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Framing the “Great Debate” on World War II

By Wendy McElroy | FFF | December 2, 2011

From September 1939 to December 1941, Americans debated the role the United States should play in World War II, which was then ravaging Europe. Should America actively support the Allies, especially Britain, by providing direct financial and indirect military aid? Or should America maintain its traditional role of nonintervention? (World War I had been the sole exception.)

In 1941, the dispute intensified into what has been called the Great Debate, although the term is sometimes used to describe the entire discussion. Throughout most of the year, conflict raged in Congress, over radio waves, in print, on soap boxes, in lecture halls, from pulpits, and over kitchen tables.

Those who wanted to intervene had the great advantage of presidential power, but it is not clear which side would have prevailed had the debate continued. But on the morning of December 7, 1941, the Japanese bombed the U.S. Naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. On December 8, the United States declared war on Japan. On the 11th, Germany and Italy declared war on the United States; America reciprocated. Discussion was effectively over.

Defining the debate

In general terms, those who wanted to intervene argued that American security rested on defeating Germany, and so America should actively assist Britain and the Allied powers, largely through supplying their war needs (few called for military involvement before Pearl Harbor). The other side argued that America had no vital interest in the conflict. Active assistance would draw America directly into the war and, so, deeply damage America economically, politically, and in terms of lives lost.

The debate is often portrayed as “internationalists” versus “isolationists,” but this characterization is misleading. The so-called internationalists were often sympathetic to only a few favored nations. They were often “isolationist” or protectionist in other areas such as trade, where they advocated high tariffs to favor domestic goods and labor. Moreover, their definition of internationalism sometimes devolved to an advocacy of American dominance rather than that of global partnership.

The “isolationists” are even more difficult to fit under one label. In his essay “American Anti-Interventionist Tradition,” Justus Doenecke observed that

So-called isolationists often sought to increase foreign trade, endorsed noncoercive forms of international organization, fostered cultural interchange, and supported relief and recovery. In fact, they might take pains to deny they were isolationists, preferring the name anti-interventionist, neutralist, or nationalist.

What united them was a common opposition to America’s entry into World War II. The reasons for opposition varied as widely as did their political makeup, which spanned from far Right to far Left.

A more accurate description of the debate, therefore, is interventionist versus anti-interventionist.

The timing of the debate was significant in at least two ways.

First: Around the globe — e.g., in Germany, Italy, Japan, and the Soviet Union — national-security states were consolidating. These were states at perpetual war with “the enemy,” both external (hostile nations) and internal (dissident citizens). America would either be drawn into a scenario created by such states or it would maintain neutrality and, so, remain American. Many noninterventionists believed that war would replace the free American system with government control in the form of labor conscription, monopolies, military-industrial corporations, price controls, and so on.

Second: Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) had assumed the presidency (1933–1945) with a clear focus upon domestic policy, especially the economy. Only as fascism spread across Europe and communism across Asia did FDR’s attention significantly shift to foreign policy.

Then, on September 1, 1939, Germany invaded Poland. Two days later, Britain and France declared war on Germany. Prior to the invasion of Poland, FDR’s foreign policy had stressed the protection of America’s strategic and economic interests in Europe. Afterward, America’s position remained officially neutral but FDR clearly favored the Allies. For example, in a September 3rd “fireside chat” broadcast, he declared neutrality, but he also waited two days before invoking the Neutrality Acts, so that the Allies could quickly buy the war materials they needed without impediment.

Prelude to the great debate

On September 21, FDR asked a special session of Congress to revise the Neutrality Acts to allow a policy of “cash-and-carry.” The policy allowed America to sell war materials to any belligerent who paid up front and assumed all risk of transportation. In effect, however, cash-and-carry assisted Britain and not Germany because the latter was cash-strapped and unable to travel safely across a British-dominated Atlantic. Thus the policy preserved a veneer of neutrality while aiding Britain and boosting the American economy.

Prominent anti-interventionists openly challenged FDR. Today, the best remembered of these voices may be Senator Robert A. Taft, but back then the one man with sufficient public appeal to counter FDR’s own was the renowned aviator Charles Lindbergh. In September, Lindbergh began broadcasting a series of speeches over the radio. The first, entitled “America and European Wars” argued that “by fighting for democracy abroad we may end by losing it at home.” Lindbergh also published articles in popular print venues such as Reader’s Digest. Although he was far from alone in his advocacy — for example, Senator Gerald P. Nye vociferously opposed the cash-and-carry policy — it was Lindbergh who was its popular voice.

During this time, the conflict in Europe entered a phase now known as the Phoney War. This period of inactivity spanned the winter 1939–1940.

In April 1940, the Phoney War ended when Germany invaded Denmark and Norway. Shortly afterward, Belgium, Holland, and France were invaded. Thus, an urgency suffused the debate.

At the same time, the British had taken huge losses in the materials they were shipping home due to German U-boat attacks; they could no longer afford a cash-and-carry arrangement. At a December 17 press conference, FDR proposed another policy, called Lend-Lease. FDR described Lend-Lease in terms of watching a neighbor’s house burn down. He asked, “What do I do in such a crisis? I don’t say … ‘Neighbor, my garden hose cost me $15; you have to pay me $15 for it’ — I don’t want $15 — I want my garden hose back after the fire is over.”

The policy aimed at giving the President broad power to “sell, transfer title to, exchange, lease, lend, or otherwise dispose of” war materials. This would have allowed FDR to give war material to Britain (and others) without immediate payment. Instead, the recipients would give the materials back after the war or simply pay for them then in some manner. A September 1940 agreement called Destroyers for Bases provided one precedent; 50 U.S. WWI destroyers were exchanged for leases on several military bases to which Britain held rights.

In his 1941 State of the Union address, FDR reiterated Lend-Lease and confirmed the fears of anti-interventionists who believed war would destroy the free American economy. FDR declared, “To change a whole nation from a basis of peacetime production of implements of peace to a basis of wartime production of implements of war is no small task.”

And, yet, the American people were in favor of actively assisting Britain. What they opposed was any direct entry into the war. A February 1941 Gallup poll found 54 percent of Americans approved of Lend-Lease without qualification; 15 percent approved with qualifications such as avoiding war; and 22 percent were absolutely against Lend-Lease.

In February, 1941, the Lend-Lease bill arrived at Congress, where it faced stiff opposition from Republicans. Nevertheless, the Democrat-dominated House voted along party lines and passed the bill; the Senate also secured passage. On March 11, the bill was signed into law. In April, the program was expanded to include China. America was now what FDR proudly called “the arsenal of democracy.” Neutrality was now a technicality.

The America First Committee

No organization better expresses the anti-interventionist side of the Great Debate than the America First Committee (AFC).

The immensely influential AFC was rooted in a student organization founded in 1940 by Yale Law School student and future CEO of Quaker Oats R. Douglas Stuart Jr., along with several other students, including future Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart and future President Gerald Ford. By September 7, the AFC announced its nationwide status and established headquarters in Chicago. It attracted high-profile activists including Lindbergh; Robert E. Wood, the chairman of Sears, Roebuck and Company; Alice Roosevelt Longworth, daughter of former President Theodore Roosevelt; John T. Flynn, a well-known journalist and founder of the New York chapter; Norman Thomas, a prominent socialist and pacifist; as well as Senators Burton K. Wheeler (D), David I. Walsh (D) and Gerald P. Nye (R).

On December 17, when FDR first proposed a Lend-Lease bill, the anti-interventionists were galvanized. The AFC aggressively criticized the policy as well as FDR the man. Calling FDR a liar, it petitioned nationwide for the enforcement of the Neutrality Act and to force FDR to fulfill his earlier pledge to stay out of war. The AFC announced four key principles to ensure America’s neutrality:

• The United States must build an impregnable defense for America.
• No foreign power, nor group of powers, can successfully attack a prepared America.
• American democracy can be preserved only by keeping out of the European war.
• “Aid short of war” weakens national defense at home and threatens to involve America in war abroad.

Passage of the Lend-Lease bill created more debate. For example, when Germany invaded the Soviet Union, the Lend-Lease program was extended to that nation; the AFC protested vehemently that Stalin was no better than Hitler. When FDR attempted to assist British ships in the Atlantic by ordering the U.S. Navy to fire upon German submarines, the AFC accused him of waging war against Germany without a congressional declaration. At every step toward war, the AFC positioned itself as a barrier.

It sponsored rallies in small towns and cities, it promoted lectures and radio broadcasts, it distributed useful data to members of Congress and published rousing literature. One circular asked “Are you willing to give up democracy?” and referred to Lend-Lease as a “war dictatorship bill” that handed “absolute power” to FDR.

With some genuine success, Edgar J. Hoover and the FBI countered the AFC’s momentum; they attempted to smear its members as pro-Nazi, anti-Semitic or subversive. Nevertheless, the organization continued to grow, simply because the majority of Americans did not want to enter the war. At its peak, AFC boasted approximately 800,000 members in several hundred chapters.

And then Pearl Harbor occurred. Popular opinion turned on a dime and favored the rapid declaration of war. On December 11, the same day Germany and Italy declared war on America, the AFC disbanded and released the statement,

Our principles were right. Had they been followed, war could have been avoided. No good purpose can now be served by considering what might have been, had our objectives been attained. We are at war.

Today, it is common to view the anti-interventionists as “isolationists” who naively under-estimated Hitler or espoused Fortress America. But, as Doenecke observed,

They were presenting a competing world vision … that force, separated from abstract principles of international law and self-determination of nations, merely institutionalized chaotic and destructive power politics.

Anti-interventionists were also presenting a competing domestic vision

that lengthy foreign conflicts would only weaken a nation, limiting the freedom and opportunities of Americans in ways that they thought crucial. In short, real dangers were internal, centering on the nature of the American republic as they had understood and experienced it.

~

Wendy McElroy is the author of The Reasonable Woman: A Guide to Intellectual Survival (Prometheus Books, 1998). She actively manages two websites: http://www.ifeminists.com and http://www.wendymcelroy.com.

December 4, 2011 Posted by aletho | Militarism, Timeless or most popular | Leave a comment

Nuclear Money Pit

America’s atomic arsenal is stuck in the Cold War era

By Kelley Beaucar Vlahos | The American Conservative | November 29, 2011

These days superpower nuclear-weapons controversies hardly elicit the excitement that once inspired such bumper-sticker slogans as, “you can’t hug children with nuclear arms.” The “no nukes!” movement has gone the way of the Cold War and MTV playing music videos, right?

In the 21st century, the 2002 Treaty of Moscow and 2010’s New START (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty) were supposed set the clock on bilateral warhead reduction, and there are no plans for the production of more nuclear weapons. Pretty cut and dried, one would think. But like everything radiating out of Washington, the atomic drawdown is not what it seems.

Despite a deficit reduction plan to cut $1.2 trillion in federal spending over 10 years and ongoing negotiations by the so-called supercommittee to identify cuts of $1.5 trillion more, members of Congress are pushing an expanded plutonium storage and production assistance facility at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. Critics say the facility is unnecessary, poorly designed, and dangerous—there are fault lines throughout the Los Alamos property—and its cost has ballooned from $375 million in 2001 to an estimated $5.5 billion today.

It hasn’t been built yet—in fact, the designs aren’t even finished after 10 years. But the Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement Nuclear Facility (CMRR-NF) has been soaking up taxpayer money all the same as the scope of the project has metastasized.

“The country doesn’t have money to pour into an unnecessary, giant boondoggle that has grown beyond all original expectations,” charges Greg Mello, executive director of the Los Alamos Study Group, probably the toughest grassroots opposition the CMRR-NF project faces right now. “When the cost of a facility increases by more than a factor of ten, even as the fundamental purposes are evaporating, it’s important to stop, to pause and to question whether this is the right thing to do.”

There is no doubt that the budget-cutting imperative is clashing with the old way of doing business on Capitol Hill, as pet projects and earmarks come under more scrutiny than ever. Bureaucratic institutions used to getting their way by easing expensive, potentially controversial programs under the radar are finding themselves squarely in critics’ sights.

That includes CMRR-NF, which has never been the subject of a public congressional hearing or passionate floor speech—much less a heated debate on cable TV or talk radio—but has been controversial nonetheless.

“I think the key is, it appears to be a huge waste of money and particularly in our current fiscal situation there is no need to hurry this thing at all,” says Peter Stockton, senior investigator for the Project on Government Oversight, which is currently working on its own CMRR-NF report.

•    •    •

The mission of National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), which is a semi-autonomous agency of the U.S. Department of Energy, is to “improve national security through the military application of nuclear energy.” It oversees Los Alamos and is in charge of the CMRR project.

Initially, the NNSA was merely focused on renovating the parts of Los Alamos’s old Chemistry and Metallurgy Research (CMR) building that were outmoded and deteriorating by the late 1990s. Tests had found faults running under the property that could cause dangerous earthquakes.

After President George W. Bush was elected, plans to improve and upgrade salvageable portions of the nearly 60-year-old CMR were scrapped, and NNSA set about designing a “simple” replacement facility with two buildings about a mile away. One, the Radiological Laboratory Utility Office Building, is not controversial and almost complete. The other—the NF in CMRR-NF—is a new nuclear facility that would support Los Alamos’s nuclear-weapons mission, including plutonium storage, and assist in the production of plutonium-based “pits,” the fissile cores of nuclear weapons. This currently takes place at the existing TA-55/PF-4 nuclear facility next to the proposed site.

The nuclear facility, according to its critics, has become a monster. Aside from the runaway cost estimates, according to Mello the envisioned facility would give TA-55/PF-4 the capacity to double the number of pits Los Alamos produces each year and could store up to six metric tons of plutonium, “enough to rebuild the entire U.S. strategic arsenal.” This when there are thousands of pits already in storage and a treaty with the Russians sharply limits the nuclear arsenal.

Even if the increase in pit production were necessary—and as Mello and others point out, with much of the information classified or otherwise unavailable to the public, it is hard to know—the existing lab could be upgraded to carry out Los Alamos’s publicly stated mission to refurbish the current stockpile. NNSA, critics complain, has so far refused to seriously consider any alternative.

“We think there are simpler, cheaper, faster alternatives to accomplishing their stated mission, though their stated missions are aggrandized to begin with,” says Los Alamos Study Group President Peter Neils, who was on Capitol Hill in late October to get the word out about CMRR-NF. He blames the out-of-control designs and spiraling cost on a mix of Cold War ideology, over-reliance on contractors, and the self-sustaining mentality of all bureaucracies.

Simply put, says Mello, “the warhead establishment and the Cold War hawks cannot let go of designing and building new kinds of warheads, to create what they call ‘end-to-end’ work for the weapons complex.”

•    •    •

As of June, the Federation of American Scientists reports, the U.S. had 1,950 operational strategic nuclear warheads, plus approximately 200 deployed on behalf of allied countries—Belgium, Turkey, Netherlands, Italy and Germany—and 2,850 in reserve. In addition, some 3,500 retired warheads are awaiting dismantlement. This all jibes with numbers issued by the State Department in 2010. START demands that the U.S. bring those deployed numbers down closer to 1,550 by 2018.

At its peak in 1967 during the Cold War, the nuclear stockpile was at 31,225 warheads. America had 22,217 when the Berlin Wall fell in 1989. If the Cold War were still on, say critics, we might need additional capacity to build pits. But as it is there are thousands of usable pits already in reserve, and the scientific consensus says the plutonium parts of the pits have a lifespan of at least 100 years. The U.S. arsenal is well stocked in this regard.

The new CMRR-NF would help Los Alamos’s TA-55/PF4 site boost production to a conservative estimate of 125 pits a year on a double shift, according to observers. 

This is as outrageous as it is unnecessary, claims Frank von Hippel, a professor and principal investigator at Princeton University’s Program on Science and Global Security, in an affidavit for the Los Alamos Study Group, which is trying to force NNSA’s hand in court.

“There is no anticipated need to produce new pits for U.S. nuclear weapons for several decades,” he writes. The oldest pit produced in the U.S. is 32 years old, he added, noting the current TA-55/PF-4’s production rate of 10 pits per year would be adequate for any replacements necessary during the modernization and maintenance that is already going on under the auspices of NNSA.

Critics say the entire landscape of nuclear-weapons production has changed since CMRR-NF was conceived—all in the direction of reducing the nuclear stockpile—yet every adjustment in the facility’s blueprints has resulted in more capacity to store plutonium and build additional pits.

Most notably, the Reliable Replacement Warhead, a new family of warheads conceived in 2004 and used as a chief justification for modernizing Los Alamos’s nuclear-weapons complex, was defunded by Congress and cancelled by the Obama Administration in 2009.

CMRR-NF “is being built to increase capacity for pit production, even though pit production is not what we need,” the Project on Government Oversight’s Stockton charges. NNSA did not respond to several phone calls for comment on these and other charges lobbed by the opposition.

A three-page “Questions and Answers Regarding the CMRR Project” issued by NNSA before the Reliable Replacement Warhead was canceled maintains that the “primary mission of CMRR will be to support the current nuclear weapons stockpile through surveillance and life-extension programs necessary for the nuclear weapons complex” and “the size of CMRR remains the same.” It blames the soaring expense on poor initial estimates, cost increases in “the construction industry worldwide,” and requirements relating to the seismic risks, nuclear quality assurance, and security. The words “fissile core” or “pit” are never mentioned.

NNSA also contends it has put alternatives up for public comment, most recently when it amended the plans under its Final Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement, which the agency says has incorporated “updated seismic safety design information.” (The Los Alamos Study Group disagrees and has filed a second lawsuit against NNSA, contending that it’s relying on outdated feasibility and impact studies, among other charges.)

Critics say that if the new facility’s mission is merely to help maintain the stockpile, the job could be handled at an improved and upgraded TF-22/P4 facility or elsewhere at a fraction of the cost. As for size, Mello says NNSA can longer say the facility is “the same”—the square footage might be, but the installation’s scope has certainly grown since 2001.

•    •    •

CMRR-NF is not without detractors on Capitol Hill. Over the years, its budget and plans have been questioned for all of the reasons already cited and more. Indeed, today’s fiscal environment has bolstered the criticism, with results that can be seen in competing House and Senate appropriations bills. (Some $450 million has been appropriated to CMRR since 2002.)

Calling it a “cost reduction strategy,” the House in July cut $100 million from NNSA’s $300 million request for CMRR-NF as part of the overall $30.6 billion Fiscal Year 2012 Water and Energy Appropriations package. “The [House and Water and Energy Subcommittee] fully supports the Administration’s plans to modernize the infrastructure, but intends to closely review the funding request for new investment to ensure those plans adhere to good project management practices,” the final bill reads.

By trimming the agency’s request by a third, the House is refusing to provide “the additional funding to support early construction” and would not do so until NNSA resolves “major seismic issues with design” and tames CMRR’s cost.

The Senate subcommittee, too, has expressed concerns. Pointing to the growing expense, its FY 2012 appropriations bill demands NNSA submit a contingency plan that would identify the cost and consequences of delaying the implementation of CMRR, as well as a planned Uranium Processing Facility at Oak Ridge, Tennessee—another project that has gone from an estimated $1.5 billion to upwards of $6.5 billion in the last five years. The committee also proposes to cut $60 million from the NNSA’s $300 million request for CMRR, but allows for preliminary “site preparation”—in other words, construction may begin on a project whose designs are not yet finished.

Mello and Neils have tried to convince lawmakers to put a permanent stop to CMRR-NF. It’s a difficult task, they say. Many legislators are hearing about the issue for the first time and might not be willing to plough through intimidating scientific and technical jargon to get at why this project is bad news.

And CMRR-NF already has momentum. Mike Lofgren, who spent 28 years on Capitol Hill as an aide on defense issues for the House and Senate Budget Committees, says this is bureaucracy in action, and anything relating to weapons systems is going to be expensive.

“It doesn’t surprise me that after a requirement has gone away, or the need has been severely curtailed, they would just continue on with this thing,” Lofgren tells TAC. “These projects get front-loaded by optimistic projections of their cost and overstatements of, ‘hey, we really need this thing,’ so you front-load them and politically engineer them by getting the local congressmen all hyped up by saying it’s going to create new jobs.”

When lawmakers start asking whether a particular project is really worth it, the response, Lofgren says, is always, “it’s too early to tell or too late to stop” and the effort will go on until the money is gone, mission accomplished or not. One need look no further than the $65 billion fleet of F-22 Raptors, which was grounded from May to August because of operational problems and has never seen a day of combat.

It’s hard to get a firm handle on how CMRR-NF has come to be apparently unstoppable because no wants to talk—neither the detractors on the Energy and Water Development Subcommittees, nor the project’s proponents, who have long been led by figures like Sen. John Kyl (R-Ariz.). In fact, reports at the time of Senate negotiations over New START indicate that as Republican Senate whip, Kyl was successful in obtaining additional funds for CMRR-NF in exchange for Senate GOP support for Obama’s treaty with the Russians. Kyl’s office did not return calls for comment.

A spokeswoman for Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-NM), known as a longtime supporter of the CMRR project, responded with a statement from the senator that hardly sounded like a ringing endorsement.

“The CMRR is an important project for [Los Alamos National Laboratory] and for New Mexico, but it is also important to be sure environmental and cost issues are fully addressed,” Bingaman said. “My top concern as the project has been developed continues to be safety and security of the proposed facility.”

Contractors, post-Cold War ideologues, and bureaucracy may keep the CMRR-NF project going, but those interests appear to be clashing directly with the forces of fiscal restraint and new environmental concerns. After the earthquake-spawned Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster in Japan last spring, fears over seismic hazards at Los Alamos have only grown.

Meanwhile, the Los Alamos Study Group insists its goal is not to stop the U.S. nuclear program, but to make it safer, more efficient and less expensive.

The nuclear-weapons establishment “could do their job more efficiently and more cheaply if they didn’t infuse their work with so much ideology and were just more practical and straightforward,” says Mello. And CMRR-NF is not the only program that might demand additional scrutiny. According to the New York Times, the facility is just one of a host of modernization projects that could cost taxpayers over $600 billion in the next decade.

Kelley Beaucar Vlahos is a Washington, D.C.-based freelance reporter and a columnist for Antiwar.com.

November 30, 2011 Posted by aletho | Militarism, Timeless or most popular | Leave a comment