted America’s past “patience and forbearance” with Germany. He maintained that his administration had hesitated to go to war and repeatedly engaged in attempts to settle disagreements peacefully due to its friendship with and goodwill toward the German people. Yet, he complained, Germany’s belligerent attitudes and actions rebuffed his peaceful overtures. By infiltrating spies and foreign agents into the US to foment “criminal intrigues,” they had actively subverted American security all the while feigning normal diplomatic relations. He referenced the Zimmerman Telegram at this point, insinuating that no amount of diplomatic activity could blunt the threat such overt acts posed to US territorial integrity and security.15 Finally, Wilson overtly linked the importance of values to American security policies, thus implicitly rejecting the charge that the war was the product of special interests. He interpreted the Values and General Welfare Norms to hold that the US should depend upon international law to prevent or resolve conflicts in normal times while insisting that Germany had violated the basic tenets of that law in ways that allowed for no flexibility in negotiating. The US and Germany had originally come into conflict because Germany preyed on peaceful, neutral shipping and attacked commerce. German warships sank vessels with reckless disregard for their civilian passengers, resulting in “the wanton and wholesale destruction of the lives of noncombatants, men, women, and children.” In engaging in these gross violations of the customary rules of war, basic human rights, and rules of commerce, the German government had put itself outside the civilized human community; only an immediate use of military force could restrain it. 15  He also argued that the US was well-suited to win the war because united around its war aims, and that the populace demanded war in the wake of the Zimmerman Telegram. For the latter, see Fifth Annual Message, December 4, 1917. See also his proclamation, “Do Your Bit for America,” April 15, 1917.

120 

D. J. LORENZO

Congressional Applications of the Necessity Standard On April 6, 1917, Congress approved Wilson’s request to find that a state of war with Germany existed, in the Senate by a vote of 82 to 6 and in the House, 373 to 50, a result that would have been unthinkable just a few months previously.16 Republican Congressman Isaac Siegel supported going to war immediately on grounds that fully utilized Futility Arguments and pointed to Existing Hostilities.17 He argued that the US had tried a variety of alternatives to war but had failed. He noted that he had supported Wilson’s policy of arming merchant ships and stressed that this expedient had made no difference; German ships still attacked and sank those vessels. He also pointed explicitly to the failure of diplomacy, holding that the State Department had exerted itself strenuously to persuade Germany to guarantee the safety of American citizens abroad and at sea, and had likewise failed. In all he argued, “we have been extremely patient under the most trying of circumstances,” though his argument also indicated that he appreciated Wilson’s inflexibility regarding those issues. This was also the message of the editorial from the American Hebrew he inserted into the record. That article seems to embrace the proposition that the war was a last result, as it held that Wilson had “exhausted every means at his command to bring peace among the warring nations” but “the cup of patience is now full.” Siegel then moved beyond this position to hold that it was not just an accumulation of events and the exhaustion of diplomacy that led to the resort to arms, but that Germany’s actions constituted hostilities. Germany not only rejected peaceful overtures, but intentionally inflicted harm upon the US. The US tried its utmost to avoid hostilities, but Germany did not. “[T]hough we may cry peace,” he argued, “Germany answers by warring against us.” The duties and vital interests that Siegel directly identified were nationalist, but the editorial he included invoked a duty owed to the Values Norm—supporting the spread of democracy. For Siegal himself, the war 16  Doenecke notes that claims at the time held that many of those who voted in favor of war did so against their own considered views, being motivated by patriotism or a desire to show unity. Nothing less than war, p. 296. 17  Congressional Record, Vol. 55, Issue 1, April 5, 1917, pp. 383–4. Siegel was a Republican Congressman from New York who served four terms in the House.

6  THE GREAT WAR 

121

was about protecting the lives of American citizens, establishing freedom of commerce, and more generally preserving sovereignty. He held that the government must protect Americans in their “rights as men and citizens.” However, he also held that German scheming against the US, particularly with Mexico and Japan, in part triggered the war, and thus the US must use force to protect its sovereignty and territory against such moves. Representative Alben Barkley, a liberal Democrat and strong supporter of Wilson, supplied a more varied discussion of war that mixed realist with nationalist arguments.18 In arguing that the US should choose to go to war now, he first established that the administration had pursued all alternatives, but these were now exhausted. Diplomacy was futile because it had not yielded results and promised none in the future. He also referred to attempts at “persuasion” and appeals to international law that had likewise proved fruitless. He then linked this finding to his understanding of how much patience should be applied to alternatives. War, he argued, is a step which ought not to be taken, except as a last resort, after every other means of adjustment of the difficulty has been exhausted. That time, however, has arrived in our relations with Germany.

Thus, echoing Wilson’s war message, he held that the war was not a choice on the part of the US, “but has been forced upon us” given Germany’s stubbornness. One way in which this had happened in Barkley’s analysis had to do with the nature of the differences that had arisen between the two countries. These differences impinged upon America’s reputation. Here Barkley went back to a realist argument to hold that the nature and accumulation of Germany’s transgressions against the US made it imperative that the US respond with military force given that they would not cease without the use of force, and the future implications of not responding with force. These transgressions constituted “injuries and insults and invasions of our sacred rights.” To put up with those transgressions, or to continue to use alternatives to war to (ineffectually) oppose them, is not only to continue to suffer harm, but also to “give encouragement to greater [injuries] and hold our Nation up as divided, impotent, and contemptible.” 18  Congressional Record, Vol. 55, Issue 1, April 5, 1917, pp. 375–6. Barkley represented Kentucky in the House and Senate for a total of 37 years, held the positions of Senate Minority and Majority Leader, and was Vice President under Harry Truman.

122 

D. J. LORENZO

Barkley built on these arguments to establish war aims by identifying a combination of nationalist, realist, and values duties and vital interests. First, he held that American sovereignty was at stake. Germany sought to yank from the US the right to decide for itself which policies it implemented to protect its citizens and engage in peaceful commerce. Congress, he insisted, must believe Wilson when the latter held we can not longer choose the path of submission without surrendering at the command of brute force the cherished rights for the enjoyment of which our forefathers…set up this Nation…

The US would fight to “maintain our rights and our sovereignty and to protect our citizens in the enjoyment of freedom and their peaceful pursuits.” The alternative was to “haul down the flag and give universal notice that it is without meaning.” Barkley then pushed beyond this nationalist understanding to embed war aims fully in the Values Norm and a Democratic/Liberal security proposition, thus gesturing toward an expansive military policy that overturned John Quincy Adams’ policy of strict non-intervention. We get a first hint of this when he identified the fight for American reputation and sovereignty as taking place alongside other democracies and when he identified the animating force of the German war effort as autocracy. The US, he continued, has duties which extend beyond the protection of material interests and sovereignty and which can require the use of military force in situations other than those that include an invasion of the homeland. Responding to those who would have the US avoid war by pulling back its commercial vessels and appeasing Germany, he argued that such a policy ignored and discarded important parts of the American project. The US stood for the freedom of everyone—all its prior wars had exhibited some part of that project and its accompanying duties. It must now fulfill that duty by helping other democracies fight autocratic forces. By doing so, it would create opportunities for freedom and self-­government throughout the world. Ultimately, the war would be the means for eliminating autocracy, after which every state, including Germany, will be able to embrace democracy and find a home in a global community of democratic states.

6  THE GREAT WAR 

123

The Necessity Standard and Related Discussions Despite disagreements with Wilson both before and after the decision to go to war, former President William Howard Taft lent his support to entering the conflict even while he pulled short of supporting Wilson’s full agenda and provided additional grounds for war. He did concur with Wilson on the necessity of using military force against the Central Powers based on overt security and commercial concerns, as well as Wilson’s contention that the US was already at war. In so doing, he went further than did Wilson by locating American security in the context of established international law that governed the conduct of war for both belligerents and neutrals. Germany broke those laws, he held, when it attacked American vessels and civilian ships. In so doing, it murdered the Americans who died as a result, and those murders constitute transgressions that the US must meet with military force. This alone was sufficient grounds for war, and so he concluded the point by dismissing the possibility of any other viable policy. “Was there any other alternative for us than to declare war?” he queried.19 Taft also engaged in a long and familiar discussion reiterating the lengths to which the US had gone to avoid armed conflict with Germany.20 Given the position described above, it is no surprise that he did so by portraying the president as embracing, at last, the right policy. He was critical of the administration’s hesitation to do more to protect American lives and shipping between 1914 and 1917, gesturing toward a security policy which would have employed military force much sooner by labeling earlier German attacks on US shipping as hostilities that should trigger an automatic military response. However, Taft acknowledged that Wilson’s reluctance to enter the conflict satisfied those who held that war must be a last resort. American forbearance, patience, and diplomatic efforts had inevitably proved incapable of stopping aggressive German actions against American shipping, he argued, vindicating America’s entry into the war by demonstrating conclusively that it had exhausted all peaceable means of resolving the conflict. No one could accuse a weak president like Wilson of acting aggressively, fighting an unnecessary war, or resorting to military

19  “William Howard Taft on America’s Entry into the War; an Address at Union College, Schenectady, N.Y., 13 June 1917.” 20  “An Address at Union College, Schenectady, N.Y., 13 June 1917.”

124 

D. J. LORENZO

force in the absence of a remarkable threat to American security, he intimated.21 Unsurprisingly, Taft mirrored Wilson’s stance when describing the war as a necessary measure in defense of American security and sovereignty. It was the duty of American leaders to defend the rights of the US and its citizens, whether their rights are violated on land or at sea, he insisted. A state that does not stand up to powers which molest its citizens, particularly those engaged in peaceful trade, cannot be said to be autonomous and sovereign. If the US were to back off under the threat of German might and decline to enter the war, it would fall under the “domination” of Germany and lose the political and economic autonomy it had fought for and won during the Revolution.22 Taft also accepted a Democratic/Liberal security proposition insofar as he acknowledged that a world filled with democracies would be a good thing for American security and traced the German threat to its authoritarian character. However, Taft strongly differentiated between democracy and self-determination, privileging the second above the first and elevating international law above democratization. Forcibly spreading democracy is to go too far. To foist democracy on unwilling nations, especially through military means, is to take the human community back to an earlier time when powerful actors imposed values on people for their own good, “back to the logic of the Inquisition, when they burned people in this world so that they might not burn in the next.”23 Taft also identified a duty for the US and others to protect weaker countries from aggression. Taft held that the US would not fully discharge this duty just by defeating Germany. He assumed the war would open the way for continued and broader American participation in world affairs, but through the enforcement of international law rather than democratization projects or attempts to erect international governance institutions. His later, tepid, acceptance of the League of Nations was predicated on his 21  The same backhanded treatment of Wilson is evident in The North American Review’s editorial “An Ally or Hindrance” (Vol. 205, March 1917). For other uses of this argument to justify entering the Great War, see Editorial, “The Terms of Peace,” North American Review, Vol. 205, January 1917; Editorial, “For Freedom and Democracy,” North American Review 206 (March 30, 1917); Editorial, “The Call to Arms,” North American Review, Vol. 205, No. 738 (May, 1917); Editorial, “The Peril of the Future,” North American Review, Vol. 207, No. 189, June 1918. 22  “An Address at Union College, Schenectady, N.Y., 13 June 1917.” 23  “An Address at Union College, Schenectady, N.Y., 13 June 1917.”

6  THE GREAT WAR 

125

judgment that it would not impair unilateral American action. A Westphalian-plus understanding of world order, in which the US engaged in multilateral cooperation with other democracies in security matters in the context of international law, was as far as he was willing publicly to venture.24 As noted above, Wilson had previously outlined an approach to the use of military force in his Annual Address of 1915 that diverged in important ways from the position he adopted in 1917.25 Addressing his military intervention in Mexico, Wilson congratulated his administration on its restraint in undertaking an intervention based only on discharging an essential security task—repelling the forays of Mexican insurgents across US borders. It did not “take advantage of [Mexico] in her distress and undertake to impose upon her an order and government of our own choosing.” Instead, it respected the principle of self-government that the Virginia Bill of Rights set up as a fundamental American value. The US military acted as a midwife, not a conqueror or provider of order; its success had given way to anticipation, as the people of the US “now hopefully await the rebirth of the troubled Republic.” In the course of this discussion, Wilson provided an explanation of when and why the US would go to war that broadly harnessed the Security and Values Norms. The US, he argued, has its “genius best displayed in the practice of the arts of peace.” It is also a democracy and “Great democracies are not belligerent. They do not seek or desire war.” They instead embrace the liberal values of “individual liberty” and “free labor” rather than “conquest and dominion.” They make their own way in the world through industry and cooperation. This statement gestures toward a policy of restraint, patience, and flexibility with alternatives. He also outlined a set of interests that he would not compromise that expanded vital interests and pointed to the standard’s imperative side. The US, as a nation dedicated to the security of a people jealous of “our own principles of right and liberty,” he argued, will not tolerate “aggression” against itself. To lead a peaceful, non-belligerent democracy, he insisted, does not mean embracing a fully pacific position. Nor, he held, did he employ a policy of strict non-interventionism or adhere to an understanding of vital interests that extended only to the defense of American citizens, territory, trade, and sovereignty. He would intervene abroad to further and defend  “The League of Nations is Here,” Philadelphia Public Ledger, January 23, 1919.  Third Annual Message, December 7, 1915.

24 25

126 

D. J. LORENZO

self-determination in general. Referencing a Democratic/Liberal security proposition, he argued that his goals were liberal. The US, he insisted, identifies with any state “that tries to walk in these difficult paths of independence and right” and will therefore go to the aid of free and democratic states when an “outside domination” imperils their “liberty” and “self-chosen lines of self-development.” He characterized his own use of military force as always defensive in character—the Values Norm always guides the Security Norm—whether employed in the direct interest of the US or of others, for in his hands and in those of all true American leaders, war is “merely as a means of asserting the rights of a people against aggression.”26 Regarding entry into the Great War, traces of the Necessity Standard exist in conversations that took place at an important cabinet meeting held on March 20, 1917. Discussion at this meeting addressed possible responses to the continued sinking of American merchant ships by German submarines. Participants made reference to the imperative side of the standard. First, while Wilson did not indicate that he would call for war, he set out the security situation and asked for advice on whether to call Congress into an early session, and what he should set before Congress.27 He summed up his thoughts by declaring that in the quest to protect American 26  These public pronouncements fit somewhat uneasily with the reality of the later US incursion into Mexico in pursuit of Poncho Villa and his forces, and the occupation and administration of the Dominican Republic and Haiti during Wilson’s administration. Communications between military personnel and officials and others on Haiti, for example, held that the American intervention there assisted the Haitians create a “firm and lasting government.” Secretary of the Navy to Admiral Caperton, August 10, 1915, U.S. Senate, Select Committee on Haiti and Santo Domingo, Inquiry into Occupation and Administration of Haiti and Santo Domingo, 2 vols. (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1922), p. 1487; also pp. 1494, 1710. 27  While Wilson here held that the power to declare or recognize war was a Congressional prerogative, in asking the second question he appeared open to a different approach in which he as president acknowledged that a state of war exists. Colonel House was to record a few days later that, “The President asked whether I thought he should ask Congress to declare war or whether he should say that a state of war exists, and ask them for the necessary means to carry it out.” See “From the Diary of Colonel House,” The White House, Washington, March 27, 1917, in Arthur Link, et al., eds. The Papers of Woodrow Wilson (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1983) Vol. 41, p. 482. There appeared to be pressure on Wilson to declare that war existed not only from House but also from the public. For a draft response to the latter that emphasized that Wilson lacked the authority to make such a declaration, see Robert Lansing’s “Proposed Statement to the Press,” in The Papers of Woodrow Wilson, pp. 471–472.

6  THE GREAT WAR 

127

trade as a vital interest, all viable alternatives to war had been exhausted. As Secretary of State Robert Lansing records his remarks [Wilson] went on to say that he did not see from a practical point of view what else could be done to safeguard American vessels more than had already been done unless we declared war or declared that a state of war existed, which was the same thing, and that the power to do this lay with Congress.28

Secretary of War Newton Baker and Lansing were even more specific. Baker argued that war was inevitable due to German violations of important values and norms related to the conduct of war, and those that touched on American security. Thus, he held (in Lansing’s paraphrase) that there was no alternative to the use of military force: “the recent German outrages showed that the Germans did not intend to modify in the least degree their policy of inhumanity and lawlessness, and that such acts could mean only one thing, and that was war.” Lansing, in turn, provided a much longer discussion that replicated the administration’s most important public arguments. In addressing the reason for using military force at that point in time, he turned to labeling the acts in which Germany engaged as hostilities, thus ruling out alternatives. While he counseled going to Congress for a declaration of war because “the acknowledgment of such a state officially amounted to a declaration of war” which was beyond the power of the president to issue, he held that “an actual state of war exists.” The aims of the war he identified were not only those associated with duties to protect American lives and security, but also to help protect such vital interests as the defense of other democracies, the creation of a “League of Peace” populated by democracies, and the “establishment of democratic institutions throughout the world as a way of ensuring future peace.”29

28  Robert Lansing, “Memorandum of the Cabinet Meeting, 2:30–5 pm. Tuesday, March 20, 1917,” in The Papers of Woodrow Wilson, vol. 41, p. 438. 29  “Memorandum of the Cabinet Meeting,” pp. 439–40.

128 

D. J. LORENZO

Wilson’s Application of the Standard and Policy Wilson revealed both traditional and novel understandings of security and military policy in his justification of war. In discussing his exploration of alternatives, he pointed to a considerable exercise of patience and flexibility that paralleled the traditional position while adhering strictly to a bottom line of refusing to compromise on the substance of neutral trade, territorial security, and sovereignty. The difference between 1914 and 1917 from his perspective was the accumulated evidence that all viable alternatives had failed, the fact that Germany repeatedly targeted American shipping, Germany had formally announced a policy of unrestricted submarine warfare, and the evidence of the Zimmerman Telegram and other sources that Germany was actively plotting against American territorial security. The elements of the military policy he articulated therefore held that patience with alternatives should be considerable and moderately flexible, but would be cut short and military force employed when another state repeatedly violates international law and the customary rules of war involving neutral trade, and/or another state engages in activities which pose an immediate threat to American territorial integrity and sovereignty. In supplying the most ambitious discussion of vital interests, Wilson also set before the public the most innovative security policy. Most important to this policy was his embrace of a Democratic/Liberal security proposition that melded nationalist concerns for security with a traditional American emphasis on values in ways that differed from pacifists, traditional Jacksonian supporters of domestic defense, and the closely related views of former president Taft and Senator Barkley. Germany, he held, attacks American trade, security, and sovereignty because it is an autocracy, a behavior nothing but force can change. American interests can only be defended by defeating Germany, ensuring its transformation into a democratic state, and freeing and transforming other states into democracies. The US can then join with those states in a collective security organization, confidant in their credibility and peaceful intentions. In outlining this vision, Wilson put forward two new propositions: that a collective security apparatus best serves American security, and that security requires a global democratization effort within the context of a rules-based global order. This description recognizes that Wilson turned his wartime slogan on its head when he addressed Congress and the public. Indeed, he

6  THE GREAT WAR 

129

unconsciously rejected the logic of that slogan. “Making the world safe for democracy” elevates democracy to the primary place of wartime aims and post-war activities, as did Senator Barkley. It locates the duty to spread values within an agenda of ensuring that all humans enjoy their due as humans by clearing the path for them to exercise democracy fully. It is to place values above security and to pass over any Democratic/Liberal security proposition. Yet Wilson’s discussion of his war aims subordinated democratic values to the larger causes of US peace and security, and thus to the logic of a Democratic/Liberal security proposition. The primary reason why democracy, justice, and freedom should be pursued as wartime goals, and attained at least partly at the expense of Taft’s liberal and pluralist understanding of full self-determination, he held, is because the US must create and sustain a peaceful, democratic global order that will protect vital American interests. Otherwise, engaging in the war is a fruitless endeavor. Once this war ends, another will be right around the corner. There is no other way to make the world “safe” except by its successful democratization. In the long run, making the world safe for democracy in any but the short term is an impossible project in his conception because democratization is a prior condition for peace and security. Making the US safe by democratizing the world, on the other, hand, is a viable and worthwhile goal.

CHAPTER 7

World War II Using a War Thrust upon the US to Create a Congenial World Order

Background to the US Entry into World War II While the US held a coveted place at the peace talks at Versailles in 1919, President Wilson’s influence counted for less than he had expected in the face of Japanese, British, and particularly French demands. Holding out for his League of Nations, Wilson made ill-advised compromises that doomed his collective security proposal. Perhaps most importantly in the short run, he agreed that Japan would receive Germany’s concessions in China despite Chinese protests, while acquiescing to proposals to shear Germany of territory and require it to pay heavy reparations, thus producing the “unjust peace” and grievances that he rightly feared would lead to a new war. The US Senate rejected the outcome of Versailles in part due to the beliefs that the US had betrayed China, thereby keeping the US out of the League of Nations and any prospective collective security apparatus. More importantly in the long-run, large segments of the American population felt deceived by the mismatch between Wilson’s war aims and the results he achieved, generating cynicism and a profound reluctance on the part of the populace and officials to become involved in any activity that might lead to another war. Security policy following the Great War consequently emphasized the restrictive side of the Necessity Standard and returned to traditionalist views by portraying many security threats as arising from American policymakers embroiling the US in conflicts—those policies imperil the US territorially and economically as well as politically, © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 D. J. Lorenzo, War and American Foreign Policy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-66695-8_7

131

132 

D. J. LORENZO

and so the reasoning went, the US would be safe if officials avoided them. Officials consequently emphasized narrowly nationalistic understandings of security policy that focused on sovereignty and defense of the homeland, though this also included a commitment to the Monroe Doctrine, and an immediate recourse to arms in case of an attack on American territory.1 Viable options to war expanded to encompass recourse to international treaties and agreements on disarmament. Neutrality in the face of conflict would once again be American policy. In turn, Congress and successive administrations reduced the size of the military establishment, and de-emphasized those elements that were key to the projection of force. By the mid-1930s, some political figures in the US recognized that threats from revisionist European and Asian powers had emerged. These states engaged in projects of territorial expansion which threatened to alter the world balance of power to the disadvantage of states which resembled the US politically (thus triggering analysis based on a Democratic/Liberal security proposition) and endangered American trade interests. One target of this analysis was Japan, whose martial activities in mainland China upset trade relations and promised to reorder power relations in the Asia to the detriment of the US.2 Also of importance were new technologies that threatened to cancel America’s remaining geographical defenses, with the prospects of warplanes capable of reaching the mainland US from bases in South or Central America, and eventually Europe. A rethinking of American security and military policies consequently occurred among members of the Roosevelt administration. These officials revisited existing understandings of the scope and breadth of American vital interests, and began embracing views that emphasized the inter-relatedness of the world, linkages of US security with the fate of other democracies, and the need to re-arm rather than push for more disarmament agreements.3 This re-orientation had an effect on American policy in China, where Japanese intervention threatened American trade, American 1  As John Ruggie put it, policymakers “set such a high threshold for what constituted a vital or important American interest that no threat to international peace and security triggered an American response.” “The past as prologue? Interests, identity, and American foreign policy.” International security 21, no. 4 (1997), pp. 97–8. 2  For President Roosevelt’s reference to the problem of aggressive revisionism at this time and its alleged link with authoritarian states, see his State of the Union Address, January 3, 1936. 3  For a later discussion of these factors, see Roosevelt’s State of the Union Address, January 4, 1939.

7  WORLD WAR II 

133

missionaries, the commitments the US had wrested from other powers to respect Chinese sovereignty and state integrity, as well as the general American security position in the Pacific. The American position gradually hardened, as the administration refused to depart from the various treaty commitments it had accepted with respect to China. However, such concerns did not yet result in any serious consideration of military intervention in the Pacific. After the outbreak of war in Europe, the US became increasingly entangled with British affairs. US warships eventually began escorting American commercial vessels to the latter as protection against German submarines, thus engaging in military activities that did not fall very short of war. US interests in China also led the Roosevelt administration to take increasingly strict measures against the Japanese, and to take an inflexible approach to negotiations, refusing to agree to a general settlement or the non-aggression pact that the Japanese government pressed. Nominal negotiations that had begun earlier in 1941 continued until the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December of 1941.

President Roosevelt on Entering World War II Why War? Duties and Vital Interests Roosevelt identified territorial security, the furtherance and defense of American values, sovereignty, and a congenial world order as the duties and vital interests at stake in the US conflict with the Axis powers. In addressing the conflict with Japan in particular, Roosevelt used Security Arguments and a Democratic/Liberal security proposition to justify policies implemented prior to Pearl Harbor that had assisted Germany’s opponents and put pressure on Japan to cease its armed incursions into China.4 He argued that Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor was not only important for the damage it inflicted on American military forces, but also because it demonstrated the longer-term threat that Japan, together with its Axis partners, had all along posed to US security interests and values. This threat stemmed from the nature of those regimes, which are immoral, criminal, treacherous, and animated by a spirit of “gangsterism” that is hostile to the security of free democracies. This characterization of Japan and its linkage with security was a theme that Roosevelt carried over from 4

 Fireside Chat: On the War with Japan, December 9, 1941 (MC).

134 

D. J. LORENZO

his previous justifications of Lend-Lease in 1940 and 1941. The Nazis, he had then argued, were attempting to subvert the US through various intrigues due to the nature of their regime, and an important aim of assisting Britain was to eliminate this threat.5 Roosevelt also continued his earlier practice of including important references to the Values Norm to reiterate that the grounds for war were broad rather than narrow.6 His discussions of war in relation to Germany and Italy importantly focused on the intersection of values and security by hinting at his Democratic/Liberal security proposition, but more generally drew attention to those states’ failure to act in a civilized manner. As did Wilson, he held that it was not chance that led Japan to attack the US, or Germany and Italy to declare war. Nor did a conventional clash of mundane interests account for the conflict. Rather, he held that the Axis powers had outsized and malignant ambitions to institute an undesirable world order. Germany, he argued, was bent on “world conquest” and was attempting to “enslave the entire world.” Germany and its allies threw down a “challenge to life, liberty, and civilization” that must be met by armed force. In joining those who were fighting the Axis, the US was not only defending its interests; it was rightly collaborating with the “forces of justice and of righteousness” in their struggle to eliminate “the forces of savagery and barbarism.”7 In addition to fighting and overcoming these forces, Roosevelt identified other duties and vital interests, some small, others immense in their scope and ambition. As war aims, these often combined realist with values objectives, and therefore interpreted the Security and Values Norms in ways that buried previous understandings that emphasized a limited and defensive posture dependent upon geography and a concentration of military forces at home. Roosevelt addressed these aims at various times by touching on how the war was to be fought and gesturing toward his general approach to security. His Fireside Chat of February 23, 1942, in emphasizing the global nature of the war, underscored the necessity of adopting a forward defense policy to the imperative task of attaining even narrow territorial  On Lend Lease, March 15, 1941.  Message to Congress Requesting War Declarations with Germany and Italy, December 11, 1941; Fireside Chat 21: On Sacrifice, April 28, 1942; Fireside Chat 27: On the Tehran and Cairo Conferences, December 24, 1943. 7  December 11, 1941: Message to Congress Requesting War Declarations with Germany and Italy. 5 6

7  WORLD WAR II 

135

security, and implicated that stance in the goal of “total victory.” Roosevelt began by holding that a strategy of forward defense was vital to a successful conclusion to the war and the elimination of threats to American security interests. In meeting Japan in the Pacific and Germany in Europe, his administration was not waiting for the war to come to US territories again. It fights at “vast distances because that is where our enemies are.” He contrasted this strategy with what he describes as the outmoded and discredited views of American Firsters. They embrace strategic understandings that do not discharge the duty of defending US security, as their concepts are only fit for “the days of sailing ships. They advise us to pull our warships and our planes and our merchant ships into our own home waters and concentrate solely on last ditch defense.” Such passive measures are obtuse, he argued. They expose the US to the risk of defeat. The oceans, he warned, are no longer America’s defensive barriers, sufficient to shield its people and territory from the blows of the enemy. They are rather “endless battlefields on which we are constantly being challenged by our enemies.” Further, the US requires the help and resources of allies to win the war. To allow the latter to fall into the hands of the enemy through martial apathy is to court failure in the task of defending the US.  The US must consider the balance of power that was at stake in the war. Taking on enemies far from home in an offensive rather than purely defensive war would also allow the US to pursue the “total victory” which would enable the US and its allies to attain vital post-war goals. Among these were “eliminating the Empire of Japan as a source of aggression,” and ensuring that Germany does not regain its “military might.”8 Other important goals were equally unattainable by merely defending the US or waiting out the enemy. These included restoring self-determination to France and other states overrun by the Axis powers in Europe, returning “stolen property” taken by Japan, and guaranteeing to all Asian nations the right to practice “their own forms of self-government without molestation.” The administration would eliminate “all of Nazism and Prussian militarism” as well as the German conception of racial superiority before it would allow Germany to return to the European community as a “respectable” member.9

8 9

 December 24, 1943: Fireside Chat 27: On the Tehran and Cairo Conferences.  Fireside Chat 27: On the Tehran and Cairo Conferences.

136 

D. J. LORENZO

Roosevelt further expanded on these points by linking his understanding of values and world order with his conception of the war itself and to an expansive understanding of the Values Norm. Just as the war the US fought was global in nature and depended upon the cooperation of the Allies, so in turn Roosevelt emphasized the global nature of the project of defending and spreading important values. Every individual’s and every nation’s freedom, he argued, was dependent on the freedom of all others. Thus, it was necessary for the cause of freedom that the US pursues and ultimately prevails in the “great struggle.” Yet, Roosevelt had even larger plans. After outlining this understanding of the nature of values, he reiterated that the text of the Atlantic Charter set the Allies’ war aims.10 These aims included but often expanded on the aims set out above and implicated the US in a global role. The first included promises to uphold the Westphalian nature of the international system: there would be no territorial acquisitions by the Allies, nor any redrawing of national boundaries without the consent of those affected. Next were universal promises to respect or restore self-government and sovereignty to all countries, and to facilitate the access of all states to trade and raw materials. International renderings of the Four Freedoms that Roosevelt outlined in his 1941 Annual Message followed. Finally, the declaration held all nations had the right to use the seas in freedom and the nations of the world should work to eliminate the use of force. These references to international collaboration led Roosevelt to emphasize that the war must be used to make fundamental changes in the way Americans understand security and the values and the duties associated with defending that good. In early 1944, he followed up on his description of the war as an offensive rather than defensive struggle, in which the Allies would pursue total victory, by asserting that he was following the wishes of ordinary Americans to win the peace as well as the war in such a way that a new war would not arise. A continuous American role in the world was the only way to meet this essential duty: But I do not think that any of us Americans can be content with mere survival. Sacrifices that we and our Allies are making impose upon us all a sacred obligation to see to it that out of this war we and our children will gain something better than mere survival.

 Joint Declaration, August 14, 1941.

10

7  WORLD WAR II 

137

We are united in determination that this war shall not be followed by another interim which leads to new disaster—that we shall not repeat the tragic errors of ostrich isolationism.

His reports on the Tehran and Cairo Conferences reflected these broad understandings of the war and its aims, importantly by outlining his understanding of the security-related aspects of the proposed post-war United Nations. Here Roosevelt combined a values-based understanding of security as the maintenance of peace and the elimination of revisionist actors with a realist appreciation of the importance of relative and absolute power and of the use of force to outline a set of duties and relevant vital interests his policies would address. First, he would use victory to establish a framework of collaboration, entailing the cooperation of the four large allied powers working in tandem to maintain order and to prevent “another aggressor nation from arising and to start another world war.” While their activities would respect the rights of all nations and not set up a system of domination, they would resort to “international force” if necessary to keep “international peace.” Second, Roosevelt would use victory to push US policy further along the path he had outlined since his first term. Then, he had argued that the US had to assume an active role in world affairs to help keep international peace, even if the US role was limited by its weak military position and a reluctant public. The US would use the tools available, including embargoes, in an attempt to deter aggression and punish aggressors. Now he would go further: by reinterpreting the Values and Security Norms to understand their associated duties in a broad fashion, he would have the US help construct and uphold a peaceful world order. Rather than sitting out major controversies and conflicts in the hope that war does not arise or touch on vital interests (as would the “ostrich” isolationists), then belatedly joining in wars to confront aggressive revisionist actors that directly attack US territory or military units, US officials must take it as their duty to assume a prominent seat at the table of world affairs, making the US an active member of the world community and an equal partner with the other great powers. He gave two reasons why the US must participate if it wants peace. One, he maintained that the end of the war does not necessarily equal a “durable peace.” Peace must be constructed, as had not been the case after the Great War. Such construction requires American participation and American power. Two, he held that the maintenance of peace does not just mean creating institutions or processes. Peace must be

138 

D. J. LORENZO

enforced. In keeping with his earlier allusion, Roosevelt held that force must be used because aggressor nations will not cease their aggressions voluntarily, and the US must join other powerful nations in applying force if it is to succeed in its efforts to protect its own security and national interests.11 Why War Now? The Absence of Viable Alternatives In Roosevelt’s view, a viable alternative to war must protect American security while continuing to uphold important American values and vital interests in Asia. After Pearl Harbor, he needed little help in establishing that Japan had brought the war to the US by attacking its territory and military assets but spent a considerable amount of time arguing that it would continue to do so in the future. The military policy he articulated therefore held that while the US would exercise much patience with alternatives, it would immediately abandon them and employ military force when an actor attacked US territory, and or that it was clear from experience and events that an actor generally could not be safely addressed by non-military means. In addressing why war was now necessary, Roosevelt referred first to a set of nationalist and values arguments, coupled with various realist assertions, to reach the Security Norm in a conventional fashion. An initial contribution was an Existing Hostilities argument that presented Congress with a blunt interpretation of Pearl Harbor. Congress really has no choice. “Hostilities exist. There is no blinking at the fact that our people, our territory, and our interests are in grave danger,” he insisted. Like Wilson, he asked Congress not to declare war (thereby initiating hostilities), but to recognize that “a state of war has existed between the United States and the Japanese Empire.” This discussion, as well as the subsequent reference to futility, is located within a longer temporal context that must take into account the administration’s approach to negotiations. The US and Japan had engaged in talks for a considerable number of years at the instigation of both parties. Japan wanted the US to acknowledge what it claimed was Japan’s special relationship with China and the Asia-Pacific region in general, and to grant Japan complete, unencumbered trade in all items, including military materiel and related goods. Japanese officials were relatively inflexible in  Fireside Chat 27: On the Tehran and Cairo Conferences.

11

7  WORLD WAR II 

139

pursuing this stance until the fall of 1941, when they offered to enter into a non-aggression pact. The US refused and was also inflexible in its demands. The Roosevelt administration insisted that it could not abandon its duties and vital interests, as established by treaties and agreements to which the US and Japan were both signatories. These duties included respect for the territorial integrity and sovereignty of all states; non-­ interference in the internal affairs of other states; the principle of equality, particularly in economic matters and trade, and no change in the status quo in the Pacific except through peaceful means.12 The administration also refused to open American markets to the Japanese, holding that Japan had previously refused to reciprocate, and that American defense requirements necessitated that it withhold military and military-related material out of the international market as a whole except to meet the needs of those countries fighting Germany. Given this context, we can appreciate why Roosevelt used an Existing Hostilities argument as a way of reinforcing the finality of the case for war. This argument serves in part to rebut possible objections that his administration had provoked the attack when it abandoned policies of strict neutrality to defend Chinese sovereignty and US treaty rights in the Pacific. If such criticisms had gained traction in the context of the strong America First movement, the war effort might have been severely weakened or confined to unilateral defensive operations against the Japanese, as opposed to the aggressive war strategies and broad cooperation with Britain that Roosevelt preferred.13 For possibly the same reasons, assertions grounding the failure of alternatives to deal with the Japanese threat densely populated Roosevelt’s address to Congress on December 8 and his subsequent Fireside Chat on December 9. While he believed that referring to an existing state of war was necessary, Roosevelt clearly did not act as if merely reporting the attack on Pearl Harbor would be dispositive of the issue of war, and appeared to have feared that despite the attack, powerful members of Congress and the public would demand that his administration settle the 12  Cordell Hull notes that in early December 1941 the administration still feared that “the powerful isolationist groups still existing in Congress and in the United States might use [discussions of talks with Britain over Japanese moves in Asia] to renew their oft-repeated charges of ‘war mongering’ and ‘dragging the nation into foreign wars’.” Memoirs (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1948), Vol. 2, p. 1092. 13  Address to Congress Requesting a Declaration of War, December 8, 1941; Fireside Chat: On the War with Japan, December 9, 1941.

140 

D. J. LORENZO

dispute by means other than war.14 He subsequently embarked on extensive discussions of diplomacy that echoed in many respects those his predecessors provided. He used this discussion to make three points: that war was inescapable, that the US had done all it could honorably to avoid the war, and that the war was attributable to the intransigence of the Japanese. There was nothing that the US could have done to stop the Japanese while still protecting its vital interests, he argued. The US had not been unreasonable in its negotiations with Japan given the necessity of protecting its interests and values. However, nothing short of providing crushing and humiliating concessions and selling out China would have satisfied Japanese. Roosevelt had tried diplomacy, but that tactic had inevitably failed due to Japanese attitudes and policies. In making these points, Roosevelt stressed the patient, peaceful nature of America’s interaction with Japan prior to the attack. Though he did not assert that war was a last resort, he did intimate that the US had gone the extra mile to settle outstanding problems through negotiations and had found in Japan an unwilling and ultimately treacherous interlocutor. There was no point in seeking further negotiations. Here Roosevelt also gestured toward a fourth point, one reminiscent of those made in justifying entry into the War of 1812, the Mexican War, and the Great War. War was not only necessary because alternatives were exhausted in terms of viability; it also transpired that negotiating with the Japanese was dangerous given their character and the egregiousness of their actions. In his address to Congress, he stressed that Japan had schemed out and executed the action at Pearl Harbor all the while feigning interest in continuing negotiations. “[T]he attack,” he argued was deliberately planned many days or even weeks ago. During the intervening time the Japanese Government has deliberately sought to deceive the United States by false statements and expressions of hope for continued peace.

He therefore implied that even if the administration did desire to negotiate with the Japanese, there was every reason to believe that they would 14  For later arguments that held that the war was avoidable, see Bruce Russett, No clear and present danger: a skeptical view of the United States entry into World War II (Boulder, Co: Westview Press, 1997) and Robert Higgs, “How U.S. Economic Warfare Provoked Japan’s Attack on Pearl Harbor,” https://mises.org/library/ how-us-economic-warfare-provoked-japans-attack-pearl-harbor.

7  WORLD WAR II 

141

continue to attack American territory and interests. The price of not going to war would be acquiescence to such violence.

Congressional Applications of the Necessity Standard After the events of Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt asked Congress to recognize that a state of war existed against Japan. Despite nerves on Roosevelt’s part, the votes for war were little more than formalities. The Senate approved the declaration against Japan 82–0 and the House 388–1. Drama did ensue regarding Germany and Italy, for there was only casus belli against Japan and a considerable movement in the US only to fight Japan, contrary to Roosevelt’s wishes. However, Hitler and Mussolini proved accommodating and led Germany and Italy into declarations of war against the US. Congress then voted to declare war against Germany and Italy by margins of 88–0 in the Senate and 393–0 in the House. In speaking in favor of the resolution declaring war on Germany, Congressman Oren Harris15 first invoked the observation that Hostilities Exist to establish why the US must employ military force immediately.16 The US had been the subject of a “ruthless and barbarous attack” by the Japanese and a declaration of war by Germany. Given these facts, he insisted, “there is only one course to pursue.” He reinforced this point by referencing the failures of alternatives, bringing the actions of Germany and Italy into line with those of Japan, and then delineating the contrasting behavior of the democracies of the world with those states to argue against any attempt at diplomatic dealings when confronting non-­ democracies. Here some important components of a Democratic/Liberal security proposition come into play as he ascribed to “dictatorships” aggressiveness and an inherent untrustworthiness. He also included a reading of the Security Norm similar to that of James Polk as well as post-­ war policymakers by espousing a policy that rejects diplomacy when dealing with aggressive actors in general. Democracies, he argued, had been “too patient” in their dealings with the Axis. In the face of “conquest and aggression,” democracies had turned to diplomacy, while the European Axis powers demonstrated bad faith when they engaged in military 15  Harris, a Democrat from Arkansas, was in his first term. He would go on to serve 13 terms in the House before his appointment as a federal district judge. 16  CONGRESSIONAL RECORD-HOUSE, December 11, 1941, p. 9667.

142 

D. J. LORENZO

­ perations despite peaceful attempts to end disputes, just as had the o Japanese, who attacked the US at a time when it was “attempting to negotiate peaceful settlements of the difficulties between the two Governments.” “By the same inhuman method Hitler, with his German Armies, attacked country after country. Likewise, Mussollini (sic) and his Italian Army in the same manner stabbed in the back France and other countries.” If Japan’s behavior demonstrated the dangers of diplomacy, Germany and Italy were no different. War is the only viable option available in dealing with totalitarian governments and other aggressors. Harris’s war aims, in contrast, were liberal and global, drawing on an expansive reading of the Values Norm by itself rather than indebted to a Democratic/Liberal security proposition or narrowly focused on the US.  The US would fight the war, he argued, to discharge the duty to defend the “rights, liberties, and freedoms” which all people should be able to enjoy. In his construction, the war would have as its goal a restoration of a world order in which individuals once again possessed and enjoyed human rights. Harris said nothing here of democracy or self-­ determination, nor of states or nations. When he pointed to rights, he identified their holders as humans rather than political units. While the US would fight the Axis powers to put a stop to their projects of “conquest and aggression,” the primary beneficiaries would be “the peoples of the world” who would once more enjoy “peace and happiness.”17 An Existing Hostilities argument coupled with the observation that further attempts at diplomacy were futile dominated Senator Alexander Wiley’s18 decision to vote for war with the Axis powers. His first argument invoked the Security Norm alone and conventionally. Wiley re-iterated multiple times that given the Japanese attack and the declarations of war by Germany and Italy, there was “no alternative” to war. There is irrefutable evidence that all three were intent on destroying the US. There is, he held, no room for debate or “dissension” on either that conclusion or on the means to meet this threat. Congress’s task is not to decide on war, but rather to grasp and acknowledge the situation. “A state of war exists, and we must recognize it,” he insisted several times. 17  Representative Thomas Ford also provided a liberal set of war aims. Congressional Record, House, Dec. 11, 1941, p. 9668. 18  Wiley, a Republican from Wisconsin, was in his first term as senator. He would go on to serve four terms and chair both the Foreign Relations and Judiciary committees. Congressional Record, Senate, December 11, 1941, pp. 9654–9655.

7  WORLD WAR II 

143

Wiley’s contention that diplomacy is futile and dangerous made the same point, but also invoked additional norms to outline a security policy similar to that which Harris advocated. There is no reason to negotiate with any of these powers, he argued, applying the vocabulary of criminology and customary international norms to underline their malignant character. “Brigands” and “warlords” led Japan, Germany, and Italy. They are untrustworthy. The US had experienced their duplicity first-hand, when “We sought peace in the Far East and met with a treacherous attack.” The only recourse the US has is to go to war. The war aims Wiley identified were simple and read the Security and Values Norms in traditional ways. They had nothing to do with creating a world order, spreading democracy, or protecting the rights and security of other people. They were, rather, realist and nationalist in that he was concerned only with the dangers the Axis powers posed to the US. He construed the war’s main aim as that of protecting the very existence of the US as an independent country characterized by liberal values. The “war machines” of those powers, he argued, brought with them “destruction” and “chains of bondage.” They now had the US in their sights. The war must be fought to thwart their objective of attaining the “destruction of the United States and our way of life,” so that given victory, “freedom, not slavery, must be our lot.”

The Necessity Standard in Related Policy Discussions Public Uses of the Standard The privileging of the restrictive side of the Necessity Standard throughout the inter-war era manifested itself in several ways. First, before the Roosevelt administration, officials employed references to the Great War to reject the proposition that military interventions, particularly in the cause of creating a world order, were effective means for protecting security and trade. They confined vital interests and duties to a small and traditional list. Second, they interpreted the standard to hold that war would be a last resort even in the context of that constricted list. For example, President Warren Harding in opening the Washington arms control conference in 1921 held that “Our hundred millions frankly want less of

144 

D. J. LORENZO

armament and none of war.”19 He discarded in toto an American led world order or the project of state transformation that had underpinned much of Wilson’s rationale for entering the Great War. In his First Annual Message to Congress, he held that there were always viable alternatives to resolving conflicts; moreover, there was no vital interest pertaining to the US in creating such an order. He insisted that It is not my purpose to bring to you a program of world restoration. In the main such a program must be worked out by the nations more directly concerned. They must themselves turn to the heroic remedies for the menacing conditions under which they are struggling.20

Later, President Calvin Coolidge went further to round out the rejection of military force for purposes other than strict defense of the American homeland and Western hemisphere. While holding that “I believe thoroughly in the Army and Navy, in adequate defense and preparation,” Coolidge rebuffed the policies that had led to the US entry into the Great War, as well as traditional intervention in the Americas. “Our country has definitely relinquished the old standard of dealing with other countries by terror and force, and is definitely committed to the new standard of dealing with them through friendship and understanding,” he insisted.21 Importantly informing this policy was his position that other means for resolving problems impinging upon American national interests were available, effective, and preferred by the general population, though note that this policy depended upon the existence of an international order that he showed little appetite for defending militarily: It is the policy of the United States to promote peace. We are a peaceful people and committed to the settling of disputes by amicable adjustment rather than by force. We have believed that peace can best be secured by a faithful observance on our part of the principles of international law, accompanied by patience and conciliation, and requiring of others a like treatment for ourselves.22

 November 12, 1921: Opening Speech of the Conference on Limitation of Armament.  December 6, 1921: First Annual Message. 21  December 3, 1924: Second Annual Message. 22  December 6, 1927: Fifth Annual Message. 19 20

7  WORLD WAR II 

145

President Herbert Hoover urged the adoption of the London Naval Treaty by characterizing it as in keeping with the mood of an American people who embraced an understanding of national security that narrowed the list of duties and vital interests to the traditional menu. In turn, he viewed non-intervention, diplomacy, treaties, and a nationalist security policy as viable means toward securing the homeland: Our people believe that military strength should be held in conformity with the sole purpose of national defense; they earnestly desire real progress in limitation and reduction of naval arms of the world, and their aspiration is for abolition of competition in the building of arms as a step toward world peace. Such a result can be obtained in no other way than by international agreement…. The only alternative to this treaty is the competitive building of navies with all its flow of suspicion, hate, ill will, and ultimate disaster.23

Characteristically, when discussing Japanese incursions into China, Hoover invoked the Kellog-Briand Pact as part of a policy of “moral diplomacy” rather than proposing American intervention.24 The Roosevelt administration’s policies evolved throughout its first two terms. Early on, it embraced the tools prior administrations employed: cautious attempts to keep policies parallel with the League of Nations, participation in disarmament and arms limitations agreements, references to Kellog-Briand, and a practical realization that neutrality was necessary in the face of armed conflicts given a reluctant public and a lack of military preparedness. Like their predecessors, Roosevelt and Secretary of State Cordell Hull interpreted the standard to hold that military force would be a last resort. Nevertheless, Roosevelt and Hull viewed the international scene differently than did their predecessors, and consequently began pursuing a more vigorous and active foreign policy in the second half of the 1930s. Not only did they more fully embrace international law as the foundation of a world order they wished to support;25 more importantly, they understood conflicts and wars as inevitably impinging upon American duties and vital interests (specifically security and trade) even if they foresaw a very long road leading to any possible military defense of them. War could  July 7, 1930: Message Regarding London Naval Treaty.  December 8, 1931: Third State of the Union Address. 25  Cordell Hull, “Presidential Address,” Proceedings of the American Society of International Law at the Annual Meeting, Vol. 34 (May 13–15), 1940, pp. 15–16. 23 24

146 

D. J. LORENZO

come to the US willy-nilly if it broke out anywhere in the world. This analysis differed from the beliefs of American First supporters and others who held that there was no risk of war unless the US meddled in the affairs of other states. For Hull and Roosevelt, a significant risk of war was already present given US trade interests, if nothing else, and they argued that the US must work within that risk to proactively neutralize the threats that stem from the very existence of armed conflicts lest they expand to include the US. However, Roosevelt and Hull continued to feel themselves substantially constrained by public opinion, Congressional opposition, and military unpreparedness from taking steps that others might perceive as increasing the possibility of major military action. For example, they were unable to persuade Congress to alter neutrality laws so administration officials could impose embargoes on aggressors rather than on both sides of any military conflict, a move the administration argued would discourage aggressors and encourage the victims of aggression. They also avoided using any language that suggested a threat to use military force in any situation other than an attack on the US. Despite such limitations, they did employ a variety of tools—diplomacy, mediation, manipulating definitions of wars and hostilities, and employing “moral” as well as legally required embargoes on military and military-related goods—in their attempts to uphold actively a peaceful world order. This policy again differed from the approach of previous administrations (who pursued less vigorous policies, employed fewer tools, and embraced a passive neutrality), and “isolationist” opponents, who advocated a strict hands-off neutrality that strenuously avoided giving any party a pretext to attack US interests. In practice, this meant that Roosevelt publicly advocated an expansive list of vital interests and duties, along with an equally expansive understanding of viable alternatives to the use of major military force. When alluding to the Italian invasion of Abyssinia and outside interference in the Spanish Civil War, Franklin Roosevelt condemned the breakdown of international order, the violation of treaties, the invasion of territories, the wrenching away of self-determination, and the ongoing humanitarian crises they created rather than holding that those events were none of his business. He insisted that interventions in the Spanish Civil War would eventually affect the US and identified European peace as a vital American interest. However, he also argued that proactive alternatives to military action were still viable and declined to take any action that (in his estimation) might bring the US any closer to military action. He also argued

7  WORLD WAR II 

147

against a military build-up. The US could address those threats in ways calculated to prevent wider wars while still avoiding the “contagion” of war. His strategy at that time was to enact a quarantine—the attempt to isolate and contain military conflicts. His administration, he asserted, is “determined to keep out of war,” is “adopting such measures as will minimize our risk of involvement” all the while it was embarking on “positive endeavors to preserve peace.”26 From the beginning of 1939 to Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt began to shift his administration’s understanding of American security further from concepts that privileged strict neutrality and away from a focus on strengthening domestic defenses and toward a general military build­up. He began referencing forward defense and realist conceptions that would connect the defense of other states to vital American interests and tilted applications of the standard away from its restrictive side, but not completely to its imperative side. American security, he then argued, is best ensured by looking outward to take on threats far from American shores in the company of valuable allies, as well as by bolstering the home front and strengthening the military. In one example, in alluding to events in Europe, Roosevelt argued that aggressive revisionism affected US vital interests, and his administration would be active in pursuing policies that would discourage such undertakings while maintaining a policy of war as a last resort. He would pursue alternatives, but those alternatives (such as general trade restrictions and military aid) would be more muscular than diplomacy: “The mere fact that we rightly decline to intervene with arms to prevent acts of aggression,” he argued, does not mean that we must act as if there is no aggression at all. Words may be futile, but war is not the only means of commanding a decent respect for the opinion of mankind. There are many methods short of war, but stronger and more effective than mere words, of bringing home to aggressor governments the aggregate sentiments of our own people.27

Roosevelt went much further in his Annual Address in 1941 when he asserted that the effects of the war in Europe on the US were well 26  October 5, 1937: Quarantine Speech; Dominic Tierney, FDR and the Spanish Civil War: Neutrality and Commitment in the Struggle that Divided America (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2007), pp. 32–4. 27  Quoted in Cordell Hull, Memoirs, (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1948), vol. 1, p. 612.

148 

D. J. LORENZO

established. Alluding to the success of Axis powers, he held that the war created a security threat that was “unprecedented” in US history. Addressing his America First critics, he held that while enemies had threatened the US before, those threats occurred at a time when geography largely insulated the US.  Such was no longer the case. Contemporary threats are more serious now given technological innovations. Moreover, he argued, the US had fought previous wars for lower stakes—the “principles of peaceful commerce”—not the important security threats that now menaced American sovereignty. These serious security threats flowed from the Axis states’ success in pushing democracies around the world to the brink of defeat and annihilation, he argued. In response, Roosevelt outlined two policy options. The first was appeasement, which he rejected for reasons of futility, security, and more broadly values. Such a policy, he argued, presupposed attaining an acceptable deal from the Axis and leaned heavily on America’s geographical defenses. The US could never close a deal with the Axis that would preserve its important values. As for geography, he insisted that the US was vulnerable to attack from the air, sea, and eventually land. The second and correct policy choice, dictated by a new understanding of security and values that recognized the need to counter threats manifesting far from American shores, was a type of forward self-defense. Employing the logic of a Democratic/Liberal security proposition and referencing a balance of power analysis, Roosevelt argued that allowing the Axis powers to fulfill their revisionist ambitions unopposed would be foolhardy. Democracies’ defeats would mean that instead of being in friendly hands, “all the populations and all the resources of Europe, Asia, Africa and Australasia will be dominated by the conquerors.” He maintained that the US could not successfully deter or defend itself against an attack by a set of foes who could marshal those resources. Instead, his administration would provide aid to those who opposed “aggression” and in so doing were “keeping the war away from our Hemisphere.” While the US would not enter the war, there would be no appeasement, no strict, traditionalist interpretation of neutrality, nor any brokering of peace agreements made at the expense of others’ freedoms.28 Further building upon this analysis, Roosevelt justified Lend-Lease and associated forms of military aid as the preferred alternative to war to 28  Roosevelt later repeated the arguments contained in this chat in his “Arsenal of Democracy” speech of December 29, 1940.

7  WORLD WAR II 

149

support and defend democracy and freedom abroad. Those countries the fascists defeat are subjected to authoritarian governments which quash freedoms, destroy self-government, subvert self-determination, and create an atmosphere of “regimentation,” he held. The US must help democracies and prevent such conquests. More broadly, Lend-Lease would help defeat the Nazi project of creating their own “new world order” which, he held, is not a real order but merely an environment (comparable to Hobbesian anarchy) characterized by the unconstrained actions of the strong and the absence of just norms, and thus a milieu that would threaten US security.29 Use of the Standard Within the Roosevelt Administration We find more references to the Necessity Standard in Hull’s memoirs describing the months preceding the attack on Pearl Harbor. Hull’s description of his and others’ views reflected the application of the standard the administration had adopted since 1939: recognition of an expanded set of vital interests and duties, accompanied by great patience with alternatives amounting to exhaustion, but no flexibility with regard to the bottom line. The US would negotiate with Japan, but only to pressure the Japanese to accept the American position, not to engage in horse-­ trading. In this vein, he recorded the options that members of the administration considered with regard to the ultimatum the Japanese delivered on November 21. The subjects of that ultimatum, he argued, while they dealt mainly with China, nevertheless impinged upon vital US interests in the Pacific and, if accepted, would pose “a most serious threat to our national security.” The administration would and could not accept it. The US alternatively could officially reject the ultimatum, make no reply, tender a counter-proposal, or engage the Japanese in further negotiations without making a concrete counter-offer. He noted that the first two courses of action would have resulted immediately in war (and were rejected), while the third was discarded because it did not garner sufficient 29  On Lend Lease, March 15, 1941. Roosevelt accompanied these discussions with references to the General Welfare Norm, making sure to underline the observation that the US was improving its military situation and was in a position to provide military supplies to the anti-Axis powers and tend to its own defense needs. The long list of production numbers he provided Congress in his 1941 Annual Address was a response to Lindberghian America Firsters who argued that aiding Britain fatally sapped America’s own defenses.

150 

D. J. LORENZO

support from the Chinese or British.30 The administration, wishing neither to compromise nor to provoke an immediate war, therefore chose the fourth option. Hull notes with regard to this crisis that Diplomatically, the situation was virtually hopeless. We on our part, however, wanted to exhaust all means to find a peaceful solution and avoid or delay war.31

This application of the Necessity Standard appears again in Hull’s contribution to internal administration discussions in the month prior to Pearl Harbor. Here, he reinforced the view that the large-scale use of military force must be a last resort, brought about either through the complete exhaustion of diplomacy, or in Hull’s paraphrase of George Marshall and Harold Stark, in a case in which “Japan attacked or directly threatened United States, British, or Dutch territory.”32 In White House meetings, meanwhile, he held that his office would attempt through diplomacy to try to preserve peace… As long as there was the most microscopic possibility of peace, I intended to continue working toward that end.33

Roosevelt’s Application of the Standard and Policy Roosevelt’s public application of the Necessity Standard after Pearl Harbor was important because it cemented the break with previously accepted conceptions of duties and vital interests he had urged since 1939. Between September of 1939 and December of 1941, most of the public and many officials insisted that the restrictive side of the standard was still operational. The fighting in Europe, they held, did not affect vital American interests, and even if it would eventually affect the security of the American homeland, the US could still pursue deterrence. While Roosevelt disputed the first contention and underlined the current and future problems with deterrence that would arise should the fascist powers win the war, he conceded that there were alternatives, short of using military force, which  Hull, Memoirs, Vol. II, p. 1070.  Hull, Memoirs, Vol. II, p. 1071. 32  Hull, Memoirs, Vol. II, p. 1087. 33  Hull, Memoirs (transcript of meeting of the White House War Council, November 25, 1941), Vol. II, p. 1080. 30 31

7  WORLD WAR II 

151

could protect the vital interests he identified as at stake. Thus, he pushed for Lend-Lease and other programs to assist Britain. It was not until Japan attacked American territory and military assets at Pearl Harbor that Roosevelt was able successfully to invoke the standard’s imperative side, and only then by examining and discarding alternatives to war. Before Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt carved out a position that sat between traditionalist and internationalist strategies. His administration’s security policies accepted a large set of vital interests and duties and began embracing forward defense concepts even before the war; simultaneously, Roosevelt for personal, military, and political reasons wished to avoid war. He employed a multitude of alternatives that spanned political, diplomatic, economic, and military affairs, pursued those alternatives with great amounts of patience, and for the most part avoided formulations that threatened war in specific situations. Yet, his dabbling in military alternatives (Lend-Lease, convoying) would come very close to war, and his administration’s diplomatic approach contained no tangible flexibility. His objectives were expansive, at times intrusive, and pursued in an unyielding and almost aggressive fashion. He wished to attain his goals on the cheap. This combination was expedient, but ultimately incoherent and dangerous. For example, the administration did not understand that its demands and attempts at coercive diplomacy in the Pacific undid its prior efforts to deter the Japanese from initiating a larger war there.34 This policy bought the US time, but it ultimately failed to deter or coerce Japan and invited a war that Japan was able initially to fight on its own terms. After Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt moved to a full-fledged, non-traditional internationalist policy position, He constructed his justification for war out of values, nationalist, and realist materials that stressed freedom, security, and forward defense. The larger security policy he put to the public insisted that the US must remain active in the world by creating and upholding a world order in conjunction with other world powers. Roosevelt followed in large part Wilson’s agenda of locating the US in a world that posed threats to US security due to the nature of regimes, but added the dangers of aggressive revisionism and unfavorable balances of power to repudiate completely the traditionalist and America First positions. Where he most differed from Wilson was in his complete embrace 34  Scott Sagan, “From Deterrence to Coercion to War: The Road to Pearl Harbor,” in in A. George and W. Simons, eds., The Limits of Coercive Diplomacy (Boulder, Co: Westview Press, 1994).

152 

D. J. LORENZO

of forward defense and in the nature of the global order he identified. While he grounded the need to fight the Axis powers in a Democratic/ Liberal security proposition, he was not as interested as was Wilson in the connection between democracy and peace. He put his energies behind the creation of a new Concert-of-Europe type security structure that included the Soviets. The US, he held, would aid militarily any entity that would hold the line against aggressive, revisionist actors who threatened peace and global stability. This meant identifying threats that manifested themselves far from American shores, finding and aiding allies who opposed such actors, and projecting American military power around the world. The enemies of American interests, he implied, were not authoritarian regimes per se, but aggressive revisionists, and he would go on to posit a post-war security policy built on that premise.

CHAPTER 8

Korea and the Early Cold War An Immediate Military Response to Aggressive Revisionism and Attempts to Change the Global Balance of Power Contexts of the War in Korea Despite agreements reached at Yalta and other wartime conferences, tensions between the Soviets and the Western allies began rising even before the end of World War II.  Once the war ended, the Soviets pushed out Western influences and Western allies in Eastern Europe, infiltrated the Balkans, lent support to communist parties in Italy, France, and Greece, and generally rekindled or reinforced existing apprehensions of their motives. The US, Great Britain, and France insisted on their own occupation zones in Germany. Tensions also ran high in Asia. The US excluded the Soviets from Japan, while the Soviets claimed occupation rights over the north of Korea and used that base to exercise considerable influence over revolutionary nationalist parties elsewhere in the area. Confrontations soon emerged. Soviet suspicions of Western actions resulted in attempts to eject the US, Britain, and France from their occupation zones in Berlin. The US and its allies responded with the Berlin Airlift. US financial and military aid countered Soviet support for communist entities in Europe and in Greece and marked the beginning of American interventionism in the face of Britain’s weakness. Elsewhere, the Chinese civil war reignited, with communist forces emerging victorious in 1949 in the context of sporadic American assistance to the Nationalists. France fought communist-backed movements in its colonies in © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 D. J. Lorenzo, War and American Foreign Policy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-66695-8_8

153

154 

D. J. LORENZO

Indo-China. The Soviets successfully developed their own nuclear weapons, while the US and its Western European allies formed NATO. While these tensions drew the US to Korea, the war was more nationalistic than international in origin. The regimes that arose under US and Soviet sponsorship in the south and north respectively openly embraced the goal of unifying the Korean peninsula. Both regimes eyed forceful means for doing so by using the military equipment their friends and allies provided them. It is true that both Moscow and Beijing had the final say on whether the northern Democratic People’s Republic of Korea could mount an invasion of the southern Republic of Korea and provided support to those efforts. Moscow’s initial answer to Kim Il-sung’s invasion proposal, however, was no. Stalin saw little prospect for success and feared interference by the US, with all the destabilizing international effects and the considerable military presence on Russia’s doorstep such developments would entail. It was not until early in 1950 that he changed his mind.1 It was Secretary of State Dean Acheson’s speech on January 12, 1950, delineating America’s defense posture, which convinced Stalin that the US would not intervene should an invasion occur. Acheson’s deliberate exclusion of Formosa and South Korea from an American defensive umbrella was meant to signal to domestic audiences that the US was focusing only on the most important regions of the world rather than taking on the role of an indiscriminate world policeman. Instead, it indicated to Stalin that Kim’s plans could proceed unimpeded by American interference.2 When North Korean forces crossed the boundary between the north and south in late June of 1950, they enjoyed immense success, propelling the Republic of Korea and US military units down the peninsula. The US (in the absence of a boycotting Soviet delegation) pushed through a Security Council motion in the UN denouncing the invasion and calling for member nations to come to the defense of the Republic of Korea, and deployed its own military forces. President Truman, in turn, relied upon the Security Council for authority to commit US troops, asking Congress not for a declaration of war, but for the financing of military operations.

1  See Zhihua Shen. “Sino-Soviet relations and the origins of the Korean War: Stalin’s strategic goals in the Far East.” Journal of Cold War Studies 2, no. 2 (2000): 44–68. 2  Shen. “Sino-Soviet relations and the origins of the Korean War”.

8  KOREA AND THE EARLY COLD WAR 

155

President Truman on the War in Korea Why War? Duties and Vital Interests It is interesting to note that Truman resisted labeling his military operations in Korea a war. He was most insistent on this point at his June 29, 1950, news conference, where he repeatedly asserted, “We are not at war.” His resistance, it appears, stemmed from his refusal to recognize the existence of North Korea. North Korea was not a state; rather, its forces were “invaders” and “bandits.” Therefore, the situation could not involve a war, but rather a reaction to an “unlawful attack”: The Republic of Korea was set up with the United Nations help. It is a recognized government by the members of the United Nations. It was unlawfully attacked by a bunch of bandits which are neighbors of North Korea. The United Nations Security Council held a meeting and passed on the situation and asked the members to go to the relief of the Korean Republic. And the members of the United Nations are going to the relief of the Korean Republic to suppress a bandit raid on the Republic of Korea.

It was in response to a reporter’s prompting that he then agreed to a characterization of the military operation in Korea as a “police action under the United Nations.”3 Despite these quibbles, President Truman nevertheless associated the action in Korea with the protection and furtherance of peace, liberal values, and American security and thus with the duties and vital interests the Security and Values Norms identify. On one level, he held that the US intervened in defense of US security interests that, he argued, while not directly involved, were nonetheless caught up with the security interests of all other “free’ nations. On a higher level, he connected American security with the maintenance of peace through the building and preservation of a liberal world order. Truman made his case by following the logic he laid out in discussing Greece. He argued that the defense of independent countries from outside aggression was essential for maintaining a peaceful world order of international law, norms, and institutions that both reflect American

3  Earlier, his administration did release a “Statement on the Korean War,” though the reference to “war” probably referred exclusively to the actions the Koreans were fighting.

156 

D. J. LORENZO

values and contribute vitally to American security.4 The attack on the Republic of Korea, he insisted, was an attempt to “conquer independent countries.” It “defied the orders of the Security Council issued to preserve international peace.” It also revealed the existence of a regressive project of international revisionism, which represented a “return to the role of force in international affairs.” The US must resist such efforts by rigidly enforcing the international norm that neither force nor aggression is acceptable in ordinary relations or the settlement of disputes; in doing so, the US “will continue to uphold the rule of law.” Otherwise, he held, “If the United Nations yields to the forces of aggression, no nation will be safe or secure. If aggression is successful in Korea, we can expect it to spread throughout Asia and Europe to this hemisphere. We are fighting in Korea for our own national security and survival”. In his April 11, 1951, “Report on Korea,” Truman further suggested that fighting alongside the force of the Republic of Korea would bring peace to the region. Defeating the aggressor armies will force them to cease fighting. Here Truman’s logic drew on his position that the communists created the breach of peace. They were the instigators and perpetuators of violence, not the Republic of Korea or the United States. He then referenced the longer game he described the two sides of the Cold War playing. The communists, he held, created conflicts to gain territory and influence. If the US and its allies do not oppose them, stop them, and make them pay a heavy price for their aggression, they will continually disturb the peace. Those disturbances, in turn, always have the potential to turn into something bigger, hotter, more destructive, and more dangerous to American interests. To oppose the communists quickly when they create these disturbances is to deter them from doing so in the future, and thereby to reduce dramatically the chances of another world war breaking out. To bring about a peaceful, liberal world in which states do not engage in aggression and do obey international law and abide by UN resolutions, US interests are protected, and the world is kept from another global armed conflict, the US must act as the protector of those goods and fight. Truman also suggested that a central aspect of the desirable world order he defended was its concern with how governments treat their own populations. The incursion into the south, he argued, represented not only “aggression.” It also involved “terrorist” activities meant to facilitate the 4

 “Statement on the Korean War,” June 27, 1950.

8  KOREA AND THE EARLY COLD WAR 

157

imposition of a totalitarian government. Such activities, if successful, would establish a government that denied democracy to its citizens, refused to recognize rights to self-government or liberal freedoms, and removed the Koreans’ right of self-determination. The US, he argued, has a duty to uphold and protect those values by defeating the incursion and enforcing international norms addressing human freedoms and rights. Finally, Truman repeated the arguments he made in expounding on the Truman Doctrine when he argued for a projection of US military power to cover Formosa. Where earlier his administration had rejected the proposition that American security had any connection with the fate of the exiled Nationalist Chinese on Formosa, the outbreak of the Korean conflict changed the calculus. Now the extension of America’s military activities to Korea meant that Formosa was within a sphere vital to American security. To allow the island to fall to the Chinese communists was unacceptable given that it “would be a direct threat to the security of the Pacific area and to the United States forces performing their lawful and necessary functions in that area.”5 Why War Now? The Absence of Viable Alternatives In judging viability, Truman specified that any alternative to the large-­ scale use of military force must stop the fighting in Korea; result in the removal of outside forces and guarantee the security of the Republic of Korea; deter the communists from engaging in aggressive revisionism; force states associated with the Eastern bloc more generally to abide by the norms of the newly created, UN-centered, world order, and stop actions which threaten to initiate a new world war. In the pursuit of these ends, he argued for neither patience nor flexibility. He issued an ultimatum: the invading forces must unconditionally cease fighting and withdraw, or face a military response. To establish the necessity of quickly resorting to military force, Truman put forward a variety of conventional Futility Arguments to make the point that endeavors to end the conflict had been attempted but failed. He did not emphasize the extensive nature of such efforts or hold that they had been exhausted, but rather underlined his observation that the recalcitrant nature of the invaders and the Soviets frustrated the efforts of the UN and others to reign in the North Koreans without further bloodshed, 5

 Statement on the Korean War, June 27, 1950.

158 

D. J. LORENZO

and this recalcitrance was one reason for the immediate use of force. In both his June and July 1950 addresses, Truman highlighted resolutions passed by the Security Council and supported by the vast majority of ordinary UN members that “called for the invaders of Korea to stop fighting.” Those resolutions had been ignored. He then disclosed efforts his administration pursued to persuade the Soviets to restrain the North Koreans. However, he argued, “[the Soviet Union’s] attitude toward this act of aggression against the Republic of Korea is in direct contradiction to its statements.” Truman’s substantive arguments for the immediate use of military force combined realist with value-based assertions. The former stretched readings of the Security Norm in its construal of the interconnectedness of the world and the nature of outbreaks of violence. His references to security and forward defense in the first instance were grounded in global interdependence. Just because the scene of the conflict in question is far from the US does not mean that it does not impact American security. “An act of aggression such as this,” he held, “creates a very real danger to the security of all free nations.” Truman emphasized the nature of the attack, repeatedly labeling it “aggression.” The armed incursion, he insisted, came “without provocation,” “without warning,” and “with no justification whatsoever”. His case importantly rested on this contention—it founded both his realist and values arguments. It was the nature of the attack, not just that it was a breach of peace, or that it involved a close American ally (which the Republic of Korea was not) that made quick military intervention imperative. It must be an inflexible American policy immediately to use military force in these circumstances, he argued, because acts of aggression can be precursors to greater threats and dangers if not “met with force.”6 The price of delaying or refusing to use force is inevitable— future threats at the hands of aggressive actors. Here Truman was one of the first to rehearse the Munich trope not just as a justification for going to war, but also to discard patience and flexibility in pursuing alternatives. It was in this vein that he asserted, “The free nations have learned the fateful lesson of the 1930s. That lesson is that aggression must be met firmly. Appeasement leads only to further aggression and ultimately to war.” 6  This point was reflected in internal meetings wherein “Acheson responded that the United States had to act even if the effort was unavailing.” Gary R.  Hess, Presidential Decisions for War: Korea, Vietnam, the Persian Gulf, and Iraq (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2nd ed., 2009), p. 21.

8  KOREA AND THE EARLY COLD WAR 

159

Truman further expounded on this theme in the report on the conflict he delivered in April of 1951. There, he employed Aggression Arguments and the Domino Theory to emphasize the necessity of using force early in crises in a world characterized by a balance of power, weak followers, and strong states. Stopping the communists in one country, he held, would prevent the “free world’s loss of other territories in Asia.” Here he spelled out in detail the Domino Theory’s logic and roots in the lessons of the past and in the concept of aggression.7 Military action is both imperative and urgent given the temporal importance of actions. The price of inaction, compromise, or further pursuit of negotiations is the loss of territories, people and resources, and the greatly increased probability of a much larger military conflict breaking out. Truman further insisted that because alternatives are by definition not viable in the face of aggression, early military action is necessary to ensure the security of the US and its allies in general: The best time to meet the threat is in the beginning. It is easier to put out a fire in the beginning when it is small than after it has become a roaring blaze. And the best way to meet the threat of aggression is for the peace-­ loving nations to act together. If they don’t act together, they are likely to be picked off, one by one. If they had followed the right policies in the 1930’s—if the free countries had acted together to crush the aggression of the dictators, and if they had acted in the beginning when the aggression was small—there probably would have been no World War II.8

Truman also repeated his earlier contentions that the Values Norm dictated American defense of international rules and a congenial international order against those states, like North Korea and the Soviet Union, who refused to live within them. He described the invasion of South Korea as a violation of the UN Charter and of international law. The North Koreans and their Soviet sponsors were mounting a “direct challenge to the efforts of the free nations to build the kind of world in which men can live in 7  For a discussion of the origins of the Domino Theory, see Douglas MacDonald, “The Truman Administration and Global Responsibilities: The Birth of the Falling Domino Principle,” in Robert Jervis & Jack Snyder, eds., Dominos and Bandwagons: Strategic Beliefs and Great Power Competition in the Eurasian Rimland (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990). 8  Report to the American People on Korea, April 11, 1951.

160 

D. J. LORENZO

freedom and peace.” This challenge must be met and punished, not finessed, if the UN and the liberal world order that was being built around it were to have meaning, he asserted.

Congressional Applications of the Necessity Standard On hearing of Truman’s announcement that he was intervening in Korea, Senator Brien McMahon9 took the floor to signal his support for Truman’s actions by invoking the Values and Security Norms. In attacking the south, he argued, North Korea had violated international law and was participating in a larger Soviet plot to exhaust the West by encouraging disorder in various places. There was no other choice for Truman to make—military force had to be employed now. He then gestured toward a purely reactive security policy, albeit one which interpreted the Security norm broadly enough to include the enforcement of international norms and the defense of other countries, and contemplated little patience with alternatives and no flexibility. The US was not intervening because it liked war or had imperial ambitions. The US is a peaceful country, he argued, and understands that it can best enjoy freedoms in conditions of peace. It has no desire to control or annex new territories. However, given Soviet aims and North Korea’s violation of international standards, Truman “did the only thing possible under the circumstances.” McMahon identified war goals that ultimately reached American security. He held that the conflict in Korea was merely a single episode in a larger series of events whereby the Soviets attempted to wear down the West and acquire new territories in a piecemeal fashion. The US must meet their strategy of gradualism with firm military resistance. Otherwise, states would be “picked off” one by one. The war was about resisting and frustrating this larger strategy. In fighting in Korea, the US was battling not only the North Koreans, but also the larger communist and Soviet threat, whose authors attempted to recapitulate Hitler’s strategies of the 1930s. Absent American action, he implied, the Soviets would be just as successful as their mentor had been prior to World War II and would gather immense amounts of territories and resources under their control with which they could menace the US. 9

 Congressional Record, June 29, 1950, pp. 9460–62.

8  KOREA AND THE EARLY COLD WAR 

161

Representative John McCormack10 provided a combination of Realist and Value arguments to justify the war. He gestured toward a liberal Democratic/Liberal security proposition and made references implicating American sovereignty and security, but also dwelt on the necessity of resisting communists because they threaten world peace through their attempts at attaining global domination. McCormack started with references to futility that partly utilized the Munich Paradigm and joined with Reputation Arguments to outline a security policy that would use military force immediately in the face of revisionist aggression. It was not that negotiations and other alternatives had been tried and failed. They should not be attempted at all—the Soviets would “laugh and jeer” at protests, which as manifestations of “fear and appeasement” would lead to a “complete loss of prestige” on the part of the US, and the loss of confidence in the US on the part of its allies. There must be, he argued, no more Munichs. In this view, the US should reject diplomacy straightaway because the diplomatic route was by definition useless and dangerous when dealing with the Soviets. McCormack argued that an important aim of using military force in Korea was to forestall the Soviet attempt to change the global balance of power in ways that threaten US security and sovereignty. The Korean invasion, McCormack held, was just another manifestation of the Soviet strategy of encircling the US militarily. The Soviets targeted the US in their efforts to gain territory and intended to achieve world domination. They are imperialistic. They must be resisted forcibly as they attempt to “take over country after country” in Europe and Asia to harness those regions’ natural resources and economies in their fight against the US. Stopping the Soviets first meant defending Korea from Communist aggression. Korea must not be lost given that it is “the last foothold of democracy in northeast Asia”. Indeed, nothing should be conceded to the Soviets, he argued, not even “one speck of an island in the Atlantic.” In adopting this position, McCormack appeared to agree with Truman’s Munich-based, balance of power logic of taking on the Soviets wherever they fomented trouble. The only way to stop Soviet attempts to encircle the US is to resist it step by step, denying the Soviets further territories, resources, and the momentum that success brings. This was the realist and 10  Congressional Record, July 19, 1950, pp.  10632–33. Representative McCormack was either House Majority Leader or House Minority Whip from 1940–1961, and was Speaker of the House from 1961 to 1971.

162 

D. J. LORENZO

nationalist portion of McCormack’s war project, one that references the Security norm by identifying American security importantly with a forward defense policy and the goal of retaining outlying territories in friendly hands. This strategy also had the merit of fulfilling duties that the Values Norm generates. Defending non-communist states from communist takeovers in his understanding counted as defending democracy and liberal freedoms. In turn, he believed that fighting and frustrating Soviet intentions would discourage communists from engaging in further provocations, thus leading to the attainment of some brand of world peace. The Values Norm played an additional role in McCormack’s discussion, informing a policy that not only connected US security with the defense of friendly free countries, but also explicitly embraced the defense of other states on grounds that rights and freedoms must be protected everywhere. McCormack held that US national interests were “consistent with the best interests of freedom-loving people throughout the world.” In defending them as well as itself, the US was defending its own liberties. The American people want peace, “but not at the sacrifice of liberty.” The Soviets were quite different. They stand in the way of world peace by their aggressive desire to spread their authoritarian system. They “challenge the way of life we believe in” as well as the sovereignty and freedoms of people everywhere as they “seek to impose [their] ideology by any and all means upon all the peoples of the world”.

The Necessity Standard in Related Discussions In contrast to reactions to the Great War, many US policymakers after World War II underlined perceived failures to confront the fascist states and prevent the onset of the latter war, and consequently sought a continuation of Roosevelt’s post-Pearl Harbor policy. They reversed the security and military policies of the 1920s and the perceived over-weighting of the Necessity Standard’s restrictive side while also moving away from Roosevelt’s earlier half-measures. Truman displayed impatience with diplomacy and general flexibility while rejecting appeasement as a viable way of dealing with the revisionist use of military force, now understood as aggression. When the “Four Policemen” approach Roosevelt favored crumbled under the weight of increasing Soviet-American tensions, the conclusion that there was no alternative but to engage in the immediate countervailing use of military force in the face of communist revisionism led Truman’s administration to favor military intervention in situations in

8  KOREA AND THE EARLY COLD WAR 

163

which the US would have avoided during the 1920s and 1930s. Administration officials pursued this course even as they nervously weighed how much of an intervention, and what kind, would achieve their goals while averting a direct military (and later nuclear) confrontation with the Soviet Union. The impetus to reverse the previous policy was often masked by the Munich Paradigm’s placement of blame on British and Europeans rather than American policymakers and their professed goal of avoiding another global war at almost any cost, but direct condemnations of the shortcomings of American inter-war policies did appear. In 1948, President Truman argued that the US must move forward by rejecting its previous restrictive and unilateralist stance regarding military and security policies: “The United States has to accept its full responsibility for leadership in international affairs,” he insisted. “We have been the backers and the people who organized and started the United Nations, first started under that great Democratic President, Woodrow Wilson, as the League of Nations. The League was sabotaged by the Republicans in 1920.”11 Such a position led to a significant expansion of the vital interests and duties that policymakers identified when contemplating the use of military force. The Truman Doctrine was much like Roosevelt’s defense of Lend-­ Lease in that regard.12 While he held that there were still alternatives short of war available to reach those ends, Truman hinted that this might not be the case in the future. His first step in this direction was a reference to the duties the Values Norm demand. These situate the US in a global context: the US must defend nations that practice liberal values because such values attach significance to individual human lives, and it should uphold norms that require respect for human rights because such norms ought to govern the world. Truman then appended the logic of a Democratic/Liberal security proposition to identify additional duties and vital interests. The US, Truman argued, must for its own security help defend any nation which practices liberal, democratic values because such practice is a marker of a stable and non-threatening state. A world in which free, democratic states are plentiful is a safe world; a world that aggressors have wiped clean of such states is, conversely, a dangerous planet. While Truman pointed to  July 15, 1948: Democratic National Convention.  Truman Doctrine Speech, March 12, 1947. See also Dean Acheson, Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department (New York: W.W.  Norton & Co., 1969), pp. 219, 221. 11 12

164 

D. J. LORENZO

the strategic location of Greece and Turkey, the type of government aided was just as important to his Security Argument. The US will go to the aid of any democracy because the Security Norm requires it do so. Truman further developed this position by employing the realist Domino Theory argument in tandem with a balance of power analysis. Here Truman again recycled an important part of the logic that Roosevelt had used to back his Lend-Lease policies. Successful instances of aggression that topple democratic governments, Truman argued, endanger the neighbors of such states. These events shift external power balances that affect state behaviors, as well as create internal effects that sap the will and morale of American allies. Populations and resources move from one side of the conflict to the other, strengthening the communist side and weakening the “free world.” People in neighboring free countries become “discouraged” and disheartened, unwilling to continue the fight against external aggression and internal subversion in the context of a world still struggling to overcome wartime privations. Free states then yield, one after the other, either to bandwagoning with the communists or succumbing to them. It is by this process that communism will win, for the loss of one state to communism will inevitably lead to the loss of others. Encompassing and further making sense of these arguments was Truman’s use of the logic of a liberal Democratic/Liberal security proposition to portray differences between democracies and totalitarian states in their willingness to conform with international institutions and norms.13 The Truman administration’s rejection of restrictionist interpretations of the standard not only meant jettisoning appeasement, but also the concept of neutrality as the default position when faced with aggressive revisionism. This stance reversed the policy of refusing to enter military alliances and shying away from a forward defense posture, a policy Warren Harding had explicitly endorsed in 1923.14 NSC 162-2 expanded the entities the US would defend by military force well beyond the US, thereby abandoning both traditionalist understandings of security and defense and Roosevelt’s refusal in the 1930s to credibly threaten to use force in such situations. This document noted that the US was bound by treaty to provide security to NATO countries, West Germany, Berlin, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, various American states, and South Korea in cases where they are attacked. It further held that “certain other countries, such as  Special Message to Congress on Greece and Turkey, March 12, 1947.  See December 8, 1922: Second Annual Message.

13 14

8  KOREA AND THE EARLY COLD WAR 

165

Indo-China and Formosa, are so important for US security that an attack on them would probably compel the US to act with military force.” Indeed, it argued that given the importance of the concept of collective security to deterring aggression, the US should probably intervene militarily in response to problems “even in areas not of strategic importance.”15 Truman expounded on this position when he discussed the creation of European and South American alliance systems. These alliances (and accompanying commitments to use military force to defend alliance members), he argued, were necessary additions to peaceful means of settling disputes given the duty to protect the US and its friends in the face of international communism. The Soviets are extraordinary in holding that “the world is so widely divided into opposing classes that war is inevitable”. Dealing with such a rival through extensive diplomacy is futile when they act aggressively, he argued. Nationalist neutrality is also not the answer. Only a support for network of allied states covered by the umbrella of deterrence, credible promises to use military force if the US or its allies are threatened, and the use of military force are viable policies for protecting America’s vital interests, including those associated with maintaining world peace.16 Another key policy document of the post-World War II era, NSC 68, exhibits an additional application of the Necessity Standard that partly anticipates Truman’s discussion of the Korean conflict.17 NSC 68 follows the Truman Doctrine in locating the US deeply in world affairs, and subsequently in expanding the menu of duties and vital interests beyond the traditional list. It conceptualized the relationship between the US and the Soviet Union as one of sharp competition. NSC 68 also pointed to an alteration in the balance of power (with the elimination of Japan and Germany as great powers and the Soviets’ potential to obtain nuclear weapons) between Western forces dedicated to individual freedoms and the Soviet’s ideology of domination. Given the Soviets’ attempts to impose their ideology on the world and their efforts to gain a preponderance of power in the world system, it argued that the US possessed a duty that “demands that we make the attempt, and accept the risks inherent in it, to  NSC 162-2, September 30, 1953.  Inaugural Address, January 20, 1949. 17  NSC 68: United States Objectives and Programs for National Security (April 14, 1950), A Report to the President Pursuant to the President’s Directive of January 31, 1950, https://fas.org/irp/offdocs/nsc-hst/nsc-68.htm. 15 16

166 

D. J. LORENZO

bring about order and justice by means consistent with the principles of freedom and democracy.” However, while NSC 68 interpreted the relevant list of duties and vital interests differently from pre-World War II policy analyses by explicitly approving of military guarantees to entangling alliances, the restrictive face of the standard was still an important influence on the military policy it advocated. The document concluded that even given the highly competitive relationship between the US and the Soviets, options other than military force are usually viable even when the security and sovereignty of allies are at stake. The initial step in confronting the Soviets is to engage in a “cold war.” Projects that set up the clash of ideas and values, along with diplomacy should be the tools policymakers routinely use in dealing with the Soviets. The document held that a more aggressive stance would not only be unnecessary due to the viability of options, it would be dangerous because it would probably provoke an all-out nuclear exchange. It would be ironic as well. Harkening back to John Quincy Adams, it held that imposing American values on others by means of military force is not in keeping with, and ultimately destructive of, those values. NSC 68 expanded on this position (and went beyond the Necessity Standard) to hold that any use of military force would be defensive, in response to military moves the Soviets might launch in Western Europe, the Middle East, Asia, the UK, Canada, and the US.  An important US goal was to avoid another world war. Further, the document expressly held that the use of military force on the part of the US should be a “last resort” taken only “when another society seeks to impose its will upon it,” and its military policy should “rule out an attack unless it is demonstrably in the nature of a counter-attack to a blow which is on its way or about to be delivered.” The document concluded that military force “is warranted only in the face of even greater dangers” and that “The necessity of the act must be clear and compelling.” In staking out this position, the document insisted that any use of military force must be consistent with the seriousness of a threat, in that the use of force itself, and the nature of its use, must be proportional to the character of the threat. It preemptively held that in all cases but an actual or imminent military attack, the level of threat to vital interests is not sufficient to justify the use of military force. Here, the document does discuss the costs of war for both the US and the Soviets when it rejects the use of military force in all cases short of actual or imminent attacks on the US or allies, but engages in no costs-benefits analysis when treating situations in which such attacks do or are about to occur. Then a military response is

8  KOREA AND THE EARLY COLD WAR 

167

necessary tout court. Finally, the document explicitly rules out preventative war by rejecting any policy that would allow a first strike against the Soviets. While it argues that the American people would eventually rally to the government in the event of a first strike, such an action is “generally unacceptable to Americans” because they would not construe it as meeting the first part of the Necessity Standard. “Many” Americans and others, the document held, “would doubt it was a ‘just war’ and that all reasonable possibilities for a peaceful settlement had been explored in good faith.” With regard to the Korean conflict, we see significant strands of consistency between internal discussions of the meaning and impact of the North’s invasion and external discussions of the intervention on the part of the Truman administration. Internal discussions underlined the wider importance of the events and indicated that the administration saw a military response to Korea as necessary rather than the result of a cost-benefits analysis. Truman and his inner circle perceived Kim’s move as part of a larger communist attempt to alter power relations and as the first of several moves to take on new territory, with both Formosa and Iran mooted as next in line if this invasion was not blocked.18 As John Foster Dulles and John Allison put it in their telegram from Tokyo on June 25, the attack was the possible beginning of a much larger and more serious crisis unless the US acted forcibly and quickly, thus ruling out the pursuit of alternatives as useless and highly dangerous in light of American security interests. “To sit by while Korea is overrun by unprovoked armed attack,” they held, “would start a disastrous chain of events leading most probably to world war”.19

Truman’s Application of the Necessity Standard and Policy In justifying his actions in Korea, Truman applied the Necessity Standard by expanding on the interpretations of the Security and Values Norms that Roosevelt set down during World War II, while departing from the latter’s 18  Memorandum of Conversation, June 25, 1950; Memorandum of Conversation, June 26, 1950 (https://www.trumanlibrary.org/whistlestop/study_collections/koreanwar/ index.php). 19  Extract from Telegram from John foster Dulles and John Allison to Sec. of State and Ass’t Sec. Rusk, Tokyo, June 25, 1950 (https://www.trumanlibrary.org/whistlestop/ study_collections/koreanwar/index.php).

168 

D. J. LORENZO

earlier attempt to straddle traditional neutralism and international activism. He more explicitly utilized a Democratic/Liberal security proposition, mostly to identify the dangers non-democracies pose to the US and to reinforce the lessons of Munich in relation to the correct response to aggressive revisionists. Unlike Roosevelt, he moved immediately to threaten or use military force in the face of aggressive revisionism even while adopting (in the language of NSC 68) a reactive orientation toward military action and operating with an aversion to sparking a new world war. More broadly, both Loveman and Smith argue that the conception and details of this strategy applied to the rest of the world the military and security policies the US had implemented in the Western Hemisphere since the proclamation of the Monroe Doctrine: the understanding that developments within other countries could have a significant impact on American security, the belief that the movement of territorial control from one set of hands to another could count as a threat to American security, and the assertion that the US reserved for itself the right unilaterally and immediately to intervene military in such circumstances in the name of the universal entitlement of states to use force for purposes of self-defense.20 In discussing his decision to go to war, Truman was at pains to convey that he was stopping aggression, forestalling the general erosion of the West’s position, and protecting Korea. His explanation of “why war now” is pivotal. He insisted that the pursuit of alternatives must be cut off almost immediately and negotiated compromise taken off the table when aggressive revisionism (as opposed to an ordinary escalation of a dispute) is involved due to the high probability that an unopposed act of aggression will be followed by more. In so doing, he specified what alternatives should accomplish in detail, and left no flexibility or room for negotiation. The attacking forces must either leave the south immediately and provide binding commitments to respect South Korea’s sovereignty or the US would use military force. Similar to an attack on US territory, instances of aggressive revisionism allow little role for alternatives, while such an action in itself is sufficient to trigger a military response.

20  Brian Loveman, No higher law: American foreign policy and the Western Hemisphere since 1776 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2010), p.  263; Tony Smith, America’s Mission: The United States and the Worldwide Struggle for Democracy in the Twentieth Century (Princeton, NJ: Twentieth Century Fund/Princeton University Press, 1994), pp. 113–4. Smith traces this development back to Roosevelt’s wartime policies.

8  KOREA AND THE EARLY COLD WAR 

169

Truman’s security policy, in keeping with his administration’s internal discussions, expanded understandings of vital interests and duties well beyond the traditional list. Like Wilson, he located the US within a world system of rules and norms, but also employed balance of power analyses, referenced Munich, and assumed a Democratic/Liberal security proposition. He argued that actions taking place far from American shores could activate important duties and impinge on vital interests because, due to global interconnections, they could threaten American security and values. He therefore held that the US would act in concert with other free states to oppose acts of aggressive revisionism, acts that materially alter the world balance of power, acts that destroy liberal rights and freedoms, and acts that erode or disturb the existing, liberal, world order. In publicly establishing these policies, Truman differentiated himself from old-line conservatives who would return to a focus on domestic security. One can see clear connections with Roosevelt’s views even as he ventured beyond Roosevelt’s policies. By linking events in Korea to events in Europe in the 1930s, he insisted that the US must immediately respond militarily to aggressive revisionism occurring outside the American homeland lest a preponderant hostile power arise in the world and put the US in the position of bowing to it or fighting another global conflict.

CHAPTER 9

The War in Vietnam A Proactive Use of Military Force to Maintain Credibility, Resist Aggression, and Defend a Liberal World Order The Contexts of the Vietnam War In the immediate aftermath of World War II, the US had little interest in Vietnam and was at the least ambivalent about any involvement in Indo– China.1 American policymakers did not regard it as a priority given French interests there and the presence of a friendly Nationalist China to the north. Anti-colonialist impulses were also a factor, as one strand of American strategy was to build upon the major wartime conferences to create rapport with nationalists in colonial empires.2 France, however, saw the recovery of its pre-war empire as crucial to its post-war power, influence, and prosperity. While the US ultimately decided to support the French resumption of colonial administration in the area rather than push for a UN trusteeship, American policymakers expected the French to guide the peoples it governed to independence. When resistance 1  For one understanding of this ambivalence, see The Pentagon Papers, Gravel Edition (Boston: Beacon Press, 1971), Volume 1, Chapter I, “Background to the Crisis, 1940–50,” pp. 1–52. 2  Smith emphasizes more vigorously the anti-imperialist emphasis on self-determination that the US pursued during and in the immediate aftermath of World War II. Tony Smith, America’s Mission: The United States and the Worldwide Struggle for Democracy in the Twentieth Century (Princeton, NJ: Twentieth Century Fund/Princeton University Press, 1994), pp. 124–8.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 D. J. Lorenzo, War and American Foreign Policy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-66695-8_9

171

172 

D. J. LORENZO

developed to the French re-imposition of colonial rule, the US initially left matters to the French and provided no military assistance. The Pentagon Papers describes a shift in American policy that took place in 1950 with the failure of Ho Chi Minh to recognize the Vietnamese state the French created, Ho’s formation of a rival communist state, and Moscow’s recognition of the latter. The communist victory in the Chinese civil war also played a role, as did fear of the power of a unified communist Russian-Chinese bloc and the threat the new People’s Republic of China (PRC) could pose to Japan through the use of communist nationalist proxies in the region.3 It was also the case that American policymakers who addressed the conflict in Vietnam from 1950 through the early 1970s (particularly Democrats) feared a resurgence of the political wars which accompanied the “Who Lost China” debate and were determined not to preside over a situation in which significant territory was lost to the communists.4 American involvement in Vietnam initially took the form of providing military aid to the French, but that approach met with little success. While the US was hesitant to become more deeply involved, policymakers did view with alarm the possibility of a communist takeover. They also lamented the consequences of the UN failing to act decisively against communist aggression in the context of an eroding margin of US nuclear superiority over the Soviets.5 An NSC staff study put the danger in the region in stark terms, arguing that the loss of territories in Southeast Asia to the other side of the Cold War would lead to the forfeiture of military bases, threaten lines of communication and trade with India and other important countries, result in the transfer of important resources to the communist side, encourage defection and bandwagoning with the Soviets, and undermine American credibility. The latter was the first, and most fully developed, point made, and was connected with references to the Domino Theory and security fears:

 “Background to the Crisis, 1940–50”.  For this attitude on the part of the Eisenhower administration, see the Pentagon Papers, Chapter 2, “U.S. Involvement in the Franco-Viet Minh War, 1950–1954”. 5  NSC 100, “Recommended Policies and Actions in Light of the Grave World Situation,” 11 January 1951, United States, Department of State, Department of State Publication 8975, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1951. Volume I, National Security Affairs; Foreign Economic Policy (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1979). 3 4

9  THE WAR IN VIETNAM 

173

Communist domination of Southeast Asia… would be critical to United States security interests. Communist success in this area would spread doubt and fear among other threatened non-communist countries as to the ability of the United States and the United Nations to halt communist aggression elsewhere. It would strengthen the claim that the advance of communism is inexorable and encourage countries vulnerable to Soviet pressure to adopt policies of neutralism or accommodation. Successful overt Chinese Communist aggression in this area… would have critical psychological and political consequences which would probably include the relatively swift alignment of the rest of Asia and thereafter of the Middle East to communism, thereby endangering the stability and security of Europe.6

Consequently, the US continued providing military aid to the French,7 while adding technical assistance, covert support through the Central Intelligence Agency, and volunteers from overseas Chinese communities in Southeast Asia.8 The French defeat at Dien Bien Phu served notice that the French could not defeat insurgent forces, and led to the compromises of the Geneva Conference in 1954. Vietnam was to be temporarily partitioned in anticipation of national elections. However, the proposed elections never took place; instead, elections were held which created a state in the southern half of the country. The Eisenhower administration committed itself to supporting this state in opposition to the Viet Minh movement and the government erected in the north.9

6  NSC Staff Study on United States Objectives and Courses of Action with Respect to Communist Aggression in Southeast Asia, February 13, 1952. For a collection of references to both credibility and the domino theory in the context of Southeast Asia in the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations, see Robert Jervis, “Domino Beliefs and Strategic Behavior,” in Robert Jervis and Jack Snyder, eds., Dominos and Bandwagons: Strategic Beliefs and Great Power Competition in the Eurasian Rimlands (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990). 7  Joint Franco-American Communique, Additional United States Aid for France and Indochina, September 30, 1953, Department of State Bulletin, October 12, 1953, p. 486. 8  Note by the Executive Secretary to the National Security Council on United States Objectives and Courses of Action with Respect to Southeast Asia January 16, 1954. 9  United States Policy with Respect to Vietnam: Address by the Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs, Walter S. Robertson, Washington, June 1, 1956. Delivered to the American Friends of Vietnam at the Willard Hotel in Washington, DC.  U.S.  Congress, Senate, Committee on Foreign Relations, 90th Congress, 1st Session, Background Information Relating to Southeast Asia and Vietnam (3rd Revised Edition; Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, July 1967), pp. 92–94.

174 

D. J. LORENZO

During the latter parts of Eisenhower’s second term, the CIA began mounting clandestine operations in Vietnam10 and the administration discussed direct forms of military intervention in light of efforts by increasingly effective insurgents to destabilize the government of South Vietnam.11 The Diem government’s inability to conduct the social, economic, and military reforms necessary to stabilize the security environment in South Vietnam created reservations as to Diem’s capabilities and raised the possibilities of more direct American intervention. Ambassador Elbridge Durbrow put such doubts on the record in a cable in the fall of 1960: “If Diem’s position in country continues [to] deteriorate as result [of] failure [to] adopt proper political, psychological, economic and security measures, it may become necessary for [the] U.S. government to begin consideration [of] alternative courses of action and leaders in order achieve our objective,” which was to establish non-communist control of Vietnam.12 As early as the spring of 1961, President Kennedy gestured toward sending ground troops to Vietnam in tandem with existing military advisors, indicating that the option was “under consideration” given deteriorating conditions.13 Instead, the administration implemented the Strategic Hamlets initiative. This program, which entailed the resettlement of rural populations in defensible communities along with social and economic reform, initially appeared successful, leading to proposals to withdraw most American military personnel from Vietnam in 1962. However, the Diem government’s clumsy handling of military and civil affairs and resistance to meaningful reforms created a new crisis. Martial law followed an upsurge in insurgent activities. Diem’s government was overthrown in November of 1963, and Diem assassinated.

10  Ken Conboy and James Morrison, “Operation Typhoon: Early Covert Action on the Ho Chi Minh Trail,” Vietnam Magazine, August 2000. 11  The Pentagon Papers, Volume 1, Chapter 5, “Origins of the Insurgency in South Vietnam, 1954–1960”. 12  Cablegram from Elbridge Durbrow, United States Ambassador in Saigon, to Secretary of State Christian A. Herter on Threats to Saigon Regime, Sept. 16, 1960. 13  President Kennedy’s Presidential News Conference, Question on the Issue of Sending in American Troops to South Vietnam, May 5, 1961; National Security Action Memorandum 52, signed by McGeorge Bundy, Presidential adviser on national security, 11 May 1961. Kennedy had earlier signaled his support for “limited wars” in various public statements, e.g. Congressional Record, February 29, 1960, p. 3582.

9  THE WAR IN VIETNAM 

175

Congress’s authorization for direct military intervention came in the form of its approval of the Tonkin Gulf Resolution. The Tonkin Gulf incident itself was a conflation of several events involving US naval forces engaged in electronic espionage activities off the coast of North Vietnam. The North Vietnamese responded by sending torpedo boats to attack the American destroyer Maddox on August 2, 1964 while it was operating in the Tonkin Gulf. This and subsequent events in the same area led the Johnson administration on August 7 to ask for authorization to use military force in the region in defense of US personnel and those of its SEATO ally, South Vietnam. Despite some debate over the scope of the authority Congress was vesting with the president, the Resolution passed the Senate by a vote of 88-2, and the House 416-0.

President Johnson on the Vietnam War Why War? Duties and Vital Interests President Johnson identified American security, values, credibility, and a liberal world order as the duties and vital interests implicated in Vietnam.14 Thus, his war aims were first realist and nationalist, and second values-­ oriented. The realist interests he identified implicated American security by linking it to allies and friends. The US must possess strategic depth in its contest with the communist world. It must work to stop aggressors in their tracks before they gain momentum that would trigger another world war. American security, Johnson further held, is enmeshed with credibility and a policy of forward defense by which the US defends, and is seen to defend, the self-determination and territorial integrity of friends and allies.15 Johnson’s discussion started with reports of attacks on US forces in Vietnam. He characterized them as acts of violence, aggression, and “renewed hostile actions” that he would meet with a military response.16 More importantly, he cited US commitments in Vietnam and the duty to see them through. In his 1967 State of the Union address, he began his 14  Eric Patterson, Just America Wars: Ethical Dilemmas in American Military History (New York: Routledge, 2019), adds American honor, Johnson’s honor, and an explicit commitment to defend democracy to the list of Vietnam war aims in general. 15  “Speech on Vietnam,” September 29, 1967. 16  August 4, 1964: Report on the Gulf of Tonkin Incident.

176 

D. J. LORENZO

discussion of Vietnam by asserting, “We are in Vietnam because the United States of America and our allies are committed by the SEATO Treaty to ‘act to meet the common danger’ of aggression in Southeast Asia. We are in Vietnam because an international agreement signed by the United States, North Vietnam, and others in 1962 is being systematically violated by the Communists.”17 In the same speech he further insisted that it is incumbent on the US to follow through with those commitments, not just for the immediate effects it would have on Vietnam and surrounding states, but for other places as well. He quotes leaders in Asia and elsewhere as expressing relief that the US was keeping its commitments to Vietnam. Earlier, he had made the point even more explicitly: over many years, we have made a national pledge to help South Viet-Nam defend its independence. And I intend to keep that promise. To dishonor that pledge, to abandon this small and brave nation to its enemies, and to the terror that must follow, would be an unforgivable wrong. We are also there to strengthen world order. Around the globe, from Berlin to Thailand, are people whose well-being rests, in part, on the belief that they can count on us if they are attacked. To leave Viet-Nam to its fate would shake the confidence of all these people in the value of an American commitment and in the value of America’s word. The result would be increased unrest and instability, and even wider war.18

Johnson turned to previous experiences to help establish the links among US security, alliances, commitments, and credibility. The early decades of the twentieth century, he held, amply demonstrated that events and developments outside the American hemisphere strongly influence US security and its wish to live in a peaceful world. Using balance of power calculations and referencing the doctrine of containment, he pursued this analysis by arguing that the free world cannot afford to lose any territory because (in a reference to the Domino Theory) losing one territory threatens the loss of others. Quoting both Eisenhower and Kennedy, he insisted that to abandon Vietnam is to risk forfeiting surrounding countries, and ultimately Asia as a whole, to the Communists, a situation detrimental to American security, the prospects for peace, and the overall liberal world order.19 Containment is the relevant policy here because the principle that  August 5, 1964: Remarks on Vietnam at Syracuse University.  April 7, 1965: Speech at the Johns Hopkins University. 19  “Speech on Vietnam,” September 29, 1967. 17 18

9  THE WAR IN VIETNAM 

177

aggression must be met with force if it is not to spread applies equally to Asia as it does to Europe. He then echoed Roosevelt’s insistence that the US was no longer secure in its geographical position because oceans no longer provide barriers to attack from modern military technology. Economic developments tie together the entire globe such that events in one region have profound implications for others. Further elaborating on the importance of Vietnam, Johnson argued that it was key to American security in an even wider sense, in that unmet aggression in that country could spark a series of events that would end in a catastrophic world war. Here Johnson drew again upon the experiences of the 1930s, not just in the form of Munich, but more broadly upon an analysis that suggested that global wars have their origins in smaller events that escalate. Johnson hedged this analysis in ways he and others did not qualify the Munich Paradigm, but he nonetheless offered it as a compelling reason why the US had vital security interests in the ongoing conflict in Vietnam: I am not prepared to risk the security—indeed, the survival—of this American Nation on mere hope and wishful thinking. I am convinced that by seeing this struggle through now, we are greatly reducing the chances of a much larger war—perhaps a nuclear war. I would rather stand in Vietnam, in our time, and by meeting this danger now, and facing up to it, thereby reduce the danger for our children and for our grandchildren.20

Note the emphasis on the future in this discussion. It is reminiscent of the Reputation and Credibility Arguments that Madison and others deployed to hold that there was no alternative but to fight the British in 1812. However, the argument here is more closely associated with security as a vital interest, bolstered by references to the Domino Theory and balance of power analyses, as well as used to justify fighting a war far away from American shores and validate fighting a war immediately rather than in the (far) future. When it came to values, Johnson held that the intervention was a defense of an already established, multilateral, peaceful world order, the maintenance of which was a vital American interest and implicated American domestic values and general duties. First, he held that the US could not enjoy its values without their defense throughout the world. In  “Speech on Vietnam,” September 29, 1967.

20

178 

D. J. LORENZO

his speech at Johns Hopkins, he noted, “We fight because we must fight if we are to live in a world where every country can shape its own destiny. And only in such a world will our own freedom be finally secure”.21 Second, he held that the liberal values and international norms the US accepted constituted a desirable, liberal world order, and that order could only be upheld if the US discharged its duties to protect its values, enforce its norms, and uphold the terms of treaties made under its auspices. As he noted in one important speech on Vietnam, the US was involved in that country because of the duties the US had recognized since the early 1940s to protect individual rights and liberal values. The South Vietnamese were making progress in terms of democratization and instituting a rights-based liberal government. More broadly he held We cherish freedom—yes. We cherish self-determination for all people—yes. We abhor the political murder of any state by another, and the bodily murder of any people by gangsters of whatever ideology. And for 27 years— since the days of lend-lease—we have sought to strengthen free people against domination by aggressive foreign powers.22

The US, Johnson argued in another speech, was equally obliged to ensure that countries in Southeast Asia honored norms that guarantee each state’s sovereignty and prescribe mandatory, peaceful procedures for resolving disputes. Acting militarily in Asia was vitally important to the larger project of defending a world order that upheld those norms—the communists had violated a basic international rule by engaging in aggression; they therefore “still believe in force” as an acceptable means for achieving their goals.23 Yet he also argued that, given an important interest in preventing a global war, the fighting in Vietnam must be limited to defending the freedom and sovereignty of South Vietnam, not in destabilizing or taking over the north. The war is an interposition, fought within strict confines, meant to contain the communists and demonstrate that they could not win. Restraint is therefore key, particularly in refraining from either adopting the Jacksonian concept of total war, or giving up in despair:  April 7, 1965: Speech at the Johns Hopkins University.  “Speech on Vietnam,” September 29, 1967. 23  Address at Syracuse University, August 24, 1964; “Enemy We Face in Vietnam,” August 15, 1965; “Remarks to the American Alumni Council: United States Asian Policy, July 12, 1966. 21 22

9  THE WAR IN VIETNAM 

179

Whether we can fight a war of limited objectives over a period of time, and keep alive the hope of independence and stability for people other than ourselves; whether we can continue to act with restraint when the temptation to “get it over with” is inviting but dangerous; whether we can accept the necessity of choosing “a great evil in order to ward off a greater”; whether we can do these without arousing the hatreds and the passions that are ordinarily loosed in time of war—on all these questions so much turns.24

Why War Now? The Absence of Viable Alternatives For Johnson at the time of the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, alternatives to the use of significant military force would be viable only if they could keep the peace in Vietnam, discourage aggression against and protect the sovereignty of South Vietnam, demonstrate US credibility, preserve the current balance of power in the region, and uphold the liberal world order. While he and his predecessors had previously pursued negotiations and military aid to attain those goals in Vietnam, now he argued that these alternatives were no longer by themselves viable. Direct US military action was necessary. Further, while some flexibility had been part of earlier strategies, Johnson increasingly insisted that North Vietnam accept a specific settlement. Johnson’s discussion of this rationale is interesting because his immediate justification referenced the contention that the North Vietnamese had attacked American naval vessels in international waters, and thus asserted that hostilities between the US and the North Vietnamese exist.25 However, he was not content with this reason, small as it was, and continued on to posit larger reasons for an immediate military response. This effort to rule out alternatives meant dredging up familiar arguments: the Munich Paradigm, the Domino Theory, identifications of revisionists as aggressors, and the proposition that small conflicts if not immediately addressed could blow up into another world war. One of the main purposes of the American presence in Vietnam, Johnson argued, was because North Vietnam, backed by the PRC, was engaged in aggression against South Vietnam. That presence is relevant in two ways. First, because it impinged upon the US guarantee of South Vietnam’s independence which 24  January 10, 1967: State of the Union Address; also “Foreign Policy in Asia,” July 12, 1966. 25  “Enemy We Face in Vietnam,” August 15, 1965; Address at Syracuse University, August 24, 1965; “Foreign Policy in Asia,” July 12, 1966.

180 

D. J. LORENZO

Johnson intended to fulfill. To dither in adopting military means would erode credibility.26 Second, because the US must deter the North Vietnamese and communists in general from making further power plays. Aggression unmet with immediate force will turn into a winning play and inevitably draw more revisionist forces into the resulting power vacuum. “Weakness of neighbors,” Johnson argued, “is a temptation, and so only firmness backed by power can really deter power that is backed by ambition”.27 Johnson then connected these Aggression Arguments with versions of the Munich Paradigm and Domino Theory. Aggression, he argued, feeds on success. States like North Vietnam and the PRC will not be sated by their gains but will inflate their ambitions accordingly. If not met by immediate military force, Communists will shift their aims to the rest of Asia, and their success would give encouragement to fellow aggressors in other parts of the world, resulting in a loss of a series of territories and resources to the other side of the Cold War. The US must confront communists with military force immediately when they engage in aggressive revisionism if it is to maintain the status quo. Johnson further held that forcibly confronting aggressors is the only viable way to pursue the US vital interest in world peace and to maintain a liberal global order. If the US wished to have a peaceful world in which the number of violent conflicts is minimized or eliminated because states follow norms and settle disputes peacefully, he insisted, the military challenge the North Vietnamese delivered must be met quickly with military force lest the communists create new and bigger conflicts. Johnson portrayed Vietnam not as an isolated victim of random incidents, but as experiencing martial attacks that have deep connections with developments across the world and with a possible world war. A policy of resisting aggressive revisionism with military force in Vietnam, he argued, fits with a general pattern of previous presidents engaging in Greece, Turkey, Berlin, Korea, Lebanon, and Cuba in the name of preventing a larger war. Johnson explicitly discarded a policy of pursuing negotiations as a stand-alone alternative in the face of a growing opposition to the war that demanded an immediate end to hostilities through diplomacy and negotiations. He addressed those arguments in two ways. First, he insisted that  “Report on the Gulf of Tonkin Incident,” August 4, 1964.  “Remarks to the American Alumni Council: United States Asian Policy.” July 12, 1966; also “Enemy We Face in Vietnam,” August 15, 1965; Address at Syracuse University, August 24, 1965; “Foreign Policy in Asia,” July 12, 1966. 26 27

9  THE WAR IN VIETNAM 

181

the US had engaged in diplomacy previously to address South Vietnam’s security situation.28 These negotiations, he argued, had not borne fruit, and would not in the absence of continued military pressure. Diplomacy is insufficient when employed alone or in the absence of demonstrations of credible will to use force when aggressive actors like the communists are involved. In these arguments, diplomacy is futile because it is ill-suited by itself to address the types of challenges the US faced given the actions and character of its opponents.29 Later, in the midst of various bombing campaigns and bombing pauses, he argued that the US offered to hold negotiations but North Vietnamese officials refused to meet: “Why not negotiate now?” so many ask me. The answer is that we and our South Vietnamese allies are wholly prepared to negotiate tonight. I am ready to talk with Ho Chi Minh, and other chiefs of state concerned, tomorrow. I am ready to have Secretary Rusk meet with their foreign minister tomorrow. I am ready to send a trusted representative of America to any spot on this earth to talk in public or private with a spokesman of Hanoi.We have twice sought to have the issue of Vietnam dealt with by the United Nations—and twice Hanoi has refused. Our desire to negotiate peace— through the United Nations or out—has been made very, very clear to Hanoi—directly and many times through third parties…. But Hanoi has not accepted any of these proposals. So it is by Hanoi’s choice—and not ours, and not the rest of the world’s—that the war continues.30

This contention grounded Johnson’s insistence that the US must use, and continue to use, military force to coerce the North Vietnamese to the negotiating table. It employed a different type of Futility Argument that references the nature of the other party to the conflict. The reason why diplomacy should not be a first order response is not that opponents cannot be trusted; it is because they are not interested in a peaceful, negotiated resolution of the conflict.

 E.g. “January 12, 1966: State of the Union”.  “Enemy We Face in Vietnam,” August 15, 1965. 30  “Speech on Vietnam,” September 29, 1967. 28 29

182 

D. J. LORENZO

Congressional Applications of the Necessity Standard The text of the Tonkin Gulf Resolution followed the Necessity Standard. It identified “the maintenance of international peace and security in southeast Asia” as “vital to [US] national interests”. It also referenced aggression on the part of the North Vietnamese, violations of the UN Charter and international law, and the duty to defend freedom and peace as reasons for using military force. It dismissed alternatives by pointing to “armed attacks” on US military forces, thus establishing that hostilities exist. It authorized the president “to take all necessary steps, including the use of armed force, to assist any member or protocol state of the Southeast Asia Collective Defense Treaty requesting assistance in defense of its freedom.”31 Members of Congress debating the Tonkin Gulf Resolution echoed President Johnson’s immediate justifications for escalating American activities in Vietnam to include the use of major military force. Senator J. W. Fulbright, acting as the floor leader for the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, closely followed Johnson’s lead in combining realist with values arguments.32 Like Johnson, he underlined the security ramifications of the attacks on American naval vessels, labeling them not only manifestations of security threats to US armed forces and hostile actions, but also demonstrations of North Vietnam’s “aggression” and “contempt of international law.” He then moved to conventional realist arguments that pointed to the future ramifications of the decision either to confront North Vietnam with military force or to take other avenues of action. He rehearsed historical connections between military action and reputation that contained echoes of the Munich Paradigm. “An act of unambiguous aggression cannot be tolerated or ignored without inviting further provocation.” When viewed on such grounds, he insisted, the case for an immediate military response, limited though it was, is clear. Here Fulbright differentiated among contexts while checking the restrictive side of the standard. He held that the US should not rush to meet all military incidents with military force, nor treat all communist 31  Joint Resolution of August 10, 1964, Public Law 88-408, 78 STAT 384, to Promote the Maintenance of International Peace and Security in Southeast Asia; 8/10/1964. 32  Senator Fulbright was a long-standing member, then chair, of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He later became a prominent Congressional critic of the war, holding that Johnson misled him.

9  THE WAR IN VIETNAM 

183

states alike. Communists are not monolithic; the US can distinguish between those who engage in aggression and those who do not. In pursuing this line, Fulbright implicitly employed a Futility Argument by affirming diplomacy’s viability in many situations, but not this one. The US, employing a “flexible” approach, sometimes uses diplomacy and sometimes utilizes military force, depending on the circumstances, in responding to international incidents and conflicts. Like diplomacy, military force is “not an end, but an instrument, a dangerous and repugnant one which is never desirable but sometimes essential.” Military action in Vietnam, he argued, was now “necessary” not because the US had exhausted diplomacy and other alternatives, but due to the aggressive and illegal nature of the North Vietnamese actions and the character of North Vietnam’s leadership.33 Fulbright identified vital interests which were partly realist, but also values-oriented. He held that military actions were importantly about the US interest in acting successfully to “restrain or repel Communist aggression in Southeast Asia.” Aggression plays an important role in this formulation, implying as it does generic threats to American security and a dangerous revisionism that transgresses accepted international norms. Fulbright pushed first a description of a realist interest in establishing a reputation for using force against revisionists, arguing that It should be made equally clear to these regimes, if it is not yet sufficiently clear, that their aggressive and expansionist ambitions, wherever advanced, will meet precisely that degree of American opposition which is necessary to frustrate them. The resolution now before the Senate is designed to shatter whatever illusions our adversaries may harbor about the determination of the United States to act promptly and vigorously against aggression.

He also associated resisting aggressive revisionism and establishing a reputation for doing so with a duty to defend the existing liberal world order. Engaging in those projects through military force is crucial to upholding the Geneva agreements addressing the region, and central to ensuring that communist states generally abide by international norms such that they “confine their ambitions within their own frontiers” and “settle the problems of southeast [sic] Asia by peaceful and lawful means.” In turn, these goals were important to another, larger duty. Restraining aggression and  Congressional Record, Senate, August 6, 1964, pp. 18399–18400.

33

184 

D. J. LORENZO

revisionism in the region was necessary to upholding and protecting the values of self-determination and sovereignty the US had pledged to defend. American military action would help to “[e]stablish viable, independent states in Indochina and elsewhere in southeast Asia, states which will be free and secure from the domination of Communist China and Communist North Vietnam.” Senator Barry Goldwater departed from the administration’s line to adopt a more thorough combination of realist analysis with values-infused goals even as he offered general support for the war. During the 1964 presidential campaign,34 he supported the war while criticizing as insufficient Johnson’s policy of limited intervention. He moved first to locate the war within a global context. World conditions require a robust policy of deterrence and opposition to aggression, he argued, which necessarily includes a subsidiary policy of quickly engaging in credible demonstrations of military force. The US projects military power (rather than engage in negotiations) to convince communist rivals that it is willing to defend militarily its national and global interests in the face of revisionist projects. “Only the strong can remain free, that only the strong can keep the peace,” he argued. Here the argument is that diplomacy and related alternatives are futile because they do not work in the face of aggressive revisionism, they do not establish credibility and reputation, nor do they deter future acts of aggression. Goldwater further held that military force is the only option to take in Vietnam due to the nature of those with whom the US dealt. The communists, he argued, are not ordinary political players. As messianic actors, they understand nothing but power. Only military responses, not negotiated agreements, will stop them. Addressing the aims of military action beyond credibility and reputation, Goldwater implicated important liberal duties to defend freedom and democracy. The fighting in Vietnam, he argued, was part of a titanic struggle between two entities which embraced different understandings of human nature—one which embraced the centrality of individual freedom, the other a messianic and tyrannical view which would impose an understanding of the good life and good citizenship on individuals.35 The imperative to win this struggle must inform the use of force in Vietnam, 34  1964 speech at the 28th Republican National Convention, accepting the nomination for president. 35  1964 speech at the 28th Republican National Convention, accepting the nomination for president.

9  THE WAR IN VIETNAM 

185

Korea, and elsewhere, he argued, meaning that the US must commit itself fully to it. Victory must be the goal, defined as creating a situation in which the Vietnamese can enjoy the fundamental freedoms of human life. Johnson, Goldwater held, was right to fight in Vietnam, but was not willing to commit American power fully to that venture because he misconstrued the ultimate goals. Johnson fought so he could negotiate, rather than fight to deter and defeat revisionist communist aggression and successfully defend the right of the Vietnamese people to enjoy basic human freedoms. Johnson, in Goldwater’s estimation, undermined America’s reputation and deterrence capacity and failed to defend freedom even as he fought a necessary war because he was too committed to diplomacy and peace at the expense of a full-blown military defense of freedom.

The Necessity Standard and Related Policy Discussions Discussions Before the Vietnam War We find a variety of situations in which public officials invoked the standard in discussions of war and peace between the Korean and Vietnam wars. For example, in providing arguments that fleshed out the Eisenhower Doctrine and related matters, Dwight Eisenhower used the Necessity Standard to outline security and military policies that gestured toward limited patience and flexibility with alternatives and embraced security, credibility, and values as vital interests and duties. Eisenhower held that while diplomacy should generally be the first option when the US confronted a conflict, there existed important reasons for cutting short such efforts, for signaling that the US was always willing to use military force to protect its interests even when negotiating, or for moving directly to military operations when conditions deteriorated.36 Eisenhower, like others at that time, directed attention to the untrustworthy and aggressive character of the Soviets and communists in general as a reason for abandoning or cutting short diplomatic efforts. He also pointed to the stakes in question as justifications for employing increasingly muscular alternatives globally, for adhering to rigid standards, and for quickly dropping alternatives in favor of military action in specified circumstances. An attack on an ally or an invasion of a strategically  Message to Congress, January 5, 1957.

36

186 

D. J. LORENZO

i­mportant area of the world would, his Doctrine stated, trigger a military rather than diplomatic response. In those instances, negotiations alone cannot protect American interests because those interests are intimately caught up with the interests and sovereignty of other nations who are under attack, and those goods are non-negotiable. Further, he argued, it was important to communicate this stance and act upon it as a way of deterring the outbreak of both small conflicts and major wars and establishing credibility. In fleshing out this stance, Eisenhower pointed to a pattern of communist interference throughout the world— in Czechoslovakia, China, Korea, and Indo-China—which signaled the presence of a wide-ranging communist strategy to dominate the globe. The correct response to this challenge, he held, was deterrence, then a major military confrontation if necessary, rather than “indifference” in the face of belligerence and a belated and hurried military response. The 1930s, he argued, had proved this point when the members of the League of Nations had supinely allowed aggressors to take over sovereign states. Eisenhower later drew upon this analysis when justifying his dispatch of troops to Lebanon, arguing that the US must immediately confront aggressors with displays of military power when they show their hand.37 In outlining his Doctrine and justifying other moves, Eisenhower provided important clues as to his understanding of vital interests and duties. He appeared to deviate from a strict understanding of the “new look, asymmetrical response” conception of containment policy attributed to his administration, a conception which depended upon threats of massive retaliation to deter Soviet moves in strategic areas. Instead, we find that he expansively identified the “key territories” the US should defend with non-nuclear military force when he explicitly referenced the Domino Theory at his April 7, 1954 press conference. This identification drew upon realist, nationalist, and values arguments. Indo-China, he argued, was vital to the US for a variety of reasons. It contained important strategic material. It was geographically located in a crucial area that contained Western allies and competitors. It was near important Western trading partners, particularly Japan, and was home to many millions of people who were now “free”. To lose Indo-China would not only mean that the territory and people immediately subject to that aggression would be lost 37  “Statement by the President following the Landing of United States Marines at Beirut, July 15, 1958,” Public Papers of the Presidents: Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1958.

9  THE WAR IN VIETNAM 

187

to the US and the cause of freedom. It would also push over the first state “domino” whose fall would transfer resources from the collection of free states in the region to regional communist forces. This would result in the handover of further territories to the communist camp, and eventually to a larger, strategically important shift in the balance of power between the two sides of the Cold War. A policy of intervening militarily in what otherwise appear to be small, local, and unimportant conflicts is necessary, he argued, to forestall developments that could lead to a global war or other critically undesirable consequences.38 Eisenhower also directly invoked values, including individual freedoms, democracy, and self-government. The US has duties to protect such values globally, he argued, while in an invocation of the Democratic/Liberal security proposition he held that the US must defend states characterized by self-government and freedom in the name of American security. Having embraced a set of values as part of its identity, the US is required to defend them; conceiving of American security as dependent upon the existence of similar states further necessitates the US taking an interest in their defense.39 He also referenced the duty to enforce and protect international norms, including those of peaceful settlement of disputes. In so doing, he alluded to a liberal world order that the US would uphold, either alone or with allies. He argued that American military interventions protected a “world peace based on justice”. He maintained more generally that his policies enforced norms that require states to abide by the decisions and mandates of the UN General Assembly and the Security Council. Those, along with the UN Charter and the larger body of international customs and conventions, he argued, oblige the US to defend places like Lebanon from outside aggression given that the US was “required to support the principles of justice and international law upon which peace and a stable international order depend”.40 President Kennedy continued and sharpened Truman’s and Eisenhower’s use of the Necessity Standard to discuss military matters. Like his predecessors, he outlined a security and military policy that 38  The President’s News Conference of April 7, 1954; John Foster Dulles, in his national address on May 7, 1954, reiterated this analysis. “Address to the Nation,” May 7, 1954. 39  The President’s News Conference of April 7, 1954; Eisenhower Doctrine, January 5, 1957; Statement by the President following the Landing of United States Marines at Beirut, July 15, 1958. 40  Special Message to the Congress on the Sending of United States Forces to Lebanon, July 15, 1958.

188 

D. J. LORENZO

employed only limited patience and flexibility when pursuing alternatives to war, and outlined the same set of vital interests and duties they set out. Like Truman and Eisenhower, Kennedy contended that diplomacy alone was often insufficient in the face global threats to American security41 Agreements by themselves mean nothing to the Soviets. Kennedy’s arguments combined references to the character of the Soviets with descriptions of the actions they authored to hold that in certain circumstances military force should be on the agenda immediately even while negotiations or other alternatives were pursued. For example, in addressing the Cuban Missile Crisis, Kennedy held that due to the nature of Soviet actions, preparations for and entry into military activities (including the military blockade he ultimately implemented) must not be delayed by diplomatic activities. Their actions, he argued, demonstrate the Soviets’ lack of credibility in the realm of diplomatic interaction. The stationing of the missiles themselves “contradicts the repeated assurances…that the arms buildup would retain its original defensive character.” The time had come for military action to take place alongside negotiations. This policy, he conceded, was dangerous but argued, “the greatest danger of all would be to do nothing.” Kennedy expanded on these arguments in discussing his decision to impose a naval blockade as a means of pushing the Soviets to remove their missiles.42 The use of military force, even if pitched at a low level, is the only viable means for protecting American vital security interests, he argued, because security could not be the subject of flexibility or compromise. It would not be enough if the Soviet threat to American security was negotiated away by means of concessions.43 Not only would that policy prove a temporary expedient given Soviet untrustworthiness; considering Soviet moves to intimidate the US by positioning nuclear weapons close to American borders, the US faced a challenge to its place in the international order and its future capacity to maneuver in a world filled with danger. The refusal to use force would fatally erode its reputation and credibility. The US, he insisted, must respond forcibly and militarily to the challenge now “if our courage and commitments are ever to be trusted again by either friend or foe.”

 Address on the Buildup of Arms in Cuba, October 22, 1962.  Address on the Buildup of Arms in Cuba, October 22, 1962. 43  However, it turned out that Kennedy did give up (admittedly outdated) American missiles in Turkey partly in exchange for the Soviet removal of its weapons from Cuba. 41 42

9  THE WAR IN VIETNAM 

189

Here, Kennedy echoed Eisenhower’s point that leaders must absorb the strategic lessons of the 1930s regarding the prospects for all-out war, a development which all sober statesmen wish to avoid. Such wars are not prevented in the long run by attempting to appease or negotiate with aggressors. Only a reputation for engaging in immediate, forceful responses to aggression backing an inflexible demand achieve that goal given the character of aggressors and the escalatory potential of isolated conflicts. One has to stop aggression immediately to stop the march to a world war. Employing traditional and realist language to reference reputation and deterrence, Kennedy further held that weakness in the face of aggression invites further attacks, while a reputation for boldly and tenaciously defending one’s interests (and allies) scares off and discourages lawless predators, thus averting future crises and the possibility of a global war. Such policies were not restricted to direct and immediate threats to US territorial security. Previously, Kennedy had presented a version of this policy when he paired Credibility with Deterrence and Reputation Arguments while discussing events in Germany.44 He preemptively stressed the relevance of the imperative side of the Necessity Standard given a future move by the Soviets against Berlin by expanding the list of American duties and vital interests and defining viability in ways that cut short patience with alternatives in the context of actions and circumstances identified with “aggression.” He argued that because the Soviets lacked diplomatic credibility in processes that promote the peaceful resolution of disputes, because US security is intertwined with the rest of the world, and because American security is importantly defended by essential alliances, the US must maintain its military credibility by demonstrating its immediate willingness to use force to fulfill its commitments to allies. Regarding Berlin, he argued that successive US officials “have given our word that an attack upon that city will be regarded as an attack on us all”. The US, he held, cannot renege on that commitment lest it find itself bereft of allies and its threats to use force questioned. The US must be seen as willing to forcibly intervene, and intervene quickly, because Berlin was symbolic of the world at large. It was a “testing place” for American credibility and of the viability of NATO as a defensive military alliance. The US must avoid

44  “Inaugural Address,” January 20, 1961; Radio and Television Report to the American People on the Berlin Crisis, July 25, 1961; President Kennedy’s Address, in Chicago to Democratic Party Dinner, April 28, 1961.

190 

D. J. LORENZO

the “path of weakness and disunity” by signaling its immediate willingness to fight. Further, Kennedy had begun his term as president by identifying duties to defend freedom and self-determination internationally.45 The US, he insisted, was committed to protecting individuals as well as states from the onslaught of communist aggression. Human rights, he held, are seamlessly connected domestically and internationally. He expanded on these views in speaking of the crises in Berlin and Cuba. The Soviet threat to the former, he held, was part of a general threat to “free men” everywhere and was a constituent part of the global challenge the Soviets posed to individual freedoms and to the collective rights of people to govern their own affairs. The defense of Berlin was therefore a decision made necessary by the obligation to protect the rights of that city’s residents to “determine their own future and choose their own way of life.” Likewise, he characterized Soviet moves in Cuba as threats against the “free peoples of the world.”46 Later Discussions of Vietnam As for Vietnam itself, Johnson’s Secretary of State Dean Rusk embedded his justifications for fighting the war by referencing the terms of the Necessity Standard in ways that echoed Eisenhower and Kennedy.47 Embedded as it was in his larger analysis of the Cold War, his discussion combined Aggression and Futility Arguments with references to the Values Norm. On one level, he used these arguments in an instrumental fashion to outline a security policy. The only way of avoiding larger conflicts and attaining peace, he argued, was to use military force quickly in response to aggression. Diplomacy is futile, he insisted in several speeches, because aggression continues until forcibly stopped. Like Eisenhower, he held that “the clearest lesson of the 1930’s and -40’s” was that military  Inaugural Address, January 20, 1961.  Report on the Berlin Crisis, July 25, 1961; Address on the Buildup of Arms in Cuba, October 22, 1962. See also President Kennedy’s Address, in Chicago to Democratic Party Dinner, April 28, 1961. 47  Address by Secretary Rusk at the Founder’s Day Banquet of the Boston University School of Public Communications at Boston, Massachusetts on March 14, 1966, “Keeping Our Commitment to Peace”; also Statement by Secretary Rusk Before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, February 18, 1966, “The U.S.  Commitment in Viet-Nam: Fundamental Issues”. 45 46

9  THE WAR IN VIETNAM 

191

force, not concessions, stops aggression, and aggression must be stopped if peace is to be attained.48 Rusk also argued that a failure immediately to honor the military commitments contained in the pacts that the US had made with South Vietnam would fundamentally damage American credibility, reputation, and overall strategy, leading quite possibly to the loss of more states than Vietnam to the communist side of the Cold War. Such a development “would reflect on our honor as a nation, would undermine worldwide confidence in our courage, would convince every nation in South Asia that it must now bow to Communist terms to survive.”49 Delay in using military force, therefore, was not possible. Rusk linked America’s forceful opposition to aggression in Asia with both vital security interests and a US commitment to values. He first defended the intervention in Vietnam by insisting that meeting and stopping aggression abroad in general is essential to the protection of American security, but further argued that the US has historically considered the security of East Asia in particular as key to its own. This connection animated US participation in the Korean War and the US had continually re-affirmed it. The region was vital due to its characteristics (geography, natural resources, population, its place within a larger world context) and given that it was the subject of breaches of peace which could lead to larger conflicts. Most importantly, projecting force and expanding America’s security perimeter to address aggression quickly in such important areas of the world was the most effective means of preserving peace because it prevented an escalation of conflicts into dangerous and expensive world wars. On another level, Rusk connected aggression and threats to peace and security to a fundamental struggle with the communist bloc and the larger strategy of containment. Here, he held that peace as a general condition is not something to be hoped for, but must be defended by force everywhere it is threatened, and it is communists and the Soviets who threaten it. Peace will be possible and American interests will be secure only if the US takes on and defeats Soviet aggression. The Soviets are at the bottom of all 48  “Some Fundamentals of American Policy,” Address by Secretary Rusk Before the U.S.  Council of the International Chamber of Commerce at New  York, March 4, 1965; Address by Secretary Rusk, Made before the American Society of International Law on April 23, 1965, “The Control of Force in International Relations”; Secretary Rusk’s Interview on Vietnam on “Issues and Answers,” American Broadcasting Company Radio and Television on July 11, 1965, with ABC Correspondents William H. Lawrence and John Scali. 49  News Conference, May 24, 1966.

192 

D. J. LORENZO

the world’s larger conflicts, he argued; they are following a global plan of communist expansion that extends from Iran, Greece, and Turkey to Berlin and Korea. Countering this plan spurred American activism following World War II and propelled the creation of mutual defense pacts (Rio, NATO, ANZAC). By defending an ally in need, US involvement in Vietnam implements that strategy, he insisted.50 Assistant Secretary of State William Bundy outlined a similar set of policies. He held that visibly and immediately going to the aid of Vietnam by using military force was vital for matters of “confidence,” holding that such actions were central to demonstrating that the US would fulfill its military commitments. In turn, credibility was important for sustaining and bolstering states in the region. Echoing a version of the Domino Theory argument that explicitly referenced a balance of power analysis implicating the PRC as the representative of world communism, he held that there was no alternative to a military intervention in Vietnam. Absent the introduction of American combat forces into Vietnam, he insisted, South Vietnam would have fallen to the North and under such circumstances, there can be no doubt whatever that, by the sheer dynamics of aggression, Communist Chinese and North Vietnamese subversive efforts against the rest of Southeast Asia would have been increased and encouraged, and the will and capacity of the remaining nations of Southeast Asia to resist these pressures would have been drastically and probably fatally reduced.51

For Bundy, the goals of military operations in Vietnam also coincided with Dulles’s contentions that an important part of the American Cold War task in Asia was to fight the colonial designs of the communists, a task important to American values as well as other vital interests. The Johnson administration’s military activities in Vietnam were in aid of a South 50  Address by Secretary Rusk at the Founder’s Day Banquet of the Boston University School of Public Communications at Boston, Massachusetts on March 14, 1966, “Keeping Our Commitment to Peace”; also Statement by Secretary Rusk Before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, February 18, 1966, “The U.S.  Commitment in Viet-Nam: Fundamental Issues”. 51  Address by William P.  Bundy, Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, before the 20th Annual Congress of the National Student Association at College Park, Maryland, August 15, 1967; “The Path to Viet-Nam: A Lesson in Involvement,” Department of State Publication 8295, East Asian and Pacific Series 166, September 1967.

9  THE WAR IN VIETNAM 

193

Vietnam victimized by communists who attacked its sovereignty and self-determination. Bundy also alluded to Realist and Nationalist arguments, and the Security and General Welfare Norms. Going to the aid of South Vietnam by military means was an obligation binding on the US through SEATO, he observed. The US should fulfill such obligations not only because the US made the commitment and signed a treaty. “[P]ropositions rooted deeply in our own national interest” also informed and shaped that commitment: that the freedom of states in Southeast Asia is important to American security needs, and that such freedom is important to the sustenance of a world peace crucial to American prosperity.52 As with Rusk, he ultimately held that intervening in South Vietnam was vital to preventing the onset of another world war.53 This is because he believed the fate of South Vietnam was intertwined with the status of other states in the region in which the US had important security interests, and which if subjected to communist aggression might spur a conflict that would escalate into another world war. Thus, given that the military intervention in Vietnam was also “vital in the wider context of the fate of the free nations of Asia,” including Australia, South Korea, Thailand, New Zealand, and Singapore, all of which the US must keep within the realm of friendly states, it was a key to keeping global peace in a larger sense. Discussions within the Johnson administration applied the Necessity Standard in ways that paralleled its use in the statements Johnson and his cabinet members provided the public, though we see important changes in the conclusions that officials draw from successive applications of the standard. In a memorandum on South Vietnam to Johnson in 1964, before the Tonkin Gulf Resolution,54 Robert McNamara applied the Necessity Standard in a way that emphasized its restrictive side to argue against an 52  Address by William P. Bundy, Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific A flairs, before the National Executive Committee of the American Legion at Indianapolis, Indiana on May 3, 1967; “Seventeen Years in East Asia,” Department of State Bulletin, May 22, 1967, p. 790. 53  Address by William P. Bundy, Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific A flairs, before the National Executive Committee of the American Legion at Indianapolis, Indiana on May 3, 1967; “Seventeen Years in East Asia,” Department of State Bulletin, May 22, 1967, p. 790. 54   Memorandum for the President by Robert McNamara, “South Vietnam,” 16 March 1964.

194 

D. J. LORENZO

immediate military intervention. He did observe that Vietnam was of vital interest to the US, first because there was an intrinsic US interest in South Vietnam remaining “free,” and second because to allow that country to fall under communist domination would have important ramifications for American security arrangements in Asia due to the domino effect. To lose Vietnam would eventually mean, “almost all of Southeast Asia will probably fall under Communist dominance,” while “[e]ven the Philippines would become shaky, and the threat to India to the west, Australia and New Zealand to the south, and Taiwan, Korea, and Japan to the north and east would be greatly increased.” McNamara then surveyed options. He rejected de Gaulle’s proposal that the US enter negotiations to neutralize the country, arguing that such an agreement, if not the negotiations themselves, would result in a communist takeover of South Vietnam because all American assistance would have to be withdrawn. This was not a viable alternative. However, he also rejected a range of actions involving direct American military intervention, from stationing combat troops around Saigon, to American military operations against North Vietnam, to a takeover of Vietnamese military operations by American military personnel. None of these were now necessary, nor would they probably be very effective, he argued. He concluded instead that American economic and military assistance in the short run would be successful in stabilizing the current military and political situation. While active military intervention “may be necessary at some time in the future,” he held that other measures were still viable. Later internal memoranda written after Congress passed the Tonkin Gulf Resolution shifted the emphasis to the imperative side of the standard. The records55 of an important July 1965 meeting in Saigon between administration officials and a group of consultants first outlined the duties and vital interests at stake for the US military presence in Vietnam. Vietnam is crucial to American defensive alliances, which in turn form an important part of American forward defense strategy. Its retention as a friendly state is central to the defense of Thailand, its loss could affect Japan and India, and therefore its status has a bearing on the entire 55  Memo, “Vietnam Panel,” July 8, 1965. For partial references to the standard (particularly with regard to there being no other options to the use of force), see W.P. Bundy, Second Draft of “Next Courses of Action in Southeast Asia,” 11 August 1964, The Pentagon Papers, Volume 3, pp.  524–529, and John McNaughton First Draft of “Aims and Options in Southeast Asia,”, 13 October 1964, The Pentagon Papers, Volume 3, pp. 580–583.

9  THE WAR IN VIETNAM 

195

American security structure in Asia. The meeting then addressed the American military presence in Vietnam and argued that the presence should not only continue, but the tempo of military operations in Vietnam should dramatically increase. There was no other viable option. Unlike McNamara’s early assessment, they held that the situation in Vietnam not only required American military efforts, but increased efforts to stave off defeat. Other stakeholders must grasp the point that “the military situation and the facts mak[e] increases necessary.” Further, the members of this group identified other factors which made the continued use of force imperative—reputation and credibility. American willingness to use force, and its capacity to use it effectively, the group argued, are important to the maintenance of other alliances, including those in Europe. To refrain from pushing forward militarily in Vietnam would create a situation in which “de Gaulle would find many takers for his argument that the US could not now be counted on to defend Europe.” More, they insisted that Vietnam was a crucial test of the ability of the free world and the US to counter the Communist tactic of “wars of national liberation” and a US defeat would necessarily lead to world questioning whether US commitments could be relied on.

The switch from restrictive interpretations of the Necessity Standard to its imperative side in these two memoranda is quite clear. Altered understandings of the situation in Vietnam and an expanded construction of the effects of American involvement in that country drove that change. For the Vietnam group, the duties and vital interests implicated in the struggle in Vietnam were larger than those which McNamara identified, and they held that no other options but continued use of military force was viable given the situation in that country.

Johnson’s Application of the Standard and Policy Johnson’s construction of public reasons for using large-scale military force in Vietnam initially placed the events of the Tonkin Gulf at the center. However, this rationale overplayed the importance of defending American personnel and underplayed later internal and public contentions that Vietnam must be controlled for balance of power purposes, to defend values, to head off a global war, to establish credibility, and to defend a desirable world order. Johnson consistently depicted himself as patient

196 

D. J. LORENZO

with alternatives as well as flexible, but in fact his approach to diplomacy was mixed. He continually resorted to negotiations, but abruptly started and stopped them, insisted on specific terms, and saw military force as a necessary accompaniment to talks. Johnson’s public military policy posited that the US would immediately use military force when its military forces were attacked. It would also use such force to protect from aggression a state to which the US has provided guarantees only after the provision of military advice and aid have failed, and negotiations to attain fixed, uncompromisable terms had not borne fruit. In turn, his security policy implicated a global plan. He would defend US security through forward defense measures, the maintenance of an alliance system backed by credible American promises to protect allies militarily, the sustenance of a favorable balance of power, and the defense of a liberal world order that restrains states, protects human rights, and prevents the outbreak of a world war. He would also defend the domestic and international values the US embraced. In these discussions, Johnson publicly articulated policies located in the mainstream of postwar military and strategic thinking by combining a realist understanding of the world with an emphasis on values, and a willingness to use military force with an aversion to triggering another world war. He deployed balance of power analyses, employed the Domino Theory and Munich Paradigm, was committed to an alliance system and a congenial world order, and was deeply concerned with credibility and reputation. As Jervis argues, these paradigms are grounded in perceptions that the world and US interests are tightly interconnected, serve to aggregate and homogenize interests, and magnify the importance of seemingly isolated or minor issues.56 Consequently, Johnson rejected anti-war protesters by terming them naïve in their inability to appreciate the broader security issues implicated in Vietnamese affairs. Yet, he also rejected the more muscular stance that Barry Goldwater and his followers put forward. He would not unleash the totality of American military power against North Vietnam because such a move would bring much nearer a situation he and other post-war presidents feared and which he argued Goldwater did not: a world war. He had publicly committed the US to a liberal-­ internationalist, norm-oriented world order. In contrast with Goldwater’s Jacksonian approach, this order made little provision for such a war.

 “Domino Beliefs and Strategic Behavior,” esp. pp. 22–29.

56

CHAPTER 10

The First Gulf War Inflexibly Confronting Aggressive Revisionism and Enforcing a Liberal World Order

The Contexts of the First Gulf War The legacy of the Iran–Iraq war was a crucial context of the First Gulf War. Descriptions of that conflict vary.1 There is an agreement that it involved a contest over who would replace the British as the primary agent of order in the region. Another point of agreement is that long-term territorial disputes, particular over control of the key Shatt al Arab waterway, had marred the Iraq–Iran relationship for a considerable length of time, and that the war was also fought to settle those disputes. American policy was opportunistic. The Reagan administration continued its attempt (at least publicly) to shut Iran out of normal diplomatic venues and refused to have any public ties with the regime. It played a realist game with regard to the war: while it did not wish to see either side triumph, it leaned toward Iraq. Viewing Iraq as the weaker actor and possibly amenable to reform, as well as fearing that a dominant Iran would turn the Middle East into a solidly anti-American region, the US provided Iraq with military and intelligence assistance to prevent it from losing the war. The administration pursued this course despite evidence that Iraq used chemical weapons, had started a nuclear program, and had a deplorable human rights record. Reagan also protected Kuwaiti tankers in the 1  For a variety of perspectives, see Farhan Rajee, ed., The Iran–Iraq War: The Politics of Aggression (Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 1993), and Stephen Pelletiere, The Iran–Iraq War: Chaos in a Vacuum (New York: Praeger, 1992).

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 D. J. Lorenzo, War and American Foreign Policy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-66695-8_10

197

198 

D. J. LORENZO

Gulf against Iranian attacks. However, Reagan’s subordinates attempted to find openings to Iran by cultivating what they believed to be moderates in the regime, resulting in the chaotic events that informed the Iran– Contra affair. By the early 1990s, after the war had wound down, the successor Bush administration backed away from the Iraqi relationship. Even though it was aware of deep problems with the regime, it did not seek to impose sanctions or otherwise put it under pressure, fearing the reactions of what it perceived to be a paranoid President Saddam Hussein. It instead attempted to moderate Iraqi behavior by dangling a modest set of economic carrots while threatening economic sanctions if it engaged in any “illegal use of chemical and/or biological weapons” or any “breach of IAEA safeguards in its nuclear program.”2 Prior to the invasion, Kuwait had assisted Iraq during its war with Iran by loaning it money and providing other material support. The crisis began in 1990 when Iraq denounced Kuwait for selling oil in excess of its OPEC quota, thus harming Iraq’s financial position. It also accused Kuwait of stealing oil from the Iraqi portion of the Rumaila oil field. Iraq demanded a resolution to those issues as well as compensation. Iraq insisted that it keep an offshore Kuwaiti island that Kuwait had allowed Iraq to use during the Iranian war, cancellation of the $30 billion debt it owed Kuwait, and be paid an additional $10 billion by Kuwait. On July 17, 1990, Saddam Hussein renewed his accusations regarding Kuwaiti oil production at an Arab League meeting and promised to take action. Amid diplomatic maneuvering by Arab states to defuse the situation, Hussein moved military units to the Kuwaiti border on July 19. A meeting between the US ambassador April Glaspie and Hussein failed to make a deep impression on the latter. The US deferred to Arab states’ attempts to arbitrate the conflict, convinced that ongoing negotiations were making headway and that only those efforts could lead to a peaceful resolution. However, after those negotiations failed, Iraqi military forces invaded Kuwait on July 31, overrunning it and moving toward the Kuwaiti border with Saudi Arabia.3 2  National Security Directive 26, “US Policy Towards the Persian Gulf,” October 2, 1989, archived at the G.H.W.  Bush Presidential Library, https://bush41library.tamu.edu/files/ nsd/nsd26.pdf. For an insiders’ discussion of the Reagan and Bush administrations’ Iraqi policies prior to the invasion of Kuwait, see George H.W.  Bush and Brent Scowcroft, A World Transformed (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998), pp. 302–308. 3  A World Transformed, pp. 310–314. Iraq’s aims and motivations for attacking Kuwait are disputed. For various views, see Farhrang Rajee, “Introduction,” in Rajee, ed., The Iran–

10  THE FIRST GULF WAR 

199

After indicating that the invasion of Kuwait “would not stand,” the Bush administration built a coalition of states that pushed through the Security Council and helped enforce a tough regime of economic sanctions against Iraq meant to coerce it into leaving Kuwait without conditions. Meanwhile, Bush dispatched US forces to the region to deter the Iraqis from invading Saudi Arabia. He then built up an offensive striking force on the justification that the threat of military force was necessary to supplement sanctions in the attempt to eject Hussein from Kuwait. Notably, while its leaders were hesitant to follow too closely the American lead and still wary of Western intentions, the Soviet Union supported the Security Council’s strong stance against Iraq, agreed to the economic sanctions the Council imposed, and (while it did not substantively participate) did not block the US and others from sending military forces to Saudi Arabia. In January of 1991, President Bush asked Congress for approval to use military force against Iraq, pitching the request as a means for putting iron in the American negotiating position. This proposal was greeted by concerted anti-war protests, whose authors had consistently decried the prospect of military action against Iraq as immoral, a grab for oil in the interests of the US or oil companies, a futile attempt to impose order on an inherently disorderly world (or a pluralist world that rejected the American version of order), and pregnant with the possibilities of dangerous blowback. Despite such protests, the administration’s proposal prevailed in Congress, winning favorable votes in the Senate by a close margin of 52 to 47, and more comfortably in the House, 250 to 183. Following a month-long interregnum in which it passed 12 resolutions condemning Iraq’s actions, calling for Iraq to leave Kuwait and provide compensation, and levying economic sanctions against Iraq, the Security Council provided authorization for member states to use “all necessary Iraq War; Charles Tripp, “Symbol and Strategy: Iraq and the War with Kuwait,” in Wolfgang Danspeckgruber with Charles Tripp, eds., The Iraqi Aggression Against Kuwait: Strategic Lessons and Implications for Europe (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1996), and Laurie Mylroie, “Saddam Hussein’s Invasion of Kuwait: A Premeditated Act,” in Danspeckgruber and Tripp, The Iraqi Aggression Against Kuwait. For analyses that emphasize the financial motivation for Iraq’s actions, see Lawrence Freedman and Efraim Karsh, “How Kuwait was Won: Strategy in the Gulf War,” in Danspeckgruber and Tripp, The Iraqi Aggression Against Kuwait, and Christine Helms, “Arab Perspectives of the Gulf Crisis,” in R.  Helms and R. Dorff, eds., The Persian Gulf Crisis: Power in the Post-Cold War World (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1993), p. 75.

200 

D. J. LORENZO

means” to enforce those resolutions and instituted a “pause for peace” which gave Iraq until January 15, 1991, to abandon Kuwait. Following Iraq’s failure to agree unconditionally to abide by those resolutions, the US and its coalition partners struck Iraqi forces in Kuwait with air assets on January 16, 1991, and ground forces on February 23. The ground war succeeded in driving Iraqi forces back into Iraq in the course of approximately 100 hours of combat, at which time President Bush halted military operations.

President George H. W. Bush on the First Gulf War Why War? Duties and Vital Interests Bush cited security concerns, economic considerations, humanitarian and political values, and world order as items implicating duties and vital interests in this conflict. Drawing on the Security and Values Norms, Bush referenced both short and long-term goals for the military action. Short-­ term goals focused on Kuwait. Like William McKinley, Bush disavowed both aggressive intent and imperialist designs on the part of the US. American policy was “not the conquest of Iraq. It is the liberation of Kuwait.” Coalition forces would eject Iraq from that territory. Kuwaiti citizens would be protected from Iraqi troops and officials who rights. The regime Iraq had installed would be booted out, the “legitimate government of Kuwait” reinstated, and Kuwaiti sovereignty restored such that Kuwaitis would be given back “control of their own destiny” as citizens of a “free and sovereign nation.”4 Iraq would be forced “to comply with all relevant United Nations resolutions.” These actions would protect human rights, bolster American credibility in its defense of a friendly country, defend the norm of sovereignty, and put teeth into UN Security Council decisions and international law in general. Long-term goals dealt with the effects of Iraq’s actions on the rest of the world. First, Bush held that the project of ejecting Hussein and his “puppet government” from Kuwait, by removing the fruits of aggression from Hussein’s grasp, would also discourage like-minded strongmen in the future from engaging in similar adventures. Demonstrating that the use of force to gain territory would end in failure, Bush held, would help

4

 “Address Before a Joint Session of Congress on the End of the Gulf War,” March 6, 1991.

10  THE FIRST GULF WAR 

201

ensure a regional and global future free from such violence, a situation the US deemed a vital interest. Second, the intervention would help put Iraq on the path of behaving as a responsible member of the world community. Such behavior would not only contribute to a more peaceful world, but also to the “security and stability of the Gulf.” The analysis supporting this goal included a reference to a Democratic/Liberal security proposition. Hussein was an illiberal as well as untrustworthy leader who threatened the lives of American citizens and those of his neighbors. This was because he was a “military dictator” and not to be trusted to treat any fellow human in an acceptable fashion.5 Third, Bush held that the military action would take care of the WMD threat that Hussein posed to the US. Anticipating to some degree his son’s understanding of pre-emption, Bush held that removing those weapons and weapons facilities was both necessary and a high priority. Fourth, early in the crisis Bush alluded to the economic and political implications of Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait. In controlling the latter, Hussein significantly increased his control over the supply of oil on the world’s market. This would empower Hussein to manipulate prices, use oil as a weapon to coerce his neighbors and others, and destabilize the Middle East. All these real or potential actions, he argued, put at risk vital American interests in security and general welfare.6 Fifth, Bush pulled these themes together to argue that this military action would serve as the founding act of a “new world order—a world where the rule of law, not that of the jungle, governs the conduct of nations.” Unlike President’s Johnson’s references to order, this rendering in Bush’s description would be new given the end of the Cold War, but it would also be a traditionally understood and essentially Westphalian entity. It would be based on existing norms and international organizations, yet animated by states willing to enforce norms and defend principles. It would be multi-lateral in character and would include those states that had been on the other side of the Cold War. It would emphasize the rule of international law, the general role of the UN and the collective security

 “Address to the Nation on the Invasion of Iraq,” January 16, 1991.  August 8, 1990: Address on Iraq’s Invasion of Kuwait; George H.W. Bush, “A Collective Effort to Reverse Iraqi Aggression,” US Department of State Dispatch 1, no. No. 2— September 10, 1990 (1990): 72–73; “Iraq Responsible for US Hostages,” US Department of State Dispatch 1, no. No. 2—September 10, 1990 (1990): 73–74. 5 6

202 

D. J. LORENZO

values it embodied, and the authority of the UN Security Council, which sanctioned the coalition’s actions. Why War Now? The Absence of Viable Alternatives Bush’s public discussion of viability held that alternatives must be capable of removing Iraq from Kuwait, stabilizing the Persian Gulf, and forcing Hussein to give up his WMDs. Further, alternatives must send a message to other potential authors of aggressive revisionism that the US and the world at large would not tolerate such actions. Bush held that he would be patient in pursuing those objectives by employing multi-lateral diplomacy and economic sanctions. However, at the beginning of the crisis he publicly moved to an inflexible position, issuing the equivalent of an ultimatum that over time alluded to an escalating set of punishments for non-compliance. Hussein must obey all UN Security Council resolutions, leave Kuwait without condition, and give up his WMDs and WMD programs or face a blockade and sanctions, and later the use of military force. In support of this approach, Bush employed four lines of argument to justify his position that alternatives were not viable as of the passage of the January 15 deadline. In his first argument, he rebutted the contentions of some opponents that alternatives, and specifically economic sanctions, had not been given sufficient time to work. To the contrary, he argued, alternatives had been tried and had not worked. Unlike Truman, he outlined a significant set of actions taken by a long list of actors (including the leaders of Arab states), ranging from negotiations, to ever-toughening UN-approved economic sanctions, to threats of military intervention. He stressed the role of the Security Council in pressing Iraq as well as the participation of a large number of nations who cooperated in maintaining pressure on Iraq. He emphasized the length of time (around five months) that sanctions had been in place. There had been “no progress at all,” Bush insisted, even as the US and other interested parties had “exhausted all reasonable efforts” to resolve the conflict without resort to armed force. Some may ask: Why act now? Why not wait? The answer is clear: The world could wait no longer. Sanctions, though having some effect, showed no signs of accomplishing their objective. Sanctions were tried for well over 5

10  THE FIRST GULF WAR 

203

months, and we and our allies concluded that sanctions alone would not force Saddam from Kuwait.7

Next, in his valedictory address on the war, he reinforced this point by maintaining that the war was “fought only as a last resort.”8 However, it is clear that he understood last resort differently than did the opponents of the war. For many protestors, diplomacy was still a viable alternative because Hussein appeared willing to negotiate and because a compromise outcome was an acceptable solution in the context of privileging peace. In contrast, Bush embraced an understanding of viability that dictated the achievement of specified, unchangeable, goals.9 His bottom line was not flexible. There would be no compromise. Alternatives must remove Hussein completely from Kuwait and make him abide by all related UN resolutions without reservation. Neither talks, nor sanctions, nor threats of war had done so. Bush therefore argued that because those alternatives had not produced the stipulated results and nothing indicated that Hussein would change course in the future, the war was a last resort. Bush also referred to the strategic implications of tolerating the status quo, suggesting that pursuing negotiations in the way critics of the war desired was not a viable alternative given the stakes involved. He held that it was necessary to prevent Hussein from enjoying the fruits of aggression given his failure to abide by Security Council resolutions. To delay indefinitely military action while Hussein’s forces remained in Kuwait, or to abandon such action in the search for purely non-military solutions based on compromise was, in Bush’s portrayal, to reward Hussein materially for his aggression. It was appeasement.10 Drawing on the Munich Paradigm, he further held that any hesitation on the part of the US and its allies to use military force would encourage Hussein to try the same thing again, 7  That use of military force had not been a “last resort” was a specific criticism leveled by the peace group Pax Christi, among others. For a similar critique, see David Campbell, Politics Without Principle: Sovereignty, Ethics, and the Narratives of the Gulf War (Boulder, CO and London: Lynn Reinner Publishers, 1993), pp. 57–64. 8  February 27, 1991: Address on the End of the Gulf War. 9   For Bush’s stated refusal to contemplate compromise, see Bob Woodward, The Commanders (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1991), pp. 343–344, 354. 10  January 29, 1991: State of the Union Address. Others were even more direct in referencing Munich and the 1930s, and did so even earlier. See, for example, Flora Lewis, “Fruit of Appeasement,” New York Times, August 4, 1990, and Secretary of Defense Richard Cheney, Testimony, Senate Armed Services Committee, “US Persian Gulf Policy,” December 3, 1990, https://www.c-span.org/video/?15214-1/us-persian-gulf-policy.

204 

D. J. LORENZO

or threaten to do so. It would also demonstrate to other potential aggressors that the UN had little credibility in enforcing norms against violent revisionism. As the early Cold Warriors held, aggressors must be stopped quickly, and stopped early in their careers to discourage them and to deter others. Bush underlined this point by quoting a military officer, who asserted, “If we let him get away with this, who knows what’s going to be next?”11 Finally, Bush held that continuing to pursue alternatives entailed bearing additional short-term costs even if those alternatives would eventually push Iraq out of Kuwait. In his “while the world waited” passages, he identified economic burdens associated with continuing the status quo. This appears to reference the increasing cost of oil and the problems states with close economic ties to Iraq experienced in enforcing the UN-approved economic sanctions regime. These burdens were documented in various and insistent communications by state leaders to the UN. He also referenced deeply problematic behaviors and conditions that arose while the US and its allies pursued alternatives. Iraq was looting Kuwait and brutalizing its inhabitants. Hussein still possessed and threatened to use his chemical weapons arsenal and was making further progress on a nuclear program. These developments presented important and immediate security threats to the US, violated important international norms, and harmed economic conditions around the world, he argued.

Congressional Applications of the Necessity Standard Senator Orrin Hatch12 provided important realist and nationalist arguments in favor of the resolution approving the use of military force.13 These arguments invoked the Security and General Welfare Norms as well as a Democratic/Liberal security proposition. While Hatch held that approving the resolution did not automatically mean war, he argued that non-military approaches to the problem of Hussein’s actions would be futile without at least the credible threat of immediate military action. He explained the futility of such measures when pursued alone by referencing  January 16, 1991: Address to the Nation on the Invasion of Iraq.  Orrin Hatch was first elected to the Senate from Utah in 1976. He has since served as chair of the Senate Finance Committee and of the Senate Judiciary Committee, among others. 13  CONGRESSIONAL RECORD-SENATE January 12, 1991, pp. 1012–1014. 11 12

10  THE FIRST GULF WAR 

205

Hussein’s character. It was not just that Hussein was untrustworthy. Equally important were the observations that economic sticks and carrots could not reach him, and that the attempt to use those tools in the hope that he would respond positively is dangerous: He is a brutal dictator, not a cautious accountant. He is the butcher of Baghdad, not a prudent economist. He wants to control the Middle East, not maintain a favorable balance of payments. The point I want to make is that waiting is not the safer course. It carries profound risks, incalculable costs, and the potential of defeat.14

Further, Hatch held that exclusively using diplomacy and sanctions would cause a deeply problematic delay in deploying more effective, muscular tools, a delay which would increase direct threats to American security in the future. Anticipating in part Bush’s “while the world waited” formula, Hatch insisted that further delay would allow Hussein time and opportunity to deploy the weapons of mass destruction he already possessed, and to develop nuclear weapons. Further anticipating the reasoning that would lead to the Second Gulf War, Hatch argued that delay would also allow Hussein to unleash the terrorists with whom he had allied himself. The crisis was not about “the takeover of one nasty little country in the Middle East by another slightly larger and slightly nastier country,” it was about a threat to American security, and that threat must be immediate removed by confronting Hussein now with demonstrations of military power. Hatch supplemented these arguments with references to Aggression Arguments that implicated the Domino Theory and made explicit the security threats toward which Bush gestured. Most directly, he held that a failure forcefully to stand against Hussein’s revisionist move against Kuwait now would encourage the Iraqi leader to engage in further and more egregious acts of aggression in the future. Hussein would not be satisfied with the gains he would pocket from overrunning Kuwait. He would move against other states in the region. In turn, his success would encourage the radicalization of dissatisfied elements in the Middle East, leading to acts of 14  A. M. Rosenthal likewise used the language of criminality to describe Hussein’s actions, arguing that he was like a “serial killer” who tested the West’s resolve to keep peace and order by uttering threats and then acting aggressively when nothing was done in response to those provocations. “Making A Killer,” New York Times, August 5, 1990.

206 

D. J. LORENZO

terrorism that would threaten the stability of other states beyond Iraq’s direct military reach, further endangering American security. Hatch then held that military action was necessary to thwart Iraqi attempts to control territory and regional politics, end Iraq’s development of dangerous weapons, and frustrate Hussein’s encouragement of non-­ conventional attacks on the US and its allies. All these involved vital American interests. Note in this understanding not all threats are explicitly military in nature, though they might end in material destruction. While he did not mention oil, he did argue that Hussein’s attempts to lead and “radicalize” the Middle East in the mold of Egypt’s Gamal Abdel-Nasser were of great concern. He found a parallel between the current situation and the Suez crisis, and argued that the West’s failure to confront Hussein would lead to the destabilization of the region and eventually wars of aggression against Israel. In effect, Hatch identified a vital interest in removing Hussein as an agent of instability.15 Representative Stephen Solarz16 made conventional Futility Arguments to push for a relatively quick resort to force while also referencing additional security elements and focusing attention on the future to outline the costs of delay or doing nothing. Diplomacy must be abandoned tout court in dealing with Iraq, he argued, because Hussein’s regime does not abide by the treaties and agreements it signs; it is not to be trusted. Moreover, even if Iraq could be persuaded by peaceful means to leave Kuwait and it did leave, the larger issues would be left unaddressed. Iraq would still possess highly dangerous chemical and biological weapons systems, Iraq would still be on the road to obtaining nuclear weapons, and Hussein would have to be given concessions that would serve to reward his aggression and encourage “additional acts… of banditry.”17 Solarz pointed to tangible concerns for American security as informing the goals of military action. Even if Iraq had not yet physically attacked the US, Iraq’s actions present a “serious economic threat” to the US given that Iraq, in adding Kuwait’s oil reserves to its own, would control a significant portion of the available oil supply on the international market. Like Hatch, Solarz also anticipated the goals of the Second Gulf War. 15  This was also Flora Lewis’s analysis, as she held that Hussein attempted to change the balance of power in the region. “Fruit of Appeasement,” New York Times, August 4, 1990. 16  Stephen Solarz represented New  York in the House from 1975 to 1993. He subsequently served on the board of directors of the National Endowment for Democracy. 17  “The Stakes in the Gulf: A comprehensive case for the use of force,” The New Republic, Jan. 13, 1991.

10  THE FIRST GULF WAR 

207

Iraq’s possession of significant biological and chemical weapons systems and its ongoing efforts to obtain nuclear weapons, he argued, present a “clear and present danger” to the US. While other countries also possess nuclear arms, they are not aggressive, and they had not actually used those weapons, he held. Iraq was aggressive and it had used chemical and biological weapons in its war with Iran. These developments constitute an Iraqi threat to American security, and the USA can meet and eliminate that threat only by using military force to remove those weapons from Hussein’s control. Finally, Solarz identified a vital interest in creating and enforcing a peaceful international order.18 He argued it was necessary to confront and defeat Iraq as part of a larger effort to substitute the rule of international law and just norms for the Hobbesian disorder that aggression creates when it is the guiding principle of international affairs. Hussein’s Iraq, Solarz argued, is a “lawless” element that undermines the institutionalization of norms and the confidence of other nations in the capacity of those norms to provide them with security and justice. The US must remove it as a factor in world and regional affairs.

The Necessity Standard in Related Policy Discussions Discussions Between the Vietnam War and the First Gulf War The First Gulf War was the first US large-scale military operation since the Vietnam War. In part, this was due to a reconsideration of how the Necessity Standard was applied. While officials continued to construe duties and vital interests broadly to include events and conditions outside the US and the Western Hemisphere, and understood that the Cold War structured US security needs, interpretations of viable alternatives loosened such that officials continually deemed diplomacy, sanctions, military aid, and small-scale uses of military force sufficient to protect those interests and discharge-relevant duties. Thus, in contrast with Johnson’s views on Vietnam and Bush’s subsequent understanding of the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, the Nixon Doctrine

 “The Stakes in the Gulf.”

18

208 

D. J. LORENZO

expressed general reluctance to engage in large-scale military operations.19 Referencing the standard, Nixon argued that the US must avoid binary understandings. It must cease “over-involvement” in the world, while resisting the urge to retreat into isolationism. Crucially, he held that the US must take into account changing world contexts that make possible a pull back from a complete forward defense posture. The most important of these contexts were the rough nuclear parity between the US and the Soviet Union, the recovery of American allies from the effects of World War II, and the fissures that were opening on the other side of the Cold War. A desirable form of American leadership would have the US continue providing a nuclear umbrella to friends and allies and fulfill its security commitments but reduce the number of troops stationed throughout the world. Further, in the case of conventional security threats involving friends and allies, the US would “look to threatened countries and their neighbors to assume primary responsibility for their own defense, and we will provide support where our interests call for that support and where it can make a difference.” This formulation implicates the Necessity Standard in three ways. First, it puts emphasis on alternatives to the use of military force. The expectation that threatened countries and their neighbors would have “primary responsibility” for their defense means that policymakers would start with the assumption that alternatives to large-scale military intervention exist (in the form of allies’ self-help) and that they pursue them with a degree of flexibility. Second, leaders must reference a construction of vital American interests or duties to produce a decision whether to intervene, rather than assume that such interests were involved whenever armed conflicts arise. To what degree would the loss of such a state negatively bear on American interests? What would be the impact of an intervention on US interests? Would it serve to increase American credibility, or erode its standing in the world? Would it invite adverse reactions, or place stress on the US domestically? Third, a decision to intervene would require that a president falsify the assumption that self-help was sufficient and supply an additional evaluation concluding that American intervention would play a decisive role in successfully staving off an aggressive revisionist. While this doctrine still embeds the US in the world when it comes to constructing its vital interests, it weakens the presumption that connections between 19  February 25, 1971: Radio Address about Second Annual Foreign Policy Report to Congress.

10  THE FIRST GULF WAR 

209

threats to other states automatically implicate US security, and the view that American involvement is always decisive. If applied, these features would decrease the number of situations in which presidents would deem military intervention necessary as compared with applications of previous Cold War policies. The Carter Doctrine, in contrast, was more in keeping with prior Cold War policies. It asserted that security threats arising in the Middle East would automatically implicate US vital interests. President Carter issued his doctrine during the post-détente era that prefaced the intensification of the Cold War during the first Reagan administration.20 Its background was the ongoing Iranian hostage situation and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The statement consists of two parts: the first identifies significant threats to vital interests that may arise in the Middle East, while the second contains a discussion of the contexts in which the US would act militarily. Appreciations of Cold War conditions and strategies informed Carter’s discussion of threats and vital interests, as did understandings of a set of American interests that, though contextually bounded, existed apart from the Cold War. Referencing the threat derived from the “projection of Soviet military power beyond its own borders,” Carter held that new Soviet capabilities, as well as the demonstrated willingness of Soviet leaders to use them, fundamentally threatened the US. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was also associated with another development, that of the “press of social and political and economic and religious change in the many nations of the developing world.” This set of developments presented two types of challenges to the US. One is that unrest invites the use of Soviet military force in ways that could endanger American allies and other vital interests. The Soviet movement south both imperiled Pakistan (a US ally) and inched the Soviets ever closer to crucial oil-producing countries in the Middle East. The other challenge was the political turbulence that spawns terrorist movements in oil-producing regions, resulting in attacks like the one that ended with the Iranian hostage situation. This confluence of these factors was critically dangerous due to the West’s 20  State of the Union, January 23, 1980. Philip Khoury holds that the Carter Doctrine repealed the Nixon Doctrine by retaking for the US “direct…responsibility for regional security,” thus returning the US to the previous Cold War security doctrine. However, this change did not bear fruit in terms of large-scale interventions until the First Gulf War. See Khoury, “The Reagan Administration and the Middle East,” in David E. Kyvig, ed., Reagan and the World (New York: Greenwood Press, 1990).

210 

D. J. LORENZO

inability to develop alternatives to conventional energy sources, which resulted in the “overwhelming dependence of the Western democracies on oil supplies from the Middle East,” and to the Soviet’s security concerns regarding its Muslim populations. Important radical movements, Carter held, populated the Middle East, imperiling Western access to oil and actively attacked the West. They also threatened to spark unrest in the Soviet Union, impelling the Soviets to exercise their military muscle in uncomfortable proximity to important energy supplies. The policy portion of the Doctrine did not set out a blanket military solution to unrest in the Middle East, Soviet incursions, or energy dependence. Rather, much like the Monroe Doctrine in the context of the Americas, it held that the Persian Gulf was so important to the US that attempts by any state actor to control it “would be repelled by any means necessary, including military force.” Thus, the Doctrine embodies a forward defense policy—the US could use military force far from its borders to address a major security threat. As Siracusa and Warren note, this doctrine’s focus on territory and strategic resources also assumes a balance of power analysis flowing from a realist position. The US would not allow any rival or foe to control of the Gulf region, and subsequently to control the flow of oil through the Straits of Hormuz. Such control would tilt the balance of power in favor of that rival. This development would give that actor significant leverage over the West that could be used, among other purposes, to squeeze strategic concessions from the US and its allies, thus endangering US security.21 A final discussion employing the standard that importantly prefaced justifications of the First Gulf War are found in the Weinberger Doctrine.22 As an attempt to come to grips with the lessons of Vietnam, the Weinberger Doctrine insisted that policymakers cultivate conditions to optimize the chance of military success should military force be committed. Two of its principles replicate the Necessity Standard. The Doctrine’s dictum that military force only be used if connected with the vital interests of the US or its allies is a constrictive restatement that weakens the imperative side of the standard in two ways. First, it leaves out some duties (presumably those that implicate humanitarian and other values). Second, it refers to military use in the negative—it is to be used “only” in particular  Presidential Doctrines, pp. 142–144.  Caspar Weinberger, Fighting for Peace: Seven Critical Years in the Pentagon (New York: Warner Books, 1991), p. 402. 21 22

10  THE FIRST GULF WAR 

211

c­ ircumstance, leaving out the implication that such force should be used when those circumstances arise. In turn, the Doctrine’s dictum that “commitment of US forces to combat should be a last resort” restates in even bolder form the standard’s reference to the viability of alternatives. While Wirtz glosses this principle by referencing familiar arguments, for example, “when diplomacy has failed, concessions or surrender are not appropriate,”23 Weinberger’s wording appears more confining, in that it removes the space filled in the past by assertions that diplomacy itself is dangerous, or that the actions or actors in question rule out negotiations. This combination of a restricted list of duties, a weakened understanding of the imperative to discharge duties and protect vital interests, along with a restrictive interpretation of viability, is supplemented by the effects of the additional criteria the Doctrine includes. Influenced by Clausewitz, these criteria insist that before approving military force, policymakers must forge close connections between the use of military force and political and military objectives, successfully implement political preparation for the use of force, and make strong commitments to seeing through military action to victory. These criteria place burdens on policymakers by demanding time, effort, and the expenditure of political capital to satisfy the military, importantly by persuading and mobilizing the public. Taken in its entirety, the Doctrine places a heightened burden of proof and effort on those who would make the case for war. Both Dauber and Wirtz support this judgment when they hold that the Doctrine was intended to cut down on the uses and deployments of military forces and (for Dauber) was meant to eliminate humanitarian military missions.24 Discussions of the Gulf War De-classified internal documents related to the First Gulf War indicate that the Bush administration utilized the Necessity Standard to work through 23   James Wirtz, “The Unlessons’ of Vietnam,” Defense Analysis, Vol. 17, No. 1 (2001), p. 50. 24  Dauber has argued that the Weinberger Doctrine became the “hegemonic” argumentative form for publicly defending uses of military force through the 1990s. See C. Dauber, “Implications of the Weinberger Doctrine for American Military Intervention in a Postdesert Storm Age,” Contemporary security policy, Vol. 22, No. 3 (2001), pp.  72, 75–79. Brent Scowcroft noted the presence of a “Vietnam Syndrome” in Congress. A World Transformed, p. 398.

212 

D. J. LORENZO

its response to Iraq’s actions in ways that importantly echoed parts of the Carter Doctrine as well as those parts of Bush’s public statements that emphasized the strategic importance of the Middle East. National Security Directive 45 made this clear in its opening discussion: U.S. interests in the Persian Gulf are vital to the national security. Those interests include access to oil and the security and stability of key friendly states in the region. The United States will defend its vital interests in the area, through the use of military force if necessary and appropriate, against any power with interests inimical to our own.25

The key security directive that put in motion the use of military force against Iraq echoed this language.26 It starts with a discussion of duties and vital interests that included important material components and defense of allies: “Access to the Persian Gulf and defense of key friendly states in the area are vital to US security, and as a matter of long-standing policy, the United States remains committed to defending its interests in the region…against any power with interests inimical to our own.” Then, having repeated the language that the policy was to defend such interests by military force “if necessary,” it provides reasons for concluding that the use of military force is the only viable option. UN sanctions have had only a limited impact on Iraq and do not appear to be sufficient to cause its departure from Iraq. Economic sanctions mandated by UN Security Council Resolution 661 have had a measurable Impact (sic) upon Iraq’s economy but have not accomplished the intended objective of ending Iraq’s occupation of Kuwait. There is no persuasive evidence that they will do so in a timely manner.

Additionally, to delay by waiting for sanctions to take effect harms the US and its friends in economic terms, could make subsequent military action more costly, allows for the “continued brutalization of the Kuwaiti people and the destruction of their country,” and leaves unpunished an act of “unacceptable Iraqi aggression.”

25  National Security Directive 45, August 20, 1990, G.H.W. Bush Presidential Library, at https://bush41library.tamu.edu/files/nsd/nsd45.pdf. 26  National Security Directive 54, January 19, 1991, the G.H.W. Bush Presidential Library, at https://bush41library.tamu.edu/files/nsd/nsd54.pdf.

10  THE FIRST GULF WAR 

213

The memo concludes by authorizing the use of military force and laying the objectives of the war: “a. to effect the immediate, complete and unconditional withdrawal of all Iraqi forces from Kuwait; b. to restore Kuwait’s legitimate government; c. to protect the lives of American citizens abroad; and d. to promote the security and the stability of the Persian Gulf.” The memoirs of President Bush and Brent Scowcroft also characterize important internal discussions in terms of the Necessity Standard. Many of these discussions focused on the exploration of alternatives. In commenting on his early “this will not stand” remarks to the press, Bush recalls that his thought process reflected a mindset in which he desired that alternatives would work; however, the administration had to be prepared for a situation in which they failed. In that case, he would need to decide whether, given the situation on the ground, US vital interests were such that it would be necessary to employ military force.27 Bush later noted his misgivings regarding the effectiveness of alternatives and the problematic consequences of pursuing them. He feared that they ultimately would not force Iraqi forces from Kuwait, and that the price for waiting for them to achieve that goal would entail too much danger.28 A Scowcroft memo used the standard to similar effect, holding that preparations for using threats military force in tandem with diplomatic efforts were in order, and indicating that its author was leaning toward the conclusion that employing military force was necessary given the duties involved and mounting evidence that alternatives were not viable.29 Bush also reports that others in the administration thought or expressed themselves in terms of the Necessity Standard, sometimes with an emphasis on its restrictive side. He noted that James Baker argued for pursuing alternatives, including negotiations and sanctions, to the end and arguing for the criterion of last resort.30 Bob Woodward recounts that Colin Powell had similar thoughts, in that he held that the coalition (and the US) had a duty to sustain efforts to cut off and punish Iraq economically until it was

 A World Transformed, pp. 322, 333.  Ibid., p. 353. 29  A World Transformed, p.  392. Woodward has Richard Cheney voicing similar sentiments. The Commanders, p. 300. 30  A World Transformed, p. 354; The Commanders, p. 353. 27 28

214 

D. J. LORENZO

clear that they had failed before any consideration of war could be entertained.31 Discussions of duties and vital interests within the administration tracked many of those the administration made publicly. Iraq’s invasion was a threat to world order, changed the balance of power in the Middle East (and possibly the world), put Hussein in a position to tilt it even further in his favor through an invasion of Saudi Arabia, and generally created instability in the region. The invasion itself was “unprovoked.” However, there was a greater emphasis on balance of power assessments, as well the importance of the oil market and the possible economic impact of Hussein’s increased control over world oil reserves in private discussions and in internal documents than in the administration’s public justifications.32 Bush’s memoirs also reveal that discussions with Congressional leaders were importantly marked by allusions to the standard’s restrictive side with regard to alternatives, with Rep. Tom Foley characterized as holding that at one point that talk of military action was premature, as alternatives had not yet been fully tested.33 Likewise, a letter to Bush from a large group of Democrats made a similar point while insisting on Congressional authorization: We believe that the UN-sponsored embargo must be given every opportunity to work and that all multinational, non-military means of resolving the situation must be pursued. If, after all peaceful means of resolving the conflict are exhausted, and the President believes that military action is warranted, then… he must seek a declaration of war from the Congress….34

Bush more generally reported that he believed that Congress operated on the basis of first applying a reading of the standard which insisted on the complete playing out of alternatives, noting that a last diplomatic initiative would serve to illustrate that the administration had “exhausted” alternatives.35 However, these memoirs also reveal that some members of Congress held that the imperative side of the standard was operative. Senator Sam Nunn is quoted in early January 1991 as asserting his  The Commanders, pp. 299–300.  See The Commanders, pp. 226–228, 237, as well as National Security Directive 45. 33  A World Transformed, p. 372. 34  Ibid., p. 389. 35  Ibid., p. 436. 31 32

10  THE FIRST GULF WAR 

215

­ illingness to support military action when the exploration of alternatives w proved fruitless,36 while John Murtha ultimately supported the case for war on the observation that the administration had no other option.37

Bush’s Application of the Standard and Policy How did Bush’s discussion of the war address the Necessity Standard? His arguments initially fit a familiar pattern when he rejected the viability of alternatives by detailing their exhaustion, referenced Hussein’s character, and recounted the price of tolerating the status quo. He argued that coercive diplomacy and compellence had not worked in removing Iraqi forces from Kuwait, and that deterring Iraq from invading Saudi Arabia was not sufficient. On that basis, he insisted that military force was a last resort. However, he also insisted that all objectives were non-negotiable, thus offering no flexibility. Alternatives must promise to deliver specified outcomes in stipulated form and do so without sweeteners to Hussein. He thereby revealed a policy that would test alternatives for a strictly limited time, in pursuit of non-negotiable objectives, before using military force. He would brook no compromises and little delay. To compare, Bush’s patience was significantly less than Madison’s or Wilson’s, and while he was appreciably more patient than Truman, he followed Truman in his inflexibility.38 Bush explicitly identified duties and vital interests in rescuing and freeing the inhabitants of Kuwait, stabilizing the Middle East, discouraging aggression, protecting political and humanitarian values, destroying Iraq’s capacity to create and deliver WMDs, and creating a new world order by enforcing international norms and upholding the authority of the Security  Ibid., p. 439.  Ibid., p. 391; Woodward, The Commanders, p. 318, as well as p. 345 and the description of Lee Aspin’s views. 38  David Malone ascribes to Bush a “preference for a diplomatic solution, bordering at times on an unwillingness to resort to military actions” when compared with the “often bellicose rhetoric of his son’s administration.” The International Struggle over Iraq: Politics in the UN Security Council, 1980–2005 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), p.  64. James Pfiffner, in contrast, argues that Bush put the US decisively on the road to war with Iraq very early in the crisis. See “Presidential Policy-making and the Gulf War,” in M. Whicker, J.  Pfiffner, and R.  Moore, eds., The Presidency and the Persian Gulf War (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1993). Woodward records Powell drawing the conclusion on October 30, 1990, that patience was exhausted. Bush approved the decision to augment forces in the Gulf to levels necessary for an offensive action on October 31. The Commanders, pp. 319–320. 36 37

216 

D. J. LORENZO

Council. Like Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson, Bush associated American interests and duties with the fate of states in the world at large through the contention that an attack on a third party constitutes a threat to US security interests and values and by holding that the US had a vital interest in a world order, thereby continuing the tradition of combining realist analysis with a commitment to values The security and military policies President Bush furnished to the public returned to an early approach to the use of military force, thereby abandoning the caution his immediate predecessors articulated. In many ways, his policies fit well with those that characterized the interregnum between World War II and the Cold War. He made oblique references to a kind of Domino Theory when discussing the effects of Iraq’s actions on the Middle East. He resurrected the Munich Paradigm when he insisted that those actions constituted aggression, that an outraged world must confront Hussein, and that the US must use military force immediately after the expiration of the January 15 deadline. He engaged in a forward defense analysis by holding that stopping Hussein in the Middle East was vital to American security and economic well-being and took as an important goal the protection of a friendly state’s sovereignty. Finally, he identified the need to create and defend a world order that looked very much like the one Franklin Roosevelt outlined, in that it stressed both the importance of stopping aggression and the central role of the great powers acting through the UN Security Council.

CHAPTER 11

The Second Gulf War Preventative War and Regime Change

The Contexts of the Second Gulf War The roots of the Second Gulf War were deeply embedded in the conclusion of the First Gulf War and the events of 9/11. Fearing the spectacle of US military personnel slaughtering Iraqi troops, unwilling to engage in explicit nation-building that would come from a conquest of Iraq, and believing that his UN mandate only extended to ejecting Iraqi forces from Kuwait, President G. H.W. Bush ended the ground war against Iraq after 100 hours of combat. Hussein finished the conflict bloodied but unbowed, in control of Iraq, in possession of many of his most powerful military units, and in an uncooperative mood. The coalition had forced him out of Kuwait but not out of power. While US policy was to support internal challenges to the rule of Hussein’s Ba’athist Party, the Bush administration and its allies failed to provide timely support to either Kurdish separatists in the north or Arab rebels in the south when they arose to challenge Hussein’s regime. Hussein crushed both. He used that result to spin a tale of victimization, of victoriously confronting the US and the West, and of resisting the world order they sought to impose. In turn, the US, Great Britain, and initially France engaged in small-scale military operations to shield humanitarian efforts in both the north and south of Iraq, including the implementation of increasingly stringent no-fly zones, and maintained various types of economic sanctions to press Hussein to verifiably give up his WMDs.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 D. J. Lorenzo, War and American Foreign Policy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-66695-8_11

217

218 

D. J. LORENZO

Iraq’s possession of WMD’s was a major and ongoing source of friction and conflict after the war’s conclusion. Credible allegations held that Hussein deployed such weapons during his war with Iran and against Kurdish separatists; one reason the first President Bush gave for engaging Iraq militarily had been the elimination of those weapons and associated weapons programs. The agreement ending the First Gulf War, as well as United Nations Security Council Resolution 687 (1991), required the Iraqi government to give up its WMDs and submit to external inspection and verification activities. Several inspection and verification regimes operated over the next few years to oversee the process of Iraq’s disarmament and to verify that it had definitively shut down its chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons programs. These efforts met with various degrees of cooperation and resistance from Iraqi officials, creating an atmosphere of uncertainty regarding Iraq’s compliance with UN demands. Fostering that atmosphere appears to have been the goal of Iraqi policy. It played to Hussein’s advantage until 2003 by giving the impression he might be complying with mandates to disarm, but also left open the possibility that he still had viable WMDs and WMD programs. The former allowed him to resist inspections and press for the end of sanctions; the latter was important to his efforts to keep a lid on internal insurgencies and deter regional rivals. This policy reached its culmination when Hussein ceased cooperation with the UN inspection apparatus and expelled weapon inspectors in 1998. The American-led coalition responded to Hussein’s actions in various ways. In 1993, the US attacked targets in Iraq in response to an assassination attempt against former President Bush. In 1994, the US sent military units to Saudi Arabia in reaction to Hussein’s positioning of military forces on Kuwait’s borders (Operation Vigilant Warrior). In addition to ongoing enforcement of no-fly zones throughout the decade, the US in late 1998 implemented Operation Desert Fox, which entailed a series of bombing raids meant to punish the Iraqi regime for its refusal to cooperate with weapons inspections, encourage internal forces to overthrow the regime, and degrade air defense capabilities. This was the result of a change of strategy to one of “muscular containment.” Yet its effects were short-­ lived, as there appeared to be little change in Iraq’s actions or attitudes toward internal matters, international relations, or issues of WMD

11  THE SECOND GULF WAR 

219

disarmament. Having gone through containment and muscular containment, US officials began exploring other policies.1 One approach took the form of the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998.2 This legislation was justified in Congress through rehearsals of the Ba’athist regime’s military activities against its neighbors, its suppression of internal dissent, and its use of chemical and biological weapons, all of which the legislation connected with American understandings of security and humanitarian values. However, instead of prescribing a military solution, the legislation identified alternatives and called for the provision of military and humanitarian aid to internal and external bodies that would overthrow Iraq’s government. While the last years of the Clinton administration witnessed no significant results from either the policy of regime change or the lobbying efforts of such groups as the Project for a New American Century  to encourage a more militaristic policy, the election of George W. Bush as president set the stage for military action. On entering office, Bush appears to have been agnostic regarding strategies for addressing Iraq yet gathered into his administration a significant number of officials who were hawkish on the question. These included Vice President Richard Cheney and Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz. In the summer of 2001, the latter raised the possibility of a quick-strike military operation to seize Iraq’s oil fields, establish a military presence, and support internal elements hostile to the regime. Such an approach, he is reported to have asserted, was “necessary.”3 The 9/11 attacks provided a further opening for those eager to come to terms militarily with Iraq. The ­possibility of attacking Iraq was raised in the immediate aftermath of that event and planning for large-­scale military action was ongoing as a contingency as early as November of 2001, at the same time the administration 1  See Frédéric Bozo, A History of the Iraq Crisis: France, the United States, and Iraq, 1991–2003. (New York: Columbia University Press, 2016), pp. 55–63. For a complete list of US military actions against Iraq between the Gulf Wars, see Alfred Prados, Iraqi Challenges and U.S.  Responses: March 1991 through October 2002 (Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, November 20, 2002). 2  Public Law 105–338, 105th Congress. 3  Bob Woodward, Plan of Attack (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2004), pp. 21–22. This stance is in keeping with his reported understanding of the criteria to be used in contemplating the use of military force, which includes the question “Is a proposed action truly necessary?” “Guidelines When Considering Committing U.S. Forces,” internal memo, quoted in Plan of Attack, p. 19.

220 

D. J. LORENZO

was planning and implementing its intervention in Afghanistan to find members of Al Qaeda and punish the Taliban government.4 After months of maneuvering to corner Hussein and either force his voluntary abdication or build a case for mounting military operations against him, the Bush administration asked Congress for authorization to use force against Iraq as a means for backing diplomatic efforts and as a contingency for the use of force. A resolution granting the president the authority to use military force, subject to reporting requirements, easily passed both houses of Congress in October of 2002, in the Senate by a vote of 77 to 23, and the House, 296 to 133. The US invaded Iraq on March 20, 2003. While President Bush declared victory in May 2003, an insurgency soon took hold, resulting in renewed fighting. US forces remained in Iraq until late in 2011. Opposition to the war was widespread throughout the US.  Critics argued against using military force on a variety of grounds. Some held that diplomacy and other alternatives were never fully utilized in a good faith effort to resolve issues peacefully. Rather, they had been used to trap Hussein. If he admitted to the presence of WMDs, Iraq would be invaded. If he provided evidence that he had none, US leaders would brand him a liar and invade. Others held that invading Iraq and attempting to democratize it would lead to failures, unintended consequences, and severe blowback. Many held that it was not democracy or WMDs but oil that was at the heart of the operation, and that gaining control of raw materials through military force was contrary to American values.

George W. Bush on the Second Gulf War Why War? Duties and Vital Interests Bush identified security, democratic and liberal values, and world order as relevant to the Iraqi situation. Military action against Iraq, Bush held, was immediately necessary to remove the threat that Iraq would use WMDs itself against American targets or share them with terrorists, who would then employ them against the US. Here Bush referred back to a historical understanding of Hussein’s actions and intentions. Hussein’s regime “has a history of reckless aggression in the Middle East. It has a deep hatred of America and our friends. And it has aided, trained and harbored terrorists, 4

 Plan of Attack, pp. 30–31.

11  THE SECOND GULF WAR 

221

including operatives of al Qaeda.” Differentiating between the regime and the Iraqi people, Bush held that the main purpose of the action was to remove Hussein from power and eliminate his WMDs and WMD programs, thereby eliminating a potential danger to the US.5 In addition, Bush argued that this action would remove a threat to American values and general world order that Hussein and terrorists posed. Linking Iraq again with terrorism, Bush argued in a speech at West Point that the war on terror must be fought with the same moral purpose as had the Cold War in the sense that it is a duty to uphold a world order that promotes values as well as security. There is no place for neutrality between good and evil. Acting against evil actors through militarily means is a duty; that policy does not create chaos or disorder as critics would have it, but instead reveals the sources of those problems in actors who reject the shared values and norms of civilized nations, and who consequently spur and promote conflict. Reverting to a Democratic/Liberal security proposition, he held that the nature of that rejection takes the same form across dictators and terrorists and is linked to the nemesis of the Cold War and World War II—totalitarianism. Evil actors such as Hussein and the 9/11 terrorists, he held, are the enemies of democracy, freedom, human dignity, human fulfillment, and any world order built on those values. They are brutal. Moving to particular cases, he accused Iraqi leaders of embracing “a creed of power” which not only leads them to attack other states and disrupt peaceful international relations, but also to oppress the populations over which they ruthlessly rule, egregiously violating their human rights. Dictators’ ambitions and the aims of terrorists are not limited to exercising power in their own interest and without limit. To satisfy their twisted ideologies, he argued, they must go further and “seek to impose a joyless conformity, to control every life and all of life.” Americans have a duty to confront and remove such actors. Bush expanded on this point in his American Enterprise Institute (AEI) address by using an argument reminiscent of Wilson’s and Roosevelt’s, in that it gestured toward a kind of moral, reverse Domino Theory as well as referencing world order. By ridding Iraq of totalitarian leaders, he held, the US would establish a better world order that would squeeze out future dictators and terrorists by promoting liberal, democratic values. Stable and free nations “do not breed the ideologies of murder” which threaten world peace and lead to the violation of human rights. In intervening in 5

 Address to the Nation on Iraq, March 17, 2003.

222 

D. J. LORENZO

Iraq, the US would not only add another country to the list of free, stable states; its actions would have multiplier effects on other countries with regard to democracy and freedom. There are already signs that countries in the region are reaching for democratic liberal reform due to vigorous American activities there, he insisted, and by removing Hussein’s regime, support for terrorism will dwindle and the ranks of free, democratic states will again increase. In going to war with Iraq, Bush further argued, the US would discharge important duties by establishing and defending international norms and the international organizations that support them. These norms are both important in themselves and crucial to ending the proliferation of WMDs. He held that American military action would help reestablish the credibility of the UN, the Security Council, and other international organizations which support norms and oppose the spread of WMDs. Ultimately it is up to individual nations to enforce UN sanctions, he observed. Characterizing the Iraqi action as an enforcement activity, he held that such actions are necessary to create and maintain a stable, peaceful world order. Arguing against those who decried the use of military force rather than alternatives in the interests of peace, he insisted that the American use of military force to enforce norms does not threaten peace; such action instead is necessary to “restrain the violent” and to ensure that the “boundaries of civilized behavior will be respected.”6 The goal of using military force against terrorists and dictators by enforcing world norms, Bush continued, is not merely to contain evil energies, shield the US, or punish evildoers. Bush identified a larger aim that connects with further duties and vital interests that the Values and Security Norms identify. The US, he held, seeks to build a more just, humane, democratic, peaceful, and law-abiding world order characterized by freedoms, respect for human rights, and friendly relations among states. This goal would be manifested in how the US conducted itself. Bush argued in his speech at West Point that his goal ultimately was not just the “absence of war” but a “just peace” in the form of a world free of “poverty, repression and resentment.” This positive peace, he held, is only ­possible by instituting an order in which all states respect shared, civilized 6  President George W. Bush Speaks at AEI’s Annual Dinner, February 28, 2003, http:// www.aei.org/publication/president-george-w-bush-speaks-at-aeis-annual-dinner/. He had earlier made similar remarks to the UN General Assembly. See Remarks at the UN General Assembly (September 12, 2002).

11  THE SECOND GULF WAR 

223

human values. Distancing himself from Barnard Lewis and Samuel Huntington while rejecting a pluralist understanding of the world, he insisted that helping construct such an order does not involve a clash of civilizations because everyone welcomes the flourishing of such values no matter their religion or cultural background. Nor do such activities aim to create a utopia or empire, he argued. In fighting evil and supporting a just peace in the name of world order, the US is involved in a truly human, not Western or American, project. The US, he held, has a duty to help others enjoy “safety from violence, the rewards of liberty and the hope for a better life.” In fighting the war against terrorism and Hussein’s regime, the US would help to create a world in which people would enjoy the fruits of the single surviving model of human progress based on nonnegotiable demands of human dignity, the rule of law, limits on the power of the state, respect for women and private property, and free speech, and equal justice and religious toleration.

American activities in Iraq would flow from his administration’s embrace of this model, Bush insisted. In his speech on the eve of the war as well as his earlier remarks to the AEI, he maintained that American aims were to remove Hussein as a dictator, “restore control” of Iraq to its people, “respect” Iraqi civilization and faith traditions, and leave behind a “united, stable and free country.” The US would liberate Iraq, not conquer it. Reaching back to historical examples, he held that to attain those goals the US would not fight and run but remain in place to help oversee Iraqi reconstruction just as it did in the aftermath of World War II when it helped facilitate the restoration of self-determination to the defeated Axis states. Likewise, just as it had eschewed control over Japan and Germany, the US would not determine the nature of Iraq’s post-war government other than to ensure that Iraqis did not fall under the control of a new dictator. Historically, he insisted, the US “did not leave behind occupying armies, we left behind constitutions and parliaments” and substituted freedom and liberty for “fascism and militarism.” It would do the same in Iraq. Iraq will be much better off in terms of freedom and democracy due to America’s intervention, given American dedication to bringing good things to those whom it defeats militarily.

224 

D. J. LORENZO

Why War Now? The Absence of Viable Alternatives Bush held that policymakers must judge the viability of alternatives on their capacity to ensure the elimination of Hussein’s WMDs and WMD programs, as well as any other threats that Iraq may pose to the US. In articulating this agenda, he, like his father, was inflexible. Only an agreement that met all these items in full, without conditions or buy-offs, would take the use of military force off the agenda. In his speech to the AEI, Bush appeared to reject alternatives by dismissing the possibility that problems with Iraq’s WMD’s and weapons programs could be resolved without the use of force. He painted states like Iraq, which possessed or pursued WMDs, as dangerously stubborn in their attachment to them and plans for their use, requiring the use of force against them: High-minded pronouncements against proliferation mean little unless the strongest nations are willing to stand behind them–and use force if necessary. After all, the United Nations was created, as Winston Churchill said, to ‘make sure that the force of right will, in the ultimate issue, be protected by the right of force’.7

He extended this case (first in a speech to the US Military Academy and then in his speech to the public on the eve of the war) by giving three types of reasons for dismissing alternatives.8 He prefaced this discussion by recounting the peaceful efforts that the US, its allies, and the UN had pursued to persuade or coerce Hussein into disarming, characterizing those efforts as failures, and insisting that those aims could not be compromised. Referencing a Democratic/Liberal security proposition to link Hussein’s character to the prospects for solving the situation by alternative means, he first argued that patience with alternatives should be limited because diplomacy and measures short of war do not work with “tyrants.” They cannot be trusted to keep their agreements. Bush enlarged on the nature of the threats Hussein directly and immediately posed to the US through his possession and pursuit of WMDs and the necessity of eliminating those threats unconditionally. He argued that the price to be paid for not forcibly removing Hussein immediately was a constant atmosphere  Speech at AEI’s Annual Dinner, February 28, 2003.  Address to the Nation on Iraq, March 17, 2003; Speech at the US Military Academy, June 1, 2002. 7 8

11  THE SECOND GULF WAR 

225

of threat and uncertainty. Because totalitarian dictators like Hussein do not abide by international norms, particularly those having to do with peaceful relations among states, Bush argued, to continue to deal with him through sanctions and efforts at containment is to expose the US to serious security risks. Second, Bush asserted that hostilities already existed between Iraq and the US.  In addition to Iraq’s military attacks on and harassment of American planes enforcing the no-fly zones, he argued that there were ties between the Iraqi regime and the terrorist organizations which had planned the 9/11 attacks. He explicitly drew comparisons between those activities and the security threats associated with World War II and the Cold War to establish the reality of the conflict between the US and Iraq and its alleged terrorist allies. These comparisons underlined the necessity of militarily confronting those foes despite his previous characterization of the amorphous nature of the “resourceful and ruthless” terrorists whom the US confronted. While this discussion could signal a position which held that military force would only been used in the context of actual hostilities, Bush used these characterizations of events and Hussein’s nature to depart from a patient and reactive understanding and move beyond previously accepted military and security policies. In Bush’s conception, Hussein’s targeting of US planes was important not because it was the trigger for a large-scale use of military force, but because that action was indicative of Hussein’s attitude toward the US in a context in which terrorists manifested their hatred for the US in unconventional attacks and Hussein possessed, or had the capacity to produce, WMDs. Bush’s third argument explicitly placed the conflict with Iraq in the context of what would come to be called the global war on terror and associated understandings of world order. He held that deterrence is not effective against terrorists, and containment does not work when tyrants can slip its bounds by supplying WMDs to terrorists. The events of 9/11, he held, ushered in a new era that requires new approaches. The US must deal with dangers “actively and forcefully” rather than reactively and indirectly. Protecting security requires that policymakers sometimes employ military force in advance to ensure that threats to the American homeland do not take material shape given how quickly events move, how fluidly and surreptitiously non-state actors operate, and how devastating their attacks might be. An essential part of protecting security is to ensure that WMDs do not fall into terrorists’ hands, and discharging this task most efficiently entails making sure WMDs are not available to them. Hussein

226 

D. J. LORENZO

may attempt to mount a WMD attack directly, but more importantly his “close ties to terrorist organizations” meant he could share with them any weapons which he might acquire. By using military force against Iraq to remove its capacity to produce WMDs for its own use or to arm terrorists, the US would “take the battle to the enemy, disrupt his plans and confront the worst threats before they emerge.” In this argument, Bush held that if the US perceived that a major threat could manifest itself in the future, it would act militarily to remove that threat before it materialized. The US and its allies must immediately remove Hussein from power through military force even though he had not yet attacked the US or its allies with WMDs, nor could be demonstrated to have supplied terrorists with such weapons. The price of continuing to tolerate the status quo is too high. It is the Iraqi regime’s pursuit of WMDs in the contexts of terrorism, as well as its possible possession of such weapons, which constitutes that risk. Bush pointed to both the present and the future in this context to support a policy of initiating immediate, preventative war. Iraq represents a “direct and growing threat” to the US. “We are now acting,” he argued, because the risks of inaction would be far greater. In one year, or five years, the power of Iraq to inflict harm on all free nations would be multiplied many times over. With these capabilities, Saddam Hussein and his terrorist allies could choose the moment of deadly conflict when they are strongest. We choose to meet that threat now, where it arises, before it can appear suddenly in our skies and cities.9

Congressional Applications of the Necessity Standard The resolution that gave President Bush authorization to use military force (the “AUTHORIZATION FOR USE OF MILITARY FORCE AGAINST IRAQ RESOLUTION OF 2002”) addressed explicitly the imperative side of the Necessity Standard.10 It argued first that Iraqi leaders had not lived up to their obligations to destroy their WMDs and 9  Address to the Nation on Iraq, March 17, 2003; also March 20, 2003: Address on the Start of the Iraq War. 10  Public Law 107–243, 107th Congress, at https://www.congress.gov/107/plaws/ publ243/PLAW-107publ243.pdf.

11  THE SECOND GULF WAR 

227

verifiably terminate their WMD programs, and treated those obligations as absolute. Iraq, it held, was in direct and flagrant violation of the cease-fire attempted to thwart the efforts of weapons inspectors to identify and destroy Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction stockpiles and development capabilities, which finally resulted in the withdrawal of inspectors from Iraq on October 31, 1998

Iraqi leaders, the resolution further held, were also in violation of other UN orders to cease repressing citizens, release non-Iraqi citizens held captive, and return property stolen from Kuwait. In short, reliance on diplomacy, the UN, inspection and disarmament regimes, and other means for rendering Iraq a safe and tolerable member of the international community had failed despite many efforts. This left military action, or the threat of imminent military action, as the only viable option for removing the threat Iraq posed and returning that country to the ranks of good world citizens. The Resolution then deployed a series of Existing Hostilities arguments. Iraq had “demonstrated its continuing hostility toward, and willingness to attack, the United States” by attempting to assassinate former President G.H.W. Bush, militarily engaging US warplanes enforcing no-­ fly zones, and harboring terrorists, including those who had expressed an intent to attack the US and, in the case of Al Qaeda, those who had already attacked the US. Further, it identified the price to be paid in a larger sense for tolerating the status quo by relying upon failed alternatives, noting that Iraq both poses a continuing threat to the national security of the United States and international peace and security in the Persian Gulf region and remains in material and unacceptable breach of its international obligations by, among other things, continuing to possess and develop a significant chemical and biological weapons capability, actively seeking a nuclear weapons capability….

The Iraqi war resolution then set out two objectives linked to vital interests in security and world order. The first was that military action would defend American security from dangers posed by Iraq’s possession of WMDs and WMD programs, its attacks on American warplanes and citizens, and its support for terrorists hostile to the US. The second objective was the enforcement of Security Council resolutions. How broadly

228 

D. J. LORENZO

this latter objective is to be construed is unclear. It could be limited to only those resolutions that pertained to Iraq. In this narrow construction, the US would only be carrying out its prima facie responsibilities as a member of the UN. Construed more broadly, this could reference a duty to uphold an international order in which formal international institutions play an important role, and thus a return to the policies of the first President Bush. In contrast to the president’s arguments, there is no mention of establishing a democratic government in Iraq. However, despite the language of the resolution, which seemed to indicate that the case for war was already established to Congress’s satisfaction, its action section placed responsibility for applying the Necessity Standard on the president before he could act. The president would only be authorized to use military force if he reported to Congress a finding that (1) reliance by the United States on further diplomatic or other peaceful means alone either (A) will not adequately protect the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq or (B) is not likely to lead to enforcement of all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions regarding Iraq11

Representative Steny Hoyer,12 as with most supporters of the resolution, did not understand it as automatically authorizing war, but as empowering the president to make the determination to use military force based on strict criteria and as supplementing diplomacy with a credible threat of war to force Iraq to comply.13 Yet one can construe his argument 11  Some who opposed this resolution but supported alternatives that would authorize the use of military force also followed this pattern but insisted that the restrictive side of the Necessity Standard be fulfilled more fully by obtaining another Security Council resolution. Thus for Rep. DeLauro of Connecticut, “The Spratt substitute takes the responsible course of action, exhausting diplomatic efforts and building an international coalition first, while acknowledging that military action may be inevitable.” AUTHORIZATION FOR USE OF MILITARY FORCE AGAINST IRAQ RESOLUTION OF 2002, House of Representatives— October 09, 2002, 107th Congress, 2nd Session, Vol. 148, No. 132—Congressional Record, Daily Edition, H7312. Similarly, Rep. Harman of California, who supported the resolution, emphasized that the resolution authorized the use of military force “only if peaceful options have failed” and required the president to report to Congress “should military action become necessary.” Ibid., H7313. 12  Democrat from Maryland. Hoyer first entered the House in 1981 and has served as House Minority Whip and House Majority Leader. 13   AUTHORIZATION FOR USE OF MILITARY FORCE AGAINST IRAQ RESOLUTION OF 2002, House of Representatives—October 09, 2002, 107th Congress, 2nd Session, Vol. 148, No. 132—Congressional Record, Daily Edition, H7310

11  THE SECOND GULF WAR 

229

as taking the case for war as proven barring a last minute and highly unlikely change of heart on the part of Saddam Hussein to abandon Iraq. Hoyer held that the time for using alternatives to force had passed. He based this determination on several grounds. First was the failure of other means to neutralize Iraq’s security threat to the US and others. Despite UN resolutions and inspection regimes (which “failed”), Hussein continued to persist in “efforts to develop and acquire weapons of mass destruction, and he sponsors international terrorism.” The reasons for these failures, Hoyer argued, have to do with character and point to the inevitable conclusion that force is necessary. One was the character of the international community. Its efforts to disarm Hussein were undermined by “vacillation,” just as they had been in earlier attempts to confront Slobodan Milosovic. Here the implication is that various players were unwilling to threaten credibly the use of military force, or to use force, and instead wished to fall back on diplomacy no matter the results. The other was an analysis of Hussein’s character drawn from a Democratic/Liberal security proposition. He is a tyrant and aggressor who inevitably takes actions that endanger the security of the US and its allies, Hoyer alleged. Hoyer turned next to Security Arguments and the Security Norm, arguing that military action was needed immediately to stop Iraqi attempts to develop and obtain WMDs. The price to be paid for failing to act forcefully now and by tolerating the status quo was the “proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and the most virulent strain of terrorism which targets innocents and glories in suicidal mass murder.” This price was unacceptable. Hoyer then referenced the Security Norm by deploying an Existing Hostilities argument to refute contentions that the US would be initiating hostilities. Authorizing the use of military force would not be authorizing something new, he held. Rather, it would be a matter of escalating already existing military activities. Referencing attacks on American warplanes, he held that the US had been embroiled in “an ongoing engagement in Iraq since that nation agreed to terminate its hostility towards its neighbors in 1991.” Hoyer then outlined an expanded set of war aims that identified American security and values as well as world order as vital interests. He held that action would not be directed against the Iraqi people, with whom the US has “no quarrel.” Nor would “territorial acquisition” be on the menu. Instead, military activities would first ensure American security.

230 

D. J. LORENZO

Here the reference is to the destruction of WMDs and WMD programs, and possibly eliminating Iraq from acting as a safe haven for the international terrorists Hoyer held Hussein supported. The second aim was “the promotion of peace, stability and the rule of law in Iraq, the Middle East and the international community.” The content of this aim can be inferred from Hoyer’s prior discussion—ending the suppression of the Iraqi people, protecting surrounding states, and possibly reinforcing international institutions. Given the tenor of Hoyer’s discussion (including his regret that the international coalition had not removed Hussein’s government at the end of the First Gulf War), he appeared to support regime change and a general democratization agenda. There would be no other way of attaining the war’s goals given Hoyer’s desire to remove WMDs from Hussein’s grasp, or in constraining Hussein from committing the acts Hoyer condemned, which ranged from allegations that Hussein attacked civilians and used chemical weapons against insurgents to accusations that Hussein was “enslaving his own people.” Removing Hussein and the Ba’athist regime would also eliminate the actors who posed a threat to Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Israel, all of whom, Hoyer pointed out, Iraq had attacked in the past. Immediately before the war, Senator John McCain14 discussed the use of military force against Iraq in a fashion that was responsive to the war’s critics, particularly those who used Just War criteria to argue that the proposed war was not a last resort. While identifying American security as the primary vital interest at stake in the conflict with Iraq, McCain focused importantly on the “last resort” criterion. He refused to concede that there was a “rush to war” in the quest to have Iraq destroy its WMDs and effectively renounce WMD programs. In articulating this refusal, he made a practical distinction between viability and critics’ understandings of last resort. In his view, the governing criteria was viability—could alternatives achieve objectives? Pursuing alternatives does not mean exhibiting limitless patience or latitude, but only so much patience as is needed to ascertain reasonably whether alternatives will work. In this instance, he argued, diplomacy and sanctions have not worked, and demonstrably are not viable options given the character of Hussein and his regime; at some point that conclusion must be accepted. Here he delved into the lengthy process 14   John McCain, “Hard Truth,” https://www.mccain.senate.gov/public/index. cfm/2004/6/post-2902cb34-670f-4728-a3cf-10f6eaa76d55; “The Right War for the Right Reasons,” New York Times, March 12, 2003.

11  THE SECOND GULF WAR 

231

that the US and others had undertaken to persuade Hussein to disarm, and the amount of pressure that the international community had brought to bear on him to give up his WMD programs in a verifiable fashion, with no results. To refuse to acknowledge this situation, concede that there were no other viable options given the amount of patience the US had exercised, and agree that the imperative side of the standard was operative, he held, is to be unreasonable and pig-headed: The main contention is that we have not exhausted all nonviolent means to encourage Iraq’s disarmament. They have a point, if to not exhaust means that America will not tolerate the failure of nonviolent means indefinitely. After 12 years of economic sanctions, two different arms-inspection forces, several Security Council resolutions and, now, with more than 200,000 American and British troops at his doorstep, Saddam Hussein still refuses to give up his weapons of mass destruction. Only an obdurate refusal to face unpleasant facts—in this case, that a tyrant who survives only by the constant use of violence is not going to be coerced into good behavior by nonviolent means—could allow one to believe that we have rushed to war.

McCain also provided support for the war after the invasion in the face of increasingly vocal critics who held that the war had been unnecessary on the part of the US and disastrous for ordinary Iraqis. Again focusing on security as the relevant vital interest, he insisted that the case for military confronting Iraq had been strong at the time of the action and continued to be strong a year later despite surprising developments. An important part of that case for war was the absence of other, peaceful means of resolving the problems Iraq posed. Here McCain, like Bush, held that alternatives must achieve goals that were not subject to revision or compromise. Diplomacy, he argued, had proven futile when attempting to obtain satisfaction of the set of unalterable demands on Iraq that were required (most importantly its disarmament and dismantling of its WMD programs). He further contended that the sanctions regime against Iraq could not be sustained. It was “crumbling” due in large part to an unwillingness of other countries to continue. Even it had been sustained, he held, it had proven largely ineffective. “…the regime was growing stronger, not weaker” and would continue to do so if such alternatives were further pursued. Here, McCain described the futility of alternatives not just in terms of the failure of negotiated agreements and sanctions to deliver

232 

D. J. LORENZO

specified results, but also more fundamentally in terms of their general inability to protect American security in interactions with an aggressive dictator.15 However, it was not just the failures of alternatives that McCain emphasized here. McCain’s post hoc justification of the war represented the apotheosis of an approach that judges the viability of alternatives through perceptions of threat. McCain’s earlier discussion of alternatives assumed that Iraq possessed WMDs. He now conceded that the fact that WMDs had not been found in Iraq probably indicated that the regime did not possess them at the time of the invasion. However, he argued that this conclusion should not change the assessment of the security threat Saddam Hussein posed to the US at the time of the invasion and the response the US should always take to similar threat perceptions, including the abandonment of alternatives. The available evidence justified the immediate use of force because it indicated that Hussein did have WMDs, and everyone knew he had used them previously. Even given the subsequent evidence, we must still conclude that it would have been irresponsible to have refrained from responding militarily to remove the perceived threat Iraq posed. For McCain, it was not just an attack, evidence of an imminent attack, or solid evidence of a serious threat to vital interests that are pivotal to determining whether military force should be used immediately, but the presence of any evidence that suggests the presence of a serious threat. McCain thereby pushed the Security Argument’s conservative logic to its limits in judging the viability of alternatives—policymakers must assess viability by assuming the unalterable goal of security policy is the removal of any potential major security threat, and if alternatives cannot demonstrably remove such a potential threat, military force should be used immediately against its author. McCain further insisted that military action against Iraq would still have been necessary even if the Bush administration had suspected that Hussein did not possess WMDs at the moment. McCain here reinforced Bush’s position on preventative war. The security threat Iraq had posed prior to the invasion, McCain argued, “was grave and gathering.” The fact that the regime did not possess WMDs at that time did not mean that it could not rapidly acquire them. The regime could restart its weapons 15  Kenneth Pollack had earlier made much the same argument before the invasion. See The Threatening Storm: The United States and Iraq: The Crisis, the Strategy and the Prospects after Saddam (New York: Random House, 2002), Chapter 7.

11  THE SECOND GULF WAR 

233

programs at a moment’s notice. Thus, the most important factor in the decision to use military force was not Hussein’s possession of WMDs, but Iraq’s capacity to create them coupled with Hussein’s character. Analyzing the existing data in this way yields the conclusion that Iraq posed a very serious threat to US security. It was, therefore, necessary that the US take on Hussein militarily, and it was better than this be done sooner rather than later, when “sanctions had lost force [and] he had resuscitated his weapons programs,” and better to have done it and failed to find WMDs than not to have done it and discover that Hussein was armed with such weapons.16 McCain’s post hoc as well as his initial justification for the war also made significant use of Values arguments to identify duties and related goals that the war furthered. McCain referenced a strong humanitarian dimension to the mission, arguing that having ensured that Hussein could “never again slaughter Iraqis,” the US had fulfilled the duties it had neglected when it failed to intervene in Rwanda and when it delayed its reaction to ethnic cleansing in Kosovo. McCain then went further to argue that the intervention had important democratic implications for Iraq and the Middle East in general. It was right, he argued, for the US to intervene on behalf of the Iraqis to provide them with true self-determination and the means for attaining democracy. Removing Hussein not only meant liberating Iraq; it would have similar implications for neighboring countries, given that the invasion would serve as a means for “encouraging the necessary transformation of the Middle East” toward democracy, and would go a long way toward fulfilling and defending values more important than peace, namely liberty and justice.

16  This looks significantly like the “one percent doctrine” which Dick Cheney allegedly embraced while vice-president. See Ron Suskind, One Percent Doctrine: Deep Inside America’s Pursuit of Its Enemies Since 9/11 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2006).

234 

D. J. LORENZO

The Necessity Standard in Related Policy Discussions While some establishment figures counseled acting on hegemonic pretensions as the Cold War closed,17 and others argued that the US should pull back from its self-imposed burden of ordering the world,18 much thinking on security and military policies following the First Gulf War gravitated to the course George H.W. Bush had outlined. The US would take leadership in building a multi-lateral world order founded on agreements, international law, norms, the UN Security Council and employment of military power in conjunction with allies and blessed by other major powers (now including Russia and China). This strategy was composed of several elements. One was to continue engaging fully in the task of ordering the world given the inevitable presence of aggressive and revisionist states and other threats to the security of the US and its allies. Another was the practice of consulting with international organizations such as the UN and NATO. The US would not look first to unilateral actions or military solutions but employ established institutions to deploy a range of tools. This strategy would still allow the US to set its own course and use military force in rare situations, but also ease the burdens of providing global security and furnish legitimacy to its attempts to order the world economically and politically to its own liking. This was a qualified return to the Four Policemen/Concert of Europe model that Roosevelt had outlined immediately before and during World War II. The early Clinton administration generally followed this line, though it opted for small-scale military engagements rather than reprise the First Gulf War. For Bill Clinton in his inaugural address, the US as an actor operated “[t]ogether with our friends and allies.” In conceiving of security threats, he referred not just to the traditionally defined list, but also concerns defined in the context of a collectively governed world order. Outlining his administration’s policy on the use of military force, he held

17  For example, Charles Krauthammer, “The Unipolar Moment,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 70, No. 23 (1990). 18  Jeanne Kirkpatrick, “A Normal Country in a Normal Time,” The National Interest, Fall 1990. Doug Bandow, “Keeping the Troops and Money at Home,” Current History, Vol. 93, No. 379 (Jan. 1994).

11  THE SECOND GULF WAR 

235

When our vital interests are challenged or the will and conscience of the international community is defied, we will act, with peaceful diplomacy whenever possible, with force when necessary.19

Nancy Soderberg revealed the administration’s general security policy in a discussion that addressed the reasons for retaining forward defense concepts, a commitment to deterrence, the cultivation of a reputation for defending vital interests forcefully, and interventionism after the end of the Cold War.20 Why is it necessary for the US to involve itself militarily in the world when its most important rival, the Soviet Union, no longer exists? Because, Soderberg held, the end of the Cold War did not end threats to American interests, and those interests must be broadly defined. Others besides the Soviet Union have the capacity and desire to harm the US and its allies, and many cannot be dealt with diplomatically or through other alternatives; thus, the duty on the part of American policymakers to confront threats “from rogue states, from terrorism and organized crime… [and] the spread of weapons of mass destruction.” The US must remain able and willing to respond militarily to any attacks on its territories, citizens, or allies no matter where they occur and who is the author and must be seen and understood to possess the resolve to do so quickly. The fact that attacks were still possible and manifested themselves with some regularity was evidenced by the case of Iraq. The US generally used military force only as a last resort, but for regimes like Hussein’s or in the case of Bosnia military action must be taken early in a crisis and despite the possibility of imposing sanctions or continuing talks. Alternatives are not viable in these situations given the nature of the threat and the need to establish future credibility. Internal discussions regarding the use of American and NATO forces against Slobodan Milosevic in Kosovo reveal the presence of the standard and a military policy that enlarged upon the earlier Bush conception. A key internal action memo identified the goals of the intervention first in a Duty to Protect proposition. American and NATO action would “avert a humanitarian catastrophe” triggered by systematic applications of  First Inaugural, January 20, 1993.  “The Continuing Need for America’s Global Leadership,” Nancy E. Soderberg, Deputy Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs, Remarks before the Women’s Foreign Policy Group, Washington, DC, October 17, 1996, in Bureau of Public Affairs, U.S. Department of State Dispatch, Vol. 7, No. 44, October 28, 1996, http://dosfan.lib.uic. edu/ERC/briefing/dispatch/1996/html/Dispatchv7no44.html. 19 20

236 

D. J. LORENZO

“violence,” the elimination of humanitarian aid, and “atrocities.” Second was credibility. If the US failed to insert itself decisively in the situation now, having participated in and sponsored prior negotiations, its standing as a sponsor of world order and particularly its self-identified role as a protector of vulnerable populations in the region would be questioned. In turn, the memo was explicit in holding that no other viable options were available to protect civilians or retain credibility. A discussion among high-­ level officials had yielded “a consensus that an approach focused exclusively on humanitarian relief and diplomatic negotiations has no reasonable prospect of success” and that “a credible threat of force has a much higher prospect for success compared to a purely humanitarian and diplomatic approach which seems destined to fail.” Subsequently, President Clinton proposed a significant increase in military operations in Bosnia to end violence between warring factions that closely followed the reasoning contained in that memo.21 Ongoing difficulties with Iraq and the events of 9/11 also spurred discussions in Congress that touched on the Necessity Standard. In 1997, the House passed a resolution that, by rehearsing Iraq’s policy of “deception, lies, concealment, harassment, and intimidation” respecting international attempts to inspect, verify, and destroy its WMDs and WMD programs, held that such alternatives may not be viable.22 It then specified that while the US would pursue alternatives with some patience, flexibility would not be on the table: “the current crisis regarding Iraq should be resolved peacefully through diplomatic means but in a manner which assures full Iraqi compliance with United Nations Security Council resolutions…”. It then continued, “in the event that military means are necessary to compel Iraqi compliance,” the US should attempt to use military force in cooperation with other states; failing such cooperation, “the United States should take military action unilaterally to compel Iraqi compliance with United Nations Security Council resolutions.”23 Later, in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, P.L. 107-40 went further, authorizing the president to use military force against any actor involved in those actions. Citing national security as the main objective of any military operation, 21  November 27, 1995: Address on Bosnia. Clinton held that the US under his leadership would follow in this tradition rather than the deviation taken after World War I when “we pulled back from the world, leaving a vacuum that was filled by the forces of hatred.” 22  Congress had already identified Iraqi WMDs and WMD programs as threats to US security in resolutions authorizing force preceding the First Gulf War. 23  H.Res.322—105th Congress (1997–1998), Nov. 13, 1997.

11  THE SECOND GULF WAR 

237

the statute treated the attacks as acts of war requiring an immediate military response, on grounds that, “such acts render it both necessary and appropriate that the United States exercise its rights to self-defense and to protect United States citizens both at home and abroad.”24 President George W.  Bush also referenced the Necessity Standard in discussing his use of military force in Afghanistan. He provided two reasons for engaging in immediate military action rather than pursue other options.25 First was an Existing Hostilities argument. Afghanistan, Bush argued, was intimately connected with the activities of the 9/11 terrorists. Al-Qaeda was at war with the US, and the Taliban allowed that organization to stage attacks out of Afghanistan. Afghanistan was a “terrorist base of operations” which required neutralization. Second was a traditional Futility Argument that indicated Bush employed little patience and no flexibility when it came to negotiations in this instance. The US had demanded that the ruling Taliban regime close “terrorist training camps” and turn over to the US the leaders of the Al-Qaeda network. Had the Taliban complied, no military force would be used. But Afghan leaders had refused; military force was, therefore, the only option available. The war aims Bush provided were both long and short term in nature and mixed realist and nationalist understandings of vital interests with values-informed duties. Immediately, military force would deprive Al-Qaeda of an important base of operations from which it could strike the US and its allies and ground attempts to capture and bring members of Al-Qaeda to justice. In the long term, Bush held that these actions were a defense of the freedoms that Americans and others in the world should enjoy. In making this claim, he characterized the events of September 11 as attacks on the Western way of life. Finally, Bush drew upon earlier tropes that associated peace with the willingness to use military force to deter or destroy actors who threaten the US.  The aim of the US, Bush held, was always peace, but “the only way to pursue peace is to pursue those who threaten it.” Discussions internal to the administration addressing the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks referenced the Necessity Standard. The vital interests at stake were territorial security and the protection of US citizens. The  115 STAT. 224 PUBLIC LAW 107–40—Sept. 18, 2001.  “Military Operations in Afghanistan,” Oct. 7, 2001, https://georgewbush-whitehouse. archives.gov/news/releases/2001/10/20011007-8.html. Bush termed his communication with the Taliban an ultimatum. See Bob Woodward, Bush at War (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2002), p. 98. 24 25

238 

D. J. LORENZO

administration would use military rather law enforcement assets against Al Qaeda and the Taliban, and do so immediately (against Al Qaeda) and almost immediately (against the Taliban), because hostilities exist—the US was at war.26 Further, immediate, large-scale military action was necessary to deter future attacks and demonstrate US willingness to protect its interests by applying force. Much like Polk, Bush insiders blamed his predecessor for not acting strongly enough in the face of previous provocations. The absence of deterrence and a weak reputation had resulted in an attack Bush’s watch.27 Likewise, during the lead-up to the Second Gulf War policymakers grappled with the issue of Iraq and its association with WMDs and terrorists by recourse to the standard. While everyone agreed that Iraqi WMD and WMD programs represented an immediate threat to American security, these internal discussions reflected nuanced differences when it came to the testing of alternatives. Colin Powell emphasized the restrictive side of the standard: using large-scale military force was thinkable and feasible only when other solutions were exhausted and positively ruled out.28 Karen Hughes is quoted by Bush himself as expressing similar sentiments; Bush said he agreed with her formulation.29 Yet Woodward also records Bush recalling his thoughts soon after the events of 9/11 that foreshadowed his later decision to use military force. These ruminations embraced the imperative side of the standard, and thereby revealed more aggressive security and military policies. Here Bush focused on the threat Hussein posed to US security and measured viability as the capacity to neutralize that threat completely. Bush asserted that existing policies, including diplomacy, sanctions, inspections, and a general policy of containment were not working and could not work. Woodward soon thereafter describes him as reaching the conclusion that there was no other option but war.30 Most of the same arguments addressing vital interests and duties members of the administration employed in public discussions not only appear with regularity in the debates which Woodward reports31; the National Security Presidential Directive he quotes, which contains the first  Bush at War, pp. 15–17, 30–31, 41, 45.  Ibid., pp. 38. 28  Plan of Attack, p. 156. 29  Ibid., p. 252. 30  Ibid., p. 250. 31  For example, Plan of Attack, p. 162. 26 27

11  THE SECOND GULF WAR 

239

indication that the administration would use large-scale military force against Iraq, also employs the same reasoning. The use of force was meant to liberate Iraq, eliminate WMDs, cut Iraqi links to terrorists, stop Iraqi attempts to destabilize the Middle East, and create moderate, pluralist democracies in Iraq and the region.32

Bush’s Application of the Standard and Policy At first glance, it appears that George W. Bush, like the previous President Bush, justified using major military force against Iraq in 2003 solely on the grounds that coercive diplomacy and compellence had not worked in forcing Hussein to give up his WMDs and WMD programs. However, in digging deeper, Bush revealed to the public security and military policies that resembled more closely those Richard Cheney, John McCain, and PNAC/neo-conservatives supplied than did his father. For the younger Bush, the preventative use of force was a guiding principle given the inapplicability of deterrence and containment To flesh this out, Bush did follow in the footsteps of predecessors by outlining the failure of alternatives in his thorough recounting of events and graphic descriptions of Hussein’s character and actions. Yet, these arguments had a different purpose than establishing a preferred policy of extensive American patience with alternatives, or just labeling Hussein a dictator and recalcitrant American foe. By linking Iraq to dictatorships, WMD programs, and terrorists, Bush used the 9/11 attacks to ground the contention that Iraq posed a serious and immediate security threat to the US and world order despite the absence of a direct Iraqi attack or plans for an attack on the US or any other entity. Because Bush established viability as the capacity to eliminate any threat from WMDs whether actual or potential, he argued that patience with alternatives must be short or negligible, and flexibility nil, for two reasons. First, he held, the US cannot pursue a patient or flexible policy because alternatives (diplomacy, sanctions, inspections, agreements, etc.) are generally not effective in preventing the establishment of a WMD program, eliminating an already present program, or even establishing with clarity whether such programs exist. 32  “Iraq: Goals, Objectives and Strategy,” Plan of Attack, p. 155. For an analysis of these discussions that stresses the ascendancy of particular ideas through which the administration understood American security, see Andrew Flibbert, “The Road to Baghdad: Ideas and Intellectuals in Explanations of the Iraq War.” Security Studies, Vol. 15, No. 2 (2006).

240 

D. J. LORENZO

This is the lesson he drew from the failures of the successive UN disarmament regimes. Alternatives to the use of force in these circumstances are never viable options given the character of the actors involved, their connections, and the nature of the security threats they pose. Military and security policies must incorporate this conclusion. Second, the presence of terrorists allows Hussein or like-minded rogue leaders who create WMD programs to project power with deadly effect, so any plausible plan to deal with aggressive revisionist leaders and to combat terrorism must address quickly and inflexibly the supply of weapons that such leaders could develop and terrorists could employ. Deterrence and containment will never work. If Hussein possessed even one or two WMDs, he could put them beyond the reach of the US and UN by slipping them to terrorists. The lesson of 9/11 is that the instruments the terrorists used could easily have been the dirty bombs or biological agents that Iraq either possessed or could quickly develop. Any delay in eliminating potential sources of WMDs means lengthening the time the US is open to this deadly threat, and any compromise prevents the elimination of the threat. Based on this analysis, Bush put to the public a policy that calls for immediately employing military force based on any evidence that a dictator or other aggressive actor has plans to create a WMD program. The US need not employ alternatives, nor wait for an attack or even a credible threat of an attack to manifest. If it does employ alternatives, it should include little room for patience and none for compromise. One presents an ultimatum. In this instance, during the first phase of diplomacy Hussein was required to destroy his WMDs, dismantle his WMD programs, and provide compelling evidence that he had accomplished both tasks. Negotiations were only a means to document the attainment of those precise goals, not an avenue for bargaining or payoffs. Later, on the eve of military operations, Bush insisted that the only way in which war could be avoided was for Hussein and his associates to leave Iraq. Here, as with his father, Bush’s employment of ultimata severely restricted his pursuit of alternatives to war. More generally, Bush invoked a forward defense strategy to take on of threats far from US borders as well as a preventative stance that temporally sought to prevent major security threats from manifesting themselves. This policy goes even further than the Cold War policy of immediately responding to aggressive revisionists and represents a repudiation of NSC 68’s stance on preventative war. This position is related to Madison’s and Polk’s discussions of reputation because it justifies the immediate use of

11  THE SECOND GULF WAR 

241

military force in response to activities by identifying the possibility of a future attack that would arise in the absence of a forceful response to a current situation. It also follows Truman and others in arguing that dictators must be met immediately with military force when they pose security threats, but here the emphasis is on the potential possession of WMDs rather than on acts of aggressive revisionism. The larger purposes of the war which Bush identified (encouraging democratization, reinvigorating a liberal democratic world order) implicated a security policy that was in keeping with many twentieth-century examples that assumed an enlarged menu of American interests and duties. More specifically, it was founded on an updated Wilsonian Democratic/ Liberal security proposition that also took into account the presence of mobile terrorists. Bush maintained that Hussein was a security threat in part because he was a dictator, and in  part because he had connections with terrorists. As a rule, the USA must project power to eliminate such actors whenever there is any evidence that they potentially possess the means to pose a serious security risk to the US either directly or indirectly. Further, he held the US was under threat from Hussein, Iran, North Korea, and terrorists due to their hostility to the universal values the US embraced. The only way those values and American security can be protected is to engage in regime change and re-invigorate a desirable world order.33 The US would take the lead in these efforts. Thus, this policy rejects contentions that the use of force to spread or encourage values is either utopian or contradictory, repudiates John Quincy Adams’ advice to avoid crusades against monsters abroad, and discards the traditionalist argument that defending US security means concentrating on the immediate defense of the homeland.

33  For arguments that the war was about world order, see Galia Press-Barnathan, “The War Against Iraq and International Order: From Bull to Bush.” International Studies Review, Vol. 6, No. 2 (2004): 195–212 and Strobe Talbott, “War in Iraq, Revolution in America.” International Affairs, Vol. 79, No. 5 (2003): 1037–1043.

CHAPTER 12

The Necessity Standard in Recent Policy Discussions

Contexts While the US has not participated in a major war since the invasion of Iraq in 2003, that does not mean the US has eschewed military activities, nor indicate that the potential for more interventions has been absent. The Obama administration wound down US military involvement in both Iraq and Afghanistan, but by the end of that administration US troops remained in both countries, albeit at reduced levels. The US also engaged in military strikes in Syria, Libya, and Yemen, and utilized drones to target alleged terrorists and terrorist camps during Obama’s presidency. These activities took place within larger contexts of growing tension and ongoing conflicts. Relations with Russia have remained uneasy since 2003, punctuated by tensions over Russian actions in Crimea. Conflicts with North Korea and Iran have been ongoing over their attempts to develop nuclear weapons, and Iran’s alleged participation in destabilizing activities in the Middle East. The latter region itself has also been the scene of unrest and uprisings identified with the latest wave of democratization. Finally, relations with China have deteriorated, particularly under the Trump administration, such that many in the US consider that state a political, economic, and military competitor with a different and unfriendly view of world order.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 D. J. Lorenzo, War and American Foreign Policy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-66695-8_12

243

244 

D. J. LORENZO

Barack Obama and Donald Trump located themselves apart from the G.W. Bush administration’s policies and displayed several other similarities.1 Both condemned the decision to go into Iraq in 2003. Both began their presidencies by emphasizing the necessity of scaling back American military commitments in general, and those of their predecessor in particular, though both eventually continued many of those commitments for a considerable time. Obama did not involve the US in a major war, nor did Trump. Both used military force on a limited scale to punish Assad’s Syria for using chemical weapons in the name of both US security and the enforcement of international norms. Both were hesitant to use force out of concern for involving the US in a larger conflict. Obama initially took a position to the left of Bush, holding that the latter had been too quick to use American military force and was unfocused in his aims, yet continued to pursue forward defense policies. Trump initially took a Jacksonian stance, but in office exhibited considerable inconsistencies. At times, he acted in ways not far different from Obama. At others, he was critical of forward defense in ways consistent with a traditionalist view that simultaneously eschews foreign commitments and condemns appearances of military or political weakness.

Policy Discussions During the Obama Administration President Obama entered office in contexts that mitigated against large-­ scale military operations. First, the global financial crisis put his administration under fiscal strain, as it faced the prospects of a disastrous economic depression. Avoiding such a catastrophe required resources and attention. Second, it inherited ongoing military operations and deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan that were costly and increasingly unpopular. Obama vowed to remove American forces from both states,2 though he was unable to accomplish those goals for several years, and even found himself increasing troop levels in those locations.3 Aside

1  For a nuanced comparison of the G.W. Bush and Obama administrations based on readings of national security strategy documents, see Aaron Ettinger, “U.S. national security strategies: Patterns of continuity and change, 1987–2015,” Comparative Strategy, Vol. 36, No. 2 (2017) 115–128. Ettinger’s analysis locates more continuities between those administrations than does this discussion. 2  Acceptance Speech, Democratic National Convention, July 28, 2008; Inaugural Address, January 20, 2009. 3  Speech on Strategy in Afghanistan and Pakistan, December 1, 2009.

12  THE NECESSITY STANDARD IN RECENT POLICY DISCUSSIONS 

245

from those deployments, he mainly confined himself to small-scale military actions and drone strikes. Obama revealed the character of his military and security policies in three important statements. His address at West Point in 2009 revealed his thinking early in his presidency. There, in using the ongoing military commitment in Afghanistan as his subject, he held that his approach to similar security problems was multi-lateral. He would work with allies (particularly NATO) in Afghanistan and in similar circumstances. These  operations would  deal with the task of eliminating terrorists, address the consequences of failed states, and pursue the larger project of “taking away the tools of mass destruction.”4 Later in his presidency, he specifically embraced the concept of necessity and laid out both the circumstances and ends of the use of military force. In discussing Iran, he identified that country’s pursuit of WMDs as a direct threat to American security and held that the US “would stand ready to exercise all options to make sure Iran does not build nuclear weapons,” well-established code for the use of military force. However, if military force was on the table, Obama held that he was no hurry to turn to that expedient and provided a ranking of alternatives. Negotiations would come first and would have to be exhausted. He would then turn to increased or more stringent economic sanctions, and only if those were demonstrably ineffective would he consider military force. He also outlined further strictures on the use of military force that drew upon both ironic understandings of such use and some of the logic that opponents of Korea and Vietnam employed. There would be no “open-ended conflicts,” he argued, nor would he quick to engage in big operations given that these were “what terrorists prefer for us—large-scale deployments that drain our strength and may ultimately feed extremism.”5 This approach eventually resulted in an agreement with Iran (the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action) addressing its nuclear activities. In his national address on Libya in 2011,6 Obama provided a broader discussion of his position that offered only qualified support to the expansion of vital interests that presidents have embraced since Franklin Roosevelt. Here, in addressing and ranking security issues and linking them with a military policy, he held the following. He would use military  Speech on Strategy in Afghanistan and Pakistan, December 1, 2009.  State of the Union Address, January 28, 2014. 6  Remarks by the President in his Address to the Nation on Libya, March 28, 2011. 4 5

246 

D. J. LORENZO

force quickly, unilaterally, and decisively to defend the American homeland, American citizens, US allies, and US core interests. The implication was that his administration would conduct such military operations only in response to attacks rather than in a preemptive or preventative fashion. In other situations that impinged on matters related to “our common humanity and common security,” he would exercise leadership in the international community to bring to bear its united force, employing considerable patience and some flexibility before using military force. He would do so because while “our safety is not involved, our interests and our values are.” In this discussion, Obama differentiated between vital interests and ordinary interests, and excluded from the former any situations that involved American values, world order, or the upholding of international norms. He specifically alluded to the prevention of genocide, the keeping of peace in general, the safeguarding of regional security, and the protection of the “flow of commerce” as associated with ordinary interests, not vital interests. While he ventured beyond traditionalists and Jacksonians in his definition of vital interests and in his willingness to use military force in situations that did not involve vital interests, we see that he would not always associate occurrences of aggressive revisionism with vital interests, nor include other instances in which world order was threatened. Consequently, he would not pursue a unilateral American military response in such situations. That is not to say he would automatically consider the restrictive side of the Necessity Standard to be definitive in those cases, but that the process of getting to military action depended upon the support and participation of the international community and would generally be limited to small-scale actions that would act as an alternative to large-scale military action. This policy represents a significant step back  from the greater willingness to use large-scale force quickly in defense of a world order that policymakers from 1945 through 1972 (as well as the G.H. W. Bush and G.W. Bush administrations) embraced. When addressing issues outside those he identified as meriting quick, unilateral military action, Obama appeared to follow in part the policies of post-Vietnam policymakers in contemplating only a small-scale military response after significant patience with alternatives, considerable flexibility, and in tandem with the international community. Several examples of Obama’s application of these policies can be found. In his treatment of the situation on Libya in 2011, he emphasized the extensive character of the alternatives he pursued before considering a military option. He observed

12  THE NECESSITY STANDARD IN RECENT POLICY DISCUSSIONS 

247

that he had worked and would continue to work through the UN and the international community in both his policymaking process and the implementation of policies. He identified goals that resided outside his definition of vital interests—the action would have a humanitarian purpose. Gaddafi’s threats to massacre his own citizens, he argued, must be stopped because they violated American values and international norms. Further, if he were allowed to operate unmolested, Gaddafi would create floods of refugees that would destabilize already fragile neighboring states undergoing democratic transitions and would serve to put a damper on the wave of democratic transitions that were ongoing. However, he insisted that the military response to those actions would be small in scale. Likewise, in his discussion of a possible military strike against Syria in response to its government’s use of chemical weapons, Obama followed his distinction between vital interests and values.7 Obama initially stressed the duties implicated in the situation: enforcing international norms, protecting the security of the US and its allies, protecting the lives of civilians. Presidents had alluded to those duties in the past to justify both large and small military interventions. He also argued that while the US had employed other means, those alternatives had failed to prevent Syria from using chemical weapons, and such efforts would continue to fail without at least the credible threat that the US would use military force. The purpose of the military action, Obama therefore held, was to deter Assad from using chemical weapons again, to degrade his facilities for deploying and using those weapons, and to signal the US’s intolerance for their use. This last purpose embodied a fear that Assad’s continued employment of WMDs would erode the international norm against their production and utilization and encourage their deployment against US targets. In addressing objections against the proposed action, Obama insisted (among other replies) that the action would not lead to a wider military involvement, and that no other means short of threatening the use of military force would be effective. While Obama applied elements of the Necessity Standard to this situation, he qualified his position in three ways consistent with his earlier statements. First, he held that the threat of Syria’s chemical weapons was not a “direct or imminent threat to our security.” This finding departed from the Bush Doctrine—Obama did not hold that a threat derived from WMDs demands an immediate dismissal of alternatives and resort to a unilateral, preventative war. The use of force would be dependent upon 7

 Address to the Nation on Syria, September 10, 2013.

248 

D. J. LORENZO

reaching agreement among friends and allies. Second, he limited the scope and goals of the action. While he argued that the US does not do “pinpricks” as hawkish critics alleged, he was not proposing to use ground troops or to engage in a long air campaign. Nor would the action be part of a plan to remove the Assad regime. “We learned from Iraq that doing so makes us responsible for all that comes next,” he argued. Finally, while he referenced the past failure of diplomacy, he alluded to encouraging actions on the part of Russia and held out hope that its leaders would succeed in pressuring the Syrians to cease using chemical weapons. He therefore introduced the policy debate to Congress while asking that its consideration be postponed while this alternative was pursued. This picture of a relatively reserved Obama who avoided large-scale military activities  by restricting the list  of  vital interests he recognized might be unsettled by examining the scope and frequency of the small-­ scale military actions his administration undertook. If we take those actions, fought under the rubric of the global war on terror, collectively and over time, they could be construed as amounting to the equivalent of a large-scale military operation.8 In addition to drone attacks, the Obama administration consistently reported to Congress that combat operations had taken place or were ongoing in a variety of countries. These missions generally targeted the Taliban, al Qaeda, or ISIS. The sites of those operations consistently included Afghanistan, and usually included Somalia and Yemen, but also sometimes included additional locations. Thus, the June 13, 2016 report state that military operations had taken place in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Somalia, Yemen, and Libya.9

Policy Discussions During the Trump Administration The Trump administration reacted cautiously, if not ambivalently, to the prospect of using military force. Some described Donald Trump as occupying a non-interventionist position during the 2016 presidential campaign.10 However, when in office, his administration engaged in several limited military strikes in Syria, made noises about possible wars with Iran  My thanks to Lt. Ulysses McGuinness for suggesting this line of analysis.  See, for example, the Letter from the President—War Powers Resolution, June 15, 2102, June 12, 2014, June 13, 2016. 10  Philip Rucker and Robert Costa, “Trump Questions Need for NATO, Outlines Noninterventionist Foreign Policy,” Washington Post, March 21, 2016. 8 9

12  THE NECESSITY STANDARD IN RECENT POLICY DISCUSSIONS 

249

and North Korea, and did  not engage in the type of military budget ­tightening which generally characterizes eras in which the restrictive side of the standard predominates.11 President Trump came into office espousing a conception of military and security policy that won the support of such critics of conventional policies as Michael Scheuer.12 During his campaign, he had criticized military operations that supported the creation or maintenance of a comprehensive world order. He pointed instead to the efficacy of trade and diplomacy to make the world a more peaceful place. Trump also did not accept that military force should be used in the quest to spread democracy. This was the ostensible basis for his opposition to the Second Gulf War. Such efforts, he argued, spread chaos rather than democracy, mainly because the subjects of such action have “no experience or interest in becoming a Western democracy.” More generally, he rejected the projects of regime change, nation-building, and interventions in internal affairs of countries, holding that such endeavors in the past (particularly in Iraq, but also in Afghanistan) resulted in the harmful destruction of traditional institutions, which in turn facilitated “civil war,” the rise of “religious fanaticism,” and the creation of vacuums which are filled by groups who pose a danger to American security.13 While he denounced the attempt to spread “‘universal values,’ he did hold that it is useful to promote “Western civilization” as a model of political interaction by means of suasion.14 Employing the traditional trope, he noted in his Inaugural, “We do not seek to impose our way of life on anyone, but rather to let it shine as an example for everyone to follow.”15 Like Jacksonians, Trump was intimately concerned with defending the American homeland, going so far as to include immigration with border issues as relevant to American security.16 Like nationalists and realists in  Address to the UN General Assembly, September 19, 2017.  Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror (Washington, DC: Brassey’s, Inc., 2004), esp. pp. 257–258. Scheuer generally supported President Trump; however, he did criticize Trump for venturing into territory Scheuer views as interventionist, specifically for his bombing of Syria. See for example “Mr. Trump Takes a Swim in the Swamp. Can He Get Out? Does He Want to Get Out?” April 15, 2018, https://non-intervention.netlify.com/2018/04/ mr-trump-takes-a-swim-in-the-swamp-can-he-get-out-does-he-want-to-get-out/. 13  April 27, 2016 Foreign Policy Speech. 14  April 27, 2016 Foreign Policy Speech. 15  Inaugural Address, January 20, 2017. 16  December 18, 2017: Remarks on National Security Strategy. 11 12

250 

D. J. LORENZO

general, he also understood economic, trade, and monetary issues as implicated in security. For Trump, trade is not only the means by which Americans become richer, but also the means by which they defend themselves both indirectly (by making funding available for a large military and security establishment) and directly (as weapons to be used against rivals and foes).17 He also consistently emphasized the importance of nationalism while gesturing toward a pluralist, Westphalian position, holding at one point The future does not belong to globalists. The future belongs to patriots. The future belongs to sovereign and independent nations who protect their citizens, respect their neighbors, and honor the differences that make each country special and unique.18

While pushing allies to shoulder more of their own defense burdens, Trump and members of his administration have often painted this as a strategy for reinvigorating the existing alliance system rather than an attempt to dismantle it, thus appearing to embrace a return to the Nixon Doctrine. This stance is reflected in his argument that the US should operate in concert with others based on the “shared interests of our allies” and the understanding that cooperation is a “two-way street” that does appear to include some international norms. His administration has also emphasized that the US is willing to walk away from alliances if its interests are not put foremost.19 Yet, Trump  also spoke of security and military policy in other ways while president. At one point, he averred that he followed “principled realism,” was attentive to “vital national interests,” and his policies were “rooted in our timeless values.”20 He committed himself to taking aggressive military action against non-conventional foes, arguing that killing terrorists (both state-backed and others) saves lives and in one instance argued such killings were meant to “stop a war.”21 This position distanced him from mid-twentieth-century America First advocates. However, it may be in keeping with traditional nationalists and Jacksonians like Scheur,  December 18, 2017: Remarks on National Security Strategy.  Remarks at the UN General Assembly, September 24, 2019. 19  April 27, 2016 Foreign Policy Speech. 20  Remarks on National Security Policy, December 18, 2017. 21  See, for example, January 3, 2020: Remarks on the Killing of Qasem Soleimani, as well as October 27, 2019: Statement on the Death of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. 17 18

12  THE NECESSITY STANDARD IN RECENT POLICY DISCUSSIONS 

251

who approve of a policy of pursuing terrorists anywhere in the world given that the US is at war with them. In this mode, Trump stressed the importance of vigorously defending what he perceived as American interests in ways that can entail military responses to events and conditions located well beyond American territorial borders. Despite other arguments that US interventions have destabilized the world, he maintained, for example, that the US “must crush and destroy ISIS” and specified that he was willing to use military force to “eradicate” the forces of “radical Islam” wherever they reside. Further, maintaining a hard bottom-line while pursuing alternatives to war, he withdrew the US from the “Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action” with Iran (which represented significant flexibility on the part of the Obama administration), arguing that it insufficiently addressed Iran’s nuclear ambitions. He subsequently re-imposed economic sanctions to gain leverage for a new agreement and at times revealed himself open to using military force against that state. He pushed for large increases in the military budget to “rebuild the U.S. Armed Forces,” in order, among other tasks, to “accelerate the campaign to defeat ISIS and support Operation Freedom’s Sentinel in Afghanistan.”22 His administration also continued its predecessor’s military involvement in a variety of locations in support of the global war on terror. Thus, for example, his June 11, 2019 War Powers Act report to Congress listed military actions in Afghanistan against the Taliban and al Qaeda, in Iraq and Syria against ISIL and al Qaeda, and in Yemen and East Africa against al Qaeda.23 He further argued that the Obama administration’s withdrawal schedule from Iraq provided the space and opportunity for ISIS to form

22  Text of a Letter from the President to the Speaker of the House of Representatives, March 16, 2017. 23  Text of a Letter from the President to the Speaker of the House of Representatives and the President Pro Tempore of the Senate, June 11, 2019. By the fall of 2020, however, it appears that after signing a peace deal with the Taliban, Trump was both promising to withdraw US troops from Afghanistan early and using military assets to assist the Taliban in its fight against ISIS.  See “President Donald J.  Trump Is Taking a Historic Step to Achieve Peace in Afghanistan and Bring Our Troops Home,” February 29, 2020 https://www. whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/president-donald-j-trump-taking-historic-stepachieve-peace-afghanistan-bring-troops-home/; “Trump’s Afghanistan Withdrawal Announcement takes Pentagon by Surprise,” The Guardian, October 8, 2020, and Wesley Morgan, “Our Secret Taliban Air Force,” Washington Post, October 22, 2020.

252 

D. J. LORENZO

and expand,24 and vetoed a War Powers Act resolution that would have compelled him to withdraw military forces from Yemen.25 Trump’s stance on Syria exemplified his overall ambivalence. In 2017 and 2018, he carried out air strikes against the Syrian government in retaliation for its use of chemical weapons against civilians. He referred to the exhaustion of peaceful alternatives as establishing the reason for employing force and referenced the necessity of using force as a deterrent given the nature of those activities.26 He also provided a variety of goals that departed from any foundational Jacksonianism. He held that the strikes enforced an international norm against the use of chemical weapons, which he labeled a vital American interest. He also employed extraordinarily melodramatic language to argue for a humanitarian justification of the attack, suggesting that the Syrian government should be punished militarily for its use of chemical weapons on civilians: Using a deadly nerve agent, Assad choked out the lives of helpless men, women, and children. It was a slow and brutal death for so many. Even beautiful babies were cruelly murdered in this very barbaric attack. No child of God should ever suffer such horror.

This position was in keeping with his earlier, caustic, denunciation of Obama’s lack of response to the plight of Christians throughout the world when they have been “subject to intense persecution and even genocide,” thus suggesting a policy of armed intervention justified on humanitarian grounds.27 More generally, when comparing Trump to Obama, we see that the former has not adhered to Obama’s distinction between vital interests and ordinary interests. By employing his distinction, Obama held that the use of Syria’s chemical weapons posed only an indirect threat to America’s security. He addressed that situation through military action, but only after a lengthy pursuit of alternatives and in a limited and multilateral fashion. Trump’s policy held  that only vital interests should be addressed by military means (whether on the large or small scale) but depicted the use of chemical weapons against non-US citizens as ­impinging directly  on a vital interest in retaining and enforcing the international 24  https://www.donaldjtrump.com/policies/foreign-policy-and-defeating-isis/; Letter to Paul Ryan, March 16, 2017 https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/whitehouse.gov/files/ omb/budget/fy2018/amendment_03_16_18.pdf; Inaugural Address, January 20, 2017. 25  Presidential Veto Message to the Senate to Accompany S. J. Res. 7, April 16, 2019. 26  Speech on Syrian Action, April 13, 2018; Speech on Syrian Action, April 7, 2017. 27  April 27, 2016 Foreign Policy Speech.

12  THE NECESSITY STANDARD IN RECENT POLICY DISCUSSIONS 

253

norm against their use. He therefore took action against Syria despite the fact that its attacks were not aimed at American targets and did so after employing only limited patience with alternatives and foregoing extensive efforts at creating a multi-lateral response. Further, in 2018, Trump justified the maintenance of troops in Syria to fight ISIS, differentiating his policy from that of his predecessor on the grounds that he had unleashed the power of the military, whereas Obama had allowed ISIS to form when he withdrew troops from Iraq. Thus, in a speech to a group of veterans in the summer of 2018, he held We’re putting America first again, and we are seeing the incredible results. We’re destroying the bloodthirsty killers known as ISIS—almost gone. We’re calling the threat by its real name, a name that wasn’t mentioned for a long time. It’s called radical Islamic terrorism. That’s what it is. You have to know your enemy before you can defeat your enemy.28

However, in the fall of 2019, he decided to remove almost all American military forces from Syria, leaving it to Turkey to police the northern part of Syria despite criticism that this move would leave the Kurdish forces who had fought alongside US forces against ISIS open to Turkish attack and would open the way for ISIS/ISIL forces to reconstitute.29 In addressing this decision, Trump moved back to a non-interventionist position by positing the intractable nature of conflicts in the world, the limited character of American vital interests and duties, and the lamentable tendency of the US to be sucked into endless commitments: If Syria wants to fight for their land, that’s up to Turkey and Syria, as it has been for hundreds of years, they’ve been fighting…. we were supposed to be there for 30 days; we stayed for 10 years. And it’s time for us to come home. We’re not a policing agent, and it’s time for us to come home.

He then more broadly addressed US military commitments throughout the world, reiterating that his intention was to reduce those commitments dramatically given their expense and their ironic consequences. He thereby shrank the list of duties and vital interests he recognized and backed away from a forward defense policy:  Speech at the Veterans of Foreign Wars National Convention, July 24, 2018.  H. J. Res. 77: “Opposing the Decision to End Certain United States Efforts to Prevent Turkish Military Operations Against Syrian Kurdish Forces in Northeast Syria,” 116th Congress, 1st Session. 28 29

254 

D. J. LORENZO

…the plan is to get out of endless wars, to bring our soldiers back home, to not be policing agents all over the world. If you look at other countries— Russia, China—they don’t have countries to take care of. We have—we’re close to 90 countries, in one form or another. We’re in 90 countries all over the world, policing and—frankly, many of those countries, they don’t respect what we’re doing, they don’t even like what we’re doing, and they don’t like us.30

A final note returns to Trump’s insistence on including trade as a component of security policies. To some degree, this emphasis is reminiscent of the early presidents.31 An important part of Trump’s strategy was to rely upon economic and financial tools, including trade wars, sanctions, and financial controls, to give bite to his version of coercive diplomacy. He depicted these tools (sometimes in league with threats to use military force) as sufficient to bring about either agreement to his preferred positions, or the collapse of undesirable regimes.32 If this was a permanent part of Trump’s military policy, he would never have discarded economic tools in favor of major military force on the grounds that they have cumulatively run their course or do not work. He appears to have embraced a sequential and compartmentalized pursuit of alternatives that would be discontinued in favor of military action only by the introduction of a large and unequivocal casus belli into the relationship. Such a casus belli would consist of an attack on American territory, civilians, or military assets, or (as with the use of chemical weapons) a threat to an international norm he regarded as essential to American security. Yet even when such events have occurred (as when Iranian forces shot down an American drone), he displayed significant caution.33 This description again suggests Trump’s public approach was quite traditionalist, reminiscent of policies presidents adopted in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. 30  Remarks by President Trump and President Mattarella of the Italian Republic before Bilateral Meeting, Oct. 16, 2019. 31   Aaron Ettinger, “Trump’s National Security Strategy: ‘America First’ Meets the Establishment,” International Journal, Vol. 73, No. 3 (2018): 474–483, also makes this point while emphasizing the contradictions of Trump’s national security strategy. 32  “Remarks by President Trump to the 74th Session of the United Nations General Assembly,” September 25, 2019; “President Donald J. Trump Is Protecting The Nation by Modernizing and Expanding Sanctions to Combat Terrorism,” September 10, 2019; “Trump Sanctions Iran Again, Inching Toward Economic Blockade,” Foreign Policy, September 19, 2019. 33  See Peter Baker, Eric Schmitt and Michael Crowley, “An Abrupt Move That Stunned Aides: Inside Trump’s Aborted Attack on Iran,” NY Times, September 21, 2019.

CHAPTER 13

The Necessity Standard and Discussions of War in the US

We have seen that the Necessity Standard had its origins in the culture of the Colonial, Revolutionary, and Early National eras, and that this standard as well as arguments justifying the use of military force are importantly grounded in the four traditional norms. We have also seen the institutionalization of the standard in presidential discussions and Congressional debates. We have located evidence of its use in policy conversations and internal policy documents within the executive branch. We have seen that it is often the case that presidents and their colleagues use the same arguments favoring the use of military force in public as they do privately. We have also seen how, over time, the scope of the duties and vital interests presidents invoke have changed, as have orientations toward patience with alternatives and flexibility, such that presidents have revealed a variety of military and security policies. This chapter concludes this study by making observations about and exploring the implications of the previous analysis. It begins by addressing presidents’ references to the time and circumstances in which military force is used. It then typologizes wars based on presidential justifications, discusses the impact of the standard on the policymaking process, and concludes with a discussion of the standard’s possible impact on the public.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 D. J. Lorenzo, War and American Foreign Policy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-66695-8_13

255

256 

D. J. LORENZO

The Circumstances and Types of Wars, and Approaches to Security and Military Policies An initial generalization regarding the use of the Necessity Standard underlines the observation that its two parts interact. Interaction mainly takes the form of understandings of duties and vital interests influencing the pursuit of alternatives along the dimensions of patience and flexibility. Most importantly, the identification of duties and vital interests provides substance to the goals that alternatives must achieve to be deemed viable. Further, that act of identification influences the alternatives policymakers pursue and how patient and flexible policymakers are willing to be when pursuing alternatives. For some presidents, the protection of interests such as security in the face of WMDs, or world order in the contexts of acts of aggressive revisionism, cannot be the subject of negotiations, thus they expect alternatives to produce very specific outcomes and display little patience with them. Likewise, most presidents attempt to remove threats to territorial security and the safety of citizens as quickly as possible. This orientation can also lead to little patience with alternatives. Given their character and substance, vital interests touching on reputation, credibility, the protection of territorial security through deterrence, and the enforcement of a world order encourage the use of military force and can lead to an immediate turn to military force. In contrast, the identification of relevant humanitarian duties work in the opposite direction to encourage negotiations and push against the use of military force as contradictory. Thus, we see Grant’s and McKinley’s reluctance to use military force in the context of humanitarian crises in Cuba. When Should Wars Be Fought? To begin an historical overview, James Madison referenced a policy that displayed a high level of patience and flexibility in pursuing alternatives to war to counter threats to a mostly traditional set of vital interests. Indeed, the US endured years of British interference in trade and trouble on its borders. It was that history, plus the years of fruitless diplomacy, the blow to the US’s reputation that would follow a US refusal to respond forcibly to a history of provocations, and the realization that Britain fully intended to create a hostile world order, which Madison identified as the pretext for finally engaging in war. Madison pointed to an accumulation of events in the context of a policy in which he treated war a last resort to escape

13  THE NECESSITY STANDARD AND DISCUSSIONS OF WAR IN THE US 

257

situations that were no longer endurable. While James Polk held that his turn to war was a last resort and referenced prior negotiations marking a long-standing series of disputes with Mexico, it was not so much the exhaustion of those negotiations as (again) an accumulation of events plus Mexico’s military activities that spurred his resort to war. Here Polk depicted himself as moving more quickly than did his predecessors in responding to attacks on American territory, and in protecting America’s reputation for defending forcibly its vital interests. In general, he communicated a policy of moderate patience and flexibility in defending a list of vital interests and duties that was a little longer than the traditional roster. William McKinley articulated a policy of almost limitless patience and a significant amount of flexibility in addressing the issues order, humanitarianism, security, and trade that lay at the heart of the conflict with Spain. Without a push from Congress, it appears he would have continued in his efforts to mediate. When he was pushed to act (importantly by reaction to the Maine incident), he argued that his hand was forced by the conclusion that, without American intervention, those issues would never go away. He, too, pointed to an accumulation of events. Woodrow Wilson publicly provided a policy that deployed a large quantity of patience with a variety of alternatives, but did not offer much flexibility in the content of his goals. Alongside offering personal mediation of the European war, he resorted to the arming of commercial vessels as a way of avoiding large-­ scale hostilities. His discussion points to an accumulation of events capped by a set of specific and unbearable actions. He embraced a hard bottom line regarding the issues of trade that formed the core of the conflict; this, along with understandings of territorial security form the traditional part of his war goals, but his subsequent discussion of world order pushed his agenda beyond traditional boundaries. Franklin Roosevelt for years pursued alternatives in dealing with the Axis threat, due largely to a public that possessed little appetite for war and a weak military establishment. He displayed immense amounts of patience. He was, though, inflexible in his pursuit of alternatives when it came to negotiating with the Japanese on issues that touched on American duties and vital interests, a position officials knew would likely draw a violent Japanese reaction. He depicted the war as an immediate response to the Japanese attack, but he otherwise identified a set of duties and vital interests that extended well beyond the traditional list to include world order and protection of democracies and rights.

258 

D. J. LORENZO

Harry Truman had no patience for aggressive revisionists, nor was he flexible in his demands. His recourse to war occurred almost immediately after North Korea ignored his demand that it cease military operations and withdraw to its own territory. He outlined a policy that construed American security more broadly than was traditional, including as he did references to balances of power and American values, and like Roosevelt pursued a global order. Though Lyndon Johnson inherited a conflict in Vietnam that had run for some time, he discussed patience inconsistently while displaying little flexibility. He referenced attacks on US forces as a triggering event. This in contrast to the more extensive patience with alternatives that Eisenhower and Kennedy displayed. George H.W. Bush followed Truman in putting forward a policy that refused to tolerate aggressive revisionism. He indicated that some patience with alternatives is in order, but in pursuit of an inflexible set of demands. In the latter attitude, he turned the First Gulf War into an echo of the Korean War in the sense that he pointed to a specific casus belli and moved relatively quickly. George W. Bush went a step further, holding that little patience and no latitude would be exercised when potential threats to the American homeland associated with the development of WMD’s were detected in the context of pervasive terrorism. He therefore used military force before an attack on the US or any other country could develop based on a history of aggressive behavior and the presence of terrorist organizations. His list of duties and vital interests also included democratization and world order. In summarizing these observations, we see that an argument that a president has exhausted alternatives and turned to military action does not provide a consistent understanding of the policy a president employs when utilizing large-scale military force. One president may hold that a military solution is the only viable option only after years of dealing with a conflict, by employing various alternatives, and by displaying considerable flexibility. Concluding that alternatives are not viable here entails delaying the use of military force for significant periods by pursuing every possible alternative to their conclusion. Another president may claim the same while unleashing a war after only a short interval of diplomacy or non-military coercion, justifying that move by arguing that given the circumstances, stakes, interests, or actors involved, alternatives have little chance of working. Presidents therefore describe in various ways the circumstances under which they decide to employ large-scale military force. One scenario

13  THE NECESSITY STANDARD AND DISCUSSIONS OF WAR IN THE US 

259

entails presidents identifying an accumulation of various problematic and unresolved factors over a significant length of time and arguing that continuous peaceful efforts have failed. War results, these presidents argue, when this accumulation demonstrates the unresolvable nature of the conflict and the dangers of pursuing alternative approaches. It is often the case that presidents in such scenarios will hold that war has been thrust upon them. In a different scenario, presidents refer to circumstances in which a state commits a casus belli that calls for the immediate application of large-­ scale military force. While these presidents can cite threats to trade and values as part of the circumstances leading to war, they usually do not treat them as immediate casus belli. They cite instead actual, potential, or threatened attacks on American territory or military assets, significant threats to American reputation or credibility, or attacks on other states that they depict as violent shocks to the current order or balance of power. Here the argument is that the US is already at war. A third scenario combines these factors. A long history of conflict to which the US has responded with non-military policies can be punctuated by an event or condition which is deemed a casus belli. A fourth scenario resembles the second and third, in that a long conflict precedes the outbreak of large-scale military action. However, it differs in that presidents acknowledge that responses to the conflict have included both peaceful actions and military activities. They therefore describe the war as an escalation of military action. The following categorizes the wars discussed in accordance with this framework:  ccumulation of Events and Actions Alone A 1812, Spanish War Immediate Casus Belli Alone Korea, World War II  ccumulation of Events and Actions and a Discrete Casus Belli A Mexican War, Vietnam, Gulf War I Escalation of Threats The Great War, Gulf War II A note on the peculiar situations of World War II, Vietnam, and the Second Gulf War. President Roosevelt had not only pursued a policy of pressuring Japan beginning in late 1940; he had also been engaged in significant military activities in the Atlantic for some time before the attack

260 

D. J. LORENZO

on Pearl Harbor. However, he did not stress those activities in his discussion of the war, instead underlining both diplomatic activities and the provision of military aid. The war was really an escalation that Roosevelt relabeled the product of Pearl Harbor. President Johnson inherited a long-running conflict into which the US had inserted itself. His predecessors had contemplated but decided against large-scale intervention. Their exploration of alternatives was a departure from Truman’s policy of moving immediately and represented a reaction to the problematic nature and outcome of the Korean War that anticipated the future reaction to Vietnam. They followed instead a policy of very gradual escalation that Johnson amplified. Johnson, however, like Roosevelt, did not present the war as the result of a gradual escalation, but as the product of a casus belli in the Tonkin Gulf. In turn, his description of that casus belli depended importantly on larger global contexts and established military policies rather than the immediate events that occurred in Vietnam. It was only under circumstances in which the US was concerned with the effects of shifts of power and challenges to credibility that he could use a microscopic attack on American forces to justify a full-scale military intervention backed by strong Congressional approval. President G. W. Bush did cite a long history of accumulating problems to demonstrate the seriousness of the security threat Iraq posed and the futility of pursuing alternatives, and thus pointed to the use of large-scale military force as a response to an escalation of threats. Yet, he also described a policy of eliminating security threats before they emerge. Further, while Bush insisted on embedding his justification in an analysis of past and future terrorist activities tied to 9/11, that event and the possible threats flowing from it had only a speculative connection with Iraq and its history of conflict with the US. In other words, 9/11 was not the product of the conflict with Iraq (even members of the administration who postulated a connection did not claim that it was the result of that conflict), nor did Bush argue that any future terrorist attacks would be the product of the conflict, only that Iraq’s possible possession of WMDs may lead to more serious attacks by Iraq or by other entities. Further, while he cited the lengths to which the US pursued alternatives during the entire course of the conflict, he presented a military policy based on a preventative logic that demands immediate military action. There is therefore a mismatch between parts of Bush’s justification of the use of military force in 2003 and the military policy he sought to establish. That justification suggested the use of any alternative was dangerous because such a course would

13  THE NECESSITY STANDARD AND DISCUSSIONS OF WAR IN THE US 

261

allow threats to manifest themselves, and points to a policy that looks much more like the one that spurred military involvement in Korea than US involvement in the Great War. Therefore, while this war was in his description a response to an escalation of threats, its complexities transcend that categorization. Typology of Wars: Why Should Wars Be Fought? Presidential justifications of wars have cited a variety of vital interests, some of which extend beyond the immediate circumstances of the war. We can differentiate among wars to a limited extent by referencing those duties and vital interests and subsequent goals. However, there is considerable overlap, as we can characterize specific wars in a variety of ways. Wars of Trade 1812,1 Mexican War, Spanish War, Great War, Gulf War I Protecting neutral trade as a vital interest ties the War of 1812 to the Great War despite the passage of a century, significant changes in the world, and the position of the US.  For Spain and Mexico, trade was a secondary factor, included as just one more reason why the US should end an ongoing crisis. The First Gulf War is a more problematic occurrence. Some officials implicated trade in oil as a strategic security interest, while opponents of the war painted oil as a commercial issue and placed it at the center of the conflict. The Carter Doctrine had referenced oil as a vital security interest. However, President Bush barely mentioned oil in his discussion of that war.  ars of Reputation or Credibility W 1812, Mexican War, Korean War, Vietnam War While they are different concepts, both reputation and credibility implicate military and security policies that draw upon realist concepts and point to future security threats. The War of 1812 was the most important reputation war, Vietnam the most important war of credibility.  ars Implicating World Order W 1812, Great War, World War II, Korean War, Vietnam War, Gulf War I, Gulf War II 1

 Bolding indicates a war in which the characteristic was a major factor.

262 

D. J. LORENZO

The War of 1812 is the outlier here, in that Madison fought it only to prevent the implementation of a hostile world order. Wilson, Roosevelt, George H.W. Bush, and George W. Bush argued that they fought to create a new or reinvigorated world order. Truman and Johnson held that they fought in Korea and Vietnam to defend an existing order.  alance of Power Wars B The Great War, World War II, Korean War, Vietnam War Caught up as they were with balance of power theories, the Korean and Vietnam wars were about preventing shifts of power, but these involved the fate of small states and were seen as part of a possible process by which American security was eroded. World War II and the Great War were fought over much larger potential shifts which would have put the US immediately in a disadvantaged position had they occurred.  ars of Territorial Security W 1812, Mexico, Great War, World War II, Gulf War II The War of 1812, the conflict with Mexico, and World War II were importantly defined as responses to physical attacks on American territory. For the Great War and Gulf War II, the aim was to frustrate potential attacks on the US. Wars of Humanitarianism Spanish War, Great War, Gulf War I The war with Spain remains the only major humanitarian war. Presidents provided humanitarian reasons for fighting the Great War and Gulf War I, but those were peripheral justifications.  ars of Freedom, Democracy, or Self-Determination W Mexican War, Great War, World War II, Vietnam War, Gulf War I, Gulf War II Presidents referenced a Democratic/Liberal security proposition in discussing each of these wars, though Polk’s reference did not serve as a main justification. Presidents justified each of the other wars on the additional grounds of freedoms, rights, and self-determination in some form.

13  THE NECESSITY STANDARD AND DISCUSSIONS OF WAR IN THE US 

263

Types of National Security Strategies Our examination of justifications of wars and analyses of generations of policymaking allows us to think about security and military policies in a larger sense and to differentiate among various general approaches. Here again the emphasis is on how presidents describe the circumstances in which the US would discard alternatives and go to war, and how they define vital interests and duties. This approach, in using those two factors to understand military components of national security strategies, differs from parallel efforts by Diebel and Ruggie, among others. Diebel analyzes such components by examining historical strategies for furthering the various interests identified by the duties to further physical security, general welfare, and values.2 Ruggie approaches the question from a constructivist perspective, describing particular policymakers putting forward and instituting liberal internationalist, realist internationalist, and isolationist policies with public opinion as a major limiting factor.3 Differentiating among the military portions of various national security strategies by referencing the interaction between orientations toward the timing of the use of military force and the goals of such use produces the following results. First, Madison’s discussion of the War of 1812 and Truman’s justification of the Korean War are clear exemplars of widely diverging approaches. Madison emphasized the presence of a lengthy and exhaustive exploration of alternatives, and a long list of transgressions, before using military force. He further focused on a limited, nationalist list of vital interests and duties. In Madison’s description, the War of 1812 was fought only when a profound reluctance to go to war was overcome by the perception that the very existence of the national community was immediately at risk. Truman’s characterization of the Korean War, in contrast, featured a rapid recourse to arms, and a single event that took place well outside the US and did not directly implicate US security or sovereignty. The arguments against appeasement he and other contemporaries furnished were also importantly arguments against compromise and flexibility. His justification featured a lengthy list of vital interests and duties that extended well beyond the nationalist focus Madison supplied. His discussion described an approach that was quick to accept a military ­ 2   See Terry L.  Deibel, “Strategies before Containment: Patterns for the Future.” International Security, Vol. 16, No. 4 (1992): 79–108. 3  John Ruggie, “The Past as Prologue? Interests, Identity, and American Foreign Policy.” International Security, Vol. 21, No. 4 (1997).

264 

D. J. LORENZO

challenge by reference to a grander conception that located the US at the center of a world order. The most important characterization of the US in this policy was not that it would act as a normal great power, or that it would act on its uniqueness, but that it would engage in forward defense and discharge an essential role in the creation and maintenance of a desirable world order and consequent world peace. Other descriptions of wars describe national security strategies that fall along a spectrum between Madison and Truman. To sum up, Polk’s characterization of the war with Mexico falls close to the Madisonian pole. It also featured a long conflict, but one that flared into large-scale military activities only after a perceived invasion of US territory. It, however, also followed Monroe in embracing a Democratic/Liberal security proposition and an approach to territorial security that referenced the removal of possible threats from North America. McKinlley’s justification of the war with Spain also described a patient approach but moved further away from Madison’s traditional goals by adding local order and humanitarianism while fully adopting Monroe’s conception of the US as the central player in creating regional order. Wilson’s discussion followed a traditional reluctance to enter war, but justified US entrance into the Great War by reference to both traditional grounds (trade and physical territorial security), and non-traditional goals, including the spread of democracy and a central role in creating and maintaining a world order. Roosevelt described US entry into World War II as taking place after much patience with alternatives, yet was a response to a casus belli that involved traditional interests (the physical security of the US), and would be fought in pursuit of a large set of non-traditional goals. Johnson followed Roosevelt in describing the war in Vietnam as the result of a casus belli rather than an escalation. Like Truman and Roosevelt, he fought for a large set of non-traditional goals. G.H.W. Bush followed Truman in identifying the First Gulf War as a response to a casus belli that did not involve traditional understandings of vital interests or duties, but rather focused on an expansive understanding of  security and a liberal world order. He advocated more patience with alternatives than did Truman, but not as much as traditionalists. G.W. Bush, in describing the Second Gulf War as an escalation that also took 9/11 into account, revived a Wilsonian understanding of vital interests and duties, while he was closer to Truman in his treatment of alternatives.

13  THE NECESSITY STANDARD AND DISCUSSIONS OF WAR IN THE US 

265

From these descriptions, we can identify six forms that the military portion of national security strategies have taken4: Traditionalist The traditionalist approach leans heavily toward the restrictive side of the Necessity Standard. It counsels neutrality in conflicts that do not directly involve the US and the avoidance of alliances. It generally requires that policymakers exhaust alternatives to the use of large-scale military force, though it recognizes the necessity of cutting short such endeavors given actions that constitute “war,” a situation it defines conservatively. It identifies a limited selection of vital interests: territorial security, the safety of citizens, national sovereignty, reputation, the protection of trade, the defense of international norms that govern trade, and resistance to an uncongenial world order. While focused on the security of American territory, its commitment to protecting trade means that this approach will generate justifications for the use of force abroad. All parties involved in discussions of the War of 1812 generally subscribed to this approach, though the realism of some Federalists took more seriously the need to conciliate strong international actors. This is also the policy choice of many Jacksonians and those who identify with America First. Regional Ordering The Monroe Doctrine laid the foundation for an approach that retains the Traditionalist list of vital interests but interprets them expansively to include action in the hemisphere. The resulting approach partly informed Polk’s justification of the Mexican War (which also partook of aspects of Traditionalism) and had its apotheosis in McKinley’s discussion of the Spanish War. It conceives of the US as the central player in protecting regional security by supporting democratic regimes, applying humanitarian values, and creating local order in the Americas when states or peoples are unable to supply that good. It follows Traditionalism in its approach to alternatives when large-scale force is contemplated in response to events outside the US but would immediately turn to an armed response in cases of attack on American territory.

4  This is not intended as an exhaustive list, as it does not include (among others) the pacifist and thoroughly realist approaches that have been put forward at various times.

266 

D. J. LORENZO

Wilsonian The original Wilsonian approach locates a Democratic/Liberal security proposition at the heart of its understanding of the world. It expands vital interests beyond the Traditionalist list to include the defense and spread of liberal democracy as crucial to physical security, is open to collective security arrangements, and seeks to uphold a modified Westphalian world order. It expends much patience on alternatives when confronting events impinging on vital interests that do not involve territorial security, but much less patience when territorial security is on the agenda. The G.W. Bush variant differs in holding that pre-emption based on an analysis informed by a Democratic/Liberal security proposition can be on the menu.  lobal Forward Defense G This approach combines values, a Democratic/Liberal security proposition, understandings of forward defense, alliances, collective security or Concert of Europe type arrangements, and references to the domino theory and balance of power analyses. It includes all the varieties of containment strategies, as well as rollback. It expands vital interests beyond Traditionalism, Regional Interventionism, and Wilsonianism to include maintaining a favorable power balance, and a central role in the creation and defense of a liberal world order. By critiquing patience and flexibility in pursing alternatives, it advocates a quick military opposition to aggressive revisionism, the defense of allies, and credibility as well as territorial security. Roosevelt laid the foundation for this approach, which typifies policymaking at the height of the Cold War. Elements of the G.H.W. Bush and G.W. Bush administration policies partake of these elements as well, though those administrations did purport to exercise considerable amounts of patience with diplomatic efforts to attain an inflexible bottom line.  lobal Forward Defense Revised G This approach embodies important parts of the Global Forward Defense understanding, most importantly by embracing a long list of vital interests and duties, employing a forward defense strategy that includes the positioning of military assets abroad, and defending a congenial world order. However, it departs from its predecessor in two significant ways. First, it is much more patient with alternatives, preferring to employ gray area alternatives or engage in small-scale military actions rather than resort to large-­ scale military actions. Second, it puts much energy into identifying

13  THE NECESSITY STANDARD AND DISCUSSIONS OF WAR IN THE US 

267

strategically important actions and regions rather than following a policy of opposing aggressive revisionism in general. Note here the contrast of the Truman Doctrine and Kennedy’s Inaugural with the Nixon, Carter, and Weinberger Doctrines. This strategy describes the policy of the post-­ Vietnam administrations (Ford, Carter, and Reagan), as well as important aspects of the Clinton, Obama, and the Trump administrations’ approaches.

The Impact of the Necessity Standard on the Public and on the Policymaking Process The Impact of the Necessity Standard on the Public It is important to address the relationship between the standard and the public as well as on security and military policies. I suggest below that applications of the Necessity Standard may make a difference in how the public perceives the use of force and how it approaches the overall question of war and peace.  he Standard and the “Rally Around the Flag” Phenomenon T It is possible that the Necessity Standard contributes to the “rally around the flag” phenomenon. The case for this contention is as follows. One purpose of discussing the use of military force publicly is to generate support for the project as a national endeavor. Mobilization is the goal. Important factors in that mobilization are the character of the case for war and particularly the stakes involved which policymakers provide. In this understanding, rally effects that accompany decisions to use military force are not only the products of patriotism, the absence of elite criticism of leaders, the invocation of fear, or othering, because the conversation regarding the use of military force involves more than those factors. Addressing the Necessity Standard requires an emphasis on duties and vital interests and the underlying norms that help define those goods. The conversation elevates the importance of the American political system and the American way of life. In short, when policymakers address the standard by referencing its imperative side, they invite the population to rally around the action as a way of protecting that political system and way of life. This analysis explains Parker’s conclusions regarding rally data, which “suggests that the national government and political institutions rather

268 

D. J. LORENZO

than incumbent officials were the primary beneficiaries of the goodwill that follows a rally event”.5  he Standard and the Bifurcation of the Public T It is also possible that the use of the standard contributes to the division of the population into two very different camps. One camp is composed of those who argue for a strict, traditional, and nationalist conception of military and security policies that holds military force should be restricted to the protection of territory, citizens, and possibly trade and only after expending great patience with alternatives. Some adopt such views as the result of experiences with the application of the standard in its imperative form. They are disillusioned with policies that expand the US role in the world because they see both military force and diplomacy as discredited. The discrediting of military force may come about through perceptions that leaders overpromise the good that military force can accomplish when it comes to a set of duties and vital interests, and/or exaggerate the dangers the US faces. In the 1920s and 1930s, the perception was that the promises made that America’s entry into the Great War would prevent future wars and result in a general democratization of the world were not made good. Attention turned toward explaining American participation in the war by referring to the role of special interests and the resistance of Europe to engage in political reform after the war. A similar phenomenon occurred with the cumulative effects of the Korea and Vietnam Wars. Experiences of those wars led some to conclude that all cases for the use of military force overstate dangers to vital interests and do little to count the costs of war. The retention or loss of Korea or Vietnam to the “free world” appeared to affect little the fortunes of the US, while the attempt to hold those countries cost the nation a great deal in terms of blood and money. Alternatives, particularly diplomacy, may also be discredited when policymakers establish that there is no viable alternative to the use of military force in a given situation. When leaders display little patience with alternatives, portray diplomacy as availing little in the face of intransigent actors and doing nothing to solve crucial problems, as well as adopt inflexible positions, they sometimes do their job too well. For some citizens, if the choice is between ineffective forays in diplomacy and bloody uses of military force, then the better solution is to define duties and vital interests 5  Suzanne L. Parker, “Towards an Understanding of “Rally” Effects: Public Opinion in the Persian Gulf War.” Public Opinion Quarterly, Vol. 59, No. 4 (1995).

13  THE NECESSITY STANDARD AND DISCUSSIONS OF WAR IN THE US 

269

narrowly and draw up policies accordingly so that neither diplomacy nor war is in play. The US should stay out of such affairs completely. This set of rejections more generally lead to the creation of non-­ interventionists (whether libertarian or leftist), followers of America First, some Jacksonians, neutralists, or adherents of a Traditionalist national security strategy, all of whom reject most arguments for the use of military force as well as active American leadership in world affairs. They are sometimes inspired by customary warnings that wars negatively affect domestic politics (even though they may differ in nature of the damage done). They may also argue, for example, that the US cannot take on a duty to protect in cases of humanitarian crises because such endeavors are useless, or because they are only a façade for furthering illegitimate, imperialist aims. They may insist that the US cannot be a part of creating or enforcing a world order. They often argue that the US cannot order, democratize, or pacify the world by military means. For some, the world is not capable of attaining those characteristics at all; for others, such characteristics can be attained only by the exertions of each state. They often paint attempts by the US to order the world or otherwise interfere as ironic as well as ineffective. The use of the standard in its restrictive form may also create reactions to perceived failures of non-interventionist policies, leading to the adoption by many of a policy of aggressive interventionism. Here members of the public and policymakers draw the opposite conclusion from those described above given what they perceive as the deeply problematic results of passive foreign policy and a blinkered understanding of the world. Importantly, their rejection of restrictionist positions do not result in their adopting nuanced positions, but in keeping with the binary character of the standard, result in the adoption of strongly interventionist views. They hold that the world must be ordered because such order is intimately connected with vital US interests in remaining secure, free, and prosperous, and further contend that this order must be one which the US participates in creating and upholding, by military means if necessary. These Americans continue to take to heart the lessons of the Munich Paradigm and in part blame the American retreat from the world after World War I for the rise of Hitler. They argue that the US holds a long list of vital interests and duties, and it must act positively to defend and discharge them. If previous efforts have been ineffective, then policies rather than goals must be changed. These include various Wilsonians, Neo-Conservatives, Jacksonians who believe that the US must maintain a reputation for

270 

D. J. LORENZO

defending its interests with force, and those who argue the US must maintain and enforce a world order.  he Standard and the “Impossible Presidency” T Finally, to come back to the origins of the Necessity Standard, we know that colonial writers were correct when they argued that wars expand the power of presidents. This phenomenon would probably have occurred whether or not the Necessity Standard had been in place given the other factors involved in that expansion, including economic developments. However, justifying war by claiming to meet the criteria of the Necessity Standard may also have contributed to the high public expectations of what Suri calls the “impossible presidency”.6 That conception of the presidency holds that the duties and expectations of the office have far outstripped the powers and capacities of the individuals who occupy it. The imperative side of the standard may specifically have contributed to this phenomenon as officials loaded responsibilities onto the presidency through the expansion over time of the list of duties and vital goals that the US must defend or discharge. Further, if president must use military force in situations due to the involvement of duties and vital interests, then not only will they sometimes find themselves catapulted into wars they do not desire and that overtax their abilities. They will face enormous pressure to conclude successfully and unambiguously any military conflict they fight. If the stakes involved in a conflict action are so important that they must use military force, nothing but complete success will be an option. Muddling through is not good enough, as we have seen in the case of Vietnam, and later Iraq and Afghanistan. Excellence and the unambiguous achievement of goals are required, even in circumstances in which such outcomes are not available. Failure to match these expectations may contribute to a political disillusionment with presidents and the office of the presidency. Possible Impacts on the Policymaking Process Finally, the evidence presented here suggests that the presence and institutionalization of the standard influences the decision-making process within administrations and Congress. Many of these outcomes flow from the 6  Jeremi Suri, The Impossible Presidency: The Rise and Fall of America’s Highest Office (London: Hachette, 2017).

13  THE NECESSITY STANDARD AND DISCUSSIONS OF WAR IN THE US 

271

standard’s departure from the costs-benefits analyses that lie at the heart of the Rational Actor Model.  he Presence of the Restrictive Side of the Standard—Avoidance T and Delay Because the standard has a significant restrictive side, it ensures that the large-scale use of military force is not routine. It establishes that alternatives, including diplomacy and sanctions, are the main means by which the US protects its vital interests and discharges its duties. More, the standard not only focuses attention on the stakes involved, it does so in the form of assessments of the most important stakes. Each administration and all policymakers must come to grips with the definition of those stakes every time they contemplate the use of major military force. The list of those items has changed significantly over time. Constraints on the large-scale use of military force led to a consistent recourse to neutral policies during the eighteenth and much of the nineteenth centuries. The result was that the US did not go to war in circumstances that pushed other states to do so. It did not go to war with Britain in the early 1790s over trade issues. Nor did it go to war with Britain in the 1840s over territorial disputes in North America, or Spain in the 1870s to address the situation in Cuba. The impact of powerful interpretations of the restrictive side of the standard alongside its geographical isolation also played a role in delaying US military efforts significantly. Large-scale US entry into the Napoleonic wars did not materialize until 1812, long after most other powers had become involved. The same is true of other actual or potential military encounters during the nineteenth century. War with Mexico did not happen until the mid-1840s despite longstanding pressures to use military force. Conflicts with Spain over Cuba, as we have seen, were present as far back as the 1820s and were immediately topical in the 1870s. Despite perceptions of threats to values and vital interests, non-military options (including neutrality) were long understood to be viable. The same held to a limited extent during parts of the twentieth century. The US never contemplated intervening militarily against Italy or Japan during the 1930s, and likewise kept out of the Spanish Civil War and the Japanese incursion into China, developments which would have provoked stronger responses had they occurred later. Delay has also been a hallmark of some actions. Wilson refused to enter the Great War until 1917 despite intense pressure to do so from some quarters. Franklin Roosevelt was

272 

D. J. LORENZO

forced to back the Allies by means short of war until late 1941 in the face of intense opposition from the public, who held that America’s interests can and should be protected by almost any means other than war. Smaller delays are also possible. Memoirs of key players show policymakers during the two Persian Gulf wars building time into their schedules in which they would be seen as engaging in various non-military activities aimed at ending the conflict despite articulating little faith in their effectiveness. They had to demonstrate that nothing but military force was a viable policy. Such outcomes can have significant consequences. If a foe can only be dealt with by military force, then to delay military action even for short periods for reasons other than military necessity may raise the costs of using force and erode favorable margins for victory.7 Delay can also result from the application of the second part of the standard—that large-scale military force is to be used only when vital interests and duties are at stake. Until policymakers connect a conflict with such interests and duties, then military action is not on the table. Thus, US engagement in World War II was significantly delayed not only because alternatives were still considered viable, but also because the public and many policy makers, in holding to a nationalist understanding of security, insisted that no vital duties or interests were at stake for the US until US territory was attacked. Likewise, President Kennedy refused to confront the Soviets militarily in Cuba before the discovery of Soviet intermediate range missiles there despite calls for him to do so because he initially held that Soviet activity on that island did not threaten vital American interests.  he Presence of the Imperative Side of the Standard—The Push T for the Use of Military Force The imperative side of the standard also influences decisions for war, sometimes pushing policymakers to use force when they are reluctant to do so, or to use it sooner rather than later. This has been true throughout US history. In the nineteenth century, while James Madison appeared to have favored war, this attitude was partly the product of intense pressure exerted on him by the War Hawks to defend the frontier. The evidence is much clearer for the Spanish War. William McKinley was transparently pushed into war. He wanted to continue using diplomacy but gave way for fear that a hawkish Congress would humiliate him. Likewise, Woodrow 7  See Brent Scowcroft’s discussion of this point in George H.W. Bush and Brent Scowcroft, A World Transformed (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998), p. 400.

13  THE NECESSITY STANDARD AND DISCUSSIONS OF WAR IN THE US 

273

Wilson had pursued a diplomatic solution to the Great War all the way into the spring of 1917. Several of his cabinet members noted public pressure for entry into the war at that time given German attacks on American shipping and argued accordingly that the administration must get out in front in terms of a war policy. For Secretary of the Treasury William G.  McAdoo, war with Germany was inevitable, and the administration should declare war immediately given that (in Lansing’s paraphrase) “if we did not do so at once, the American people would compel action and we would be in the position of being pushed forward instead of leading, which would be humiliating and unwise”. Secretary of the Interior Franklin Lane noted the same pressures: “He emphasized particularly the intensity of public indignation against the Germans and said that he felt that the people would force us to act even if we were unwilling to do so”.8 The evidence for the imperative side of the standard pushing a nominally reluctant Harry Truman, Lyndon Johnson, and George W.  Bush into wars is also present. It is clear that Truman was influenced by the Munich Paradigm and the emerging “Who Lost China” debate, and was eager to demonstrate that he took seriously duties to engage in forward defense policies and stoutly defend American values while shunning any possibility of buying peace through diplomatic concessions.9 Johnson is said to have felt the same pressures during the Vietnam War, fearing that reneging on Eisenhower’s and Kennedy’s commitment to Vietnam would cripple his presidency and put his Great Society legislation in jeopardy.10 Conservatives placed President Clinton under intense pressure to adopt a tougher military policy toward Iraq, as evidenced by the public letter from the Project for a New American Century. The transformation of an initially quietist George W. Bush into the president who engaged the US in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, while importantly facilitated by the events of 9/11, has also been attributed to the influence of such hawkish subordinates as Richard Cheney. The latter allegedly “boxed in” the president on

8  Arthur Link, et  al., eds. The Papers of Woodrow Wilson (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1983), Vol. 41, pp. 438, 443. 9  See, for example, Dean Acheson’s discussion of Robert Taft’s response to the invasion of South Korea in Present at the Creation: My Years at the State Department (New York: W.W. Norton, 1969), p. 410. 10  See Francis M.  Bator, “No Good Choices: LBJ and the Vietnam/Great Society Connection.” Diplomatic History, Vol. 32, No. 3 (2008).

274 

D. J. LORENZO

Iraq by publicly insisting that Saddam Hussein possessed WMDs and thereby posed an existential threat to the US.11  mphases on Particular Parts of the Crisis E Just as Kohn has argued that the use of historical metaphors performs cognitive functions in the context of policymaking, so the institutionalization of the Necessity Standard affects the policymaking process in the stages wherein respectively, officials discuss options and take decisions.12 It does so by drawing attention to and emphasizing various conditions and issues relevant to sorting among and choosing policies in ways that some other standards, or a general discussion of issues of war and peace, do not. First, when presidents turn their attention to elements responsive to the restrictive and imperative sides of the standard (i.e., by considering problems with alternatives and the vital interests and duties at stake), the standard simplifies the decision-making process and discussions of the decision to use force in several ways. It makes the decision an either/or proposition (to use large-scale military force or not) rather than a choice among several policies based on a costs-benefits analysis. It simplifies the discussion of alternatives to a consideration of viability. It does not focus attention on other possible factors that might impact decisions to use military force, such as chances of military victory, comparative power, or policy objectives which cannot be established as vital interests or duties. Nor does it encourage a comparison of costs, or a calculation of costs and benefits. It is the president’s supporters rather than the president who occasionally refer to the benefits of war (other than the protection of vital interests and discharge of duties), and it is the opponents of war who most often focus on its costs. Second, in focusing attention on the viability of alternatives and the vital nature of interests and duties rather than other factors, the standard (when its application results in a martial policy) reinforces the conclusion that the use of force is imperative, to be engaged no matter the costs and no matter the chances of success. This creates a powerful incentive to go 11  Charles-Philippe David, “Policy Entrepreneurs and the Reorientation of National Security Policy under the GW Bush Administration (2001–2004).” Politics & Policy, Vol. 43, No. 1 (2015), especially p. 77. 12  For a discussion of the conventional understanding of the stages of policymaking, see Jean-Frédéric Morin and Jonathan Paquin, “How to Identify and Assess a Foreign Policy?” in Foreign Policy Analysis (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018).

13  THE NECESSITY STANDARD AND DISCUSSIONS OF WAR IN THE US 

275

along with the decision as well as making it easier for policymakers to dodge questions regarding those factors. Third, given that the standard only allows for the use of force when alternatives are not viable, it focuses attention on the meaning and assessment of viability (in terms of patience and flexibility) in ways that help drive policy discussions: What characteristics of a policy make it viable with regard to relevant duties and vital interests? What must a policy accomplish for it to be deemed viable? What is viability? Is it an absolute or relative condition? Does viability mean immediate success, success in the future, or only the possibility that the other side will engage? Are acceptable outcomes of the crisis loosely defined, and therefore encompass possible compromises that negotiations produce? Or is the acceptable outcome precisely defined? Conversely, how far away from producing an acceptable outcome must alternatives be for them to be judged not viable? What sets the relevant timeframe? How long must alternatives be pursued before they are deemed not viable? While participants can and do supply various answers to these questions and provide different assessments of the situation even when they agree on how those questions are to be answered, note the nature of these questions. They generally do not address whether an alternative approach or the use of military force is the best or the most effective policy. The standard tends to deflect analysis away from that sort of comparison. Fourth, in drawing attention to the factors that help determine whether viable alternatives exist and vital interests and duties are at stake, the standard pushes policymakers to evaluate policies over time, and to reach conclusions based importantly on analyses of the past and future. In acting as a rule, the standard’s requirement that alternatives be deemed not viable for war to be justifiable compels policymakers to survey the history of attempts to resolve the conflict. What has been accomplished? Are there grounds for confidence that something will be accomplished in the future? Likewise, the standard’s requirement that vital interests and duties be at stake leads to discussions of the ongoing nature of threats. For how long has a threat existed? Will it persist if not forcibly addressed? Will it get worse if not addressed? Thus, the standard focuses attention on the history of those factors. Fifth, as noted above, the standard focuses attention on the problems involved with maintaining the status quo and the costs of doing nothing. What would be the outcome of employing a non-viable policy? What will happen if such policies continue, or they are discontinued but no other

276 

D. J. LORENZO

action taken? What will the future hold if military force is not used? Would allowing the status quo to continue constitute a dereliction of duty or the endangerment of vital interests in the future? If so, then military force must be used. If not, then allowing the status quo to continue would be the correct policy and the use of military force would not be justified because the nation can live with this situation, again even if using military force might create the optimal outcome.  ossible Effect on Responses to Conflict Management P In the context of rationalist discussions of conflict management tools, the use of the standard in internal policymaking discussions and externally in interactions with Congress and the public may affect the willingness and capacity of policymakers to respond to conflict management efforts by other parties.13 This is because policymakers who invoke the imperative side of the standard put aside the costs of war. A rationalist analysis of conflict management conceives of the efficacy of both coercive (deterrence and compellence) and non-coercive (reassurance, diplomacy, mediation, adjudication) tools at the disposal of participants in the conflict and parties outside the conflict as built on calculations of costs. Coercive tools communicate the willingness of an actor to raise the costs for another state to escalate or further a conflict; leaders then factor this communication into their analysis. Non-coercive tools communicate the desire of another actor to lower the costs of compliance through the de-escalation and peaceful settlement of the conflict; leaders likewise factor this communication into their analysis. In internal discussions, a prominent use of the standard and the corresponding neglect of costs can have various effects given this way of understanding conflict management. A policy of patience with alternatives will give time for the development and deployment of non-coercive tools on both sides, the welcoming of reassurance and diplomatic efforts by the other side of the conflict or third parties, and a willingness to accept that conflict management tools are viable. Here, efforts by other actors to lower the costs associated with alternatives or the status quo could affect a decision whether to use military force. However, given a policy of impatience with alternatives and an inflexible bottom line, or given a conclusion that the imperative side of the standard is operational, this analysis predicts that policymakers will disregard or ignore efforts by others to influence US policy by employing conflict management tools. This is  For one example, see Richard Ned Lebow, Avoiding War, Making Peace (Springer, 2017).

13

13  THE NECESSITY STANDARD AND DISCUSSIONS OF WAR IN THE US 

277

because in dismissing the viability of alternatives, the conclusion has already been reached that, by definition, lowering the costs of tolerating the status quo is not possible, and/or because further attempts by other parties to raise the costs of using military force has no purchase given the principled nature of the decision to use large-scale military force. In discussions involving the public, the invocation of the imperative side of the standard also leaves policymakers with little room to maneuver when other parties employ conflict management tools. Policymakers are tied to a policy of using military force by an argument that puts aside, ignores, or emphatically rejects a discussion of costs of war. The decision is characterized as principled, not utilitarian. Coupled with the urgency with which an imperative use of the standard frames the crisis and the high bar the restrictive side of the standard presents, policymakers’ domestic credibility is on the line in such situations, raising significantly the price they would have to pay domestically for responding positively to attempts at conflict management by other parties even if they so wished. They can, as we have seen with the debates over Gulf Wars I and II, safely employ compellence and other forms of coercive diplomacy during a conflict after the imperative side of the standard has been invoked. But to react affirmatively to conflict management efforts by other parties or to re-initiate non-­ coercive efforts which would entail compromise once they and others have invoked the imperative side of the standard exposes policymakers to devastating charges of weakness, waffling, appeasement, or betrayal.14

Conclusion We see that official responses to the possibility of war raises two important sets of questions everyone should contemplate. First, when should wars be fought? How long should the US endure conflict? How far should it pursue alternatives? Which alternatives should it pursue? How willing should it be to compromise and cut deals? How long should it endure blows to its reputation, dangers to its trade, or threats to its security, citizens, or preferred world order before it goes to war? Under what circumstances, if any, should the US move immediately to war? Second, for what purposes should it fight? What are America vital interests and duties? Should it 14  For example, see David Greenberg, “Syria Will Stain Obama’s Legacy Forever,” Foreign Policy, December 29, 2016, https://foreignpolicy.com/2016/12/29/obama-neverunderstood-how-history-works/.

278 

D. J. LORENZO

restrict itself to a traditional and mainly nationalist menu that features exclusively the defense of the homeland, trade, sovereignty, citizens’ interests, and its own values? Or should it venture further to create or defend a global order, defend values in general, or engage in humanitarian or order-­ bringing enterprises? Thinking through these questions inevitably entails addressing the historical and cultural elements that have informed policy discussions over time, including the norms, arguments, and historical materials discussed in Chap. 2. Which norm is most important? How should we rank norms? Which arguments are persuasive? Should we continue to accept colonial arguments regarding the dangers wars pose to our political system? How closely should historical materials, such as the Federalist and Anti-Federalist Papers, the Declaration of Independence, and Washington’s speeches, confine our understandings of war and peace now and into the future? The findings addressing the institutionalization, use, and impact of the Necessity Standard contained here also suggest further avenues of scholarly and normative exploration. One is the persistence of the Necessity Standard into the future. Will it continue to be the standard that presidents and other policymakers use to work their way through issues of war and peace and justify the use of major military force? Should it continue? One possibility is that as American political culture changes through time and the distance from the Founding increases, the cultural elements that support the standard will fade, leading to its modification or replacement. We have already seen that its interpretation over time has changed, from a predominantly restrictive understanding in which patience with alternatives was great, flexibility expansive, and the list of vital interests and duties short, to include in some understandings an impatience with alternatives, considerable rigidity, and a long list of vital interests and duties. We have also seen attempts at augmenting or replacing it with a more complete version of the Rational Actor Model. But the standard has already persisted over more than two centuries, through changing domestic contexts, changes in America’s relative power, and significant shifts in the global system and America’s place in that system. The other important avenue of exploration entails the search for the standard in situations other than those that implicate the large-scale use of force against other states.15 What of small interventions? The plethora of 15  Though not part of this study, it is apparent that Abraham Lincoln invoked the standard when he discussed his decision to use force against the South at the beginning of the Civil War. See his Address to Congress, July 4, 1861.

13  THE NECESSITY STANDARD AND DISCUSSIONS OF WAR IN THE US 

279

the former might suggest the use of a more utilitarian standard. An examination of the rationales for using force against the Amerindian nations would also be of interest not only to judge the degree to which the standard was used outside the contexts explored here, but also to compare and contrast associated policymaking, justifications, invocations of cultural views, and norms.

Index1

A Acheson, Dean, 154 Adams, John, 22, 42, 56–58, 101 Adams, John Quincy, 45n8, 56–58, 79, 122, 166, 241 Adams-Onis Treaty, 63, 81 Aggression argument, 159, 180, 205 Aguinaldo, Emilio, 91 Alger, R.A., 104, 105 Allison, Graham, 4, 5, 15, 167 Al Qaeda, 33, 220, 221, 227, 237, 238, 248, 251 America First, 139, 148, 151, 250, 253, 265 Arguments legitimizing war nationalist, 31–32 realist, 30–31 values, 32–33 Authorization for use of Military Force against Iraq Resolution of 2002, 226

B Bach, Alfred, 81 Baker, Newton, 127 Balance of Power Argument, 61 Barkley, Alben, 121, 121n18, 122 Bas vs. Tingy, 46n10, 57n36, 75 Berlin Airlift, 153 Brutus, 22, 23 Buchanan, James, 82, 83 Bundy, William, 192, 193 Bush, George H.W., 100n26, 198–207, 211–218, 227, 228, 231, 232, 234, 235, 258, 262, 264, 266 security and military policies, 215–216, 234 use of Necessity Standard, 204–215 Bush, George W., 219–226, 237–241, 244, 246, 258, 260–262, 264, 266, 273 security and military policies, 238, 239 use of Necessity Standard, 226–239

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to note in the cited source.

1

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 D. J. Lorenzo, War and American Foreign Policy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-66695-8

281

282 

INDEX

C Cairo Conference, 137 Calhoun, John, 67, 72, 75, 75n16 Carter Doctrine, 209, 209n20, 212, 261 Carter, Jimmy, 209, 210, 267 Cass, Lewis, 74–78, 74n15, 75n16 Cheney, Richard, 219, 239, 273 China, People’s Republic of (PRC), 172, 179, 180, 192 Clay, Henry, 49, 53, 54, 54n28 Clinton, Bill, 219, 234, 236, 267, 273 Cold War, 153–169, 172, 180, 187, 190–192, 201, 207–209, 209n20, 216, 221, 225, 234, 235, 240, 266 Congress, 4, 7, 8, 32, 40, 42, 47n11, 49, 57, 58, 66, 68, 69, 69n8, 74, 74n15, 75, 80, 82, 89, 90, 96, 102, 104, 106, 109, 111, 113, 116, 118, 120, 122, 126–128, 126n27, 132, 138–142, 139n12, 144, 146, 149n29, 154, 175, 182, 194, 199, 214, 219, 220, 228, 236, 248, 251, 257, 270, 272, 276 Coolidge, Calvin, 144 Credibility argument, 177 Cuba, 88–100, 93n13, 102–107, 180, 190, 256, 271, 272 Cuban Missile Crisis, 5, 188 D Dauber, C., 4, 211 de Gaulle, Charles, 194, 195 de Santa Anna, Antonio López, 63, 64, 66, 67 Declaration of Independence, 21, 26, 40, 79, 278 Democracy argument, 34 Democratic/Liberal Security Proposition, 7, 12, 30, 34–37,

40, 46, 66, 70, 79, 106, 114, 115, 118, 122, 124, 126, 128, 129, 132–134, 141, 142, 148, 152, 161, 163, 164, 168, 169, 187, 201, 204, 221, 224, 229, 241, 262, 264, 266 Deterrence argument, 50, 70 Diplomacy, 14, 18, 37, 47, 48, 50–53, 58, 59, 64n1, 69–73, 76, 80–82, 84, 85, 96–98, 100–103, 105, 116, 118, 120, 121, 140–143, 145–147, 150, 151, 161, 162, 165, 166, 180, 181, 183–185, 188, 190, 196, 202, 203, 205–207, 211, 215, 220, 224, 227–231, 235, 238–240, 248, 249, 254, 256, 258, 268, 269, 271, 272, 276, 277 Doenecke, Justus, 120n16 Domino Theory, 31, 159, 164, 172, 176, 177, 179, 180, 186, 192, 196, 205, 216, 221, 266 Dulles, John Foster, 167, 192 E Eisenhower Doctrine, 185 Eisenhower, Dwight, 173, 174, 176, 185–190, 216, 258, 273 Existing Hostilities argument, 49, 74, 98, 138, 139, 142, 227, 229, 237 F Fillmore, Millard, 88 Fisher, Louis, 69n7 Floyd, M.R., 116n11 Formosa (Taiwan), 154, 157, 165, 167 Forward Defense argument, 34 Fourteen Points, 112, 115 Freedom argument, 34

 INDEX 

Fulbright, J. William, 182, 182n32, 183 Futility argument, 69, 73, 98, 100, 120, 157, 181, 183, 190, 206, 237 G Goldwater, Barry, 184, 185, 196 Grant, Ulysses S., 88, 97, 102–104, 256 Great Britain, 24, 29, 31, 45, 47, 80, 81, 109, 110, 153, 217 Greece, 153, 155, 164, 180, 192 Gulf War I contexts of, 197–200 Justifications of, 210 Gulf War II contexts of, 217–220 justifications of, 12, 262 H Haas, Richard, 5 Hamilton, Alexander, 23, 55, 56, 74 Haralson, H.A., 73, 74, 76, 78 Harding, Warren, 143, 164 Harris, Oren, 141–143 Hatch, Orrin, 204–206 Hayden, Michael, 4 Hendrickson, David, 31 Ho Chi Minh, 172, 181 Hoar, George, 100–102 Hoover, Herbert, 145 Hoyer, Steny, 228–230, 228n12 Hughes, Karen, 238 Hull, Cordell, 139n12, 145, 146, 149, 150 Humanitarian argument, 34 Hunt, Michael, 9, 11 Hussein, Saddam, 198–207, 205n14, 206n15, 214–218, 220–226, 229–233, 235, 238–241, 274

283

I International law, 14, 14n1, 18, 20, 28, 32, 41, 44, 46, 47, 97, 102, 109, 110, 118, 119, 121, 123–125, 128, 144, 145, 155, 156, 159, 160, 182, 187, 200, 201, 207, 234 International norms, 14, 27, 31, 43, 45, 46, 58, 61, 112–114, 143, 156, 157, 160, 178, 183, 187, 204, 215, 222, 225, 244, 246, 247, 250, 252, 254, 265 International order argument, 34 Iran, 167, 192, 197, 198, 207, 218, 241, 243, 245, 248, 251 Iran-Iraq War, 197 Iraq, 18, 19, 33, 197–202, 198n3, 204, 206, 207, 212–233, 235, 236, 238–240, 243, 244, 248, 249, 251, 253, 260, 270, 273, 274 J Jackson, Andrew, 63, 64n1, 80, 81 Jacksonian policies, 265 Jacobson, Matthew, 95n17 Jay, John, 24, 28 Jay Treaty, 41, 42 Jefferson, Thomas, 22, 28, 31, 42, 48, 50, 51, 54–56, 58, 59, 71, 72 response to threats to trade, 58 on the use of the military, 31, 71, 72 Johnson, Lyndon, 175–182, 184, 185, 190, 192, 193, 195–196, 201, 207, 216, 258, 260, 262, 264, 273 security and military policies, 258 use of necessity standard, 182–185, 190, 193 Jonas, Peter, 65n2 Just War Theory, 4, 16, 16n7

284 

INDEX

K Kellog-Briand Pact, 4, 145 Khong, Yuen Foong, 4 Kim Il Sung, 154 Korea, 153–169, 180, 185, 186, 192, 194, 241, 245, 261, 262, 268 Kuwait, 198–207, 212, 213, 215, 217, 218, 227, 230 L Lansing, Robert, 126n27, 127, 273 League of Nations, 112, 124, 131, 145, 163, 186 Lebow, Richard, 3n2, 4n10 Lend-Lease, 134, 148, 149, 151, 163, 164, 178 Libya, 243, 245, 246, 248 Local order argument, 34 Long, John, 104 Loveman, Brian, 57, 61n44, 168 M Madison, James, 24, 27, 42–54, 56–61, 69, 83–85, 91, 117, 177, 215, 240, 256, 263, 264, 272 security and military policies, 59–61 suspicion of wars, 60 use of the necessity standard, 59, 83 McCain, John, 230–233, 239 McCormack, John, 161, 161n10, 162 McDonough, Matthew, 74n14 McKinley, William, 89–98, 100–107, 100n24, 104n28, 200, 256, 257, 265, 272 security and military policies, 239 use of necessity standard, 100, 104, 105 McMahon, Brien, 160 McNamara, Robert, 193–195

Mead, Walter, 11, 31, 32, 61n44 Meernik, James, 3n4 Mexican-American War, 63–65 contexts of, 63–65 Mexico, 63–85, 111, 121, 125, 126n26, 257, 261, 262, 264, 271 Monroe Doctrine, 78–80, 88n1, 132, 168, 210, 264, 265 Monroe, James, 29, 29n31, 31, 31n34, 48, 77n19, 78, 79, 79n22 Munich Paradigm, 161, 163, 177, 179, 180, 182, 196, 203, 216, 269, 273 N Necessity Standard definition of, 13–40 differences from other standards and conceptions, 14 impact on policymaking, 255 impact on the public, 255 origins, 12, 13, 21–29, 255, 270 uses by members of Congress, 4, 40 uses by presidents, 4, 21, 40, 228, 278 Neutral trade, 41–43, 46, 56, 57, 61, 113, 117, 128, 261 9/11 attacks, 219, 225, 236, 237, 239 Nixon Doctrine, 207, 209n20, 250 Norms Constitutional, 38, 43, 52, 117 General Welfare, 10, 13, 51, 81, 93, 99, 114, 116, 119, 193, 204 Security, 66, 73, 137, 160, 222 Values, 125, 134, 143, 155, 167, 200 North Korea, 154, 155, 159, 160, 241, 243, 249, 258 NSC 168, 165, 168, 240 NSC 162, 164

 INDEX 

285

O Obama, Barack, 12, 243–248, 251–253, 267 Offner, John, 106n34 Ostend Manifesto, 88, 88n2, 89 O’Sullivan, John, 81n26 Owen, John, 61n44

security and military policies, 132, 162 use of Necessity Standard, 149–150 Rosenthal, A.M., 205n14 Rusk, Dean, 181, 190, 190n47, 191, 191n48, 192n50, 193

P Patterson, Eric, 7n17, 19 Peace argument, 34 Pentagon Papers, 172 Philippines islands, 87–107 Pinheiro, John, 67n3 Platt Amendment, 91, 91n11 Polk, James K., 64–85, 80n24, 88, 119, 141, 238, 240, 257, 262, 264, 265 security and military policies, 83–85 Powell, Colin, 4n8, 213, 215n38, 238 Project for a New American Century, 219, 273

S Sanctions, 6, 13, 44, 52, 80, 198, 199, 202–205, 207, 212, 213, 217, 218, 222, 225, 230, 231, 233, 235, 238, 239, 245, 251, 254, 271 Schmidt, Vivian, 10 Schroeder, J., 8n20, 68n6 Security and military policies presidential discussions of, 7 types of, 256–267 Security argument, 34, 36, 70, 106, 133, 164, 229, 232 Self-determination argument, 34 Siegel, Isaac, 120, 120n17 Slidell, John, 82 Soderberg, Nancy, 235 Solarz, Stephen, 206, 206n16, 207 Sovereignty argument, 34 Soviet Union/Russia, 80, 81, 154, 158, 159, 163, 165, 199, 208, 210, 234, 235, 243, 248, 254 Spain, 29, 80, 81, 87–107, 257, 261, 262, 264, 271 Spanish-American War, 106n34 contexts, 87–91 Stalin, Joseph, 154, 154n1 Syria, 33, 33n41, 33n42, 243, 244, 247, 247n7, 248, 249n12, 251–253

Q Quasi War, 42, 57 R Rally around the flag phenomenon, 267–268 Rational Actor Model, 1, 5, 6, 15, 271, 278 Reputation argument, 77, 161, 189 Roosevelt, Franklin, 132–141, 132n2, 143, 145–148, 148n28, 149n29, 150–152, 162–164, 167–169, 168n20, 177, 216, 221, 234, 245, 257–260, 262, 264, 266, 271

286 

INDEX

T Taft, William Howard, 123, 123n19, 124, 128, 129 Teller Amendment, 90, 94n15 Tonkin Gulf Incident, 175 Tonkin Gulf Resolution, 175, 179, 182, 193, 194 Trade argument, 51 Truman, Harry, 121n18, 154–165, 167–169, 187, 188, 202, 215, 216, 241, 258, 260, 262–264, 267, 273 security and military policies, 162, 187 use of necessity standard, 160–169, 187 Trump, Donald, 12, 243, 244, 248–254, 267 Turner, George, 100, 101 Tyler, John, 71 U UN Security Council, 20, 200, 202, 212, 216, 234 V Van Buren, Martin, 71, 80, 80n24 Versailles, Treaty of, 131 Vietnam War contexts of, 171–175 justifications of, 190 W Walzer, Michael, 7n17, 18, 19 War preventative war, 167, 217–241, 247 types of wars, initiation of wars, 15 types of wars, war aims, 10, 18, 19, 30, 36, 37, 51, 67, 67n4, 78,

94, 96, 96n18, 99, 107, 111, 112, 115, 119n15, 122, 129, 131, 134, 136, 142, 143, 175, 175n14, 229, 237 War of 1812 contexts of, 41–42 justifications of, 1 Washington, George, 28, 41, 46n10, 48, 50, 54, 56, 57, 101, 105, 143, 278 Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs), 201, 202, 205, 215, 217, 218, 220–222, 224–227, 229–233, 235, 236, 236n22, 238–241, 245, 247, 256, 258, 260, 274 Weinberger Doctrine, 7n17, 210, 211n24, 267 Wiley, Alexander, 142, 142n18, 143 Wilson, Woodrow, 109–129, 110n2, 124n21, 126n26, 126n27, 131, 134, 138, 144, 151, 152, 163, 169, 215, 221, 257, 262, 264, 271–273 security and military policies, 128 use of Necessity Standard, 120–127 Wolfowitz, Paul, 219 Woodford, Stewart, 105 Woodward, Bob, 4n8, 213, 215n38, 219n3, 238 World War I contexts of, 109–111 justifications of, 32 World War II contexts of, 143, 208 justifications of, 134, 151 Z Zimmerman Telegram, 111, 118, 119, 119n15, 128