Partisans of the Old Republic: Right-Wing Opposition to U.S. Foreign Policy

This dissertation will advance the argument that right-wing noninterventionism emerged from a broader tradition of anti-imperialism and remained a persistent force within American conservative politics throughout the 20th century, albeit politically constrained and culturally isolated by the sociopolitical trends of postwar America. Unlike other treatments of the topic, this dissertation will begin in the earliest days of an organized and continuous noninterventionism that emerged in response to the rise of American power abroad at the turn of the 20th century. It will trace these lines of proto-conservative critique through what was once a broad political response to an assertive American foreign policy, arguing that what became known as a "right-wing" perspective on America's role in the world was rendered as such by the interplay of post-New Deal American politics and their relationship with events overseas. This dissertation is grounded in two bodies of primary source material, one congressional and another drawn from conservative media. While political histories of noninterventionism often focus on the affairs of the presidency and the cultural forces that animated them, this study shifts its political gaze towards Capitol Hill. The analysis of political materials in this study relies on a conventional close reading of traditional primary sources available through the Congressional Record and a variety of traditional sources such as op-eds, campaign ads, personal correspondence, and speeches. This dissertation also employs original computational analysis of congressional voting records and demographic data associated with members of Congress. This computational analysis draws on a dataset of almost one million voting observations from 1935 until 1996, and it disaggregates American foreign policy into its constituent parts: military, diplomatic, and foreign aid policy. This analysis reveals wide fissures in the Cold War consensus, making a case for the political staying power of the noninterventionist right throughout the early Cold War. By focusing on Congress and using this unique computational analysis, this study uncovers continuities in noninterventionist thinking and the longevity of its political presence despite the U.S. government's drive toward global dominance, continuities overlooked by earlier scholarship. This dissertation promises to provide a historical context for current events that have baffled commentators and scholars alike: the alleged and inexplicable return of "isolationism" to conservative American politics. The findings of this dissertation, coupled with our current era of discord, make the assertive, interventionist, or universalistic iterations of a conservative foreign policy look like aberrations rather than norms. Far from being dogmatic, often a synonym for conservatism, the broader landscape of the American right's foreign policy has been remarkably dynamic and contentious for a century.

Author

• Buck, Brandan Paul

• Conservatism
• Foreign Policy
• Isolationism
• National Security
• Non-interventionism
• Republican Party

Identifier

hdl:1920/14322

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:MARS:1920/14322