Tomorrow, the World The Birth of U.S. Global Supremacy in World War II Stephen Alexander Wertheim Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 2015 © 2015 Stephen Wertheim All rights reserved ABSTRACT Tomorrow the World: The Birth of U.S. Global Supremacy in World War II Stephen Wertheim This dissertation contends that in 1940 and 1941 the makers and shapers of American foreign relations decided that the United States should become the world’s supreme political and military power, responsible for underwriting international order on a global scale. Reacting to the events of World War II, particularly the Nazi conquest of France, American officials and intellectuals concluded that henceforth armed force was essential to the maintenance of liberal intercourse in international society and that the United States must possess and control a preponderance of such force. This new axiom constituted a rupture from what came before and a condition of possibility of the subsequent Cold War with the Soviet Union and of U.S. world leadership after the Soviet collapse. Thus this dissertation argues against the teleological interpretations of two opposing sets of scholarship. The first set, an orthodox literature in history and political science, posits a longstanding polarity in American thinking between “internationalism” and “isolationism.” So conceived, internationalism favored global political-military supremacy from the first, needing only to vanquish isolationism in the arena of elite and popular opinion. The second, revisionist camp suggests the United States sought supremacy all along, driven by the dynamics of capitalism and the ideology of exceptionalism. By contrast, this dissertation uses methods of intellectual history in order to show that policy elites scarcely envisioned U.S. supremacy prior to 1940. Instead they widely identified with “internationalism,” understood then as the antithesis of power politics, not of isolationism. Prewar internationalists, in short, sought to replace armed force with peaceful intercourse in world affairs. The narrative begins, in Part I, with the decline of traditional ideas of internationalism, at first gradually in the 1930s and then decisively eight months into World War II in Europe. When the Nazis steamrolled France in May 1940, stunning the world, they swept away the old order and with it the assumptions of American internationalism. Now peaceful intercourse, far from replacing armed force, seemed paradoxically to depend upon armed force to undergird it. In official and especially semiofficial circles, American postwar planners scrambled to map the international area required to safeguard U.S. geopolitical and economic interests. They swapped continents in and out before concluding, by the autumn, that America’s living space spanned the globe. Simultaneously, the Axis powers shattered the fundaments of British imperial power, presenting the opportunity for the United States to take the lead. Out of the death of nineteenth-century internationalism and British world leadership, U.S. global supremacy was born. In 1941 policy elites conceived how to achieve world leadership, the subject of Part II. At first they hardly wished to set up a new world organization to replace the failed League of Nations. They preferred a permanent partnership with Great Britain and its white Dominions, a vision that President Franklin D. Roosevelt endorsed. Projecting a postwar cold war between the Anglosphere and a Nazi-dominated Europe, planners thought the “English-speaking peoples,” America chief among them, would police most of the world. Soon, however, planners perceived a problem. U.S. supremacy, especially in partnership with Britain, sounded imperialistic. If asked to play power politics, the American people might refuse to lead. Preoccupied with domestic public opinion, policy elites launched a campaign to legitimate U.S. political-military preeminence. From 1942 to 1945, as Part III recounts, they achieved what they conceived. They popularized a narrative that turned armed supremacy into the epitome of “internationalism,” redefined in opposition to their newly coined pejorative “isolationism.” Then they revived world organization after all, less to eliminate war or promote law than to cleanse U.S. power in the eyes of the American public as well as foreign states. Harnessing the resonance of prior efforts to end power politics in the name of internationalism, the United Nations Organization became an instrument to implement power politics. Table of Contents List of Abbreviations................................................................................................ ii Acknowledgements................................................................................................. iii Dedication............................................................................................................... vi Introduction............................................................................................................. 1 I. WORLD LEADERSHIP EMERGENT Foreign policy elites adopt supremacy as an objective Chapter 1: Internationalism before “Isolationism,” 1815-1940........................... 27 Chapter 2: World War for World Order, May-December 1940.......................... 83 II. THE WILL TO LEAD THE WORLD Foreign policy elites conceive how to achieve supremacy Chapter 3: The Anglo New Order of 1941......................................................... 129 III. LEGITIMATING SUPREMACY Foreign policy elites achieve what they conceived Chapter 4: Instrumental Internationalism, 1941-1943........................................ 182 Chapter 5: The Debate that Wasn’t, 1942-1945................................................. 227 Conclusion........................................................................................................... 271 t Bibliography......................................................................................................... 275 i List of Abbreviations AB Adolf Berle Papers, Franklin Delano Roosevelt Library AJT Arnold J. Toynbee Papers, University of Oxford AS Arthur Sweetser Papers, Library of Congress AW Arnold Wolfers Papers, Yale University CDA Committee to Defend America by Aiding the Allies Papers, Princeton University CFRP Council on Foreign Relations Papers, Princeton University CFRWPS Studies of American Interests in the War and the Peace, Council on Foreign Relations Library, New York, NY CW Charles Webster Papers, London School of Economics EB Edwin Borchard Papers, Yale University EME Edward Mead Earle Papers, Princeton University ER Elihu Root Papers, Library of Congress FFF Fight for Freedom Papers, Princeton University FRUS Foreign Relations of the United States HFA Hamilton Fish Armstrong Papers, Princeton University HH Harry Hopkins Papers, Franklin Delano Roosevelt Presidential Library HN Harley Notter Files, National Archives II HRL Henry R. Luce Papers, Library of Congress JFD John Foster Dulles Papers, Princeton University JS James Shotwell Papers, Columbia University LP Leo Pasvolsky Files, National Archives II ND Norman H. Davis Papers, Library of Congress PJ Philip Jessup Papers, Library of Congress PPF President’s Personal File, Franklin Delano Roosevelt Presidential Library PSF President’s Secretary’s File, Franklin Delano Roosevelt Presidential Library QW Quincy Wright Papers, University of Chicago RLB Raymond Leslie Buell Papers, Library of Congress SW Sumner Welles Papers, Franklin Delano Roosevelt Presidential Library WL Walter Lippmann Papers, Yale University WS Whitney Shepardson Papers, Franklin Delano Roosevelt Presidential Library WWF Woodrow Wilson Foundation Papers, Princeton University YIIS Yale Institute for International Affairs Papers, Yale University ii Acknowledgements In certain lights, this dissertation looks like the one I vaguely envisioned writing when I entered graduate school. Mostly, it is nothing like that dissertation. Thank goodness. More precisely, thanks are due to many people at Columbia and beyond. They begin with my committee. I am inordinately fortunate that Matt Connelly, my supervisor, brought me to Columbia. He provided tireless support throughout my studies and in every way — personal, professional, intellectual. As promised, he also picked up the tab: my turn now. Duncan Bell gave me a bounty of stimulating comments and oriented me to the University of Cambridge. Mark Mazower’s influence appears everywhere in these pages, or those worth reading. We pieced through the history of internationalism at a formative moment, and I am particularly grateful for his intellectual companionship. Anders Stephanson encouraged and challenged me in the right ways, at the right times. Not to put too fine a point on it, but I possess no better writing device than: “what would Anders say.” Marilyn Young provided exceedingly generous and incisive guidance. Especially in the closing months, her careful editing and boundless encouragement were indispensable. I also want to thank, from my college training, Robert David Johnson, Erez Manela, Ernest R. May, and Daniel Sargent: they made me a historian and continue to inspire my interest in American diplomatic history. Many thanks to those who read and commented on chapters or related papers, including Alan Brinkley, Ted Fertik, Anne L. Foster, Arunabh Ghosh, Michaela Hoenicke-Moore, Andrew Kinney, Joris Larik, Philippa Levine, Rebecca Lissner,