Charles W. King

For decades now the United States’ European allies have been criticized by some American politicians and policy-makers for failing to maintain their defense spending at 2% of Gross Domestic Product, as stipulated by NATO. These countries are derided as ‘Free Riders’. Some Americans complain about subsiding European nations by taking on their defense burden for them. The United State has in effect taken much of Europe’s defense burden upon itself, but that is not a reason to be critical. Like the Marshall plan, American defense spending was essential for Europe to become a healthy market for American goods after World War Two. The burden of defending themselves from the Soviet Union and Warsaw pact after 1945 could easily have been too cumbersome for Western Europe, and it certainly would have crowded consumer spending out of the economy for defense. The United States has let its European allies flourish under its defensive umbrella for decades and has flourished because of it, and it is not the first superpower to benefit from such an arrangement.

When the Monroe Doctrine was issued in 1823 the United States did not possess the naval strength to enforce it. The US Navy had grown significantly from the original six frigates laid down in 1794, but would still be no match for the naval forces of a European great power like France, Spain, or Great Britain. Throughout much of Europe the doctrine was received with disregard and contempt. Its saving grace was British insistence upon Freedom of the Seas. The nineteenth century was the height of Pax Britannia, and the British economy of was booming as a result of increasing industrialization and trade. Spanish re-conquest of Latin America would have been detrimental to British interests. The United States and its still nascent Navy did not have to invest in enforcing the Monroe Doctrine, because the Royal Navy already was. In a very real way the Monroe Doctrine was an American declaration of an existing British policy. From the War of 1812 to the Spanish American War in 1898 the US was a ‘Free Rider’ on the Royal Navy and British maritime and free trade policy. The British did not implement these policies or invest in the Royal Navy for American benefit. They were beneficial to Great Britain itself.

American policy-makers who are critical of the defense burden that the US bears for its European allies should consider how this spending benefits the United States. Investing in defense abroad makes a war in the American home waters or continent less plausible. The American government spends the money on American made equipment and the training of American personnel, developing domestic industry and increasing readiness in ways that would not be pressing without forward deployed troops. Allied nations who rely on the United States for defense also purchase American made goods and American services. The ability of foreign markets to afford American consumer goods is what made the Dollar the reserve currency of the world for the twentieth century. There may be ‘free riders’ on American defense spending, but that does not mean that it is a waste of money. The British Empire, and the early United States, would not have prospered if not for the Royal Navy and Freedom of the Seas. Investing in ‘free riders’ will protect American prosperity into the twenty first century.

Charles W. King

Today the European Union has been buffeted by crisis after crisis; Sovereign debt, refugees, Brexit, illiberal democracy in Eastern Europe. The recent election in France averted a possible complete collapse of the European project. It is worth noting in this time of crisis for Europe that the European Union has been an unqualified success at its original purpose; preventing war in continental Europe.

The history of Europe is one of conflicts, dating all the way back to the Roman Empire. During that history many attempts have been made to establish structures that would prevent future conflict. The Holy Roman Empire, The Peace of Westphalia, Napoleon's Empire, the Congress of Vienna, and Bismarck's Alliance system, and the League of Nations all failed to prevent the nations of Europe from descending to violence again. Compared to the span of European history the twentieth century was both brutal (as measured by the casualties of the World Wars) and tranquil (as measured by the number of conflicts). It is true that to an extent there now exists a cultural disdain for the Clausewitzian use of 'war as politics by other means' but that was also true to an extent between World War One and World War Two. The establishment of NATO was a significant factor in the prevention of another European conflict, as was the looming threat of the Soviet Red Army in Eastern Europe. External threats and the continued occupation of West Germany are not enough to explain how the Europe of 1946 became the Europe of today.

Established by the Treaty of Paris in 1951 the European Coal and Steel Community is another in the plethora of post-World War Two international institutions designed to prevent future conflicts. The United Nations' purpose was to prevent another World War, and NATO possessed a dual purpose containing both Germany and the Soviet Union. Proposed by the French Foreign Minister Robert Schuman in 1950 the purpose of the common market was to, "make war not only unthinkable but materially impossible." The ECSC attempted to achieve this through a surprisingly limited means; it created a common market for two strategic commodities, coal and steel, between its six member states, France, West Germany, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg. With these two essential war-making materials flowing unrestricted across borders nations would no longer have reason to fight over valuable borderlands like Alsace-Lorraine and the Ruhr, and it would be difficult to hoard steel or coal for military build up.

Then something surprising happened; the economies members of the European Coal and Steel Community began to flourish. They were some of the most ruined countries in Europe, devastated by two World Wars and the Great Depression, and yet they began to rebuild faster and stronger than those outside the common market. They quickly decided to expand their common market to more than two commodities, signing the Treaty of Rome in 1957 to establish the European Economic Community, based on the ECSC. The European Coal and Steel Community is the template upon which all of the subsequent supranational institutions of Europe have been based, from the European Atomic Energy Agency to the European Parliament. It facilitated recovery of Western Europe after World War Two, and its continued growth in the decades since. In those decades the original purpose of the European Coal and Steel Community has been forgotten. As Europeans struggle with economic disparity, refugees, and diplomatic deficits they should rejoice in the fact that they have transformed an institution designed to prevent war to an engine of growth. The European Union has turned swords to ploughshares on an epic scale.

Charles W. King

The second major continuity of American foreign policy is its focus on trade, and the specific terms under which it prefers to trade. Not only is the United States a 'Free Trade' evangelist today, it has always been one. This consistency illuminates how the United States has historically approached diplomacy. Understanding that can help policy-makers through a more complete understanding of the history of American foreign policy and how the American perspective and method in foreign affairs and international trade differs from other countries'.

A number of the Intolerable Acts passed by the British government that prompted American rebellion were indented to reinforce mercantilist policies and crack down on smuggling. Smuggling was rife in the American colonial era, as trade with foreign powers and the colonial possessions was illegal under British colonial policy. Along with the imposition of monopolies on specific goods in the colonies, these policies combined to restrict trade significantly and inflate prices. American consumers suffered and the coffers of companies like the British East India Company filled. When the Revolution broke out in 1776 it was in part a response to the British crack down on foreign goods and trade in foreign markets. Americans have been committed to free trade from their founding onward.

The Monroe Doctrine and the Open Door Policy are continuations of this commitment to these free trade principles. The Monroe Doctrine was not only a prohibition against European intervention in events in the Americas, it also insisted upon open access to colonial possessions in the Americas for trade, and freedom of navigation on the seas. Monroe declared that the United States was going to trade with Latin and South America, whether Europe liked it or not.

In 1899 American Secretary of State John Hay sent diplomatic notes to the great powers, asking them to commit to Chinese territorial integrity after the First Sino-Japanese War in 1895. Known as the 'Open Door Notes' they formally established the mode under which the United States would operate for the next hundred plus years, and enumerated the principles it had operated under since the American Revolution.

The United States has always insisted upon free trade, and done so using language that couches it as fair, moral, and just, giving people the ability to exercise their god given rights. It must be recognized that the United States has promoted these policies because they benefit the US and its citizens. Breaking free from British mercantilism and monopolies allowed American merchants to sell their goods for more in foreign markets and lowered prices for imports to the United States. The Monroe Doctrine relied upon the fact that the British Royal Navy already enforced freedom of navigation. The Open Door Notes attempted to level the playing field in China for the United States without the commitment of troops, but it was not rebuke of European intervention in China or an insistence of Chinese sovereignty.

The United States has been a trading nation since its founding. As a trading nation is benefits from access to foreign markets and good, and freedom of navigation. The nations the United States trades with do not necessarily receive the same benefits. While there are excellent moral arguments for free trade, to imagine the United States is pursuing its own prosperity is foolhardy. It is the responsibility of the government to protect the life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness of the American people. Since its founding that has been understood to include its economic prosperity through free trade. It is essential that American policy-makers recognize that foreign governments will, and should, resist throwing their country's doors wide open when they believe it will harm their people and their well-being. Doing so will facilitate better diplomatic and economic arrangements that benefit both the US and its trading partners and retain the moral high ground sought by liberal democracies.

Further Reading

Emily S. Rosenberg, Spreading the American Dream: American Economic and Cultural Expansion 1890-1945, (New York, NY: Hill and Wang, 1982).

William Appleman Williams, The Tragedy of American Diplomacy, (New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Co., 2009).

Charles W. King

Many American policy-makers, in the in Congress and the White House, are increasingly critical of spending on foreign aid. The criticism of cuts to foreign aid as a method of balancing the national budget is legitimate, but beyond the scope of this article. Instead it will discuss what kinds of aid the United States provides, why it does so, and what the benefits and drawbacks of such aid are. The United States, through the State Department and USAID, provide not only monetary aid, but also food, medical aid, and defense aid. While ‘Soft Power’ has been a focus of the State Department in recent decades, the United States has engaged in foreign aid for much longer than that. It did so, and continues to provide foreign aid for a multitude of reasons.

Food and medical aid are perhaps the most visible form of foreign aid that the United States provides; white sacks of grain with red and blue “USA” on them have become a staple of reporting on USAID programs. The reputation as a good samaritan that the United States gains from disaster relief is not irrelevant, but the impact that such aid has in the US and abroad has more concrete effects. In states receiving aid there can be significant distortions in the economy, and local politics. The presence of free or cheap food can cause a drop in food prices, leading local farmers to cease farming, exacerbating food shortages. There are also repeated accounts of warlords and others seizing food and medical aid and using it to strengthen their political standing. The flip side of the coin is that food aid is intended to distort the United States economy. The vast majority of foodstuffs provided are purchased as part of the US’s agricultural subsidy program to boost the market price of the products of American farms. US food aid also introduces American staple grains like corn and wheat to markets where they were not previous popular, creating new markets for American goods. Starvation and epidemics also increase instability, providing aid ensures stability to regions of vital national interest to the US.

Monetary aid is also a mixed blessing. President Carter began providing aid to Egypt in exchange for Egyptian recognition of Israel. This achieved a minor policy objective. The Egyptian government fulfilled its commitment with lip service, and the money sustained the repressive Egyptian state without the need to develop the Egyptian economy. This resulted in a loss of American prestige in Egypt at a steep monetary cost for little gain. Not all monetary aid is money down the drain. The Marshall Plan provided a tremendous amount of monetary aid to Europe after World War Two, which was then used to purchase American goods. This sustained the American economy as it transitioned from war materiel to consumer goods, and increased the access of American businesses to foreign markets.

Similarly defense aid to foreign allies, in the form of arms as well as cash or financing for arms purchases, serve as a subsidy for the American economy. Israel continues to be the largest recipient of American foreign aid, and much of that money returns to the US as payment to American defense contractors and manufacturers. While it is true that this money could be spent on other domestic projects or purchases for the US military, it is in US interests to ensure that both the manufacturing and research and development fields of the American defense industry are healthy. Foreign aid for defense spending does this effectively.

The United States does not provide foreign aid out of the goodness of its heart, nor simply to stake a claim on the moral high ground in international affairs.  Foreign aid does have some negative side effects, but the benefits to the US are concrete and substantial. Foreign aid subsidizes American agriculture, industry & science, ensures market access, preserves regional stability, and facilitates foreign cooperation with policy objectives. Cutting the foreign aid budget would not simply be a sacrifice of nebulous American ‘Soft Power’; it would be a serious blow to the United States’ economy and national security.

Further Reading

William Appleman Williams, The Tragedy of American Diplomacy, (New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company, 2009).

Michael E. Latham, The Right Kind of Revolution: Moderinzation, Development, and U.S. Foreign Policy from the Cold War to the Present, (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2011).

Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Extremes: A History of the World, 1914-1991, (New York, NY: Vintage Books, 1994).

Charles W. King

The last two centuries have seen tens of millions of people die of famine across the world. Few things make government seem more impotent than their people slowly dying of hunger as they sit by unable to anything about the lack of ample food. These deaths, probably more than a hundred million, are tragic, and doubly so because of an insidious lie; there has always been enough food. Despite the consternations of Thomas Malthus, increases in the productivity of agriculture have consistently outpaced the growth of the population. This raises the question as to why the nineteenth and twentieth centuries experienced horrific death rates from famine, unprecedented in the history of mankind.

The most straightforward answer is that these deaths are the responsibility of natural disasters, droughts and other natural phenomenon that destroyed crops and lives. This fails to recognize that drought, locusts, blights, and the like are not a new occurrence.  Since the advent of agriculture droughts and other natural disasters have occurred, and societies have found ways to mitigate their effects. The droughts that preceded some of the deadliest famines were equally devastating to crops. Research has shown that the famines in British ruled India in 1876-1879 and 1896-1902 were of a severity that had happened dozens of times in the previous centuries. Why then did millions Indians die of starvation between 1876 and 1879, many orders of magnitude more than died as a result of droughts of similar size only decades before? It is also important to understand that two of the most well-known crop disasters of the last two hundred years are man-made in their origin. Both the Irish Potato Famine and the American Dustbowl were caused by the unsustainable agricultural methods of the Irish and American farmers.

It is the Irish Potato Famine that best illuminates the true cause of famine deaths in recent centuries. Legend has it that upon hearing of the plight of the Irish the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire declared that he would be sending food aid to the Irish and money in the amount of ten thousand pounds sterling. This caused a minor diplomatic incident as the Queen of England had only donated two thousand pounds. More important than the wrangling over charitable donations was the fact that for the duration of the famine Ireland remained a net exporter of foodstuffs, primarily wheat. This is not unique to the Irish Potato Famine. India remained an exporter of food during both the famine of 1876-1879 (6.1 to 10.3 million deaths), and the famine of 1896-1902 (6.1 to 19 million deaths). China and Brazil experienced famines the same years (a consequence of global climate phenomenon) with death tolls proportional to their populations. Both continued to export food. This is not unique to the nineteenth century. Ethiopia experienced a devastating famine between 1989 and 1990, prompting an outpouring of support from the developed world. Throughout the famine Ethiopia was a net exporter of food.

It is not that the world has not possessed enough food to feed those who have died of starvation in the past two centuries, research shows that it is unlikely that food would have had to been imported to relieve most famine stricken areas.  Whether Indian, African, South American, Chinese or otherwise, those who have died of starvation have been unable to afford the food that was in their own countries. The purchasing power of the growing metropolises of the developed world has been too much for them to overcome. This is not unique to the colonial and developing world. In the late eighteenth century there were riots across England—in cities and rural towns—as the price of wheat on the newly open markets grew to be unaffordable for peasant farmers and urban laborers alike. Like the colonial and developing world, the English peasantry had utilized systems of famine and risk mitigation for hundreds of years, it was only with the introduction of new market systems that the English began to stave and riot.

Societies in Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East have been successfully dealing with natural disasters for thousands of years, and yet in the last three centuries there has been a devastating increase in famine deaths. Mankind has had a measurable impact upon the global climate, but even that is not yet extensive enough to be responsible for the millions of deaths from starvation. It is also not fair to place the blame for these deaths entirely on the merchants who exported food from famine stricken areas. That they were responding to market incentives does not absolve them of responsibility, but also highlights that a policy that may be good for some is not necessarily good for all. This also cannot be a blanket incitement of global free trade, which has saved millions and raised the quality of life of billions. It is essential that policy-makers understand that in the twenty-first century famine is not a natural disaster or even the result of agricultural practices. Famine is a political failure, and it has dire consequences for security and stability.

Further Reading

Mike Davis, Late Victorian Holocausts: El Nino Famines and the Making of the Third World, (New York, NY: Verso: 2002).

E. P. Thomson, "The Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the Eighteenth Century." Past & Present No. 50 (February, 1971).