Foreign Policy Non-interventionism

[Ramen]

Ron Paul’s foreign policy of nonintervention is clearly in line the policy of President George Washington (and Thomas Jefferson. Paul’s foreign policy is also in line with the policy held by John Quincy Adams, Secretary of State (1817-1825) and our sixth President (1825-1829) and the policy held by Republican Senator Robert Taft, the chief ideologue and acknowledged leader of the conservatism of the Republican party from 1939 to 1953. Let’s take a look at the facts through the timeline of historical events:

April 19, 1775: Minutemen engage British troops at Lexington and Concord. “The shot heard’ round the world” sparks the revolutionary war.
July 4th, 1776: Congress adopts the Declaration of Independence.

February 6, 1778: The United States and France sign the Treaty of Alliance - a defensive alliance which promised support in the event of attack by British Forces. Since this treaty had no termination date, it eventually came to be seen by Washington as an entangling alliance.

The first 4 articles of the treaty establish that in the case that war were to break out between France and Britain, during the continuing hostilities of the American Revolutionary War, a military alliance would be formed between France and the United States which would combine each respective military’s forces, and efforts for the direct purpose of maintaining the " liberty, Sovereignty, and (independence) absolute and unlimited of the said united States, as well in Matters of (Government) as of commerce.

Article 12 establishes the agreement as a conditional treaty which will only take effect upon a declaration of war “between France and Britain”. I invite you to review the terms of the treaty here:

Treaty of Alliance Between The United States and France; February 6, 1778
http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fr1788-2.asp

March 17, 1778: Four days after a French ambassador informed the British government that they had officially recognized the United States as an independent nation with the signing of The Treaty of Alliance and The Treaty of Amity and Commerce, England declared war on France. Britain’s declaration of war on France allowed the French to directly engage them in the Revolutionary war.

September 3, 1783: The Treaty of Paris, signed by John Adams, Benjamin Franklin and John Jay, representing the United States and David Hartley, a member of the British Parliament, representing the British Monarch, King George III, formally ends the Revolutionary war.

Almost immediately after the signing of the 1783 Treaty of Paris, Americans began to question whether the failure of the treaty to address an expiration date for the military alliance meant the treaty was to continue indefinitely into the future and, in effect created a perpetual alliance between the United States and France. Secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton and members of the Federalist Party who disliked the proposition of being eternally allied with France seized on the French Revolution as a chance to officially nullify the treaty.

In 1790, two parties had started forming in the United States: one, the Democratic-Republican Party, formed by Madison and Jefferson, held a strong pro-French bent while the Federalist Party, formed by Hamilton, was pro-British. The advent of the French Republic, in September 1792, temporarily boosted the pro-French Democratic-Republicans, as it ended the political and ideological isolation of the American Republic and legitimized its regime in a world dominated by monarchies.

However the Federalists, led by Hamilton, used the French regime change to question the validity of the 1778 treaties: after bitter debates between Jefferson and Hamilton, it was then decided that the treaties were still valid but Washington opted for a policy of strict neutrality in the coming wars, thus crippling the treaties' military provisions. The new French minister to the United States, Edmond-Charles Genet, contributed further to a deterioration of the alliance by testing this American decision and trying to arm privateers from American harbors in the spring and summer of 1793. His actions discredited the French Republic and led Jefferson to leave his position as secretary of state in December 1793.

The young government’s entangling alliance with France led our Founders to adopt a foreign policy of nonintervention.

September 17, 1796: In his farewell address, President George Washington, a Federalist, urged that we must, “Act for ourselves and not for others,” by forming an “American character wholly free of foreign attachments.” He was clearly referencing lessons learned by the entangling alliance of the French Treaty of 1783 when he stated, "It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world."

March 4, 1801: President Thomas Jefferson, a Democratic-Republican, clearly advocated a foreign policy of nonintervention in his first inaugural address when he stated, “Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations — entangling alliances with none.”

Both Washington and Jefferson, in the wake of the 1783 Treaty of Alliance with France, became strong advocates for a foreign policy of nonintervention. Washington's 1796 farewell address and Jefferson's 1801 inaugural address clearly indicate that neither of these presidents believed that the US should be inextricably entwined with any nation over others.

John Quincy Adams on U.S. Foreign Policy. Adams, as US Secretary of State, delivered the following speech to the U.S. House of Representatives on July 4, 1821, in celebration of American Independence Day.

AND NOW, FRIENDS AND COUNTRYMEN, if the wise and learned philosophers of the elder world, the first observers of nutation and aberration, the discoverers of maddening ether and invisible planets, the inventors of Congreve rockets and Shrapnel shells, should find their hearts disposed to enquire what has America done for the benefit of mankind?

Let our answer be this: America, with the same voice which spoke herself into existence as a nation, proclaimed to mankind the inextinguishable rights of human nature, and the only lawful foundations of government. America, in the assembly of nations, since her admission among them, has invariably, though often fruitlessly, held forth to them the hand of honest friendship, of equal freedom, of generous reciprocity.

She has uniformly spoken among them, though often to heedless and often to disdainful ears, the language of equal liberty, of equal justice, and of equal rights.

She has, in the lapse of nearly half a century, without a single exception, respected the independence of other nations while asserting and maintaining her own.

She has abstained from interference in the concerns of others, even when conflict has been for principles to which she clings, as to the last vital drop that visits the heart.

She has seen that probably for centuries to come, all the contests of that Aceldama the European world, will be contests of inveterate power, and emerging right.

Wherever the standard of freedom and Independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions and her prayers be.

But she goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy.

She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all.

She is the champion and vindicator only of her own.

She will commend the general cause by the countenance of her voice, and the benignant sympathy of her example.

She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom.

The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force....

She might become the dictatress of the world. She would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit....

[America’s] glory is not dominion, but liberty. Her march is the march of the mind. She has a spear and a shield: but the motto upon her shield is, Freedom, Independence, Peace. This has been her Declaration: this has been, as far as her necessary intercourse with the rest of mankind would permit, her practice.

Source: http://www.fff.org/freedom/1001e.asp

Ron Paul is the only GOP candidate that advocates the same foriegn policy held by Presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Quincy Adams and Republican Senator Robert Taft.

Taft, who earned the nickname, “Mr. Republican” was the chief ideologue and acknowledged leader of the conservatism of the Republican party from 1939 to 1953. Taft led the Conservative Coalition against Roosevelt’s New Deal. He believed in a strong national defense and a foreign policy of nonintervention.

The following passage is an excerpt from Taft’s book, "A Foreign Policy for Americans". The full text of the book, written during the height of the Korean War in 1951, can be read free of charge at the link provided below the text:

“War should never be undertaken or seriously risked except to protect American liberty. Our traditional policy of neutrality and non-interference with other nations was based on the principle that this policy was the best way to avoid disputes with other nations and to maintain the liberty of this country without war. From the days of George Washington that has been the policy of the United States. It has never been isolationism; but it has always avoided alliances and interference in foreign quarrels as a preventive against possible war, and it has always opposed any commitment by the United States, in advance, to take any military action outside of our territory. It would leave us free to interfere or not interfere according to whether we consider the case of sufficiently vital interest to the liberty of this country.”

Source: A Foreign Policy for Americans - Robert taft - 1951
http://mises.org/books/taft.pdf

Ron Paul is the only GOP candidate that advocates the same foriegn policy held by Presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Quincy Adams and Republican Senator Robert Taft.

Taft, who earned the nickname, “Mr. Republican” was the chief ideologue and acknowledged leader of the conservatism of the Republican party from 1939 to 1953. Taft led the Conservative Coalition against Roosevelt’s New Deal. He believed in a strong national defense and a foreign policy of nonintervention.

The following passage is an excerpt from Taft’s book, "A Foreign Policy for Americans". The full text of the book, written during the height of the Korean War in 1951, can be read free of charge at the link provided below the text:

“War should never be undertaken or seriously risked except to protect American liberty. Our traditional policy of neutrality and non-interference with other nations was based on the principle that this policy was the best way to avoid disputes with other nations and to maintain the liberty of this country without war. From the days of George Washington that has been the policy of the United States. It has never been isolationism; but it has always avoided alliances and interference in foreign quarrels as a preventive against possible war, and it has always opposed any commitment by the United States, in advance, to take any military action outside of our territory. It would leave us free to interfere or not interfere according to whether we consider the case of sufficiently vital interest to the liberty of this country.”

Source: A Foreign Policy for Americans - Robert taft - 1951
http://mises.org/books/taft.pdf