Great Plains Studies, Center for
Date of this Version
Summer 2002
Citation
Great Plains Quarterly Vol. 22, No. 3, Summer 2002, pp. 163-81.
Abstract
In the rare studies dealing with American post-World War II isolationism, the state of North Dakota always holds a special place, as it has acquired the reputation of having been "the nation's most isolationist state during [the] postwar decade."1 To a large extent, this reputation can be ascribed to the attitude of some of its prominent members on Capitol Hill, such as Senators William Langer, who voted against the United Nations Charter in 1945, and his colleague Milton Young, an opponent of the North Atlantic Treaty in 1949.2 Representative Usher Burdick, who sat between 1949 and 1959, also contributed to the isolationist label given to this midwestern state. This Republican politician, not enthusiastic about US participation in the Korean War, eagerly lambasted foreign aid during the Truman-Eisenhower years.3 Above all, the North Dakota congressman attracted attention during the postwar period for his vehement criticism of the United Nations Organization and for his advocacy of an American withdrawal from this international body created in 1945.
This article, which is largely based on an examination of the politician's rich manuscript collection at the University of North Dakota (Grand Forks), seeks to examine and comprehend Burdick's position toward the United Nations (UN) during the Truman-Eisenhower era. Such a study seems justified on several grounds. First, Burdick's stance in the field of foreign policy during the early Cold War years, notably his opposition to the United Nations, was sufficiently unusual in itself to be intriguing for any attentive observer of the period. In fact, the Republican congressman was incontestably one of the earliest public critics of the international organization in the United States. Second, such a study is relevant given the contemporary US perspective, which is marked by an "often turbulent relationship"4 between the American nation and the international body as well as a growing anti-UN sentiment in Congress and among the public.5 This theme is all the more warranted inasmuch as some key elements of Burdick's rhetoric still hold a prominent place in the recent anti-UN discourse of conservative commentators and politicians such as Jesse Helms of North Carolina,6 the Republican chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. In the same vein, Burdick's denigratory comments (as we will see) about the UN-affiliated United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization still find echoes at the dawn of the twenty-first century, for instance: "[UNESCO] was a corrupt, anti-American organization," said California representative Tom Lantos in the spring of 2001.7 Incidentally, some current websites railing against the United Nations cite Usher Burdick as having warned, a half century ago, of some dangers associated with an American membership in the international body.8
In order to attain our goal of understanding Usher Burdick's attitude and also to enlarge our comprehension of the context in which his views evolved, I draw on a wide range of primary sources: in addition to Burdick's papers and congressional documents, newspapers, and magazines, I have consulted the manuscript collections of Burdick's contemporaries and colleagues on Capitol Hill. But before reviewing Burdick's stance concerning the United Nations, some biographical information and a brief look at his domestic record is necessary in order to better understand the foreign policy viewpoint of this man depicted by a Massachusetts colleague as "one of North Dakota's most distinguished sons."9
Comments
Copyright 2002 by the Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska-Lincoln