FDR Foreign Policy

The new millenium is upon us. As we enter a new century, we find that it will be a century that is distinctly Franklin Delano Roosevelt's in terms of foreign policy and international relations. In 1940, there was a good chance the then future of today might have been the reality of Adolph Hitler's Third Reich or Joseph Stalin's brutal tyranny. Instead, because of his foreign policy, the international order today resembles the reality Franklin Delano Roosevelt imagined. Roosevelt's foreign policy ideology was influence by two presidents who served before him, Theodore Roosevelt, his fifth cousin, and Woodrow Wilson. Roosevelt learned foreign policy from these two men and his own foreign policy was a distilled version of them which kept the best aspects of them and added some elements of Roosevelt's own ideas, such as the League of Nations "Theodore Roosevelt taught him national-interest, balance-of-power geopolitics. Woodrow Wilson, whom he served as Assistant Secretary of the Navy, gave him the vision of a world beyond balances of power, an international order founded on the collective maintenance of the peace. F.D.R.'s internationalism used Teddy Roosevelt's realism as the heart of Wilson's idealism" (Schlesinger 3-4).

The scope of this paper cannot do justice to all aspects of Roosevelt's foreign policy, therefore the analysis will focus on key points and legislation of the policy that best demonstrate Roosevelt's ideolo

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ct which required all males between the ages of 21-35 to register for a year of military training. In September of that year, he unleashed 50 U.S. navy destroyers to Britain in exchange for eight naval bases in the Western hemisphere. Thus, Roosevelt's foreign policy at the beginning of the war in Europe was twofold: the buildup of defense and giving assistance to countries threatened by Germany, Italy and Japan. The Lend-Lease Act was passed which allowed for military equipment to be transferred to victims of aggression by these countries. Once the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7th, 1941, Roosevelt needed no help in winning the isolationists versus interventionists debate. Congress overwhelmingly supported America's entry into the European theater of war and war was declared on Japan and Italy and Germany when they came to the aid of the Japanese "As war leader, F.D.R. picked an extraordinary team of generals and admirals. In partnership with Churchill, he presided over the vital strategic decisions. And also, in the footsteps of Wilson, he was determined that victory should produce a framework for lasting world peace" (Schlesinger 4). We can see the influence of Wilson's Fourteen Points, a program he desig

Category: Government - F