We all know the stereotype. Republicans are tough, belligerent and war-like. Democrats are soft, peace loving and wet.
But, regardless of whether you think either of these positions is admirable or not, are they supported by the facts? Consider the last hundred years…
1917: Democrat Woodrow Wilson leads the US into the First World War.
1921-33: Republican presidents avoid involvement in global affairs as far as possible and keep the US out of the League of Nations.
1941-45: Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt leads the US into the Second World War.
1945-53: Roosevelt’s Democrat successor Harry S. Truman drops two atomic bombs on Japan, ending World War II. Truman leads the US into the Cold War and the Korean War (1950-53).
1953-61: Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower ends the Korean War and avoids wider entanglements e.g. In Vietnam. The US is widely perceived to lose ground to the Soviet Union in the Cold War during this period. Cuba goes Communist. Eisenhower warns of a “military industrial complex” on leaving office.
1961-63: Democrat John F. Kennedy attempts to invade Cuba and begins dramatic increase in US military support to South Vietnam. CIA launches repeated assassination attempts on Castro.
1963-69: Democrat Lyndon B. Johnson escalates Vietnam into a major war.
1969-74: Republican Richard M. Nixon ends US involvement in Vietnam, re-opens relations with China and signs the SALT arms reduction treaty with the Soviet Union.
1974-77: US defence spending reaches an all time low under Republican Gerald Ford.
1977-81: Democrat Jimmy Carter ends Détente and begins a dramatic increase in US military spending. Boycotts the 1980 Moscow Olympics.
1981-89: Republican Ronald Reagan oversees the end of the Cold War.
Admittedly, events since the Cold War make this argument harder to sustain…
Qualifications.
All of the above is true. However, bear in mind…
Wilson and Roosevelt were hardly warmongers. Wilson broke down and cried soon after officially declaring war and later attempted to forge the League of Nations.
Eisenhower oversaw a dramatic expansion in US defence spending. The perception that the USSR overtook the US at the time, proved to be utterly false.
Nixon sabotaged peace talks in Vietnam and only ended the war after first attempting to escalate it further and invading Cambodia. Most opposition to Vietnam came from the Left and support from the Right.
Carter initially adopted a far more liberal foreign policy approach turning far more conservative midway through his presidency under the influence of adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski.
Reagan was hugely belligerent and oversaw a massive increase in US defence spending. The Cold War ended in spite of him, not because of him. Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev largely deserves the credit for this, not Reagan or anyone in the West.
Even so…
Chris Hallam's World View 
Reblogged this on Chris Hallam's World View.
Nixon never wanted war, the history books will be rewritten about him. When he got to his senses they set him up with the recordings.
Kennedy wasn’t different. They bullied him into the bay of pigs but when he came to his senses, he didn’t have the shadow of an assassination hanging over him.
Reagan upgraded the US nuclear deterrent with the the B2 stealth bombers after telling the world he was funding StarWars project.
The Russia run out of economic options. They built a space shuttle because that’s what they needed to deploy and steal satellites, just like the US does today over the north pole.
But USSR later figured out they needed to upgrade all their Radar on the ground also against the unseen and stealth planes.
Thank you for your comments. I don’t entirely agree. I think Kennedy and Nixon were both very much their own men, more so than you give them credit for. It’s true the Bay of Pigs invasion plan was formulated under Eisenhower. JFK was also inexperienced in 1961. Despite this, the decision to invade was clearly ultimately Kennedy’s. I am an admirer of JFK but even so, responsibility for this failure must ultimately lie with him, particularly as he withdrew crucial air support. The decision certainly didn’t save JFK from assassination as we know.
Likewise, all the evidence suggests Nixon oversaw the installation of the listening devices. He knew they were there. He wasn’t “set up”. He was guilty anyway!
He certainly didn’t start the Vietnam War although may well have done had he been in office after 1961. To his credit, he did try to end it. Eventually.