by Robert Sobel
Even so, the petroleum companies did not make large new investments in Mexico, but instead turned elsewhere. In 1924 total American investments in Mexican petroleum production was $250 million; by 1929, the figure had dropped to $206 million. In the same period American petroleum companies increased their investment in South American petroleum from $220 million to $444.5 million, with the largest increases coming in Venezuela and Colombia. In addition, American petroleum companies made their initial forays into the Middle East and boosted stakes in the Dutch East Indies.
It is worth noting that the American companies’ decision not to make large commitments in Mexico was provident. When Lazaro Cardenes became Mexico’s president in 1934, he returned to the policy of confiscation and anti-Church activities. In 1938 the government seized American and British petroleum properties valued at close to half a billion dollars, which the Roosevelt administration handled with far less success than Coolidge obtained in the late 1920s.
The other trouble spot in Latin America was Nicaragua, which had been occupied by American marines since 1912. This was a sensitive matter, due to Nicaragua’s proximity to the Panama Canal. Coolidge withdrew almost all the marines in 1925, asserting matters had been set in order. Once the Americans left, civil strife returned, and by 1926 there were clashes between rival claimants to the presidency. The United States backed Adolfo Diaz, who had been chosen by the Nicaraguan Congress, while Mexico supported Juan Sacasa, who was rumored to have Soviet connections. Aided by Mexican arms, the Sacasa forces, commanded by Jose Moncada, won several victories, prompting Coolidge to send the marines back to Nicaragua in May, where they remained for two months. He also dispatched former Secretary of War Henry Stimson to the area to attempt to bring about a settlement. Within a few months Stimson managed to win the approval of both sides to a compromise that enabled Diaz to remain in office with opposition participation. By then, too, Mexico stopped sending in arms as a result of the new arrangement with Washington. As part of the agreement there was to be an election in 1928, which resulted in Moncada’s election. But Augustino Sandino refused to lay down his arms, obliging Coolidge to keep the marines there, and they were there when he left office in 1929. Coolidge was involved in several other, minor matters in Latin America, and on the whole this was a successful part of his presidency.
That short trip to Havana in 1928 to attend the Sixth International Conference of American States—the only time Coolidge ever left American shores—indicated the concern he had in creating an atmosphere of harmony with the other American nations. After Coolidge delivered the opening address, in which he attempted to be conciliatory, El Salvador’s delegate, backed by Argentina and Mexico, sharply attacked the United States, criticizing the belief that any nation had the right to interfere in the internal affairs of other nations. The resolution offered by the delegate failed to pass, but the obvious anger demonstrated by the Latin Americans prompted Kellogg to seek a new policy that would be more acceptable.
The State Department’s chief legal advisor, J. Reuben Clark, drew up a memorandum for Kellogg in which he argued against the Roosevelt Corollary—TR’s “amendment” to the Monroe Doctrine asserting that the United States could exercise an international police power if provoked. The Monroe Doctrine, Clark noted, was aimed at Europe, not American nations. The Clark Memorandum was not considered an official statement of American foreign policy, and it wasn’t even released until 1930, after Coolidge had left the White House, but its tone did mark a change of direction for the United States, which was continued by his successors.8
Troubles in China did lead to an American initiative in that part of the world, and for a while it appeared Navy Secretary Wilbur’s statement regarding American ships on the Yangtze might eventuate. That country was in the midst of civil war, and the European powers, including the USSR, were backing one side or the other, with the western Europeans hoping to broaden their influence in the country. Coolidge adopted the classic American position of standing for the Open Door. There was a marine garrison of some four thousand troops in Shanghai, and the navy had a flotilla in the waters off that city to enforce American rights, but not, as it turned out, to take action. Secretary Kellogg, always aware of the Soviet presence, reported to Coolidge in 1924:I feel that the critical conditions in China require some action to allay the public agitation. I am quite aware that this anti-foreign sentiment is due partly to Bolshevik activities and propaganda, but there is no use disguising the fact that there had been growing for some time in China a nationalistic movement resentful of foreign control.
At the Washington Naval Conference the Chinese had been promised tariff revisions and a reconsideration of extraterritorial rights, and Coolidge supported both programs, while at the same time warning that foreign lives and property had to be guaranteed. Treaty revision had begun when, in late 1926, rebel forces threatened to close the vital road that connected Peking to the sea. With Coolidge’s approval, Acting Secretary of State Joseph Grew warned the rebels of an American naval blockade. From then on his major objective in China was to keep American troops off the mainland—he had no intention of having an American military presence in China while several thousand marines were in Nicaragua. In 1928 he extended diplomatic recognition to the Nationalist government, but the civil wars continued long after Coolidge had left the presidency.
Throughout it all, Coolidge was silent on China. This was of a piece with his approach to the presidential role in foreign policy.
The presidency is primarily an executive office. It is placed at the apex of our system of government. It is a place of last resort to which all questions are brought that others have not been able to answer. The ideal way for it to function is to assign to the various positions men of sufficient ability so that they can solve all the problems that arise under their jurisdiction. If there is a troublesome situation in Nicaragua, a General McCoy can manage it. If we have differences with Mexico, a Morrow can compose them. If there is unrest in the Philippines, a Stimson can quiet them. About a dozen able, courageous, reliable, and experienced men in the House and Senate can reduce the problem of legislation almost to a vanishing point.
Coolidge’s twin desires to prevent wars and save money motivated his energetic attempts to convene a follow-up to the Washington Naval Conference to limit naval construction. The Washington Conference had addressed the matter of capital ships, but had done nothing for those in other categories, such as destroyers and submarines. Coolidge hoped a second conference, to convene in Geneva, would address these matters. In 1924 Congress had authorized the construction of eight new cruisers, which would have cut into those Coolidge budget surpluses. Soon after, the League of Nations voted to establish a Preparatory Commission for the Disarmament Conference, and Coolidge urged American participation as an alternative to the construction program. As late as December 1925, in his annual message to Congress, Coolidge believed “that it is the reduction of armies rather than navies, that is of the first importance to the world at the present time.” A year later he changed his tune. “We have recently expressed our willingness at Geneva to enter into treaties for the limitation of all types of warships according to the ratio adopted at the Washington Conference,” he said in his message. “This offer is still pending.”
The army was quite small in the 1920s—it had fewer than 135,000 men under arms in 1927. The navy was even smaller in terms of personnel, with 95,000 men. But the army’s equipment was crude and inexpensive, while the navy’s was sophisticated and costly. One of Coolidge’s most critical budget requirements was to place limits on an expansion of the navy, which was necessary if he was to continue to pay off the national debt—hence his desire for another naval conference.
The Coolidge call for a conference was accepted by the United Kingdom and Japan, but France and Italy held back—they sent only observers to the conference. British fears of losing primacy on the high seas and Japan’s ambitions in Asia were problems, but so were France and Italy, who harbored ho
pes of great power status and who were unhappy with the results of the Washington Conference. These problems doomed the conference, which opened on June 20, 1927, to failure. The Geneva Conference also opened a bitter dialogue between the United States and the United Kingdom that poisoned relations between the two countries for the remainder of the Coolidge administration.
That December, after the failure at Geneva, Coolidge asked Congress for an increase in naval appropriations, the first shot in a nine-year, billion-dollar naval program. Congress authorized the construction of fifteen large cruisers as permitted under terms of the Washington Conference agreement. This set off an arms race—between the United States and the United Kingdom—that Coolidge had hoped could be avoided.
There remained one more method by which Coolidge might assure peace and lower military spending. In mid-decade most European countries evinced interest in pacts to ensure against another war. At Locarno in 1925, the German and French governments pledged to respect the Rhine frontier between the two countries. This led to other treaties worked out by delegates from France, Germany, Belgium, the United Kingdom, Italy, Poland, and Czechoslovakia. The first three nations agreed to respect their boundaries and never go to war against one another again except in self-defense. The United Kingdom and Italy were to be the guarantors of this agreement. Germany pledged to settle all disagreements with the other countries by peaceful means. The Locarno Agreements were hailed as a clear demonstration that wars in Europe were no longer possible.
In the spring of 1927, as Kellogg prepared for the Geneva Conference, Columbia University Professor James Shotwell called upon French Foreign Minister Aristide Briand with a proposal to build upon the Locarno Agreements and create a multilateral pact to outlaw war, based upon the 1924 Geneva Protocol for the Pacific Settlement of International Disputes. At the time Briand was more concerned with a Franco–American pact to be introduced on the tenth anniversary of America’s entry into the war, April 6, 1927. Briand delivered a speech on this subject on that date, an unusual way to call for a diplomatic discussion. Shotwell, attorney Salmon Levinson, and others drafted a document in which war was condemned as an instrument of national policy and government pledged to settle all disputes in an amicable fashion. The draft was published and elicited widespread interest. At the time, Kellogg’s hands were full, having to deal with Mexico, Nicaragua, and China. France’s refusal to attend the Geneva Conference did nothing to improve relations with the United States.
Borah had been talking about similar ideas for much of the decade, and had become further energized by the Locarno Agreements. He thought a multilateral pact along these lines was a more effective way to keep the peace than was the League of Nations. He wanted to go further—not only to outlaw war but to make it part of international law. Borah persuaded Kellogg to grant Levinson a hearing, and he agreed, but Levinson was unable to convince the secretary of the merits of such a treaty. Borah now took his case to the public, delivering several speeches on the subject, which were well received. Meanwhile Kellogg attempted to convince Coolidge that separate arbitration treaties with various countries were a more sensible approach. The secretary and the senator clashed over this matter in December hearings before Borah’s Foreign Relations Committee, at a time when public opinion was swinging toward the Borah approach.
Coolidge was also coming around, and accordingly, Kellogg sent two messages to Briand shortly before the end of the year, one proposing a renewal of an existing treaty between France and the United States, the other containing a suggestion that the French bilateral concept be replaced by a multilateral approach. At first Briand would not be swayed, but by March he accepted in principle the American position. The following month he suggested that the two countries approach the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, and Japan to discover whether they had any interest in such an agreement.
Briand went ahead and made the contacts, even though there clearly remained differences between him and Kellogg on the final form of such an arrangement. In early May the by-then enthusiastic Briand wrote to Kellogg, suggesting that such a treaty would be “the greatest accomplishment of my administration or of any administration lately,” and talking of the possibility of a Nobel Peace Prize for those involved in achieving acceptance of the proposed pact. Briand, who had shared the award with Gustav Streseman in 1925, might have dreamed about being the first person to win the award twice.
Toward the end of the summer it appeared that fifteen countries that had been involved in the negotiations were prepared to sign the treaty, the ceremony to take place in Paris, but there remained some seemingly minor problems to be worked out. Kellogg said he would not attend unless his counterparts in the other countries did so as well. He excluded the Japanese foreign minister, however, on the grounds that the distances were too long and the expenses would be onerous. The Italian foreign minister tried to beg off, but in the end opted to come.
Borah organized support for the pact skillfully. The fact that the classic isolationist favored it certainly helped. Coolidge lobbied for the measure, inviting doubtful senators to the White House for consultation. Dawes helped where he could, noting the finer points of the pact, but also warning that a rejection would be a slap in the face for the president, especially poignant since this was to be the last request he would be making of the Senate. Supporters of the pact noted that it had to be seen in the light of the large-scale American military buildup; Dawes claimed that the two measures were “the declared and unified policy of the United States.”
Coolidge, who had been lukewarm about the pact when the idea was first broached, now was a supporter. In his annual message of December 4, 1928—his final annual message—he wrote warmly of the pact:One of the most important treaties ever laid before the Senate of the United States will be that which the fifteen nations recently signed at Paris, and to which forty-four other nations have declared their intention to adhere, renouncing war as a national policy and agreeing to resort only to peaceful means for the adjustment of international differences. It is the most solemn declaration against war, the most positive adherence to peace, that it is possible for sovereign nations to make. It does not supersede our inalienable sovereign right and duty of national defense or undertake to commit us before the event to any mode of action which the Congress might decide to be wise if ever the treaty should be broken.
This section of the address was followed by one in which Coolidge discussed the costs of national defense, which he characterized as “stupendous.” The bill came to $668 million, which was $118 million more than it had been in 1924. “We have reached the limit of what we ought to expend for that purpose.” He went on to say that America’s foreign interests had to be protected: “Our largest foreign interests are in the British Empire, France, and Italy.” This wasn’t so, and represents the underside of American foreign concerns during the Coolidge years.
On January 15, 1929, the Kellogg–Briand Pact was ratified by the Senate by a vote of 85 to 1. Ultimately 62 nations signed. Coolidge signed the measure in a White House ceremony on January 17. Briand did not receive his second Nobel Prize; it was awarded to Kellogg alone.
It became fashionable during the 1930s and with the coming of World War II in 1939 to deride the pact and consider it a foolish chimera drawn up by timid men. Given the horrors of World War I, it is difficult to consider it ill-advised or those who drew it up and signed it craven. Rather, it was idealistic and perhaps utopian. The men of 1928 believed in international law. The cynicism that existed toward the concept had not yet become manifest. That would come later.
Developments in Mexico, Nicaragua, and China were front page news during the Coolidge years, as was the Geneva Conference and the Kellogg–Briand Pact, but they did not excite national debate. Foreign policy was not as important to Coolidge—or to most of the country—as were domestic affairs. But under his watch America remained at peace, and trade and foreign investment rose to new heights, with American business rushing to take advantage of th
e new opportunities in a global economy in which the European powers, still shattered by World War I, were in retreat.
13
The Last Year
There were others who constantly demanded that I should state that if nominated I would refuse to accept. Such a statement would not be in accordance with my conception of the requirements of the presidential office. I never stated or formulated in my own mind what I should do under such circumstances, but I was determined not to have that contingency arise.
I therefore sent the secretary to the president, Everett Sanders, a man of great ability and discretion, to Kansas City with instructions to notify several of the leaders of state delegations not to vote for me. Had I not done so, I am told, I should have been nominated.
The Autobiography of Calvin Coolidge
WRITING IN FEBRUARY 1927, Walter Lippmann addressed the matter of “The Causes of Political Indifference To-Day.” In his view, old political and economic differences had been eliminated by prosperity.
