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CHAPTER 4 The Political and Economic Sources of Divergent Foreign Policy Preferences in the Senate, 1949-51 If we can ... carry out only those agreements which can be ratified through Constitutional processes, I am quite sure that we not only can write a peace treaty, but it will provide the opportunity whereby we can put our financial house in order, reduce taxes, and keep off our back controls, regimentations, and directives issued by our Federal bureaus. -Kenneth Wherry, Senate Minority Leader It is imperative that this trend [of growing relative Soviet power] be reversed by a much more rapid and concerted build-up of actual strength of both the United States and the other nations of the free world. The analysis shows that this will be costly and will involve significant financial and economic adjustments. -NSC68 Did congressional debates over the goals and priorities of U.S. foreign policy during the early Cold War era reflect cleavages in the American political economy? This chapter presents statistical evidence that they did. The international trade and investment interests ofhome-state firms and industries , mediated by the party system, strongly influenced senators' foreign policy preferences. In underscoring the need to take the opponents of U.S. foreign policy seriously, this statistical evidence sets the stage for the account of political conflict and bargaining between the administration and its opponents that follows. Congressional opposition to administration foreign policy cannot be treated as the product of individual idiosyncrasies , failure to understand the administration's goals, or mere political opportunism. It reflected systematic and lasting features of the American political economy. The problem facing the administration in its efforts to secure broad support for its foreign policy was not simply overcoming the misperception or myopia of its political opponents. It had to persuade them to accept a policy that simply did not serve their interests. 75 76 Building the Cold War Consensus The attitudes of members of Congress are more amenable to statistical analysis than the views of executive policymakers discussed in the last two chapters. Roll call votes contain enough individual data points to make statistical inference possible. Because legislators can express their preferences on each issue in only a limited number ofways when they vote, the coding of each individual vote requires relatively little interpretation by the analyst. Reasonably good data exist about the economic structure of the United States and the international interests of large firms within it during the early postwar era. A statistical comparison of these economic data with the voting records of individual senators can reveal whether there are systematic relationships consistent with my theoretical argument about the influence of interests and the party system on foreign policy preferences. While administration proponents of NSC 68 believed their vision of the global political and economic order would promote the interests of the United States as a whole, not everyone agreed. At the time, many parts of the United States had few ties to the international economy. While Dean Acheson and others found it hard to take their views seriously, members of Congress who came from such an environment saw little point in devoting enormous resources to the construction ofa world order in which they had such a small stake. Other administration critics had international interests that called for an equally ambitious world order of a different sort. The administration's program was not intended to assert direct U.S. control over foreign territory, particularly in the Third World. These areas were understood in the administration primarily as an economic hinterland for the major industrial areas they sought to rebuild. As Frieden (1989; 1994) has pointed out, direct investors in extractive industries have strong incentives to favor direct colonial control of areas in which they have interests. Cumings (1990, 97~100) offers evidence that individuals linked to mineral industries were worried that the administration's brand of internationalism would not protect their interests. The administration's opponents worked assiduously to undermine its foreign policy and, indeed, to destroy politically those who had devised it. While the struggle between these interests is critical, the merit of the arguments they made need not concern us here. Even if one could show that either the administration or its critics were correct about the relative costs and benefits of their proposed courses ofaction, this evidence would reveal little about the policy-making process. Not only would such information have been unavailable at the time, but, in any event, policies are selected because those who favor them...

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