The Republican Party and the Creation of the Bipartisan Foreign Policy, 1945-1953

Abstract

This thesis provides a historical and structural reexamination of the Republican Party’s role in shaping American foreign policy from 1945 to 1953. Defying the historiography of a frictionless postwar consensus and an executive branch-centered narrative, this historical chronological study demonstrates that the Republican Party’s role in formulating the bipartisan foreign policy was a contingent and debated legislative construction. Far from representing passive submission or a surrender of partisan identity, the GOP’s role was an indispensable exercise in creating it, and due to politics being what it is, straining it. Through historical chronology spanning from 1945 to 1953, the party's center actively reconciled global commitments with conservative principles of fiscal restraint and constitutional equilibrium. By examining these legislative dynamics, this project argues that domestic political competition, when channeled through disciplined institutional frameworks, strengthens rather than weakens domestic legitimacy.