SWNCC Files
Memorandum by the Joint Chiefs of Staff to the State–War–Navy Coordinating Committee
SM–4827
Subject: Foreign Policy of the United States
The Joint Chiefs of Staff have considered the first twenty-five pages of a document entitled “Foreign Policy of the United States” which was forwarded to them by the State-War-Navy Coordinating Committee for comment. The Joint Chiefs of Staff perceive no military objections [Page 1140] to public issuance of the proposed statement provided additional paragraphs from the speech of the President quoted in the document are included, in order to inform both other nations and our own people that the United States proposes to maintain military forces to support its foreign policy.
To this effect, the Joint Chiefs of Staff recommend that additions and amendments be appropriately introduced in the first twenty-five pages of the document by direct quotation from, or paraphrase of, those passages from the President’s speech of October 27 reproduced below:
“The foreign policy of the United States is based firmly on fundamental principles of righteousness and justice. In carrying out those principles we shall firmly adhere to what we believe to be right; and we shall not give our approval to any compromise with evil.”52
. . . . . . . . . . . . . .
“We have assured the world time and again—and I repeat it now—that we do not seek for ourselves one inch of territory in any place in the world. Outside of the right to establish necessary bases for our own protection, we look for nothing which belongs to any other power.
“We do need … armed might, however, and for four principal tasks:
“First, our Army, Navy and Air Force, in collaboration with our Allies, must enforce the terms of peace imposed upon our defeated enemies.
“Second, we must fulfill the military obligations which we are undertaking as a member of the United Nations Organization—to support a lasting peace, by force if necessary.
“Third, we must cooperate with other American nations to preserve the territorial integrity and the political independence of the nations of the Western Hemisphere.
“Fourth, in this troubled and uncertain world, our military forces must be adequate to discharge the fundamental mission laid upon them by the Constitution of the United States—to ‘provide for the common defense’ of the United States.
“These four military tasks are directed not toward war—not toward conquest—but toward peace.
“We seek to use our military strength solely to preserve the peace of the world. For we now know that that is the only sure way to make our own freedom secure.
“That is the basis of the foreign policy of the people of the United States.”
Brigadier General, U.S.A., Secretary
- The following omissions indicated in the original.↩