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Rare US Peace President: Warren G. Harding.

Walt Zlotow, West Suburban Peace Coalition, Glen Ellyn IL , 11 Nov 25

Growing up in the 50’s, we were taught by popular culture, even in school, that the worst president among America’s 34 thru Eisenhower, was Warren Gamaliel Harding (March 4, 1921 – August 2, 1923). Harding was ancient history to us school kids, having died in office 3 decades earlier in just his 29th month as president. We couldn’t be bothered seeking to understand his true governance.……………………………………………………..

 it was in foreign affairs that Harding’s words and deeds of peace resonated worldwide. He not only didn’t initiate a single international intervention, he made strides toward reconciliation with foreign targets of US interference. More importantly, he promoted disarmament, which was both successful and lasted over a decade after his death, only done in by German and Japanese expansionism.

Harding was America’s first Good Neighbor to Latin America long before FDR coined the phrase. He withdrew US troops from Cuba his predecessors sent multiple times to protect US business interests. He criticized his predecessor’s endless interference in Haiti, Dominican Republic and Nicaragua as well. He achieved a treaty with Columbia that payed them $25 million in reparations for TR’s fomented revolution there to build the Panama Canal. He also worked with Mexican President Alvaro Abregon to reestablish diplomatic relations with Mexico that had been severed by Woodrow Wilson as part of Wilson’s several Mexican interventions.

But his greatest legacy was promoting what today’s America wouldn’t dream of: disarmament. He achieved the largest global-disarmament agreement ever at the November 1921 Washington Naval Conference he convened with Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes including representatives from Japan, Britain, France, Italy, China, Belgium, Netherlands and Portugal. It negotiated the halt of new battleship construction for over a decade. It achieved reduction in dozens of warships by the US, Britain and Japan, pegging the Navy’s future strength to parity with Britain and Japan. A reporter remarked that the Harding-Hughes duo “sank in 35 minutes more ships than all of the admirals of the world have sunk in centuries.” 

The conference produced six treaties and twelve resolutions on issues ranging from signatories agreeing to honor their respective territorial integrity in the Pacific, limiting tonnage of naval ships, and modernizing custom tariffs.

Back at home, Harding pardoned socialist presidential contender Eugene Debs, jailed by the anti free speech Woodrow Wilson for criticizing the WWI draft, and released 22 other antiwar dissidents as well. Julian Assange should have been so lucky to reveal America’s dirty foreign policy laundry under a President Harding.

A century after his death, only JFK, another short term president who pivoted to peace in just his last year, could arguably be judged as promoting such a profoundly peace agenda.

Wouldn’t the US be better off today if we had, occupying the Oval Office, a hard drinking, adulterous, poker playing president who promoted peace, instead of one with an infinitely more defective character who glories in prosecuting and provoking senseless war?

November 15, 2025 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | history, politics