I HAVE WRITTEN this book to emphasize the fact that the freedom of the people of the United States is in serious danger from the foreign policy of the present Administration.

I have frequently written of the danger to liberty at home from the constant increase in the activity, the spending, and the power of the Federal Government, but today the threat from foreign policy is even greater. We have wandered far from its true purpose to preserve the peace and liberty of the people of the United States. Even when the purpose has been correctly understood, mistakes of judgment have led us into dangerous paths. We are embarked on a voyage at this moment in which a continued failure of understanding and judgment may wreck the greatest adventure in freedom the human race has ever known.

Our forefathers came to a continent of forests, wide plains, and savages. They lived by the work of their own hands. Those who did not wish to work for another man opened new land for themselves. There was no trace in their hard, free life of a caste system or a feudal system or an inherited aristocracy.

More than a century before Marx was born a frontier equality in social relations gave us—and still gives us—an unequaled social democracy in the true sense of those Communist-perverted words. The pioneers, who carried with them one book, the Bible, also laid up for us a moral capital which has not yet been exhausted.

Today we face threats to our liberty and moral foundation from abroad and from our foreign and domestic programs. Distance has been so diminished by the airplane, and weapons have become so destructive, that this threat must be met on a world scale. If we are foolish in our use of our strength, we shall not survive; and with our freedom will disappear the little that remains of freedom in the rest of the world.

Power without foresight leads to disaster.-Our international relations have been conducted with so little foresight since 1941 that six years after vast military victories in Europe and Asia we face a more dangerous threat than any that has menaced us before. Our soldiers, sailors, marines, and airmen have not failed us. Our political leaders have.

By 1941 anyone who was not bamboozled by Soviet psychological warfare knew that the Soviet Government was a predatory totalitarian tyranny intent on establishing Communist dictatorship throughout the world. But our leaders failed to foresee that the Soviet Union would turn against us after the defeat of Germany and Japan. They made no attempt to insure our future against that eventuality. They brought forth no positive policy for the creation of a free and united Europe or for the preservation of the independence of China. They preferred wishful thinking to facts, and convinced themselves that Stalin would co-operate with them to create a free world of permanent peace. So at Teheran, Yalta, and Potsdam they handed Stalin the freedom of eastern Europe and Manchuria, and prepared our present peril.

Their foresight was such that in face of all the facts, as late as May 4, 1950, according to the New York Times, President Truman "asserted repeatedly that he saw no possibility that the 'cold war' would develop into a shooting war and even promised to reduce the defense budget next year."

On June 25, 1950, the Korean war began. The deaths and wounds that Americans have suffered there have at least served to educate our national Administration—after the event. It has been the most expensive education that the people of the United States have ever paid for.

What is the record?

In 1945, when Mr. Truman became President, the Soviet Union was exhausted. Much of its industry was destroyed. It had no atomic bomb, no long-range bombing planes, no serious navy. Its hold on eastern Europe was shaky. China was our ally and the Chinese Communists were hemmed into a small area.

President Truman held such power as no man had ever held before. Our air force was incomparably superior to any other. Our navy was more powerful than the combined navies of the rest of the world. Our army was a superb fighting force at the peak of efficiency. Our industrial plant, by far the greatest in the world, was intact. We alone had the atomic bomb which guaranteed the speedy destruction of any nation that might dare to risk war with us. We could have seized and held the initiative for the creation of a free and peaceful world. Our leaders did not know how or where to lead.

Today Stalin has atomic bombs and long-range bombers capable of delivering them on the United States. He has 175 Soviet divisions, and 60 satellite divisions in Europe, and a Chinese Communist army of about 3,000,000 in Asia. He has some 50,000 tanks and more than 15,000 tactical aircraft. His Indo-Chinese accomplices are draining the strength of the French Army. His guerrillas are withstanding the British Army in Malaya. He has riveted an iron control on eastern Europe.

China is his ally. To face Stalin's 225 divisions the Western democracies and ourselves are scheduled to have thirty divisions in Europe—perhaps—by the end of 1951. Moreover, Soviet psychological warfare has been so successful in Western Europe that one fourth of the French and one third of the Italians vote Communist.

In 1941 Stalin ruled 180 million subjects and was not sure that he or his empire would survive. In 1951 Stalin directs 800 million people. Unless our foreign policy is conducted more competently than it has been during the past ten years, our very survival is in doubt. There may be infinite arguments as to the wisdom of many steps in our foreign policy since 1943. But there can be little argument as to its results.

There is an old saying that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Our national administration has had good intentions.

We do not need to seek further than the Sermon on the Mount to know the first step we must take if freedom under God is to survive in our country and in the rest of the world: "A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit.

"Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire.

"Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them."

(Foreword by the Author: Senator Robert A. Taft)

Download A Foreign Policy for Americans by Robert A. Taft

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Made available in electronic form on Mises.org with the permission and encouragement of Robert Taft, the grandson of the author and former governor of Ohio.

About Robert A. Taft:

Robert Alphonso Taft (September 8, 1889 - July 31, 1953), of the Taft political family of Ohio, was a Republican United States Senator and as a prominent conservative spokesman was the leading opponent of the New Deal in the Senate from 1939 to 1953. He led the successful effort by the Conservative coalition to curb legal favoritism for labor unions. He failed in his quest to win the Presidential nomination of the candidate of the Republican Party in 1940, 1948 and 1952.

U.S. Senator

Taft was elected to the first of his three terms as U.S. Senator in the election of 1938. Cooperating with conservative southern Democrats, he led the Conservative Coalition that opposed the "New Deal." The expansion of the New Deal had been stopped and Taft saw his mission to roll it back, bringing efficiency to government and letting business restore the economy. He criticized the New Deal as socialistic and attacked deficit spending, high farm subsidies, governmental bureaucracy, the National Labor Relations Board, and nationalized health insurance. He did, however, support social security and public housing. Taft set forward a conservative program oriented toward economic growth, individual economic opportunity, adequate social welfare, strong national defense, and non-involvement in European wars.

Taft was re-elected again in 1944 and in 1950, after high-profile contests fighting organized labor. He became chairman of the Senate Republican Conference in 1944.

Taft was a contender for the GOP presidential nomination in 1940, losing to charismatic Wendell Willkie. As a U.S. senator, he was given the nickname "Mr. Republican"; he was the chief ideologue and spokesperson for the paleoconservatism of the Republican Party of that era.

As a leader of the Old Right non-interventionist wing of the GOP he strove to keep the United States neutral during 1939-1941, and opposed the draft. He supported the general principles of the America First Committee but did not join it. However, he strongly supported the war effort after the Japanese Attack on Pearl Harbor.

1947 Taft-Hartley Labor Act

When the Republicans gained control of Congress in 1946, he focused on labor-management relations as chair of the Senate Labor Committee. Decrying the effect of the Wagner Act in tilting the balance toward labor, he wrote and passed over Truman's veto the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act, which remains the basic labor law as of 2006. It bans "unfair" union practices, outlaws closed shops, and authorizes the President to seek federal court injunctions to impose an eighty-day cooling-off period if a strike threatened the national interest.

Taft was reluctant in his support of farm subsidies, a position that hurt the GOP in the farm belt. Moving a bit to the left, he supported federal aid to education (which did not pass) and cosponsored the Taft-Wagner-Ellender Housing Act to subsidize public housing in inner cities. In terms of foreign policy he was non-interventionist and did not see Stalin's Soviet Union as a major threat. Nor did he pay much attention to internal Communism. The true danger he said was big government and runaway spending. He supported the Truman Doctrine, reluctantly approved the Marshall Plan, and opposed NATO as unnecessary and provocative. He took the lead condemning President Harry S. Truman's handling of the Korean War.

Presidential ambitions

Taft sought the GOP nomination in 1948 but it went to his arch-rival, Governor Thomas E. Dewey of New York. Taft relied on a national core of loyalists, but had trouble breaking through to independents, and hated to raise money. Taft tried again in 1952, using a strong party base. He promised his supporters that he would name Douglas MacArthur as candidate for Vice President, but was defeated by Dwight Eisenhower. After the convention Taft issued a brief statement conveying his congratulations and support to Eisenhower. Thereafter, however, he brooded in silence at his summer home in Quebec. As the weeks passed, Eisenhower's aides worried that the Taft forces would sit on their hands during the campaign. In September they finally arranged a meeting between the two leaders, at Morningside Heights in New York City. There, in order to gain Taft's support in the campaign, Eisenhower promised he would take no reprisals against Taft partisans, would cut federal spending, and would fight "creeping socialism in every domestic field." All along Eisenhower agreed with Taft on most domestic issues; their dramatic difference was in foreign policy. Eisenhower firmly believed in NATO and committed the U.S. to an active anti-Communist foreign policy.

Taft served as Senate Majority Leader in 1953, and he strongly supported Eisenhower's domestic proposals. He worked hard to assist the inexperienced new officials of the administration. He even tried–with little success–to curb the excesses of McCarthyism. By April the President and Taft were friends and golfing companions, and Taft was praising his former adversary. Defeat in 1952, it seemed, had softened Taft. No longer burdened by presidential ambitions, he had become less partisan, less abrasive, and more conciliatory.

Death and legacy

After contracting cancer in April 1953, Taft continued to work hard, but an exploratory operation in July revealed that the cancer was widespread. After a brain hemorrhage Taft died in a New York hospital on July 31, depriving the new administration of its ablest supporter on Capitol Hill. He is buried at Indian Hill Episcopal Church Cemetery in Cincinnati.

In 1957, a committee led by Senator John F. Kennedy selected Taft as one of five of their greatest Senate predecessors whose oval portraits would adorn the President's Room off the Senate floor. Kennedy would profile him in his book Profiles in Courage.

(From wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

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