the political context of foreign policy decisions

The founding premise of this site, and the evidence from much of my academic research over the years, is that domestic politics influences American foreign policy. And it's also true that international developments can in turn shape domestic politics.

I discovered the importance of understanding political context as I was writing my first research paper in college, a case study of how the Truman Administration responded to the Berlin blockade. A librarian helped me insert the microfilm rolls for the 1948 New York Times in the clunky reader. There on the front page for June 25 the lead story was not a story from Berlin, but one from Philadelphia, where the Republican National Convention had just nominated Thomas Dewey as its presidential candidate. That means, I realized, that every decision Truman made that day and following was shaped and colored by the 1948 election contest. No wonder he decided on a strong and firm response; no wonder he seized upon an airlift, despite predictions that it would be woefully insufficient.

You can write a paper just focusing on the foreign policy decisions and military planning. That's how today's Wikipedia account reads. But in fact the domestic political context was a powerful factor.

Recently I was reading an account of the 1940 election and the surprising nomination of Wendell Willkie by the GOP. Prior to the June 24 start of the convention in Philadelphia, Thomas Dewey and Robert Taft were the clear front runners, with Willkie, who had been a Democrat until the year before, a distant dark horse. There were 10 candidates on the first ballot.

Willkie won on the 6th ballot, partly because of favorite son concessions and thundering supporters in the gallery. But he also won because he was the only interventionist in the contest All of the others were hard or soft isolationists. And what happened on the very day the convention started? France surrendered to Germany an Compiegne. And what had happened on June 18, just after the fall of Paris? President Franklin Roosevelt named two senior Republican statesmen, Henry Stimson and Frank Knox, to the cabinet posts for the Army and Navy.

Hitler's triumph, France's collapse, and Britain's vulnerability were on everyone's mind. And Republicans knew that they needed someone who shared FDR's views on military strength if they were to beat him on domestic economic issues. In this case, the foreign developments shaped domestic politics.