The Tragedy of American Diplomacy

Rating:
Summary: A must miss!
Review: If you're looking for a typical left-wing "revisionist" account of US diplomatic history, then this book might appeal to you. Like too many pseudo-intellectuals, Williams has a preconceived notion of how the world works and then looks to support his theory with some facts, ignoring many others that would clearly contradict his view. He fails to offer a sophisticated analysis - not for the serious scholar.

Rating:
Summary: Cold war classic still rings true today
Review: In his cold war classic, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera expounds, "There is an infinite difference between a Robespierre who occurs only once in history and a Robespierre who eternally returns, chopping off French heads." In his own cold war classic, William Appleman Williams investigates the "tragedy and terror" of an American foreign policy that, in subverting our American ideals of humanity and self-determination and then continually forgetting, has chopped off heads ad infinitum.

In "The Tragedy of American Diplomacy," Williams traces the Open Door Policy, from its articulation in the Open Door Notes of the McKinley Administration to its culmination, when it became engrained in the minds of cold warriors like Truman and Kennan. That the Open Door became internalized is perhaps why it, like Kundera's Robespierre, "eternally returns." The ruling class has continually turned to the Open Door, which basically holds that our internal tensions and economic problems can be solved not here at home but by transforming the rest of the world to our liking, all the while thinking they've struck upon something entirely new. As Williams writes, "Among the many ironies of Kennan's policy of containment, perhaps the greatest is the fact that he had so internalized the assumptions and principles of the Open Door Policy that he thought he was proposing a radically different program." This is sharp historical analysis, and if "Tragedy" were filled with only the likes of it, the essay would still be a cold war classic. But it is philosophical weight such as what follows this critique of Kennan that leaves "Tragedy" full of meaning and relevance fifteen years after the fall of the Berlin Wall: "This is indeed the final act in the transformation of a utopia into an ideology." As I write, it is 2004 and American forces occupy Iraq. Whether you agree with Bush's rationale for war or not, you should understand that it is not some new doctrine; whatever he tells us, September 11, 2001 did not "change everything;" nor are Bush's neocons the first to dream up such utopia. Like Kennan, however, those who led us to war believed they were doing something radically different. And like Kennan's containment, the Iraq war is in fact just another swing of the Open Door Policy that first opened with the Spanish-American War (which also devolved from military victory over tyranny into a more ambiguous crushing of a native insurgency). Along the way, leaders such as Senator Vandenburg, as he admitted in a candid moment, have realized the need "to scare hell out of the American people." Williams laments that Vandenberg and likeminded elites "did consciously employ exaggeration and oversimplification to accomplish their objectives." (In another odd foreshadowing of 2004, Williams's 1972 revision opens with a young Vietnam veteran turned protester named John Forbes Kerry asking, "How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?") Clearly then, Williams has much to teach us still today.

Williams did not preach despair. He was hopeful that America might find transcendence, as Karl Jaspers defined it, of the tragic, by looking in the historical mirror with brutal honesty and then acting humanely, armed with the truth. He hoped that America might stop smashing local revolutions while calling them Soviet plots, and instead turn our focus inward, to show the world how a people can live peacefully and democratically. In the 1972 edition I read, Williams concludes by holding up Chile as an inspiration of self-determination. A few months after he wrote this, the Nixon Administration, particularly Henry Kissinger, made sure there'd be no more self-determination in Chile. With President Allende's death on September 11, 1973, and the installation of murderous war criminal Pinochet as dictator, the Open Door, and the executioner's axe, kept swinging.


Rating:
Summary: The Tragedy of American Diplomacy
Review: In the Tragedy of American Diplomacy, William Appleman Williams illustrates how America fails to honor its own principles when it approaches foreign policy. America believes in self-determination and the right to develop its own brand of democracy. Unfortunately, no other nation is afforded the luxury of self discovery. Other nations must conform to America's vision of democracy or face the terror of America?s military might. This, to Williams, is the tragedy.

Cuba is his first case. America wanted Cuba to adhere to American visions which meant wealth for the sugar planters and their American backers. When Cuba sought its own course and threw off a repressive regime, America objected. The rift has existed ever since as no American administration will ever acknowledge Cuba's right to govern its own affairs so long as Castro is in power.

Williams then systematically follows the years from 1898 through 1961 and paints a similar picture. It does not take the reader long to get the idea and carry the argument beyond Williams' parameters and show that everything from Grenada to Lebanon to Afghanistan to Iraq can be shown in the same light. American puppet governments are not granting freedom and democracy to their constituents as much as they are part of a ruling class dominated by the business interests that exploit their workforce and deny requests for reform until the entire population is ripe for rebellion (remember the Shah of Iran). One wonders if the Saudi government is the next great western ally to fall victim to a popular revolt of Muslim fundamentalists.

Williams is a master of detail and works his arguments creatively in an entertaining fashion. Neoconservatives of today will have the same objections as their predecessors from the 1950s in acknowledging Williams as a valid author. But Williams makes a strong case and if more people were exposed to his writing, our country might even find a way to avoid the same pitfalls. A Saudi revolution would disrupt oil markets and jeopardize world economies. Perhaps if some thought is put into policy such a scenario is avoidable and preventable. If people are willing to give Williams a chance American foreign policy might eventually reflect a broader American vision rather than the interests of a few.

Rating:
Summary: The Tragedy of American Diplomacy
Review: In the Tragedy of American Diplomacy, William Appleman Williams illustrates how America fails to honor its own principles when it approaches foreign policy. America believes in self-determination and the right to develop its own brand of democracy. Unfortunately, no other nation is afforded the luxury of self discovery. Other nations must conform to America's vision of democracy or face the terror of America?s military might. This, to Williams, is the tragedy.

Cuba is his first case. America wanted Cuba to adhere to American visions which meant wealth for the sugar planters and their American backers. When Cuba sought its own course and threw off a repressive regime, America objected. The rift has existed ever since as no American administration will ever acknowledge Cuba's right to govern its own affairs so long as Castro is in power.

Williams then systematically follows the years from 1898 through 1961 and paints a similar picture. It does not take the reader long to get the idea and carry the argument beyond Williams' parameters and show that everything from Grenada to Lebanon to Afghanistan to Iraq can be shown in the same light. American puppet governments are not granting freedom and democracy to their constituents as much as they are part of a ruling class dominated by the business interests that exploit their workforce and deny requests for reform until the entire population is ripe for rebellion (remember the Shah of Iran). One wonders if the Saudi government is the next great western ally to fall victim to a popular revolt of Muslim fundamentalists.

Williams is a master of detail and works his arguments creatively in an entertaining fashion. Neoconservatives of today will have the same objections as their predecessors from the 1950s in acknowledging Williams as a valid author. But Williams makes a strong case and if more people were exposed to his writing, our country might even find a way to avoid the same pitfalls. A Saudi revolution would disrupt oil markets and jeopardize world economies. Perhaps if some thought is put into policy such a scenario is avoidable and preventable. If people are willing to give Williams a chance American foreign policy might eventually reflect a broader American vision rather than the interests of a few.

Rating:
Summary: A must miss!
Review: The term "revisionist historian" has come lately to describe one who conforms to an ideology of "politically correctness". William Appleman Williams, however, embodies the true definition of a revisionist: one who examines the evidence from a new angle and breaks with the traditional interpretations. "The Tragedy of American Diplomacy" is such a text. Beginning with the Spanish-American War of 1898, Williams presents the United States as a tough and, at times, ruthless aggrandizer of its economic power and expansion. The traditional teaching of US history involves emphasis on American isolationist tendencies and stress on the nonexistence of an "American Empire." Williams challenges that presentation. While acknowledging that the US has never really had an empire on the model of the British or French empires, Williams argues that the US empire has always been economical. The Open Door Policy, generally associated with US-Chinese relations, actually formed a larger US economic philosophy adhered to in US relations everywhere. The American opposition and responses to Fidel Castro's revolution in Cuba (the culminating event in the book) stemmed largely from the loss of economic privileges, rather than the nebulous ideology of anti-Communism. Williams provocative analysis goes a long way toward altering traditional portrayals of US foreign policy and its goals, and inspired the careers of a whole generation of truly revisionist historians.

Rating:
Summary: A revisionist manifesto on U.S. foreign policy
Review: The Tragedy of American Diplomacy holds a unique place in the annals of foreign policy and diplomatic history. As the veritable grand-daddy of revisionism in this field, its influence has been pervasive. As proponents worked to produce revisionist studies in the same vein and opponents set out to debunk those new arguments, a postrevisionist synthesis of sorts has emerged. Williams' focus on economics in the determination of American diplomacy has compelled other historians to take better take economic factors into account and in so doing to gain more understanding of the subject. While the field of study has benefited from the influence of this book, the arguments of the book itself are often questionable.

I found this book to be fascinating, sometimes insightful and sometimes propagandistic. As Bradford Perkins says in his essay on the book's influence, this is a manifesto rather than a monograph. The politics of the author appear clearly on the very first page, as he condemns the American invasion of Cuba and holds the policy behind that move up as a shining example of the tragedy of American diplomacy in his eyes. Williams' acknowledged radical views are spread liberally throughout the book, and they often serve to disrupt my own interest in some of his arguments. Basically, he says the drive for economic expansion, as espoused in the Open Door Doctrine of the late 1890s, determined American foreign policy from that time on, that it became a veritable axiom of American political thought. In Williams' eyes, the intensive desire to expand America's market and sell her surplus products throughout the world led to a problematic form of economic imperialism and inevitably did much to start the Cold War. His discussion of economic policy as foreign policy in the wake of the depression of the 1890s and up until the end of World War II struck me as very insightful and even compelling. While he says that America's intentions were indeed humanitarian, the policy caused other nations to resent America's dominating influence in their societies and further fueled the revolutions of the first half of the twentieth century. Williams' argument diminishes in impact, however, when he comes to discuss the origins of the Cold War. His portrait of the U.S. is one of an economically aggressive, imperial power seeking to remake the world in America's image. He contends that America was in fact the opposite of isolationist in its policies and that its steps forced the Soviet Union into a corner and brought on the Cold War.

William's intense radicalism thwarts his own efforts. He goes out of his way to defend the Soviet Union and its policies. He describes Stalin as a man who had no intention of spreading communism, only wanting to secure his own borders after World War II. America is the bully that "forces" Stalin to take over Eastern Europe and install the iron curtain there. His U.S.S.R. is one always looking to compromise and to live in peace with the terrible Americans. It is easy to see why some critics labeled Williams a Stalinist tool and dangerous Marxist intellectual. Williams pleads that he is not saying economic determinism is behind his theories, but the fact that his arguments are largely Marxist and all but solely economic in nature leads me to believe he only wanted to avoid being labeled as the socialist he was. I often found Williams to destroy what were valid arguments by slipping in snide political remarks--the most galling of which was that America's efforts to penetrate the Chinese market in the 1930s led the U.S. to go to war with Japan (as if America was the belligerent and not the victim of Japanese attack).

I do want to emphasize the fact that Williams does present some interesting and compelling ideas about economics and foreign policy. While I disagree completely with his overall view, I have to praise parts of the book for effectively making points worthy of consideration and of great value in understanding America's history of diplomacy in the 20th century. Anyone deeply interested in the subject almost has to read Williams because this book has affected the nature of the debate; if you are a conservative such as myself, you may have to grit your teeth through some sections, but you will reap definite rewards from reading this book.

Rating:
Summary: A revisionist manifesto on U.S. foreign policy
Review: The Tragedy of American Diplomacy holds a unique place in the annals of foreign policy and diplomatic history. As the veritable grand-daddy of revisionism in this field, its influence has been pervasive. As proponents worked to produce revisionist studies in the same vein and opponents set out to debunk those new arguments, a postrevisionist synthesis of sorts has emerged. Williams' focus on economics in the determination of American diplomacy has compelled other historians to take better take economic factors into account and in so doing to gain more understanding of the subject. While the field of study has benefited from the influence of this book, the arguments of the book itself are often questionable.

I found this book to be fascinating, sometimes insightful and sometimes propagandistic. As Bradford Perkins says in his essay on the book's influence, this is a manifesto rather than a monograph. The politics of the author appear clearly on the very first page, as he condemns the American invasion of Cuba and holds the policy behind that move up as a shining example of the tragedy of American diplomacy in his eyes. Williams' acknowledged radical views are spread liberally throughout the book, and they often serve to disrupt my own interest in some of his arguments. Basically, he says the drive for economic expansion, as espoused in the Open Door Doctrine of the late 1890s, determined American foreign policy from that time on, that it became a veritable axiom of American political thought. In Williams' eyes, the intensive desire to expand America's market and sell her surplus products throughout the world led to a problematic form of economic imperialism and inevitably did much to start the Cold War. His discussion of economic policy as foreign policy in the wake of the depression of the 1890s and up until the end of World War II struck me as very insightful and even compelling. While he says that America's intentions were indeed humanitarian, the policy caused other nations to resent America's dominating influence in their societies and further fueled the revolutions of the first half of the twentieth century. Williams' argument diminishes in impact, however, when he comes to discuss the origins of the Cold War. His portrait of the U.S. is one of an economically aggressive, imperial power seeking to remake the world in America's image. He contends that America was in fact the opposite of isolationist in its policies and that its steps forced the Soviet Union into a corner and brought on the Cold War.

William's intense radicalism thwarts his own efforts. He goes out of his way to defend the Soviet Union and its policies. He describes Stalin as a man who had no intention of spreading communism, only wanting to secure his own borders after World War II. America is the bully that "forces" Stalin to take over Eastern Europe and install the iron curtain there. His U.S.S.R. is one always looking to compromise and to live in peace with the terrible Americans. It is easy to see why some critics labeled Williams a Stalinist tool and dangerous Marxist intellectual. Williams pleads that he is not saying economic determinism is behind his theories, but the fact that his arguments are largely Marxist and all but solely economic in nature leads me to believe he only wanted to avoid being labeled as the socialist he was. I often found Williams to destroy what were valid arguments by slipping in snide political remarks--the most galling of which was that America's efforts to penetrate the Chinese market in the 1930s led the U.S. to go to war with Japan (as if America was the belligerent and not the victim of Japanese attack).

I do want to emphasize the fact that Williams does present some interesting and compelling ideas about economics and foreign policy. While I disagree completely with his overall view, I have to praise parts of the book for effectively making points worthy of consideration and of great value in understanding America's history of diplomacy in the 20th century. Anyone deeply interested in the subject almost has to read Williams because this book has affected the nature of the debate; if you are a conservative such as myself, you may have to grit your teeth through some sections, but you will reap definite rewards from reading this book.