From Colony to Superpower: U.S. Foreign Relations Since 1776 (78 page)

Conflict erupted again in 1925 after Calles, a former teacher, shopkeeper, and bartender, known as "the Turk," replaced Obregon. The colorful Calles's base was in the trade unions, and he too sought to walk a high and thin tightrope between his more radical supporters and the United States. Calles promoted a new law limiting to fifty years possession of oil lands owned by foreigners prior to 1917. To display his nationalist credentials and distract attention from Mexico's economic problems, he also launched an attack on the powerful Catholic Church, causing a strike by Mexican clerics and a brutal civil war with the so-called
Cristeros
that would last three years, take seventy thousand lives, and inflict huge economic costs on Mexico.
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Calles's initiatives provoked a resumption of conflict with the United States. Oilmen once again screamed in outrage. Catholic organizations such as the Knights of Columbus protested the attack on the church. Ambassador James Sheffield, a worthy successor to the numerous other ugly Americans sent to Mexico, vigorously backed the oil companies. He
privately denounced Calles as a "murderer and assassin." He described Mexicans as greedy and ignorant because of their Indian blood. "Calomel [a nasty-tasting purgative] is more effective than pink lemonade when you have ills to cure," he advised the State Department. Sharing Sheffield's alarm at the specter of a "Bolshevik Mexico," Kellogg issued an ill-considered statement that Mexico was on trial before all the world. The situation was worsened by U.S. fears that Mexico was stirring up perennially embattled Nicaragua, thus challenging its control of the region. Preparing the way for possible military intervention, Kellogg ominously warned the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that Russian agents were active in Mexico. Calles meanwhile threatened to "light up the sky all the way to New Orleans" by setting fire to Mexico's oil wells.
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Once again, cooler heads prevailed, this time fortunately
before
the United States dispatched troops across the border. The talk of war was probably more ritualistic than earnest. In fact, neither side wanted conflict. The oilmen's influence was seriously compromised because of their involvement in the Teapot Dome scandal that had rocked the Harding administration. Bankers like Lamont and peace groups urged Coolidge to negotiate. The Senate dismissed Kellogg's ranting about Bolshevism as nonsense and called for arbitration.

Coolidge thus opted for negotiation. In September 1927, he and Calles opened the first long-distance connection between Washington and Mexico City, conducting a telephone "summit" that immediately eased tensions. Coolidge made an especially inspired choice by replacing Sheffield with his old college roommate, now a J. P. Morgan Company partner, Dwight Morrow. Morrow turned out to be a true rarity in the long and troubled history of Mexican-American relations, setting out above all to like the people he was assigned to deal with. According to French foreign minister Aristide Briand, Morrow was as "shrewd as a pocketful of mice." Eschewing calomel, the newly appointed diplomat adopted a shocking "pink lemonade" approach toward an old adversary.
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He applauded Mexican food and culture and ventured into the marketplace to meet ordinary people. His clumsy efforts to speak Spanish won widespread praise. He changed the sign to read "United States Embassy" instead of "American Embassy," a small measure of enormous symbolic significance. To demonstrate his trust, he met with Calles with
only a Mexican interpreter. He spoke to Washington over the telephone in full knowledge that the line was tapped. To the delight of an entire nation, he persuaded his future son-in-law, the world hero Charles Lindbergh, to fly directly from Washington to Mexico City, two-thirds the distance from New York to Paris, and the popular "ambassador of the air" received a wildly enthusiastic reception. Morrow eventually persuaded Calles to return to the essence of the Bucarelli Agreement. The oil companies were not appeased, but the ambassador's "Ham and Eggs" diplomacy had saved them from the more serious threat of seizure of their assets without compensation. Morrow also brought in a U.S. Catholic priest to mediate between Calles and the Mexican church, helping settle the
Cristero
revolt and ease Calles's domestic problems. It was the last time serious consideration was given to U.S. military intervention in Mexico. Without giving up anything, Morrow had shown what one person with a conciliatory approach could accomplish. The settlement was much more important to Calles than to Coolidge. Well might some Mexicans admonish: "God save us from friendship with the United States."
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The high-water mark of the Republican era came in August 1928 with the signing of the Kellogg-Briand Pact outlawing war as an instrument of national policy. This much maligned and frequently ridiculed agreement had a curious birth in France's unrelenting efforts to protect its security against a future German attack. Seeking to entice the United States into the French security system, at least by indirection, Foreign Minister Briand shrewdly capitalized on the surge of goodwill generated by Lind-bergh's trans-Atlantic flight to propose through a quite extraordinary public letter to the American people a bilateral treaty outlawing war. Such a treaty, he reasoned, would tie the United States closely to France and perhaps serve as a deterrent to Germany. It would create a sort of negative alliance that, in the event of war with Germany, would permit France to exploit U.S. neutrality without fear of war.
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Furious with Briand's decidedly undiplomatic intrusion in U.S. politics, Coolidge and Kellogg would have preferred to ignore the overture. But in the best spirit of the 1920s, the peace movement organized a massive public relations campaign in support of outlawing war. Seeing little choice but to give in, Coolidge and Kellogg, with equal cleverness, oneupped Briand by proposing a multilateral agreement. Hoist on his own
petard, the foreign minister in turn had no choice but to go along, and a suddenly enthusiastic Kellogg vigorously pushed the agreement at home and abroad. Fittingly, after months of sometimes difficult negotiations, fifteen nations, including all the European great powers, signed an agreement renouncing war as an instrument of national policy. The U.S. Senate approved the treaty with but one dissenting vote. Few believed it would actually eliminate war, but many did hope that an important step had been taken toward promoting peace. Americans were especially pleased that their nation had taken the lead in this most worthy of causes. Conspicuously lacking in enforcement provisions, the Pact of Paris perfectly fitted the Republican approach of involvement without commitment, most often cited as its major flaw. A more important omission may have been the lack of provision for peaceful change.
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In March 1929, Herbert Hoover and Secretary of State Henry Stimson assumed responsibility for carrying forward the policies initiated by Harding and Hughes. Taking office at a time of optimism, they found their task complicated by their own uneasy working relationship and very soon by the economic crisis that began with a stock market crash eight months after their ascension to power. Out of necessity, Hoover and Stimson involved the United States in the increasingly serious European problems to an even greater degree than their Republican predecessors. They promoted with new resolve the seemingly tried and true solutions of the era. Such efforts proved insufficient. By 1931, the world was deeply mired in economic crisis. In Europe and East Asia, economic dislocation provoked political and military challenges not simply to the regional status quo but to the entire postwar structure of peace.

Hoover and Stimson appeared ideally qualified to sustain the momentum generated by their predecessors, but this extraordinarily experienced and unusually talented foreign policy "team" proved much less than the sum of its parts. Hoover had been a strong internationalist in the early 1920s, but his experience as secretary of commerce appears to have made him cautious.
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Both men lacked political experience and a zest for politics—Hoover once scorned politicians as "reptiles." An engineer by training and skilled manager, Hoover conspicuously lacked leadership skills and was prone to analyze problems to death. He was also a pessimist,
and working through an issue with him, Stimson once complained, was like "sitting in a bath of ink." An elitist through and through, the very embodiment of the eastern foreign policy "establishment" of Roosevelt and Root, Stimson, on the other hand, believed in the essentiality of strong executive leadership and, like his mentors, in the utility of force in diplomacy. He reveled in the nickname "Colonel" earned through war service and disparaged Hoover's "Quaker nature" and caution. When in doubt, he insisted, you "march toward the guns."
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The two men respected each other and shared similar views on most major issues, but sharp differences in personality, style, and philosophy produced an awkward working relationship.

The economic crisis that began in 1929 would dominate and in time destroy the Hoover presidency. The full force of the Great Depression would not be felt until after 1931, but the stock market crash of late 1929 had immediate and profound economic consequences. In the United States, manufacturing dropped sharply, unemployment increased dramatically, and growing numbers of businesses and banks failed. As the crisis deepened, American corporations focused inward on the domestic market. Trade declined sharply. Overseas investment slowed and then ceased altogether. Banks stopped lending money abroad, and tourism ended. The dollars that had underpinned postwar economic recovery dried up, with ripple effects across the world. The depression exposed the flaws in Republican approaches to postwar problems. It dimmed U.S. prestige in Europe, weakening its ability to lead and Europe's willingness to follow. A confirmed internationalist on many issues through much of his distinguished career, Hoover himself turned inward, seeking the solution to the nation's economic problems mainly at home.

In the face of new and increasingly daunting challenges, Hoover and Stimson clung to familiar solutions. Even more than Hughes, the Quaker Hoover saw armaments as a major impediment to peace and prosperity. He thus brought a new fervor to an old issue. Post–Washington Conference efforts to extend limits to other classes of ships had failed. A follow-up conference at Geneva in 1927 had broken down over Anglo-American wrangling on cruisers, but one indication of a sharp deterioration in U.S.-British relations in the late 1920s. In the absence of agreement, the United States in early 1929 set out to build fifteen new cruisers, signifying the onset of a new arms race. The U.S. move scared Britain into accepting parity with the United States and led to a 1930 naval conference in London.

Hoover attached great importance to the conference, sending a high-level delegation including Stimson and Dwight Morrow and putting
forth bold new proposals. The United States and Britain quickly reached agreement on cruisers, but they could never palliate French insistence on a broader security treaty. They accommodated only with great difficulty Japan's demands to increase its Washington ratios. After three months of arduous negotiations, the United States, Britain, and Japan signed an agreement for a 10:10:6 ratio on light cruisers while conceding Japan 10:10:7 on heavy cruisers and battleships and parity in submarines. The London accord restored some Anglo-American amity and resolved the long-troublesome cruiser issue, pleasing Hoover and Stimson. In fact, London marked a transitional phase in the netherworld between the 1920s and 1930s. The conferees saw dimly if at all that the future of naval warfare resided in aircraft carriers. The failure to satisfy France may have been more important over the long run than the three-power agreement. The moderate Japanese government went along only because it needed Western credits and wanted to continue its policy of cooperation. The treaty was immensely unpopular in Japan—"a beautiful gold lacquer lunch box containing gruel," one critic complained. Unbeknownst to the participants, the London Conference marked the end of cooperation and the beginning of an era of conflict.
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On economic issues, as well, Hoover and Stimson fell back on old solutions in the face of new and complex problems. In the United States, as elsewhere, a natural response to the onset of depression was to protect the nation's own economy by raising the tariff. Ignorant of or indifferent to the international implications of protection and most concerned with protecting the domestic market, Congress in the 1930 Hawley-Smoot tariff raised rates on average to 40 percent, a 7 percent jump over the highly protectionist tariff of 1922 and the highest rates in U.S. history. Like many American businessmen, Stimson recognized the potential damage of such a tariff to international trade. Although he refused to risk his own political capital on what he saw as a no-win issue, he pushed Hoover to veto the bill. The president was himself sensitive to the potential dangers, but he too saw the domestic market as the key to recovery and deluded himself that the flexible provisions in the 1930 tariff could be used to sustain trade. Hoover acquiesced. The results were catastrophic. The tariff provoked huge resentment abroad—the French considered it tantamount to a declaration of war—and ultimately retaliation, further drying up international trade.
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The old issues of war debts and reparations refused to go away. Even as Hoover took office, yet another committee of experts met in Paris to
work out a final reparations settlement. Headed by veteran financial diplomat Owen D. Young, the committee also included American bankers Morgan and Lamont. The task was even more challenging than five years earlier. Europe's apparent economic recovery removed the sense of urgency that had brought about the Dawes settlement. The powers were as divided as ever. Germany continued to insist on major reductions, France on holding the line. The Hoover administration feared the Allies would use the negotiations to link reparations and war debts and believed that the Europeans should assume a greater burden of the settlement. Young summoned his considerable negotiating skills to devise an acceptable plan. He threatened to shut off credits to gain European acceptance. He used the intercession of no less than Root to bring Hoover and Stimson around. The Young Plan called for gradual and significant reductions in reparations payments while ensuring that the Allies got enough to meet their war debt obligations. To administer the arrangements, it established a Bank for International Settlements, which Young envisioned as the economic arm of the Kellogg-Briand Pact. This final settlement turned out to be anything but final. It was probably the best that could have been obtained under the circumstances, but its success hinged on continued foreign loans and German economic growth, two early victims of the global economic crisis. Reluctant converts, Hoover and Stimson gave the scheme no more than lukewarm support.
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