One for all and all for one. That simple principle underlies all alliances. But what happens when the all dwindles and the one ends up alone? That’s the position Britain found itself in the late spring of 1940. Poland, Norway, Denmark, Belgium, the Netherlands, and France had all fallen under the Nazi jackboots. Britain was the only thing standing between Adolf Hitler and control of Europe. With Britain tottering on the abyss, its prime minister, Winston Churchill, gave one of the great rallying cries in world history, the “finest hour” speech of June 18, 1940.

As Churchill wrote the speech—he did not rely on others to craft his words—the situation was dire. Indeed, over the previous six weeks Churchill had given two major speeches preparing Britons for what was to come, first telling them he had “nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat” and then urging them to “never surrender.” Now the Germans had raised the swastika over Paris. It was just a matter of time—four days in fact—before the French government would formally surrender. Britain was left alone to face Hitler’s Germany.

When Churchill began speaking on the floor of the House of Commons, his fellow parliamentarians knew that June 18^th marked a significant date in British history—the 125^th anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo, when British troops under the Duke of Wellington defeated Napoleon. Churchill’s task was to rally their descendants to stop another authoritarian from dominating the European continent, this time against even longer odds.

Churchill spoke for thirty-six minutes. His final paragraph summarized what Britain and the world faced:

The Battle of France is over: the Battle of Britain is about to begin. Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilisation. Upon it depends our own British life, and the long continuity of our institutions and our Empire. The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us. Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be freed and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duty and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say: This was their finest hour.

That night at 9:00 p.m., Churchill repeated his speech almost word for word, this time on BBC radio. An estimated 60 percent of the British people listened to the broadcast. Churchill’s delivery left a lot to be desired. He spoke the entire time with a cigar in his mouth, leaving some of his listeners to conclude he was drunk.

However imperfect Churchill’s delivery may have been, the emotional power of his words is unquestioned. Three weeks later, on July 10, 1940, the German Luftwaffe began bombing Britain. What Churchill had named the Battle of Britain had begun. The tribulations of that summer would show Britons at their finest hour, in no small part because Churchill gave one of his finest speeches at his country’s moment of greatest need.

Economists are said to be too smart for their own good and not smart enough for anyone else’s. If so, should presidents take their advice? One president who wishes he had is Herbert Hoover. In June 1930, more than 1,000 economists signed a letter urging him to veto a bill that Congress had sent to his desk. Hoover disregarded their counsel, however, and on June 17, 1930 signed into law the Smoot-Hawley Tariff. The law intensified the Great Depression and helped solidify Hoover’s ranking as one of the worst presidents in American history.

The genesis of Smoot-Hawley was a bid by Republican members of Congress to pick up the farm vote. Commodity prices had fallen in the 1920s, and Republicans argued that raising tariffs on agricultural imports would help farmers. (Yes, tariffs are taxes, and today’s GOP favors lower rather than higher taxes. But before World War II, Republicans were the party of higher tariffs. Times change.) The call for higher agricultural tariffs was made politically attractive by casting it as a matter of fairness: the average tariff on manufactured goods was higher than the average tariff on agricultural goods. So farmers deserved the same kind of protection that industrialists did, or so the argument went.

Officially labeled the United States Tariff Act of 1930, Smoot-Hawley took its name from its congressional sponsors: Senator Reed Smoot (R-UT), chair of the Senate Finance Committee, and Representative Willis Hawley (R-OR), chair of the House Ways and Means Committee. The ordering of their names was unusual. The normal practice for tariffs bills is for the House sponsor’s name to go first because the Constitution requires all tariff bills to originate there. However, Smoot was far better known than Hawley, so he got top billing.

Smoot had a parochial interest in the bill. Utah’s sugar beet industry faced tough competition, especially from Cuban sugar growers. A higher tariff would help keep Utah’s farmers in business. Smoot’s effort to take care of his constituents prompted the humorist Will Rogers to joke: “120 million Americans eat sugar, 1,200 raise sugar, but Smoot ‘had dedicated his entire political career to make sugar not only sweet but dear to the 120 million.’”

Smoot wasn’t the only member of Congress to see the tariff bill as a way to help particular interests back home. Pretty much every member thought the same thing, which was the problem. The version of the bill that passed the House raised 845 tariff rates and cut just 82. Unwilling to be outdone, the Senate increased 890 tariffs and cut 235. To make matters worse, most of changes Congress enacted specified tariffs in specific amounts rather than a percentage of product cost. So if the cost of an imported good fell, the tariff (tax) on it actually increased in percentage terms.

It didn’t take a Ph.D. in economics to realize that Smoot-Hawley would be, as economists like to say, “contractionary.” Famed industrialist Henry Ford spent an evening at the White House trying to explain to Hoover why Smoot-Hawley would be bad law. Several of Hoover’s close advisers thought the same thing. One of them later recalled: “I almost went down on my knees to beg Herbert Hoover to veto the asinine Hawley-Smoot Tariff.” Their arguments worked with Hoover—to a point. He concluded that the tariff bill might be a bad idea.

But Hoover signed Smoot-Hawley into law anyway, attesting to the power of politics to drive smart people to do dumb things. Just as economists predicted, Smoot-Hawley triggered a vicious cycle of self-defeating actions that trade experts call beggar-thy-neighbor policies. Foreign countries angry at what they saw as a U.S. effort to hurt their exports enacted retaliatory tariffs. The net result was to spark a steep decline in U.S. and global trade. U.S. exports in 1929 stood at almost $7 billion. Three years later they totaled just $2.4 billion. World trade fell by as much as two-thirds between 1929 and 1934. Smoot-Hawley didn’t cause the Great Depression, but it made it much worse than it should have been.

Smoot-Hawley did have one saving grace: it prompted a major re-think of U.S. trade policy. In 1934, Congress passed, and President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed into law, the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act. It was premised on the idea that negotiating with other countries to reduce tariffs promotes economic growth. That principle has driven U.S. trade policy ever since; it is reflected in such things as the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, the World Trade Organization, and the North American Free Trade Agreement. Lower tariffs and more open trade in turn have proven to be a major driver of global economic expansion over the past seven decades. Economists may have lost their battle to win over Hoover, but they won the larger intellectual contest to discredit protectionism and promote trade liberalization.

Happy Flag Day everyone. Two hundred and thirty-six years ago today, the Second Continental Congress adopted the design that became the American flag. So Happy Birthday, Stars and Stripes!

Here are a few facts about the flag:

• Most colonial flags did not feature stripes. They instead featured “beavers, pine trees, rattlesnakes, anchors, and various other insignia…affixed to different banners with mottoes such as ‘Hope,’ ‘Liberty,’ or ‘Appeal to Heaven,’ and spoke to the first colonists struggle with the elements in the new territory.”
• The flag that flew in Philadephia on July 4, 1776 was the Grand Union Flag. It had thirteen horizontal stripes representing the colonies, and it bore the red cross of St. George of England with the white cross of St. Andrew of Scotland.
• Betsy Ross did make flags in Philadelphia in the 1770s, but she almost certainly did not make the first American flag. The story that she did was first told by her grandson in 1870, or ninety-three years after the flag debuted. His evidence? Family stories.
• Red, white, and blue appear to have been chosen as the flag’s colors because those were the flag colors that the colonials were most accustomed to; after all, they are the colors of the Union Jack. Nonetheless, many people think that the color choice was deliberate and symbolic. That’s probably because five years after the first flag design was chosen, Charles Thompson, the secretary to the Continental Congress, wrote in a report about the creation of the Great Seal that the colors had specific meaning: “The colors of the pales (the vertical stripes) are those used in the flag of the United States of America; White signifies purity and innocence, Red, hardiness & valour, and Blue, the color of the Chief (the broad band above the stripes) signifies vigilance, perseverance & justice.”
• No one agrees on why the five-pointed star design was chosen. Francis Hopkinson of New Jersey, a signatory of the Declaration of Independence, is thought to have conceived of the stars in the flag. One historical oddity: the stars on the ceiling of the Oval Office have eight points. No one knows why.
• The flag has been updated twenty-six times to increase the number of stars as new states joined the union.  Today’s flag was approved on July 4, 1960.
• Crews from Apollo 11, 12, 14, 15, 16, and 17 each planted an American flag on the moon.  The six flags remain there today.  American flags have been placed at the North Pole and the top of Mount Everest.
• Over 90 percent of American flags are made in the United States. The United States exports over $400,000 in flags to countries around the world, over half of which go to Mexico.
• President Woodrow Wilson first proclaimed Flag Day by executive order in 1916. In 1949, President Harry Truman signed an Act of Congress formally establishing National Flag Day. Many places have claimed to be the birthplace of Flag Day, but on June 14, 2004, Congress unanimously voted that Flag Day originated in Ozaukee County, Waubeka, Wisconsin. (In case you are wondering, Waubeka is located 35 miles north of Milwaukee.)
• Pennsylvania is the only state to celebrate Flag Day as a state holiday.
• Folded properly, the flag is shaped into a triangle with only the stars showing.  It takes thirteen folds to complete.
• Specific rules govern how the flag should be displayed. If you want to brush up on them, try here and here.

If you have any other interesting facts about the flag, please post them in the comments below.

Doughboy. GI. Grunt. Dogface. Warrior. Whatever term you prefer, if you see an active duty, former, or retired member of the United States Army today, wish their service Happy Birthday. The United States Army just turned 238 years old.

The Army website provides a short but thorough overview of its history. Here are five tidbits worth knowing:

• It is the oldest of the four services. With its creation on June 14, 1775, it is four months older than the United States Navy and five months older than the United States Marine Corps.
• Eleven Army Generals have gone on to become president of the United States: George Washington (General), Andrew Jackson (Major General), William Henry Harrison (Major General), Zachary Taylor (Major General), Franklin Pierce (Brigadier General), Andrew Johnson (Brigadier General), Ulysses S. Grant (General), Rutherford B. Hayes (Major General, Brevet), James A. Garfield (Major General, Volunteers), Benjamin Harrison (Major General, Brevet), and Dwight D. Eisenhower (General). No Navy Admiral, Marine Corps General, or Air Force General has ever been elected president. (Chester A. Arthur was Quartermaster General of the New York State Militia at the start of the Civil War, but I don’t believe he was mustered into federal service.)
• The highest rank in the United States Army is General of the Armies of the United States. Only two men have held it: George Washington and John Pershing. Efforts to give General Douglas MacArthur the title failed. Washington got his title posthumously on July 4, 1976. During his lifetime, the highest rank he achieved was Lieutenant General. President Ford issued the executive order elevating Washington to six-star status because given the military’s strict hierarchy he was technically outranked by the four- and five-star generals who came after him. President Ford’s executive order directs that Washington shall always be considered the most senior United States military officer.
• The Medal of Honor has been awarded to a member of the United States Army 2,403 times. Put differently, nearly 70 percent of all 3,468 Medals of Honor that have been awarded have gone to soldiers in the United States Army.
• There are over 540,000 active duty Army personnel.  About 80,000 are stationed overseas.  May they all return home safely.

I asked Colonel John S. Kolasheski, a military fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations this year, what to read if you want to know more about the Army’s history. He recommended several books from the U.S. Army Chief of Staff’s Professional Reading List.  Here are a few:

Fredriksen, John C. The United States Army: A Chronology, 1775 to the Present (2010).

House, John M. Why War? Why an Army? (2008).

Stewart, Richard W. (ed.) American Military History, vol. 2: The United States Army in a Global Era, 1917-2008 (2010).

If you have any other recommended reading about the Army, please post in the comments below.

The World Next Week podcast is up. Bob McMahon and I discussed the presidential elections in Iran, the G8 summit in Northern Ireland, and President Obama’s trip to Berlin.

The highlights:

• Iranians head to the polls tomorrow to cast their ballot for a new president. If none of the six men on the ballot wins a majority of the vote on the first go, there will be a run-off election next Friday. Whether the Iranians vote once or twice, the election hardly qualifies as free and fair. The list of six candidates was vetted by the Supreme Leader and the powerful Guardian Council; potential candidates who posed a possible threat to the regime or opposed its policies were booted off the ballot. So none of the final six candidates favors halting Iran’s nuclear program. Indeed, one of the leading candidates, Saeed Jalili, has been Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator since 2007. One open question about the election is whether the regime’s opponents will head to the polls or sit out the vote. Iran’s last presidential vote saw the Green Movement emerge, but the regime forcibly crushed the protests. A repeat of that dynamic is possible, though probably not likely. One thing is certain: the election marks the end of the eight-year-long Ahmadinejad presidency. Like the United States, Iran limits its presidents to two terms.
• The leaders of the Group of Eight industrialized countries—or G8—will be watching the Iranian elections closely as they make their way to Lough Erne in Northern Ireland for their annual meeting. Britain currently holds the G8’s rotating presidency, and Prime Minister David Cameron has prioritized the “three Ts”–trade, transparency, and tax–as topics for discussion. The discussion of first “t” could be the most interesting. The United States and Europe have opened negotiations on a Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). If successfully negotiated, it could turn out to be a watershed development for the global economy. The discussions at Lough Erne could give us a sense of TTIP’s chances for becoming a reality. Global terrorism and Syria will also be on the G8′s agenda, but the likelihood of a major breakthrough on either issue is low.
• After the G8 summit wraps up, President Obama heads to Berlin, Germany. Obama was last in Berlin in 2008 when an estimated 200,000 people turned out to hear what the then-presumptive Democratic presidential nominee had to say. Obama gave that speech in front of the Victory Column in the city’s Tiergarten rather than at Berlin’s historic Brandenburg Gate because German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she had “little sympathy for the Brandenberg Gate being used for electioneering.” This time around Obama gets the Brandenburg Gate, which is where Ronald Reagan gave his famed “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall” speech twenty-six years ago yesterday. Obama is expected to speak about the “deep and enduring bonds between the United States and Germany, the vital importance of the transatlantic alliance, and the values that bind us together.”  Merkel, who is up for re-election in September, may press Obama in their private meetings on the U.S. government’s surveillance programs. While Obama is personally popular in Germany, his surveillance policies aren’t.
• Bob’s Figure of the Week is Edward Snowden. My Figure of the Week is 4.9 million. As always, you’ll have to listen to the podcast to find out why.

For more on the topics we discussed in the podcast check out:

Presidential Elections in Iran: Al-Jazeera has an inforgraphic outlining Iran’s election process and the candidates. Ray Takeyh predicts that the winner of the election will most likely come from the conservative or revolutionary wings, but the moderate Rowhani may provide momentum for the reform movement. The Washington Post reports Israel is concerned about the lack of change Iran’s nuclear program.

The G8 Convenes in Northern Ireland: The UK government has a letter from British prime minister David Cameron to G8 leaders and fact sheets on trade, tax, and transparency. The Guardian writes the G8 is a “curiously outdated” body but may be able to reinvent itself to focus on international development aid. CNN reports that arrests have already been made in London ahead of the summit. The Voice of Russia outlines possible topics of conversation for the side meeting between Obama and Putin.

Obama Goes to Berlin:  The New York Times reports President Obama will get his chance to speak at the Brandenburg Gate. Spiegel Online writes that both the United States and Germany see the importance of Asia as an economic partner. Reuters says German officials are concerned about the recent surveillance programs unveiled in the United States and their implications for European citizens.

Commencement addresses have figured prominently in American foreign policy. Whether it was FDR ending the pretense that the United States would remain rigidly neutral in World War II in a speech at the University of Virginia, or George W. Bush warning Americans of the growing need for preemptive (actually, preventive) action abroad in an address at West Point, major foreign policy turning points are sometimes announced on college campuses. So which of the many foreign-policy themed commencement addresses was the most significant? My money is on Secretary of State George C. Marshall’s address to Harvard’s graduating class of  1947—it unveiled the Marshall Plan that would rebuild Europe. But plenty of others would vote for a commencement address given sixteen years later: John F. Kennedy’s arms control speech to the graduating class of American University, which he gave fifty years ago today, June 10, 1963.

Kennedy’s speech that morning doesn’t contain any especially memorable lines, certainly nothing that could compete with “ask not what your country can do for you” or  “Ich bin ein Berliner.” Officially titled “The Strategy for Peace,” the speech was significant because it asked Americans to rethink the U.S. relationship with the Soviet Union and support finding ways for the two countries to co-exist peacefully:

If we cannot end now our differences, at least we can make the world safe for diversity.

That was a bold statement to make in 1963. The crushing of liberty in Eastern Europe, the communist victory in China, the Korean war, and Khrushchev boasting that “We will bury you!” were just a few of the events that had convinced most Americans that the Soviet Union was an implacable foe. Just two years earlier Kennedy had told Americans that:

Each day we draw nearer the hour of maximum danger, as weapons spread and hostile forces grow stronger….the tide of events has been running out and time has not been our friend.

By 1963, however, JFK’s concern had changed. He was no longer worried about missile gaps and Soviet military superiority. Having survived the Cuban missile crisis, he worried about the risk of nuclear war, a risk that would grow as nuclear weapons spread. He wanted to find a way to lift the nuclear sword of Damocles from above the world’s head before it was too late. In March, he told reporters:

I am haunted by the feeling that by 1970, unless we are successful, there may be ten nuclear powers instead of four, and by 1975, fifteen or twenty…I see the possibility in the 1970s of the President of the United States having to face a world in which fifteen or twenty nations have these weapons. I regard that as the greatest possible danger.

In late May, Kennedy tasked Ted Sorensen with writing a speech that would do two things: lay out his vision of how the United States could live in peace with its major adversary, and reinvigorate the foundering eight-year effort to negotiate a nuclear test ban treaty. The Pentagon and State Department were kept in the dark about the speech’s content until the last moment, lest they attempt to scuttle it.

As Sorensen worked on the speech, White House officials scrambled to find an appropriate venue. They approached AU to gauge its interest in hosting Kennedy. The university already had a scheduled commencement speaker, Pauline Frederick, a journalist who had graduated from AU. But a presidential address is hard to pass up, and Ms. Frederick graciously stepped aside.

Kennedy traveled the five miles to AU’s campus by helicopter. When he addressed the graduates, he did not gloss over the differences between the United States and the Soviet Union. But he asked his audience to focus on the common danger facing both countries:

Today, should total war ever break out again—no matter how—our two countries will be the primary targets. It is an ironic but accurate fact that the two strongest powers are the two in the most danger of devastation. All we have built, all we have worked for, would be destroyed in the first 24 hours. And even in the cold war—which brings burdens and dangers to so many countries, including this nation’s closest allies—our two countries bear the heaviest burdens. For we are both devoting massive sums of money to weapons that could better be devoted to combat ignorance, poverty, and disease.

We are both caught up in a vicious and dangerous cycle with suspicion on one side breeding suspicion on the other, and new weapons begetting counter-weapons.

In short, both the United States and its allies, and the Soviet Union and its allies, have a mutually deep interest in a just and genuine peace and in halting the arms race. Agreements to this end are in the interests of the Soviet Union as well as ours — and even the most hostile nations can be relied upon to accept and keep those treaty obligations and only those treaty obligations which are in their own interest.

So let us not be blind to our differences, but let us also direct attention to our common interests and the means by which those differences can be resolved. And if we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity. For, in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s futures. And we are all mortal.

The speech also contained one new substantive proposal—a unilateral offer to Soviets:

I now declare that the United States does not propose to conduct nuclear tests in the atmosphere so long as other states do not do so. We will not be the first to resume. Such a declaration is no substitute for a formal binding treaty—but I hope it will help us achieve one. Nor would such a treaty be a substitute for disarmament—but I hope it will help us achieve it.

Kennedy’s speech pleased many Americans and alarmed others. (The Columbus Dispatch called it an “appeasement cue.”) But it made a decidedly positive impression on the one person JFK most hoped to reach: Nikita Khrushchev. The Soviet leader subsequently told Under Secretary of State Averell Harriman that it was “the greatest speech by any American president since Roosevelt.” Ten days later, U.S. and Soviet negotiators reached a deal to set up a hotline between Washington and Moscow. The once moribund test-ban talks also picked up momentum. A little more than a month later, on July 25, the United States, the Soviet Union, and the United Kingdom agreed to the Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, which barred nuclear testing in the atmosphere, underwater, or in outer space. The foreign ministers of all three countries formally signed the treaty in Moscow on August 5, 1963.

So it is easy to see why Ted Sorensen later called Kennedy’s AU speech “the most important and the best speech he ever gave” and why Time magazine named it to its list of the top ten commencement speeches.

A president giving a commencement address is commonplace. A president giving a commencement address when his child is a member of the graduating class is pretty rare. Rarer still is a president speaking at his child’s graduation and saying something memorable enough to make it into the history books. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt accomplished just that feat on the evening of June 10, 1940 in his “stab-in-the-back” speech at the University of Virginia.

FDR had agreed to speak at UVA because his son, Franklin Jr., was graduating with a law degree. Early that morning as he prepared to depart from Washington, FDR learned that Italy had declared war on France, thereby entering World War II on the side of Nazi Germany. He had already planned to give a speech on the events in Europe. Now he would have more to say. His aides reworked his remarks on the train ride down to Charlottesville, adding five pages of text detailing the duplicity of Italy’s leader, Benito Mussolini.

The five hundred graduates and their families who gathered in UVA’s Memorial Gymnasium to escape the rain heard a president on a mission. As the New York Times later described FDR’s delivery, “there could be no missing the depth of his feeling, since he put into the words all the emphasis at his command.”

FDR began by saying that the United States faced questions “not about the future of an individual or even of a generation, but about the future of the country, the future of the American people.” Without ever mentioning the war in Europe but fully confident that his audience understood the events he left implicit, Roosevelt argued that America could not retreat from the world:

Some indeed still hold to the now somewhat obvious delusion that we of the United States can safely permit the United States to become a lone island, a lone island in a world dominated by the philosophy of force.

Such an island may be the dream of those who still talk and vote as isolationists. Such an island represents to me and to the overwhelming majority of Americans today a helpless nightmare of a people without freedom—the nightmare of a people lodged in prison, handcuffed, hungry, and fed through the bars from day to day by the contemptuous, unpitying masters of other continents.

FDR then turned to Mussolini’s duplicity. Italy had entered the war that morning, with France tottering on the brink of collapse, in manifest “disregard for the rights and security of other nations, [and] disregard for the lives of the peoples of those nations which are directly threatened by this spread of the war.” FDR then uttered a line he had scrawled on his typewritten text:

On this tenth day of June, 1940, the hand that held the dagger has struck it into the back of its neighbor.

A variant of that line had been in an earlier version of the speech. FDR had taken it from a letter the French premier Paul Reynaud had sent that morning saying that “This very hour, another dictatorship has stabbed France in the back.” Undersecretary of State Sumner Welles argued, however, that the stab-in-the-back metaphor was inflammatory and should be dropped. FDR agreed—a least for a time. On the train ride down to Charlottesville he and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt discussed the merits of observing diplomatic niceties versus speaking candidly. In the end, FDR opted for candor.

Even more significant than FDR’s willingness to ruffle diplomatic feathers was what came next. The president pledged to:

pursue two obvious and simultaneous courses; we will extend to the opponents of force the material resources of this nation; and, at the same time, we will harness and speed up the use of those resources in order that we ourselves in the Americas may have equipment and training equal to the task of any emergency and every defense.

FDR’s denunciation of the champions of “the philosophy of force” (Hitler and his allies) and his pledge to aid their opponents (Great Britain) drew cheers from the audience. The New York Times wrote the next day:

When Mr. Roosevelt gave deliberate emphasis to this nation’s sympathies with those who were staking their lives in the fight for freedom overseas, they broke into the wildest applause, cheering, and rebel yells. As the President neared the end of his speech the cheering became general and members of the faculty stamped their feet and applauded. Whenever Mr. Roosevelt mentioned this nation’s determination to preserve free institutions and liberties and to perpetuate democracy within our borders, those on the platform and in the audience forgot academic decorum in spontaneous approbation.

The country as a whole hardly reacted in the same way. Some Democratic officials worried that the speech would alienate Italian-American voters and thereby hurt Roosevelt and the rest of the Democratic ticket with national elections less than five months off. (FDR would be running for an unprecedented third term.) And the country’s vocal isolationists saw the speech as more evidence that FDR intended to plunge the country into a war that it should not fight and would not win.

Yet as the UVA graduates filed out of their gymnasium that rainy June evening to cheers of Wahoo Wah!, the die had been cast. As Time magazine put it, with the speech “the U.S. had taken sides. Ended was the myth of U.S. neutrality.” Within a week, FDR nominated Henry Stimson to be secretary of war and Frank Knox to be secretary of the navy. Both men were Republicans. More significantly, both men staunchly favored aiding Britain. Many epic political battles were yet to be fought, over a peacetime draft, the trading of old destroyers for bases, and letting Britain buy weapons from the United States. But as FDR returned to Washington that night having given what would be remembered as his stab-in-the-back speech, even though he never used those precise words, he was intent on ensuring that the United States did not become “a lone island in a world dominated by the philosophy of force.”

Sometimes good relationships get off to a bad start. The United States and South Korea are a case in point. Today, Seoul is a valued American ally. Just last month, South Korean president Park Geun-hye became the sixth Korean president to address a joint session of Congress. President Obama said that President Park’s decision to make the United States her first overseas visit as president “reflects the deep friendship between our peoples and the great alliance between our nations.” But U.S.-Korean relations started with conflict rather than cooperation when on June 10, 1871, the U.S. Navy expedition sent to open relations with Korea instead waged the Battle of Ganghwa (or Shinmiyangyo).

The backdrop for the hostilities was the American desire to establish trade relations with Korea. Like its neighbor Japan, Korea in the mid-nineteenth century was hostile to foreign influences, so much so that it earned the nickname of “the Hermit Kingdom.” Japan agreed to sign a commercial treaty with the United States only at the point of a gun after a fleet headed by Commodore Matthew Perry appeared in Tokyo Bay in 1854. American merchants hoped that a similar treaty could be struck with Korea. The outbreak of the Civil War ended U.S. interest in Asia for a time. But after Lee’s surrender at Appomattox, American merchants again turned their eyes to the region.

The “Korean Expedition” that steamed out Nagasaki, Japan in May 1871 with five U.S. warships and 1,230 men under the command of Admiral John Rogers had two goals. The first was to open Korea to American merchants. The second was to learn the fate of the U.S. merchant ship, The General Sherman. It had disappeared after sailing up the Taedong River (which leads to modern day Pyongyang) in August 1866. The ship disregarded warnings to stop, ran aground upriver when the tide receded, and then sent out raiding parties. The Koreans eventually attacked the ship and killed its crew. Americans knew none of this because the Koreans refused to say what had become of the ship. So when the Korean Expedition set sail, the New York Times assured its readers that the effort would produce a “Detailed Account of the Treacherous Attack of the Coreans on Our Launches” and deliver “Speedy and Effective Punishment of the Barbarians.”

On June 1, the American ships entered the Ganghwa Straits on the west coast of Korea. Their goal was to steam up the Han River, which led to the capital city of Hanyang (modern day Seoul). The Korean king, however, had barred foreign ships from entering the Han. So when the American ships passed by, the Korean garrison onshore fired. Their outdated weapons did no damage, but that didn’t matter to Admiral Rogers. He gave the Koreans ten days to apologize for what he regarded as an unprovoked assault.

The Koreans refused to comply. So Admiral Rogers made good on his threat. On June 10, the U.S. ships attacked the Choji Garrison on the island of Ganghwa-do. It was a mismatch from the start. The garrison was lightly defended, poorly equipped, and badly outnumbered. U.S. marines and sailors then went on to overrun several other Korean posts on the island. When the smoke cleared at the end of the day, the Americans controlled Ganghwa-do at the cost of three dead. The Koreans weren’t so fortunate. They lost more than two-hundred-and-forty men.

Koreans call the fighting on Ganghwa-do “Shinmiyangyo,” which literally means “Western Disturbance in the Shinmi Year.” The American victory marked the first time that the stars and stripes were raised over Asian territory by force. Fifteen Americans—nine sailors and six marines—earned Medals of Honor for their bravery during the campaign, making them the first Medal of Honor recipients to be honored for fighting on foreign soil.

The Americans hoped that their victory would persuade the Koreans to negotiate. It didn’t. Instead, they sent reinforcements in large numbers and armed with modern weapons. Recognizing that the odds had shifted, the U.S. fleet pulled up anchor and set sail for China on July 3. The United States would not get a treaty with Korea until 1882. That agreement came about in good part because the Korean king was hoping that U.S. support could help him preserve Korea’s independence from China.

The 1882 treaty established “permanent relations of amity and friendship” between the peoples of Korea and the United States. That amity with South Korea continues to this day. But most Americans don’t know that, as the historian Robert Kagan put it, “the self-proclaimed disinterested and peace-loving Americans had introduced themselves to Korea by killing its people.”

The World Next Week podcast is up. Bob McMahon and I discussed Chinese president Xi Jinping’s meeting with President Obama in California, Peruvian president Ollanta Humala’s trip to Washington, and Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel’s testimony before the House budget committee.

The highlights:

• President Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping meet tomorrow and Saturday in Rancho Mirage, California, a resort town just south of Palm Springs, about 120 miles southeast of Los Angeles. The specific site for the meeting is Sunnylands, the estate of the late American publishing magnate Walter Annenberg, who among other things created TV Guide and Seventeen magazine. Assuming that the air conditioning holds up—forecasters are predicting clear skies and temperatures topping out at 106° F, or about 41° C—Sunnylands should provide the perfect backdrop for the kind of summit that President Xi has asked for and President Obama has agreed to: one that provides ample time for the two leaders to get to know each rather than haggling over specific deliverables. The two presidents certainly have no shortage of things to talk about: cybersecurity, China’s territorial disputes in the East and South China Seas, and America’s “rebalance” to Asia, to name just three. Both sides are saying that they hope that meeting will enable Obama and Xi to develop a rapport. The problem is that even if the two men conclude that they can work with each other, that goodwill might not take them very far in a crisis. Interests usually trump friendship.
• After wrapping up his meeting with President Xi, President Obama will return to Washington, DC, where he will host Peruvian president Ollanta Humala on Tuesday. The issues likely to top the agenda for Obama’s conversation with President Humala will be narco-trafficking and the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement. President Humala’s visit comes on the heels of a flurry of administration activity aimed at Latin America and the Caribbean. Just last month President Obama visited Mexico and Costa Rica, while Vice President Biden traveled to Brazil, Colombia, and Trinidad and Tobago.
• Secretary Hagel’s testimony before the House Budget Committee will highlight the fiscal pressures that the Department of Defense faces. The sequester has taken a big bite out of the Pentagon’s budget. So far DoD has taken the budget cuts in stride, but many defense officials question how long that will remain the case. A few Republicans might be open to considering tax increases as a way of providing the Pentagon budget relief. But most congressional Republicans look to be sticking to their no-tax-increases position. Meanwhile, the idea of exempting the defense budget from the sequester has few if any fans among congressional Democrats. If that legislative impasses holds, and it looks like it will, DoD will have to rethink some of its basic assumptions about missions, roles, and compensation. That will be a painful conversation, as everyone involved will want the cuts to come out of someone else’s budget.
• Bob’s Figure of the Week is 1.5 percent. My Figure of the Week is Susan Rice. As always, you’ll have to listen to the podcast to find out why.

For more on the topics we discussed in the podcast check out:

Obama and Xi meet: Elizabeth Economy discusses how Obama and Xi can “break the summit stalemate” by focusing on the positive aspects of the relationship between their two countries. Brookings reports that the length of the meeting will allow Obama and Xi to move past prepared talking points. USA Today says cybersecurity will be a central topic of discussion. The CFR-sponsored Independent Task Force on U.S. Policy in the Digital Age warns that “escalating attacks on countries, companies, and individuals, as well as pervasive criminal activity, threaten the security and safety of the Internet.”

Peruvian president Humala visits Washington: The Peruvian Times announces President Humala’s trip to Washington. Time reports that this meeting indicates the Obama administration’s hope to forge stronger economic ties with Latin America. The Washington Post interviewed President Humala after his 2011 visit to the United States when he discussed the importance of Peru’s growing free trade agreements.

Secretary Hagel’s House budget committee testimony: The Department of Defense has a summary of its 2014 budget proposal. Time writes that the Strategic Choices and Management Review assembled by Secretary Hagel has led the Department of Defense “strategically adrift.” Bloomberg reports Secretary Hagel assured Asian allies that budget reductions would not impact U.S. commitments to the region.

On the eve of President Obama’s “shirt-sleeves summit” with Chinese president Xi Jinping in California, the CFR-sponsored Independent Task Force on U.S. Policy in the Digital Age today released its report, Defending an Open, Global, Secure, and Resilient Internet. The Task Force is co-chaired by former deputy secretary of state and director of national intelligence John D. Negroponte and former chairman of the board and CEO of IBM Samuel J. Palmisano, and is directed by Adam Segal, CFR’s Maurice R. Greenberg senior fellow for China studies. I asked my colleague Anya Schmemann, who directs CFR’s Task Force Program, to highlight some takeaways from the report.

President Obama and President Xi meet tomorrow under a cyber cloud. China-based hackers have apparently conducted cyber espionage attacks against civil society actors, exile organizations, political movements, individual dissidents, corporations, think tanks, and media outlets.

While the Obama administration has publicly named China as a major source of cyber espionage (see, for example, Secretary of Defense Hagel’s recent speech at the Shangri-La Dialogue) and intends to raise the issue at the Obama-Xi meeting, the issue extends far beyond China. The Task Force took a broad look at the Internet and U.S. interests in the digital realm, and found that the open and global Internet that we all rely on is increasingly at risk.

The Internet is a massive global system and an essential tool for governments, companies, and individuals. And the United States is well positioned to reap the benefits of the expansion and deepening of this worldwide platform for sharing information and data.

Yet there are dangerous threats that travel through the Internet and also threats to the Internet. Societies are becoming more vulnerable to widespread disruption as energy, transportation, communication, and other critical infrastructure are connected through computer networks. Cyberspace is now an arena for strategic competition among states, and a growing number of actors—state and nonstate—use the Internet for conflict, espionage, and crime.

Escalating attacks on countries, companies, and individuals, as well as criminal activity, threaten the security and safety of the Internet. The number of high-profile, apparently state-backed operations continues to rise, and future attacks will only become more sophisticated and disruptive.

At the same time, the open, global Internet is at risk. Various nations—including China, Russia, Iran, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia—are territorializing cyberspace, leading to a fragmented Internet and a decline in global free expression. Even democracies such as India, Turkey, and Thailand have restricted certain types of information. Digital policy obviously involves trade-offs between privacy, security, openness, innovation, and the protection of intellectual property—but the report warns that the tradeoffs should be very carefully managed and considered.

The report says that U.S. policymakers need to be proactive on this front. The Task Force calls on the United States, with its friends and allies, to act decisively to encourage a global cyberspace that reflects shared values of free expression and free markets. By building a cyber alliance, making the free flow of information a part of all future trade agreements, and articulating an inclusive and robust vision of Internet governance, Washington can limit the effects of a divided Internet.

The Task Force’s bottom line is that the United States must work to ensure that the Internet remains an open, global, secure, and resilient environment for users. Otherwise, many gains will be lost to political, economic, and strategic fighting over the shape of cyberspace.