Since the start of his presidency in 2017, Donald Trump has abandoned multiple treaties and agreements such as the Paris climate-change accord, the Trans-Pacific Partnership free-trade agreement, asserting that U.S. foreign policy should put the interests and security of American people first. Trump’s “America first” foreign policy doctrine has cast profound doubt on U.S. commitment to the multilateral international system that the United States helped create and nurture after World War II. Pundits have wondered if the world has been sliding back to the chaos of the 1930s - when another war in Europe approached, the United States was reluctant to engage in world peace and tolerated the rise of fascist countries. Despite serious divide over Trump’s statesmanship, Trump’s instinct for non-intervention and his focus on domestic politics are widely shared among Americans. According to opinion polls, a growing number of Americans agree that the United States should reduce its overseas commitments.

Nevertheless, it is too early to conclude that America is returning to isolationism like in the 1930s. This paper explores America’s ongoing search for a new way to engage with the world, particularly focusing on the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, an action-oriented think tank built as a unique hybrid of left and right-wing anti-militarists in 2019 with the purpose of laying the foundation for a more restraint foreign policy centered on diplomatic engagement. Backed by the growing bipartisan support for ending the “endless wars,” The Quincy Institute fundamentally questions American bipartisan commitment to “primacy,” the notion that world peace ultimately depends on the United States asserting preponderant military power. Military restraint, The Quincy Institute argues, would give America the best chance of building deeper international cooperation against climate change and other global challenges that have afflicted humanity as a whole, as well as of reconstructing U.S. crumbling health care system.

The spread of COVID-19 has had profound impacts on American peoples’ perception of national security, and made Quincy’s challenges increasingly relevant. Suffering from the epidemic, many Americans are wondering if their country has been ever more threatened, in return for lavishing taxpayer dollars on the world’s largest national security apparatus. According to recent opinion polls, especially young Americans, who have grown up in the age of unsuccessful military interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere, and 2008 global financial crisis stemming from the collapse of the U.S. housing market and a rash of bankruptcies of financial institutions, no longer believe that the United States is an “indispensable nation.” Rather, they realize their country’s weakness exposed by COVID-19, and embrace more restraint foreign approaches and multilateral cooperation. Supported by these youth’s preferences, Quincy’s search for a systematically different world role for the United States would be continued and intensified in the future.

In the field of American diplomatic history, the 1930s is depicted as an era of isolationism. It is true that the United States did not actively engage in the international efforts to maintain both the Versailles system in Europe and the Washington system in the Asia-Pacific region. However, American diplomacy in the 1930s was neither dormant nor unproductive. It successfully fulfilled some important achievements in the Western Hemisphere by vigorously developing the so-called Good Neighbor Policy toward Latin American countries.

The architect of the Good Neighbor Policy was Sumner Welles, the Assistant Secretary of State for Latin American affairs from 1933 to 1937 and Under Secretary of State from 1937 to 1943. Welles is also known for the central role he played in formulating the postwar plans of the State Department during the Second World War.

By using Welles’ private papers that previous studies rarely consult, this paper examines the kind of international order Welles sought to realize in the Western Hemisphere. Before Welles joined the Roosevelt administration in 1933, the United States had made military interventions in Latin American countries repeatedly and imposed high tariffs on their commodities. Welles observed that the military interventions settled political confusion in Latin American countries only temporarily and the high tariffs prevented them from achieving economic prosperity, which Welles regarded as the fundamental factor for a sustainable stability of the society. In addition, Welles thought that the military interventions and the high tariffs induced Latin American enmity toward the United States, making it difficult for Washington to make the Western Hemisphere the solid foundation supporting American leadership in the world.

Based on those observations, this paper argues, Welles tried to modify the American tariff policy and establish an inter-American conference system to manage internal and external threats to the American republics. In other words, Welles sought to create a new hemispheric order characterized by two principles: promotion of trade and joint action to keep peace in the region. Welles’ endeavors were successful and enabled the Western Hemisphere to have, in Welles’ words, “the most advanced, and at the same time the most practical, form of regional system” in the world. This paper concludes that the hemispheric system not only supported the American war efforts during the Second World War but also impacted the postwar visions created by Welles and his group as a model that other regions should follow.

This paper sheds new light on a British historian, Arnold J. Toynbee (1889–1975) as a prominent scholar in the international relations by focusing on his arguments about European international affairs, particularly in the late 1930s. Through the analysis, this paper also contributes to further understanding of “Liberal Internationalism” in the 1930s and deepening our thought on the contemporary international order.

Toynbee is famous for his book A Study of History, where he described the development and decline of the Western Civilization, while previous studies have not addressed the role of Toynbee in international relations. It is primarily because he was criticized by E. H. Carr, who was another leading scholar in the discipline during the same period. In his classic work Twenty Years Crisis, Carr criticized his opponents by describing each of them as a utopian, who failed to grasp the reality of international politics. Among the utopians, Toynbee was included.

However, Toynbee was a prominent scholar in the international relations between the 1920s and the early 1950s. I discuss this underestimated aspect of the British historian by examining how he reacted to the rising threat of a totalitarian state, namely Nazi Germany.

After the experience of the First World War, Toynbee realized that the war and its related destructions gravely damaged Western Europe. In his view, the enormous power of sovereignty states would cause international anarchy and inter-state conflict. Therefore, Toynbee advanced a new idea of the international order for regulating state sovereignty and facilitating international cooperation of states.

In contrast to his earlier belief, the political events which were damaging the European international relations happened in the late 1930s. Among them, the expansion of Nazi Germany appeared as the most serious threat to peace. Faced with the threat, the British government appeased toward Nazi Germany, especially in the Munich Agreement and did not immediately use serious countermeasures against it.

Because of the Nazi’s aggressive behaviours, Toynbee needed to reconsider his initial political viewpoint. However, the more significant event for him was the Munich Agreement. Toynbee stood against the Agreement and stated that Nazi Germany would be a potential threat to Europe, due to its power and totalitarian ideology. Under the political circumstances, he thought that Britain had to resist against the totalitarian state. Besides, he called for the US’s diplomatic involvement in the European continent and then strategic cooperation by Britain, France, and the Soviet Union in order to prevent further expansion by Nazi Germany. By making these statements, he aimed to restore the broken balance of power and to defend democracy, and the rule of law in the European Continent.

After the coup d’état in 1926, Lithuania was ruled by the authoritarian regime led by President Antanas Smetona. In the late 1930s, complaints about the Smetona government was grew, especially among the opposition groups, such as Voldemarininkai, the Populists (liaudininkai) and the Christian Democrats, because they considered that Smetona government’s “neutral” foreign policies led to the ultimatum by Poland in 1938. Thus, they established a unified anti-Smetona movement “Lithuanian Activists Union” (LAS) in 1938 in Klaipėda (Memel) and criticized the authoritarian government as dictatorship. They aimed to establish a Fascism regime in Lithuania instead, as they believed that, under the Fascism regime, the whole Lithuanian nation could be involved in the policy decision making. They, nevertheless, considered the Jews and communists were “anti-national”, thus tried to exclude them. LAS pursued some democratic values, such as freedom of the press and free elections, but they criticized parliamentary democracy since they believed that it led to a split of the nation. They aimed at close relations with Nazi Germany and state-planned economy. They believed that such “Disciplined Authoritarian Democracy” should have replaced the Smetona-led authoritarian regime.

The purpose of this article is to describe international order designed by French neoliberalism through European integration and Atlanticism and its effects on the French government’s external policies.

French neoliberalism was born in the late 1930s in the struggle to retrieve the credibility of liberal economy and fight against fascism and communism by searching for a third way. In most of the literature, the birth of new economic norms and new economic policy in the 1930s is explained by the emergence of Keynesian economics and economic policies, and ‘neo-liberalism’ is often placed as a contrasting concept to Keynesian policies. However, the original neoliberalism was, like Keynesian ideas, more socially oriented. After the Second World war, French neoliberals gradually lost common ground regarding economic principles, dividing between the left (neoliberals seeking a way to reconcile liberalism and socialists) and the right (trying to return to orthodox liberal economics). However, the two groups were still united as long as it concerned European integration and Atlanticism. These two ideas on the international order maintained the unity of the French neoliberalism from its birth to after the Second World War.

With regard to the European integration, its support was based on the expectation that European integration become a framework to establish an ‘institutional market’ in which liberal competition was coordinated by the rules and interventions by the international institutions.

The institutional market come to reality when the EEC was established in 1957 by the initiatives of the neoliberals. Not only did they develop a campaign for the Rome Treaty, they also desired for the French economy to really participate in the liberalisation processes in Europe with financial reform to contain inflation – which was finally achieved in the Rueff Plan in 1958.

The influence of the Atlanticism of the neoliberals to the French external policy was limited. In 1936, when the Popular Front government adopted the devaluation of the franc as suggested by the neoliberals in the Tripatite Agreement between France, United States, and United Kingdom, this situation represented as a French decision to unite with liberal countries, denying fascism. However it was too late and the changing international circumstances made it meaningless.

In the 1960s, the neoliberal’s Atlanticism was reflected in their critiques to the international monetary system centered on US dollars. Their critical attitude to the dollar did not mean their support for Atlanticism was lost, rather, they tried to consolidate the economic basis of the Atlantic cooperation by reforming the international monetary system. However, when their call for return to the gold standard was adopted by the General de Gaulle, it was used as a tool to attack Atlanticism.