From Colony to Superpower: Reflections

A few last words on Herring's From Colony to Superpower.

1. It's really a very strong survey of U.S. foreign policy. But I differentiate this from U.S. foreign relations. Ultimately, the book's biggest weakness is that it too frequently does not consider U.S. interactions with the world outside of the official perspective. For Herring, and for many foreign policy scholars, what really matters are actions between governments. That's obviously very important. But many scholars in the past decade have produced fantastic studies of Americans' interactions with the world from multiple perspectives--popular culture, environmental, religious groups, labor unions, NGOs, etc. I have little doubt that a lot more great work along these lines will be coming out soon. Herring integrates little of this.

2. Nevertheless, were I to teach a class on U.S. foreign relations, as I have considered doing for awhile now, I would use this book as the basis of most of my lectures. It's as solid of an overview as one could reasonably hope for. I do recommend it for anyone interested in these issues.

3. Herring concludes with a few thoughts about American foreign policy in the present, but he seems a bit reticent to take this too far. He mentions the need for Americans to give up exceptionalism and unilateralism, supports free trade and immigration, and notes the nation's decline during the Bush administration. It'd be nice to see him do a bit more with this. Most historians are shy about drawing parallels with the present too closely, but if you are going to write a 1000 page book about, I'd say that more than 3 pages of summary to conclude would be appropriate.

From Colony to Superpower, Part XX

This is the twentieth and last chapter of Herring's book. Rob's review is here.

Herring covers the 1991-2007 period in this chapter. It's really an excellent chapter overall. I'm much more interested in talking about Clinton than Bush. This blog and a million others have covered Bush foreign policy for years. It was a disaster in every single aspect. He comes across as bad in Herring's book as he does everyplace else.

Both Rob and Herring make an important point about Clinton--he was totally unprepared to deal with foreign policy issues. This isn't too surprising--he was a member of the Democratic Party who came of age during the Vietnam War; for a generation, the Democrats basically lacked a coherent foreign policy. In addition, few Americans had a sense of where American foreign policy should go with the Cold War rug pulled out from under us. I remember being hopeful that the U.S. would use its tremendous power to do good in the world, ending conflicts and improving people's lives. Boy was I naive.

I do think both Rob and Herring underplay the one way Clinton was active in foreign policy--globalization and free trade. Herring discusses a bit, but it gets significantly less play than Somalia, Bosnia, Israel, and Rwanda. This isn't surprising, but is unfortunate. One of Clinton's most important policy decisions in his first year of office was to sign NAFTA. Free trade and neoliberalism became the hallmark of American foreign policy during the Clinton years. From Southeast Asia to South America; from Mexico to Russia, untrammelled capitalism ruled the day. The U.S. decided to use its power to promote its own business interests. It did so with the most vigor in Latin America and the reaction against this in the last 10 years suggests how significantly the U.S. overplayed its hand.

Of course, neoliberalism was not just an economic idea. Politics mattered too. "Our Brand is Crisis," a documentary about James Carville's political firm intervening on the behalf of a neoliberal presidential candidate in Bolivia is a great document of American foreign policy in the Cold War era. Popular will, the betterment of the people, and fighting poverty played secondary roles at best to promoting the interests of multinational corporations.

The inability of Democrats to have a cohesive foreign policy after 1968 was a real problem. Clinton provided little leadership on foreign policy issues during his first term. Even AIDS prevention programs were underfunded. While part of this was a general triumphalist turning of our back on the world by the nation's populace as a whole, no foreign policy platform came out of the White House to direct American foreign policy. A large percentage of the Democratic congressional delegation and progressive leaders around the country had a knee-jerk "no" response to most uses of the American military. The problem with this became clear in the run-up to the Iraq War, when more centrist Democrats didn't want to flatly say no to the president despite reservations about the war, but also had no alternative arguments. John Kerry's inability to articulate an effective response to Bush and to swiftboating in 2004 is emblematic of this problem. The disaster of the Bush administration seems to have changed this and while we may not yet have an "Obama Doctrine," we surely have a Democratic president quite comfortable in the foreign policy world for the first time since Lyndon Johnson.

I'll have more conclusions on the book as a whole in coming days.

Reagan and Latin America

In his response to my discussion of Herring's chapter on Reagan's foreign policy, Rob states:

Reagan's approach to Latin America was a touch more brutal than his immediate predecessors, but the disregard for human rights is only really notable for its contradiction with administration rhetoric towards the Soviet Union. The other difference was Congress; for the first time in a very long while, there was serious objection within Congress to administration Latin American policy. This resulted in a number of unsavory projects to limit the amount of information Congress possessed on US foreign policy, the most notable of which was the Iran-Contra affair. As the Cold War eased, so did US policy, opening some space for opposition movements in Latin America. When these movements no longer threatened to "tip the balance" towards the Soviet Union, they could tolerated and even supported to some extent.

This is a really good point. For as much as progressives rightfully excoriate Reagan for his foreign policy toward Latin America, he really wasn't that much worse than his predecessors going all the way back to William McKinley. The difference as Rob points out was Congress. By the 1980s, severe opposition to U.S. foreign policy in Latin America developed for the first time. Reagan was completely unwilling to heed this opposition, even if it meant engaging in illegal and impeachable actions to pursue his policies in Central America.

Of course, we should keep reminding the world how horrible Reagan was; this is especially true because of how conservatives lionize him. But it's also important to note that William McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, Woodrow Wilson, Dwight Eisenhower, and Richard Nixon were all terrible and the other 20th century presidents not all that great.

In fact, one might make a legitimate argument that the best president for Latin America since 1898 was George W. Bush (!) because he was too mired in his inept Middle Eastern foreign policy to pay Latin America much mind. Even when he did notice Latin America, the attention was too minimal to make a difference, most notably in the failed coup against Hugo Chavez in 2002. That's pretty damned faint praise right there, but it shows how singularly terrible the United States treated Latin America in the 20th century.

From Colony to Superpower, Part XIX

This is the nineteenth installment in the 20 part series Rob Farley and I have commenced to review George Herring's From Colony to Superpower: U.S. Foreign Relations since 1776. See the Herring Review tag below for previous entries.

This week we will discuss Herring's chapter on the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations. This is one of the book's better chapters. I like Herring's analysis of both presidents. He puts Reagan in the proper context without mythologizing him. In fact, Reagan comes across looking pretty bad. As Grandpa Caligula should. Reagan certainly was an important person. He represented what Americans of the 1980s wanted to see in themselves and in doing so, he restored national pride after Vietnam and the Iran hostage situation. The Reagan administration did incredible damage to this country and the world--in foreign policy, in the War on Drugs, in attacking welfare, in cutting domestic programs, in destroying labor unions, and in ignoring the AIDS epidemic because it was considered a gay disease. But ultimately, does Reagan deserve the blame or does the American people? It's not as if these policies were unpopular. At least until Iran-Contra, Reagan had a pretty consistently high approval rating. Why did Americans have so much hate in the 1980s toward people of the world and toward minorities, gays, and the poor in this country? I'm not prepared to offer a useful answer, but it's a sad period of American history.

However, the idea that Reagan won the Cold War has no basis in reality. In fact, most of Reagan's policies were terrible. He unnecessarily ratcheted up Cold War tensions in the early 80s, accusing the Soviets of knowing the Korean Air plane they shot down in 1983 was a civilian plane (not true), pushing Star Wars, and using dangerous rhetoric. His obsession with Central America led to disastrous results for the people of Guatemala, El Salvador, and Nicaragua. None of these places threatened the United States, but Reagan promoted horrible policies in each of these places. That he did so illegally, at least in the case of Nicaragua and El Salvador, is even more reprehensible. Where I can let earlier presidents off the hook a bit for their Latin American policies because both parties basically treated these places the same, by the 1980s, there was clear opposition to hardcore Cold War policies in the area. Congress refused to fund aid to the Contras. And Reagan's minions went around Congress. This was a crime and Reagan should have been impeached. The invasion of Grenada was even more absurd. The idea that Grenada, an island approximately the size of my office, could become the next Cuba was completely ludicrous. Nonetheless, invading the island was really popular with Americans looking for an unequivocal victory.

Reagan's policy toward the Middle East was even worse. Sending U.S. troops into Lebanon without a clear mission was a bad idea, pulling them out after the bombing of the Marine barracks made us look as weak as we had in 1973. Demonizing Iran and then dealing with them to fund the Contras was arguably the most hypocritical move in the long sordid history of American foreign policy. Reagan did a poor job of dealing with the rising tide of Middle Eastern terrorism; bombing Quaddafi's Libya was not an effective response. Virtually nothing the Reagan administration tried here went right.

One thing I thought interesting was that in the 1980s it was still possible to have a foreign policy toward Israel that was different than yes. Reagan was pro-Israel, but Begin caused him endless headaches. I guess latent anti-Semitism, especially in the State Department, was what led to a lot of hostility in the U.S. toward Israel, but at least in the 80s you could formulate an opinion about American relations with them. Today, everyone has to fall over themselves vocalizing fealty to Israel; even pointing this out, as Walt and Mearsheimer did, is cause to be accused of anti-Semitism (or self-hatred if the person involved is Jewish). I don't see how this reflexive relationship to one nation is good for the country.

What positive characteristics we can ascribe to Reagan come from the fact that he wasn't as crazy as he sounded when dealing with the Soviet Union. Although I'd like Herring to go into a bit more detail on what caused the Soviet Union to collapse, it's clear from his narrative that Gorbachev deserved most of the credit for leadership. It was his enterprise that thawed the Cold War and liberalized eastern Europe. Reagan just happened to be there. But to the chagrin of the hard-liners in his foreign policy team like the loathsome Richard Perle, Reagan softened considerably toward the Soviets once he realized what Gorbachev was doing. He stayed out of the way for the most part, and agreed to significant deals with Gorbachev over arms control during their frequent summits. Given his harsh anti-communistic rhetoric of his first term, not only was this change in heart unexpected, but also the best thing he could have done.

As for Bush, it seems that China and Iraq are the most important areas to discuss. Yes, he was president for the fall of the Berlin Wall and the breakup of the Soviet Union, but little he did mattered to this process. He wasn't particularly prepared to deal with this sudden change, but I'm not sure that most presidents would have done better. I do think Bush faced a pretty tough situation after Tiananmen Square. It was horrible, but what was Bush supposed to do? China was too powerful to act strongly against in any meaningful way. We could have completely ended all relations with them, but I remain unconvinced that this would have accomplished much for the Chinese people. As for Iraq, it's hard to argue that we should have let Saddam Hussein take over Kuwait. You really can't sanction nations swallowing their neighbors. The question of whether to leave Saddam in place is pretty tough. Obviously, Bush Jr. taking Saddam out didn't exactly work well. On the other hand, the HW Bush foreign policy team was far more competent than W's, there were active uprisings against Saddam that we might have piggybacked upon, and, for what it's worth, the times were different and the same result might not have happened. On the other hand, this is all speculation. Regardless, promoting internal rebellions and then letting Saddam brutally crush them was pretty terrible and it fits into a long history of Americans promoting democracy and freedom through their rhetoric and then hanging the freedom fighters out to dry when they take it seriously.

Sometimes the long term effects of foreign policy decisions can't be known for years. In 1989, Congress rejected Bush's first choice for Secretary of Defense, John Tower. His second choice: Dick Cheney. Tower might have sucked and maybe Cheney would have been just as powerful in the W administration. But maybe without his term as Secretary of Defense he would have remained a more peripheral player in the latter administration. Certainly the world would be a much better place now had that happened.

From Colony to Superpower, Part XVIII

This is the eighteenth installment in the 20 part series Rob Farley and I have commenced to review George Herring's From Colony to Superpower: U.S. Foreign Relations since 1776. See the Herring Review tag below for previous entries. Rob's discussion for the week is here.

This week, Herring discusses the Ford and Carter years. Not the greatest period in American history to be sure. Ford had to deal with the problems created by Nixon while Carter's efforts were undermined by the rise of conservatism that led to Reagan's election in 1980.

Ford comes across pretty good here. He started the process of bringing draft evaders home, he continued working toward detente with the Soviets and had a good personal relationship with Brezhnev, he wisely chose to let the South Vietnamese government fall without another U.S. intervention, and he acted decisively in the Mayaguez incident, when the Cambodian government took a U.S. ship and held its crew as hostages.

On the other hand, Ford faced an angry Congress. Conservatives were angry over Vietnam and despised detente. They wanted a tough foreign policy. Ford worried about a primary challenge from Reagan in 1976. The left was upset that Ford didn't do enough on human rights or reducing nuclear arsenals.

Meanwhile, there was Scoop Jackson, the good senator from Boeing. Jackson, a hero to neoconservatives, wanted to ride a wave of anti-Soviet feeling into the White House in 1976. Although a Democrat, he was as hawkish as one could be. He was also a captive of hard-line pro-Israel forces and pushed a pretty racist program for the Middle East. No one in this chapter comes across as more contemptible than Jackson, who would happily oppose a principle he once espoused if it would further his ambitions. Ford faced other challenges from Congress as well. Angry about executive abuses of power after the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution and the secrecy of the Nixon years, Congress looked to reassert itself. Sometimes this was good, such as when Congress stopped Nixon and Kissinger from supporting a covert operation to undermine socialism in Angola. However, the ability of people like Jackson to demagogue foreign policy for their own personal gain certainly shows the downside of Congressional leadership on these issues. Rob also talks about Jackson in great detail.

Oddly, Herring doesn't mention the biggest black mark on the Ford years--East Timor. Ford and Kissinger acquiesced in Indonesia invading the newly freed nation of East Timor and subjecting its residents to terrible horrors. In fact, Indonesia is barely mentioned at all in the book. Given its important strategic location, that it is the largest Muslim country in the world, and its sordid and tangled post-war history with the United States, this is quite surprising.

Carter comes across a bit worse than Ford. To some extent, Herring's criticisms are true--Carter had no foreign policy experience and was very bad at selling tough foreign policy decisions to the American people. On the other hand, Carter also faced some very difficult situations--not only a low opinion of America throughout the world, but the rise of Reagan and conservatism, and the success of the Islamic Revolution in Iran. Carter could have put together a more cohesive foreign policy team to be sure--Cyrus Vance and Zbigniew Brzezinski couldn't stand each other and this led to infighting throughout Carter's term.

Carter did some really good things. Naming Andrew Young as UN ambassador went a long way toward improving US-African relations. Carter continued trying to salvage detente in his early years in office. He rightly gave the Panama Canal back to Panama. His historic negotiations in the Middle East led to Egypt recognizing Israel's right to exist for the first time. He stood up, in the face of conservative opposition in Congress, to the white supremacists ruling Rhodesia and South Africa. He normalized relations with China, building upon Nixon's actions there, to help isolate the Soviet Union.

Looking at Panama, we can see the struggles Carter faced, not in spite of, but because of his accomplishments. The Canal clearly needed to go back to Panama. We stole the land from the nation in 1903 when we hewed it off of Colombia for our purposes. This split the new nation in two, causing consternation and anti-American feeling for decades. By the 1970s, large-scale protests against the United States were taking place in Panama. Controlling the Canal outright was more trouble than it was worth. But for conservatives, it was another example of the U.S. caving to the Third World and Carter was accused of betraying American foreign policy interests. Reagan used this issue as one where he differed from Carter and tapped into much resentment in the country over Panama in his election campaign. The more I read about Carter and America in the late 70s, the more respect I gain for Carter and the more I think he was simply facing a nation sick of anything resembling postwar liberalism. Complaints about Carter's weak leadership and ineffectiveness should properly be interpreted through this framework.

Of course, Carter's great failure was in Iran. Like every president since Eisenhower, Carter supported the Shah. By the mid 70s, it was clear that the Shah's regime was in shambles, but the U.S. didn't know what to do. When the Islamic Revolution succeeded, and especially when dozens of Americans were taken hostage in late 1979, Carter looked weak. Desperate by now to stop the rise of Reagan, Carter eventually decided to look tough. Without even consulting Secretary of State Vance, he ordered an air rescue operation. It completely failed when the planes were spotted, when a sandstorm forced them to turn back, and when a midair collision killed 8 US troops who had to be left behind. Vance resigned on principle. Carter looked weaker than ever and Reagan blew him away in the 1980 elections.

There's a whole lot more to say about these years, including about Afghanistan, Israel's failure to live up to the Camp David agreements, and Carter's relationship with the South American dictatorships, but I'll send it back to Rob for more on that.

From Colony to Superpower, Part XVII

This is the seventeenth installment in the 20 part series Rob Farley and I have commenced to review George Herring's From Colony to Superpower: U.S. Foreign Relations since 1776. See the Herring Review tag below for previous entries.

This week Herring talks about Nixon. I like this chapter because Herring is morally outraged, which always makes writing more lively. Herring clearly has little but contempt for Nixon and Kissinger. I agree, but Herring differentiates between Nixon and other presidents in ways that I am not really comfortable with.

Nixon's foreign policy successes are of some legend--opening up China, beginning arms negotiations with the Soviets. His failures are equally legendary--his invasion of Cambodia, his support for Pinochet and other South American dictators. Herring provides a nuanced discussion of these events. I found the Chinese issues particularly interesting, including that Nixon involved Reagan by sending him to Taiwan in order to settle them down. The repercussions of visiting China in the rest of Asia was also quite fascinating. The Japanese were extremely unhappy and it led to a low point in postwar U.S.-Japan relations. I also thought that Nixon's lack of policy toward Europe was interesting because it created a vacuum ably filled by West Germany's Willy Brandt. I wonder if there's been a president in postwar America less concerned about European issues (outside of the Soviets) than Nixon?

Herring also details how Israel joined Iran and Saudi Arabia as the third pillar of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. The long term benefits of this decisions have been minimal to say the least. Nixon was less favorable to Israel than Johnson, being an anti-Semite and all. But under Kissinger's guidance, the U.S. allowed Israel to further their cause in the Yom Kippur War by delay the cease fire and then did everything he could to stick it to the Arabs and their Soviet allies in coming days. Where was Nixon during all of this? Drunk apparently, at least when Kissinger presided over an emergency National Security Council meeting which moved military forces to DefCon 3.

I know Herring likes dishing the dirt on Nixon with stories like this. But the evidence doesn't suggest that Nixon was that much worse than Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, or Johnson on the issues Herring attacks him over. Imposing a Cold War mindset on Latin America and South Asia? How is this different than the previous 4 presidents exactly? Nixon did a terrible thing when he invaded Cambodia, but does anyone think Johnson wouldn't have done the same thing if he thought it was necessary? Supporting Pinochet was disgusting, but the CIA had been undermining Chilean democracy since at least the mid 60s. Plus was it any worse than what Eisenhower did in Guatemala? Nixon's biggest sin probably comes in Vietnam, where he eventually negotiated American withdrawal for basically the same effect that he could have achieved when he took office in 1969. How many American, Vietnamese, Cambodian, and Laotian lives were lost because of Nixon and Kissinger's policies? But that's almost standard U.S. foreign policy in the Cold War.

None of this excuses Nixon and Kissinger. They were bad men. But they also acted in the same universe as both previous and future presidents. Their actions aren't that much worse than Reagan or Johnson. Herring is disgusted by Nixon's personal behavior and of course Watergate. Moral condemnation is a proper response to Nixon, but he takes it too far in analyzing Nixon's foreign policy, slamming him for policies that fit very comfortably within the Cold War context.

Much more to talk about, including India and Pakistan, but I'll send it to Rob now.

From Colony to Superpower, Part XVI

This is the sixteenth installment in the 20 part series Rob Farley and I have commenced to review George Herring's From Colony to Superpower: U.S. Foreign Relations since 1776. See the Herring Review tag below for previous entries. Rob's entry for the week is here.

This week, Herring covers the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, a period dominated by Vietnam. But Vietnam was hardly the only foreign policy crisis faced by the United States. Tensions around the world dominated both administrations. Kennedy was more comfortable dealing with these issues while Johnson preferred to focus on domestic programs. It's entirely expected, though still remarkable, just how many foreign policy issues Cold War administrations had to deal with compared to American history before World War II. In the Cold War context, it's hardly surprising that Johnson's presidency was destroyed by Vietnam. It's hard to believe that any credible presidential candidate, Republican or Democrat, would have done much different.

Kennedy comes across as eager to take on the Soviets but inexperienced and underprepared. Khrushchev made him look like a child in early encounters, though the Soviets way overplayed their hand in Cuba. Kennedy handled the Berlin issue poorly and did nothing to fight the erection of the Berlin Wall. He escalated the U.S. presence in Vietnam. While his admirers claim he wouldn't have gotten the nation into a quagmire like Johnson, that's hard to believe. He may have doubted whether his moves were effective, he also wore Cold War blinders that limited his range of decisions. He continued supporting Diem in his early years and then badly blundered the necessary coup to get rid of him. After the coup, the U.S. had no plan on who to replace him or what kind of government would be more effective.

Kennedy's foreign policy is probably best defined by his actions in Latin America. While the Alliance for Progress promised a more enlightened approach to the region and while the Peace Corps looked good, inflexible anticommunism undermined these programs. Cuba defines Kennedy like no other foreign policy issue. The nation was deeply embarrassed by the failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion. That CIA and State Department leaders thought that the invasion would spark a popular uprising against Castro shows how badly they misread the situation, and several similar situations in the developing world during these years. On the other hand, Kennedy certainly was a stronger and more responsible leader than either Khrushchev or Castro during the missile crisis. What Khrushchev was thinking placing missiles in Cuba is unfathomable. Castro's anger when Khrushchev backed off is even more bizarre considering his nation was about to be blown into oblivion. Kennedy comes across less well with his undermining of left leaning regimes in South America. He ordered a coup against Guyana of all places, that noted center of key strategic importance, because they seemed leftist. Johnson approved the programs that caused a lot of the real damage in Brazil and Chile, but Kennedy began the process of undermining those countries' electoral democracies in the name of stability and anticommunism. Johnson failed in Latin America as well, particularly in the Dominican Republic, where the possibility of another Castro drove Johnson to distraction and led to another U.S. invasion of that country. For both Kennedy and Johnson, the idea of another Castro was not acceptable. That meant that almost any leader who was at all left of center became a threat to American security, regardless of whether they were actually helping their people achieve the kinds of rights that Americans enjoy every day. Such concerns were trivial in the face of threats to American democracy. And of course business interests.

Of course, Johnson was destroyed by Vietnam, and ultimately by the legacies of Truman's failure to prevent the Chinese Revolution and by the domino theory. This most avoidable tragedy happened in no small part because the United States could not see Ho Chi Minh as anything but a tool of Moscow. What if the U.S. had actually engaged with Ho? He had little interest in fighting the U.S. He just wanted to unite his country. He might have made a terrible leader, but he was certainly no worse than Diem or his successors in South Vietnam. U.S. military actions did little but kill people and solidify support for the Viet Cong. Yet Johnson could do nothing else, partially because of Cold War politics and partially because of his own personality.

Johnson was also taken for a ride by Israel. Israel looks really bad in Herring's discussion of 1967's Six Day War. Defying the United States because they knew at the end they would have American support, Israel launched a surprise attack against Egypt and Syria that was a major short term success for the Jewish state. In the long term though, the headaches Israel has with the occupied territories make that war of conquest seem like a terrible, terrible idea. American support of Israel, along with its continued support of the autocratic Shah in Iran fed Islamic radicalism that would have long term consequences for the region and for the United States.

Overall, the chapter is very strong. I do want to bring up one organizational question. After World War II, Herring resorts to traditional periodization based upon presidential administrations. I really question the utility of this. In the pre-war period, he divides the chapters in sensible blocks that represent real changes in foreign policy focus for the nation. Abandoning this for a more traditional approach toward the end of the book, I wonder if he doesn't undermine his narrative a bit. Splitting Vietnam into 2 chapters seems less than ideal to me. Kennedy continued Eisenhower's foreign policy in many respects, particularly as regards Cuba. Including the whole Cuba story in one chapter and then all of Vietnam in a second makes a lot of sense. The Gulf of Tonkin would be a great place to begin the next chapter. Instead, we will be begin next week in 1969, a time that only makes sense in the sense of a new presidential administration.

From Colony to Superpower, Part XV

This is the fifteenth installment in the 20 part series Rob Farley and I have commenced to review George Herring's From Colony to Superpower: U.S. Foreign Relations since 1776. See the Herring Review tag below for previous entries.

This week covers the Eisenhower administration (1953-61). I know Eisenhower's reputation has risen over the last 20 years. And he does seem to have had a pretty solid temperament for these difficult years. Nonetheless, I was surprised at the ineptitude of much of Eisenhower's foreign policy. His reliance on John Foster Dulles, arguably the worst Secretary of State in U.S. history, was a major problem. Dulles' reliance on Christianity as a major factor in his dealings with the world led to disaster, his favoring covert operations created some of the worst long-term messes in American foreign policy history, some of which still affect us today; his personality alienated key allies like Britain's Anthony Eden, and his racism blinded the government to the nationalist movements of Latin America, Asia, and Africa.

Of course, most of the American foreign policy establishment shared in that racism. Thinking brown people incapable of self-government, Eisenhower and Dulles continued earlier indifference to Latin American dictators, sought to create a US client state in South Vietnam, and thought we could maneuver the Middle East toward our interests. These were all colossal mistakes. Four incidents serve to show these follies. Dulles and Eisenhower's belief in the efficacy of covert operations led to the overthrow of democratically elected governments in Iran and Guatemala. The former, which led to the dictatorial Shah being placed in power, fed the Islamic Revolution of 1979. While Americans don't understand why Iran doesn't like us, they know very well why. It's not because they hate freedom, it's because of bitterness extending back to 1953. In Guatemala, the overthrow of Arbenz because he nationalized United Fruit Company land they were no longer using created instability and continued U.S. support of governments that killed, at a minimum, 100,000 citizens over coming decades. The interference in South Vietnam, ignoring the legitimacy of Ho Chi Minh's leadership and supporting Diem, primarily because he was a Catholic and therefore was one of us, set the stage for the nation's greatest foreign policy disaster. Continuing to think of men like Fulgencio Batista as our friend, ignoring legitimate nationalist concerns from the Cuban people, and believing the nation to be a vassal state set the stage for Fidel Castro's victory in 1959. A dozen more examples could be provided.

Of course, this all occurred in the Cold War context, right? Too often, I think this is used as an excuse for terrible foreign policy decisions that created great suffering for people around the world and that did not make the United States a safer nation. In reality, neither Eisenhower and Dulles in the US nor Khrushchev in the Soviet Union were particularly suitable leaders for such difficult. Both consistently misread the other, making often irresponsible decisions. On the US side, the U-2 spy plane missions that led to the shooting down of Gary Powers was particularly stupid. These missions accomplished nothing and led to great embarrassment to the U.S. Eisenhower personally approved the mission (though with reservations). Meanwhile Khrushchev simply didn't have the education or self-confidence to make correct decisions in many cases. He actually believed on his 1959 trip to the U.S. that Camp David might be a trick to capture him. Certainly crushing opposition in Hungary was a propagandistic nightmare for the USSR.

One other point about American foreign policy I found infuriating during these years was the falseness of American propaganda. Herring points out that propaganda dropped on eastern Europe during the 1950s promising American support for freedom fighters helped convince dissidents in the region to rebel against Soviet authority. When the Soviets rolled into Budapest, America did nothing. This happened again and again during the Cold War years, perhaps most devastatingly at the end of the Cold War when George H.W. Bush encouraged rebellions against Saddam Hussein in Iraq and then stood by when Saddam brutally crushed them.

There's much else to talk about, including the Suez crisis, rising tensions between Pakistan and India, China, and much more about Europe. But I'll let Rob take over.

From Colony to Superpower, Part XIV

This is the fourteenth installment in the 20 part series Rob Farley and I have commenced to review George Herring's From Colony to Superpower: U.S. Foreign Relations since 1776. See the Herring Review tag below for previous entries. Rob's entry for this week is here.

This week covers the Truman Administration (1945-53). It's amazing thinking about what a huge change these years were for the United States. Before World War II, the U.S. tried very hard to stay out of international commitments unrelated to trade, had little interest in policing the world (outside of Latin America anyway), and had a strongly isolationist population. But the war created a new U.S. foreign policy of one of two world superpowers vying for world control. This is one of many reasons why I think World War II is the second most important event in American history (after the Civil War, and just above the introduction of slavery, the Constitutional Convention, and the civil rights movement). It was so transforming to all of America. Maybe I'll do a full post on this soon.

Anyway, the Truman years brought the beginnings of the Cold War, the atomic bomb, the Korean War, NATO, the Marshall Plan, the Chinese Revolution, the Berlin Airlift, the birth of the CIA, McCarthyism, and many other amazingly important events. That Americans dealt with the transition relatively smoothly is surprising. By this, I mean there was little organized opposition to this shift in U.S. foreign policy, with the most substantive criticisms coming from the right, who wanted the Cold War fought with more vigor.

One of the most disastrous success in U.S. foreign policy history may have been the success of covert operations in Greece in 1948. Not that I think Soviet domination of Greece would have been a good thing, but because it converted many in the foreign policy and intelligence establishments of the value of covert operations, leading to many horrible incidents from Iran and Guatemala to Chile and Indonesia. And of course, the Bay of Pigs.

I do wish Herring had dealt a bit more with Vietnam and the our support of French colonialism. It's mentioned, but only in passing. This was a major blunder, as early support of Ho Chi Minh could have created a peaceful transition to power in Vietnam and avoided the Vietnam War, and by proxy, the Khmer Rouge. On the other hand, the U.S. was not mentally prepared to support anticolonial movements in 1945 and failed to do so in almost every case. Racism toward non-whites still dominated the foreign policy establishment and the Vietnamese being more qualified to run their land than the French occurred to few.

On the other hand, I was pleased to see Herring rely on one of the most interesting books of the new U.S. and the World field, Ed Wehrle's Between a River and a Mountain: The AFL-CIO and the Vietnam War, which I reviewed here. The AFL got deeply involved in American foreign policy during these years, supporting conservative labor movements throughout Europe and eventually Vietnam, Latin America, and other parts of the world. They basically offered themselves up to the CIA as stools, particularly under the leadership of the deeply anti-communist George Meany. This is the kind of work that I hoped Herring would reference throughout his work, expanding our view and broadening our understanding on the nation's foreign relations.

Overall, while Truman left the presidency with low ratings and reputation, it's hard to criticize him too harshly on the foreign policy front. He made some terrible decisions (supporting apartheid South Africa for instance), it's true, and he did provide Roosevelt's leadership. But considering he was pretty unqualified and uninformed on these issues when he took office, it seems that he acquitted himself fairly well. He could have tried to run an armed convoy through to Berlin, he could have committed ever-increasing U.S. aid and military advisers to Chiang Kai-Shek in a losing cause, he could have let MacArthur run roughshod over him and bomb China. These were incredibly challenging years, and I can think of a lot of worse outcomes than where we were in 1953 and I can think of a lot of presidents who would have handled things far less well.

From Colony to Superpower, Part XIII

This is the thirteenth installment in the 20 part series Rob Farley and I have commenced to review George Herring's From Colony to Superpower: U.S. Foreign Relations since 1776. See the Herring Review tag below for previous entries.

That World War II is the most transformative and important event in the twentieth century seems without question. In the United States, the nation rapidly transitioned from a country committed to limited engagement with the world outside of trade to the world's most powerful nation. Franklin D. Roosevelt was the primary architect of this project. In the last chapter, Herring seemed rather critical of FDR, and to a certain extent he remains so here. But Roosevelt also did a tremendous job preparing the U.S. for the war against significant domestic opposition in the 18 months before the war, allowing a still unprepared U.S. to transition into the war fairly quickly. A lesser leader might not have done this and it could have been 1943 before the U.S. was ready to fight at all. Generally, the narrative of the war is fairly uninteresting to me. I basically don't care about wars as a subject of study, except for their domestic implications. So I'll move on to some specific issues of interest.

One problem with a lot of diplomatic histories is that wars dominate the narrative at the expense of other topics. To no small extent, Herring does this as well; it's understandable but his tentative interests in the cultural side of America's relations with the world almost totally disappear in this chapter. I do think he does a good job discussing Latin America, the Middle East, and Asia. This is one of the strongest sections of the book. He shows both the benefits of the Good Neighbor policy in Latin America for short-term stability and its downside through allowing dictators like Somoza and Trujillo to consolidate their repressive regimes with tacit U.S. support. The sons of these two leaders even attended West Point. The minimal weapons provided by the U.S. allowed these governments to kill its own civilians. Whether the Good Neighbor policy was in the best long-term interests of the nation is a question Herring doesn't really explore.

In the Middle East, Herring does a great job getting into how the U.S. comes to see oil as the world's most important resource and how by 1943, the nation is becoming increasingly involved in Iran and other nations to ensure a steady supply both for the war and the postwar world. In Asia, Roosevelt wanted to slowly bring colonialism to an end, something fiercely resisted by Churchill and De Gaulle. But his own racism, and the racism of the entire nation, made taking the proper actions unlikely. Thinking the Vietnamese and other Asians were children who needed to be protected, the U.S. ultimately did little to end colonialism and moreover began to see itself dictating policy to the region. In China, Chiang's corruption became ever more obvious during World War II. Chiang had powerful friends but constantly frustrated the U.S. government who frankly saw Mao's communist movement as more effective and quite likely the winners of the Chinese civil war.

Herring also usefully discusses the fate of the Jews. While many criticize Roosevelt for not doing more to stop the Holocaust, Herring points out that he faced massive anti-Semitism both in the State Department and the U.S. population. Plus, nothing he could have done would likely have saved many Jewish lives. Roosevelt's classic ambivalence shows up very strongly in figuring out what to do with Jews after the war. He gave lip service to both Jews and Muslims on the issue and never had a strong plan, but he could also see the hornet's nest he was walking into. It's almost taboo to say this, but the establishment of Israel is one of the great foreign policy disasters of the 20th century. While one cannot question that Jews were not safe most anywhere in Europe, creating a state under constant siege that has to displace the people already living there and then oppressing them in occupied territories has not exactly been a huge success. The failure of the Jewish state to establish long-term stability in the face of low birthrates compared to the Islamic population suggests either it losing its Jewish identity or apartheid; either way, it's likely that we'll still be dealing with these same problems in another 60 years.

The person who comes off the worst in this chapter is Churchill. It's not surprising--Churchill was an excellent wartime leader but was a bastard of the first order who had no business leading the British during peacetime. His racism, outright colonialism, willingness to sell nations out, and unwillingness to consider changing Britain's traditional foreign policy prerogatives in the face of the obvious decline of the empire did little to make him a sympathetic leader today. Of course, he was facing massive challenges and perhaps changing who he was is way to unrealistic, but I have trouble arguing with the British people throwing him out of office the first chance they got.

Finally, no discussion of the war is complete without the atomic bomb. Herring is right in criticizing FDR for keeping Truman (and all his VPs) out of the loop. Although I'm sure he didn't want to dwell on his mortality, it was clear by early 1945 that FDR was running out of time. Truman was completely unprepared for the task of steering the nation through the end of the war. However, he did pretty well. His most controversial move was using the atomic bomb against Japan. It was unnecessary and immoral, but also almost inevitable. The nation spent such a huge amount of money on the thing that to not use it would have caused incredible outrage in Congress and among the general public, perhaps leading to the impeachment of Truman and the end of many politicians' and soldiers' careers. Without an outright surrender of the hated Japanese, there was no chance Truman would have made any other decision, and I think the same is true of Roosevelt, although of course we can't know.

There's more to say about US-Soviet relations, Yalta, and all of that, but I'll leave it to Rob and respond to his piece.

From Colony to Superpower, Part XII

This is the twelfth installment in the 20 part series Rob Farley and I have commenced to review George Herring's From Colony to Superpower: U.S. Foreign Relations since 1776. See the Herring Review tag below for previous entries. You can see Rob's entry for the week here.

This week covers Franklin Roosevelt's administration up to Pearl Harbor. According to Herring, the Great Depression turned American inward in a way they did not in the 1920s. Usually, the 20s and 30s are seen as a general period of isolation. Herring argues against this, but I'm not entirely convinced the Depression represents as sharp a break as he claims. I don't have strong examples in my favor, but Herring just sort of says this without really showing it. It makes sense that the nation would turn inward as a response to massive economic crisis, but it also seems that there are a lot of continuities between the two decades.

Roosevelt's foreign policy was dominated by dealing with the Depression and then preparing for World War II. Roosevelt recognized the Soviet Union, a positive step, although it certainly didn't lead to long-term good relations. He also instituted the Good Neighbor policy in Latin America, preferring stability to expensive American invasions. The Good Neighbor policy rightfully comes in for a lot of criticism. It allowed dictators like Fulgencio Batista to come to power in Cuba. Rather than push for democracy or some kind of more responsive government. Cuba was trying to work this under under Grau, but American interests in Cuba undermined his popular movement. The long-term implications of Batista and US policy set the stage for Castro.

On the other hand, a US government not blatantly riding roughshod over the rights of Latin America was a pretty welcome change after 35 years of invasion. Moreover, it would seem like a better time from the perspective of postwar Latin America, when the CIA and American military are active everywhere fighting "communism," broadly defined as "people demanding the rights that Americans enjoy everyday." This of course was unacceptable in the Cold War context and would lead to some of the most reprehensible US foreign policy actions.

Of course, the dominant issue of the period was the rising tide of German and Japanese militarism. Herring shows how ineffective the world was in dealing with both countries. When the Japanese invaded China, they rightfully believed the League of Nations would do nothing. That the United States was not part of the League didn't help, but there's certainly little reason to believe it would have made much difference. In Europe, FDR recognized some of the potential problems fairly early but faced a hostile domestic climate for any U.S. involvement. It really took the invasion of France to wake the nation up.

Herring is critical of much of Roosevelt's policy over these issues, but I think this is a little unfair. He was rightfully focused on domestic issues during his first two terms--after all, the fate of the nation was at stake here. I suppose he could have handled issues like the Italy-Ethiopia war better, but ultimately this was of pretty minor interest for the United States. Spain definitely went bad. Trying to stay out of it meant handing the nation over to Franco. But again, working with the Soviets would have been extremely difficult in 1937 and there was the same widespread domestic opposition to significant involvement. Certainly Lend-Lease furthered U.S. interests in important ways, as did the expansion of the American defense zone into the mid-Atlantic.

Finally, there is the issue of Pearl Harbor. Herring is also critical of American foreign policy toward Japan in this period, saying that we ended up with a 2 front war when we weren't prepared for 1 front. Perhaps, but what were the alternatives? To continue trading with a hostile power bent on taking over all of Asia? If you define all foreign policy questions as whether it is the U.S.' narrow interests to further policy, maybe you can criticize FDR. And certainly there were some clunky moves. But if you at all think the U.S. has some obligation to limit its trade with openly hostile nations, cutting off supplies to Japan makes a lot more sense. Yes, it did help convince the Japanese that it was in their interests to declare war on the United States. But the other side would have been aiding and abetting Japanese militarism.

The Peace Progressives

Rob needed a bit of extra time to get his review of the last chapter of Herring's From Colony and Superpower so we are waiting until next Sunday to discuss the next chapter. In his reply on the 1920s last week, he discussed the Peace Progressives. They were a group of lawmakers (largely Republicans from rural states) who believed in world peace and fiscal responsibility. Rob notes:

they made the (almost heretical in the current political climate) connection that weapons cost money, and that the interest of small government is best served by tight limitations on the size of military forces. The pursuit of international routes to peace (Kellogg-Briand Pact, for example) abetted the interest in fiscal responsibility by reducing the need for large military establishments. I think it's odd that this combination (preference for low tax, low domestic expenditure, low defense expenditure) seems to occur so rarely in the American political context; perhaps the development of the military-industrial complex served to capture pro-business (such that the term has any meaning...) legislators, or the perceived threat of communism helped purge Republican party doves?

An interesting point. These Peace Progressives, many of whom became the "isolationists" of the 1930s who tried to stay out of World War II, have been unfairly vilified. Their actions made perfect sense at the time--it seemed that ending war was possible. They didn't respond particularly well to the rise of Hitler and Japanese militarism, but they were also supported by a lot of people in this country. It's highly unfair to accuse them of not foreseeing the rise of Nazi Germany and to laugh at the peace treaties of the 1920s.

I do want to caution though about taking the Peace Progressives as some kind of model today. It sounds great--I'm for peace and I'm a progressive! I'll write more about this, probably tomorrow, particularly in the context of the Progressives of the 1900s and 1910s, but I'm seeing a lot of people on the left starting to identify with these older movements based on the common ground of name and a shared desire to reform. That's fine, but these movements don't provide us much guidance for the present. The Peace Progressives were responding to the disaster of World War I and the violation of Washington's Farewell Address, two issues with virtually no relevance for the present. As I said in my post on the 20s last week, the decade feels like the last gasp of pre-modern America colliding with a young and headstrong moderism. A lot of people, importantly from rural states, were uncomfortable with much of this, including an activist US foreign policy that consistently embroiled the nation with conflicts around the world. As Herring points out, the Peace Progressives did help end the U.S. occupation of Nicaragua, avoid war with Mexico, and cut off funds for naval construction. Surely the first two of these things were very good and the last is ambivalent.

Of course Rob's point remains valid. Almost no one will call for a reduced Defense Department budget. Despite our severe financial problems, this sacred cow cannot be touched. Rob is certainly an expert of absurd military programs, but I'm sure if people started seriously discussing it, Republicans (and many conservative Democrats too) would use a strategy that combined calling Democrats soft on terrorism with saying that the military provides a lot of jobs. The latter point is true but at a very high cost rate per job. Soldiers don't get paid a lot but planes and submarines are insanely expensive for the amount of jobs they create. Barney Frank is arguing for a reduced military budget in The Nation and he is a pretty powerful guy. But he's also a voice in the Congressional wilderness on this issue.

Herring Review, Part XI

This is the eleventh installment in the 20 part series Rob Farley and I have commenced to review George Herring's From Colony to Superpower: U.S. Foreign Relations since 1776. See the Herring Review tag below for previous entries.

This week is about the Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover administrations. Getting sleepy yet? It's not quite that boring, but it's not the most interesting period of American foreign relations either. I've always found the 1920s to be one of the most difficult periods of American history to talk about. It's a period of great modernization and a lot of continuity with the Progressive Era, but also is a major break from that previous time, sometimes it seems on the same issues, particularly on the role of reform in American society. It almost feels like an outlier of American history. What's really going on I think is a kind of last gasp of 19th century America--the craziness of the Progressive Era subsided and Americans got their beloved return to normalcy, but modernism couldn't be put away. Neither could science, social reform, a growing federal government, diversity, or women working outside the home.

And neither could the world. Herring's thesis here is that given the world of the 1920s and given American domestic policy, the United States could not have done much more than it did to change the future. He stresses that while the U.S. avoided most treaties that required actual commitment, the nation certainly was not isolationist, as many historians have asserted. I basically agree with Herring here. The U.S. thought was it was doing worked during the 20s. The nation wanted peace and the Washington Naval Treaties, the Kellogg-Briand Pact, and other agreements were designed with this in mind. Herring says that post-World War II criticisms about these treaties are ahistorical and again I mostly agree. It's not fair to accuse Americans of not being able to see the future of Hitler, Mussolini, and Japanese expansion. After all, how many of us saw the financial collapse 2 years ago? You have to judge people based upon their possible range of actions. While there were Americans, particularly international businessmen, who saw some of the problems that would overtake the world in the 1930s, most Americans could not conceive of these disasters. Certainly the relatively dim lights of Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge could not. If there is blame to be thrown around for American foreign policy during these years, it should go more to the American people than to the lame leaders they elected.

That said, while Herring does his best to enliven these years, they just aren't that exciting. He notes tentative changes in U.S. policy toward Latin America, with somewhat less military intervention. But ultimately Americans fell back upon invasion when they felt the need. Herring expresses relief that the U.S. didn't go to war with Mexico in the 1920s when Obregon and Calles were undermining American business interests in that nation. But at the same time, we did send in the Marines to put down Augusto Sandino's revolution in Nicaragua. This failed, but we did place Anastasio Somoza in power; he and his family would brutally rule that nation until the Sandinista Revolution in 1979. This is when Trujillo took over in the Dominican Republic and other pro-American brutal dictators established themselves around Latin America. So it's not as if the Republicans ultimately were that different from Wilson in this regard.

I did think it was interesting to be reminded of how American corporations gave crucial support to the Soviets in their darkest hours in the mid 1920s. One might argue that without American economic help, the Soviets would have fallen before 1940. Would this have been good? Probably not, though the Ukrainians might disagree. But a weak Russia would have been a disaster against the Nazis. In any case, the Soviets' desire for rapid modernization fit very well for American companies' desire for international markets. The Americans fooled themselves into thinking they could open up the Soviets through their investments; turns out you can have a brutal dictatorship and economic success at the same time.

There is probably more to say, but I'll pass it off to Rob now.

From Colony to Superpower, Part X

This is the tenth installment in the 20 part series Rob Farley and I have commenced to review George Herring's From Colony to Superpower: U.S. Foreign Relations since 1776. See the Herring Review tag below for previous entries.

This week we discuss Woodrow Wilson's presidency. Rob focuses a great bit on the buildup to World War I and has a lot of interesting things to say about the matter. I agree with his analysis about the Lusitania sinking being an overrated event. It didn't actually change anything. It led to a limited amount of bad press for Germany among the US public, but it's important to note that a lot of said public supported Germany. I think more importantly was that it turned American politicians and business leaders against Germany, but even this was limited and has relatively little to do with the nation's later decision to join the war. Likewise, I agree with Rob that it would have been very difficult for the U.S. to remain out of World War I--as soon as the Germans began unrestricted submarine warfare in 1917, the only way for the U.S. to stay out would have been to give up trading with the British which was clearly not happening.

I'm more interested in how Herring shapes this chapter. Wilson's racist foreign policy leads to even more invasions in Latin America, including the disastrous attempt to apprehend Pancho Villa. This failure is a precursor for the failure of Wilson's foreign policy during and after World War I, ending in the watering down of his Fourteen Points at Versailles and the defeat of the League of Nations at home. While I certainly don't disagree with this analysis, I think it lacks useful context. Wilson's story is a Progressive story. In many ways, Wilson was the ultimate Progressive. Yet we get little context about internal developments in the U.S. during these years. I have long found to many narratives of U.S. foreign policy to exist in a contextual vacuum. A lot of recent scholars are moving beyond these traditional narratives, but Herring doesn't engage this work quite enough for my tastes.

As a scholar of Progressivism, I see these disparate movements as being tied together by a few basic themes. First, an overwhelmingly moralistic way of looking at the world and your involvement in it. Second, a belief that the reformer knew what was best for the world and if just the world would adhere to the provided solution, the problem would simply go away. Third, a lack of deep thinking about many of these problems and a lack of awareness of unintended consequences. Fourth, a view of the world infused with Anglo-Saxon superiority and racism toward other peoples. I'll avoid domestic examples here but can certainly provide them if anyone wants.

All of this describes Woodrow Wilson and his foreign policy. Sure he was racist. But so were most policy makers. Wilson though combined that racism with a self-assured superiority in regards to the rest of the world, a belief that America provided the best model for other nations to follow, and a simplistic idea about social and political problems that led him to catch-all solutions like the Fourteen Points.

Now, you might argue that I'm wrong here. But what you can't argue is that Herring deals with these ideas either way. To what extent do domestic issues and intellectual/political/cultural trends affect U.S. foreign policy? Herring, like most foreign policy scholars, does a good job during the pre-1815 period. But this gets lost in the late 19th and 20th centuries. This is too bad.

A lack of context hurts the chapter in other ways. For instance, what about immigrant groups within the US? Herring mentions that Irish-Americans were upset that the peace treaty didn't deal with Irish independence, but that's about all we hear about them. Yet there were many immigrant groups in the U.S. who openly supported Germany--including the Germans and Irish, which I believe were the 2 largest groups.

Moreover, there was a lot of residual anti-English sentiment among old-stock Americans dating back to the Revolution. I have read with my own eyes books published in 1916 and 1917 convincing Americans that those days are over, that we should get over our dislike of England and realize that Germany is the greatest threat the world faces. That Americans still needed convincing in 1917 that England was our ally was amazing to me. Yet we hear none of this in the chapter.

Similarly, I'd like to see more discussion and awareness of cultural issues. For instance, the same cult of masculinity that so influenced Americans to jump to war with Spain in 1898 played an equally important role against Germany in 1917. In fact, the industrial brutality of the war helped to kill that particular strain of upper-class men's obsession with their own masculinity that influenced hunting legislation, National Parks, the establishment of the Boy Scouts, early anthropology, the Marquis of Queensbury rules in boxing, making football a respectable sport, and many other things. Hunting, boxing, and the Boy Scouts were poor substitutes for the ultimate man-making exercise: war. The Spanish-American War was simply too short to satisfy upper-class men. This is a big reason why Theodore Roosevelt left his career behind to fight in Cuba and why he wanted to fight in Germany--he had prepared his entire life for these battles.

Moreover, these ideas of masculinity were international and influenced our foreign relations. Whether in England, Germany, or the U.S., young middle and upper class men rushed to volunteer for the conflict as soon as they could. That so many of them were slaughtered on the fields of northern France made them realize their romanticization of war was a lie and helped lead to the amazing literature of the war and postwar period. Before the war, the Boy Scouts was an international movement, men from around Europe and America traveled the globe looking for exploring and hunting adventures, and English and German investors went to the U.S. West to play cowboy like TR. People of the time were aware of these ideas and they talked openly in these terms. These constructions of masculinity influenced our interactions with the rest of the world. Yet I'm not seeing much awareness of this in the major works of U.S. foreign policy history and certainly not in Herring.

But it's not as if no historians are looking at cultural connections between the U.S. and the world during the Progressive Era . Daniel Rodgers' excellent history of transatlantic Progressivism, Atlantic Crossings, demonstrates how Progressives in the U.S. were talking to and were influenced by their counterparts in Europe and vice versa. Many of these Progressives entered government and influenced foreign policy. How did these Progressive ideas influence our relations with other nations? We really don't know from Herring.

Now, I'm not trying to be a jerk here. Readers of this series know that I like the book a good bit. I think it is a very solid overview of U.S. foreign policy history. My criticism is of the field more broadly, in particular the major narratives. There are many excellent historians working on the kinds of foreign policy history that I find increasingly satisfying; to a certain extent this is the difference between "diplomatic history" and "U.S. in the world" in the profession. It might seem like a semantic difference, but the latter works to decenter the foreign policy elite and traditional narratives from our understanding of the relations between the United States and the world. It seeks to complicate our narratives by showing how consumers, social workers, civil rights activists, everyday soldiers, and other nontraditional actors shaped our interactions with other nations. Herring is aware of this work and gives occasional nods to it, but ultimately is still writing a traditional foreign policy history with all its benefits and problems.

Rob also wanted to me to talk a bit about Mexico. I've blathered on for so long that I'll keep it short. I think Herring did a pretty good job with this, but I really wish that he would develop a broader narrative framework to encapsulate our interactions with Latin America. He signals changes and continuities between TR, Taft, and Wilson, but I'd like to see sharper clarity on how these Progressive Era presidents and the business interests they allied themselves with in Latin America would shape our dealings with that part of the world through the 20th century. Perhaps the reader can draw those connections for themself, but I'm not sure the non-specialist really would.

Sometimes Herring suggests at these larger frameworks in interesting ways. He points out that John Foster Dulles was a key advisor to Wilson at Versailles. It turns out that Dulles wrote the clause in the peace treaty ascribing all guilt for the war to the Germans. These two men allowed their overweening moralism to affect U.S. foreign policy, often in negative ways. It was Dulles after all who pushed Eisenhower to support Diem; he was confident in that leader because of his Catholicism. That was his major qualification, along with being anti-communist. Wilson and Dulles also followed similar foreign policies in regards to Latin America, using the military (and the CIA for Dulles) to crush resistance to U.S. hegemony and business interests. The Dulles brothers were close to the fruit growers in Guatemala who had their interests threatened by Jacobo Arbenz' government in the 1950s. Allen Dulles' position as CIA head and John Foster Dulles' position as Secretary of State made them unusually capable of using all means necessary to protect their friends and their own investments.

Ultimately though, I don't suspect Herring will draw these connections that sharply in the upcoming chapter on the Eisenhower years.

Overall though, I think Herring summarizes the complexities of the Mexican Revolution to my satisfaction, shows how U.S. racism negatively influenced Haiti, and how U.S. actions in the Dominican Republic led to the rise of the odious Rafael Trujillo. This represents the best of Herring's work--providing a coherent, if traditional, foreign policy narrative that takes at least some of the insights of more non-traditional work into account, while also being willing to call out U.S. presidents for their policies in ways older scholars might not have done so bluntly.

Again, I like the book and I want to stress that. But overall, I found this chapter unsatisfying because there are so many unexplored issues that I think are indicative of my problems with traditional narratives of the field as a whole.

There's more to say but I'll save it for Rob's response.

From Colony to Superpower, Part IX

This is the ninth installment in the 20 part series Rob Farley and I have commenced to review George Herring's From Colony to Superpower: U.S. Foreign Relations since 1776. See the Herring Review tag below for previous entries. As you may have noticed, it's been several weeks since the last entry. This is because Rob lost his book. Amazingly, someone found it and shipped it back to him. This begs further explanation. Does he put his address in all of his books? I hope he tells us.

This week covers the period from 1901-13, or the administrations of Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft. This is a period of great importance in the history of American foreign relations. Having gained colonies in 1898, America had to figure out what to do with them. Was the nation comfortable as a hard colonialist power or did it prefer a softer colonial relationship without constant physical occupation (and the expenses that incurred)? Moreover, the United States all of a sudden found themselves a fully realized power and began to think about how to use that power and prestige on the world stage.

The central figure in this interesting chapter is Theodore Roosevelt. To no small extent, Herring buys into the Roosevelt mythology, calling him "a genuine American hero." (347). What does that even mean? Whatever, I personally loathe Roosevelt, but there's no question that he is the dominant figure of the era and that he represented the thoughts of many Americans when it came to both foreign and domestic policy. He represented both the worst and best (well, mostly the worst) of American beliefs toward the world in the early 20th century. He held all the racial stereotypes of the day (few know that he was close friends with Madison Grant, writer of The Passing of the Great Race, the most important American eugenic tract and a big influence on the young Adolf Hitler), believed that American civilization was a model for the world to follow, and had no problem deploying American power against weaker nations to get his way.

On the other hand, he was geninuely interested in promoting peace around the world, especially when it served American interests. I was newly impressed by Roosevelt's efforts to end the Russo-Japanese war and to force the expansionistic Germans to lay off the French in Morocco. This was also the period when the Red Cross began. Meanwhile, Progressive men and women (and Herring explicitly mentions women) were working toward peace around the world. All of this had limitations--America ultimately could not permanently check Japanese and German expansion and non-governmental attempts at peace ended in failure. Moreover, virtually all American activities with other nations, even the powerful Japanese and European Russians, were dominated by ideas of American superiority. Nonetheless, the root of good existed in American foreign policy of this period, even it it so often took a back seat to darker impulses.

The worst of these impulses involved Latin America. Herring spends a decent amount of space on Latin America, but certainly doesn't center it as the key to understanding American foreign policy during these years. I do see US-Latin American relations as the single most important issue. For it was during these years, even more so than the Spanish-American War, that policy makers and business leaders created the neo-colonialist relationship that marked relations between the two regions during the twentieth century. The roots of Nixon and Kissinger supporting Pinochet and Reagan supporting the Contras are in this period. The most obvious example is Roosevelt breaking off Panama from Colombia to build the Panama Canal. Not even Herring can defend TR here, writing that "even by the low standards of his day, his insensitive and impulsive behavior toward Colombia is hard to defend" (368-69).

But it was so much more than Panama. The Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine provided the ideological groundwork for U.S. domination of the region, even if it had the side benefit of telling the Europeans to step back in the Americas. United Fruit and other fruit companies completely dominated Central America during these years--this is the root of the term "banana republic." When things got hot in these countries, the fruit companies would just call in U.S. troops to put things right. We were happy to erect dictatorships in Cuba that were unresponsive to the people's needs, laying the groundwork for Fidel Castro. We dominated the Dominican Republic and turned Puerto Rico into a true colony. Particularly after William Howard Taft became president in 1909, the nation happily sent the Marines to occupy any one of these Caribbean and Central American nations when our economic interests were at stake.

None of this is excusable, and certainly Herring doesn't try to do so . I just wish he had stressed more how foundational this period was to our relations not only with Latin America, but the entire developing world during the 20th century.

Finally, the one benefit of American colonialism was the spread of baseball. Herring mentions that Filipinos picked up the game in the early 20th century. I demand to know what happened with that? Why don't we see Filipino major leaguers today? I feel that we are missing out on some serious talent.

There's a lot more to talk about, particularly concerning Asia, but I'll pass it over to Rob for his response.

From Colony to Superpower, Part VIII

This is the seventh installment in the 20 part series Rob Farley and I have commenced to review George Herring's From Colony to Superpower: U.S. Foreign Relations since 1776. See the Herring Review tag below for previous entries. Forgive the late post this week. I was in Boston until Monday evening and literally within an hour of getting back was hit by a 24 hour flu. Good times.

Rob's entry for the week is here.

This week covers the period from 1893-1901, arguably the most transitional period in the history of American foreign relations. It was during these years that the United States went to war with Spain to become a colonial power, subjugated a colonial rebellion in the Philippines that resulted from our occupation, annexed Hawaii, intervened in the Boxer Rebellion, and issued the two Open Door notes.

The consequences of this period cannot be overstated. The Platt Amendment turned Cuba into a quasi-colony, the previous Teller Amendment probably the only reason that the island did not actually become an official colony. Turning Cuba into a client state with no democratic accountability helped lead to the communist revolution that marched into Havana 50 years ago tomorrow. The Philippines rebellion showed the worst of the US--in fact, it seems to me that Herring underplays the issue. While he claims that atrocities were not ordered or condoned, that's like saying that the horrible things that have happened in Iraq were not ordered or condoned. In a technical sense that may be true, but in both cases it obscures the responsibility for atrocities that should be placed upon people in power.

The Open Door notes began the U.S. involvement in East Asia. I have always found this episode amusing because of the absurdity of calling for Europe and Japan to open their trading zones to U.S. trade. Had the U.S. gotten involved in the imperialism game a little earlier and had acquired a Chinese concession, I doubt we would have embraced the Open Door with such gusto. I have somewhat derisively refered to this idea as "Equal Imperialism for All." Of course, the Open Door is an example of the strong trade orientation of U.S. foreign policy throughout its history.

Rob wonders about the impact of the Spanish-American War on reconcilation between the North and South. He's right that very few military officers from 1865 were fighting in 1898, but the reconciliation was much broader than just issues between individual officers. The entire 1890s (and really going back into the mid 1880s) was a period where the North and South were reconciling, agreeing that the South was right about race relations, even if slavery was wrong and needed to end. This phenomenon affected many parts of American life, from reunions at the battlefields to battlefield monuments to the rise of Jim Crow. Within the military, the Spanish-American War created the first major conflict where North and South could fight together against a common enemy. The Indian Wars that Rob mentions simply weren't large enough to provide that kind of reconciliation. And while I know little about the makeup of the military of the 1870s and 80s, what I do know suggests that the leading military officers in the West had experience fighting for the Union. I can't think of one Confederate officer who was also an officer in the post-war Indian battles, though again, there may be exceptions that I don't know about.

Related to the culture of American expansion was the crisis of masculinity in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. Herring mentions this as he sets the mood of the time, but it was quite important in understanding the period. For many upper class men, war the ideal experience to reclaim an Anglo-Saxon masculinity under threat from a variety of factors, including living in enervating cities, the closing of the frontier, the increased presence of women in the public sphere, the rise of bureaucracy in corporations, the decrease of wildlife populations, and the flood of immigrants from southern and eastern Europe pouring into the country. All of these things made many men feel that traditional American manhood was under threat. The response to this crisis influenced a series of actions that led to national parks, game laws, and the Boy Scouts. Getting out to nature was a good way to build manhood, but nothing could replicate the experience of war. This goes a long ways to explain why wealthy Americans such as Theodore Roosevelt leapt at the opportunity to join up to fight in Cuba. The Rough Riders and other outfits were full of wealthy volunteers looking to have fun killing and build the proper masculinity that would lead Anglo-Saxon culture in the future. And although some of these men died (including the grandson of Hamilton Fish, Grant's Secretary of State), the war was too short to end this fantasy. It would take World War I and the deaths of the British and German elite young men to do so.

A lot of interesting issues in this chapter, but I'll stop for now.

From Colony to Superpower: Gilded Age Military

Rob's discussion of Herring's chapter this week revolves around why the United States so severely downsized their military after the Civil War. He points out (with real statistics!) how small the U.S. commitment to their military was compared with Germany, Britain, and France.

It's a good point. I do find the comment thread to his post slightly frustrating though. I think it's because most of the responses feel somewhat ahistorical. While I don't claim to have the complete answer, I think it's really important to consider how Americans thought about their government and their role in the world during these years.

In a New Yorker profile of Karl Rove from I think 2003, Rove talks about how he wanted to send government back to the Gilded Age. He's a hypocrite and liar of course; he only wanted to kill social programs while creating a gigantic military and apparatus for the government to spy on American citizens. But there's a reason Rove and Grover Norquist look back at the Gilded Age as an ideal--it was a period when you actually could drown government in a bathtub.

Certainly, as Rob rightfully points out, the U.S. had the capability to create a strong central government and powerful military. It had just done so in the Civil War. But Americans didn't want this on a permanent basis. The period between Polk and Theodore Roosevelt saw one strong president--Abraham Lincoln. The 19th century was dominated by a general contempt for government and never was this stronger than in the Gilded Age. Rather, business dominated American society. When the economy tanked in the period, as it did not infrequently, the federal government didn't turn to the Secretary of the Treasury to find the way out--it went straight to the robber barons. The Gilded Age was full of social problems, but no one looked to government to figure out what to do. It was assumed that politicians were corrupt, but even if they weren't, they didn't have the responsibility or even the right to get involved in American life. The president was intentionally weak; part of the reason Gilded Age presidents did nothing is because they thought it was inappropriate for presidents to spur legislation or play the leading role in American political life.

Americans had always been relatively hostile to even the most basic government functions. That Henry Clay's American System was greeted with so much antipathy is a sign of that--as if the proper role of government is not to build roads and other basic infrastructure. But for many 19th century Americans, even that level of government interference in their lives was too much. And when the government did take an activist stand, say with the 1862 Homestead Act, the basic response of Americans was to have the government pass the law and then get out of the way so that the people could use that land however they wanted. Moreover, the Homestead Act could only be passed after secession and in the face of a severely weakened Democratic Party, the more anti-government of the two parties.

Within this paradigm of business-oriented small government existed our military and foreign relations. Americans took seriously Washington's warnings about entangling alliances in this period, but as Herring states, the nation was never isolationist. While we might avoid official foreign treaties, we also wanted to trade our goods across the world. When we needed a military force, Americans just figured we could raise one among our own people. Certainly our small military was sufficient for dealing with Native Americans. We had raised a volunteer military during the Mexican War and taken half of their nation. Clearly the Civil War had proven the unreliability of this method of recruitment, but that could be seen as an outlier conflict for so many reasons.

With business dominating our interactions with other nations then, it made sense for business to lead the way in all parts of our foreign policy. It was business who forced the elimination of the Hawaiian monarchy and pushed those islands into the American orbit. It was business who began getting concessions from Central American nations to grow bananas. Since we believed that trade would lead to national prosperity, it made sense to many Americans that business would make a large standing army unnecessary.

Of course, none of this worked well for long. The Progressive movement sprang to life because government was not able to solve the problems that racked industrial America. Many of those problems came from the corporations running the country; eventually, this would lead to the newly activist presidencies of Roosevelt, Taft, and Wilson. Similarly, this business model of foreign relations that did not rely on a strong military presence could not operate successfully against expansionary European powers or against the revolutionary movements that became increasingly common in the early twentieth century developing world. Ultimately, the real power of United Fruit in Central America was that they had the Marines at their beck and call. Certainly, business alone was not going to create the sprawling colonial empire that many Americans wished for by the 1890s. An activist government and a standing military both were a response to the failures of Gilded Age policy and Americans' increased desire for a more regulations and a stronger central government and international profile by 1900.

Again, I don't think I have provided a complete answer to Rob's question concerning why we had such a tiny military in the Gilded Age, but I think the basic outline here is helpful.

From Colony to Superpower, Part VII

This is the seventh installment in the 20 part series Rob Farley and I have commenced to review George Herring's From Colony to Superpower: U.S. Foreign Relations since 1776. See the Herring Review tag below for previous entries.

This week's chapter focuses on American foreign relations in the Gilded Age. Never in American history were foreign issues less relevant than the Gilded Age. The nation focused its attention on internal issues, particularly incorporating the West, reintegrating the South into the nation, and building the economy. Nonetheless, there are a few interesting issues worth discussing.

In many ways, the most important issues with foreign powers that America faced during the Gilded Age happened within our own borders. It was during these years that Native Americans were fully subjugated to the U.S. government. Herring discusses this in some detail, but I'd like to see more. In addition, after 1880, the United States saw a massive rise in immigration. Those immigrants were often treated poorly. The 1891 riot against Italian immigrants in New Orleans that left 11 Italians dead caused a major international incident between the U.S. and Italy. Meanwhile, the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act ended immigration from that nation entirely. Anti-Semitism ran rampant in American society, eventually spurring the lynching of Leo Frank in 1915 and the rise of the 2nd KKK in the 1920s

The Gilded Age saw the explosion of American missionaries overseas. In many cases, the missionaries were peoples first real exposure to Americans. Those missionaries represented the best and worst of America. They fought against some of the worst social abuses they saw, including opium use in China. They brought democratic ideas to parts of the world. On the other hand, they rarely thought the nations they missionized deserved democracy, they were culturally biased, often influenced by social Darwinism, and were generally not respectful of other peoples. At the worst, the missionaries served as the vanguard of imperialism, telling their families of economic opportunities and assisting in the takeover of Hawaii. Of course, this bias was the norm of Victorian societies, but it's worth stressing the major role non-diplomatic actors played in American foreign policy.

The most interesting thing I learned about in this chapter was the so-called Pork War of the 1880s with the Europeans. American agricultural exports exploded after a European famine in 1879. While I don't doubt that European nationalism played a major role here, the Europeans were quite distrustful of American meat. Given that the this is the age of The Jungle, one can hardly blame the Europeans. Americans were infuriated that Europe resisted their delicious canned meat products. By the early 1890s, the issue faded when the U.S. compromised on some trade issues. But the centrality of food in American foreign relations is something that requires a lot of future exploration.

I do think Herring is a bit hard on Grover Cleveland. He sees Cleveland as a stubborn man without a lot of foresight. From the perspective of expanding American power, perhaps Herring is right. But couldn't we also interpret Cleveland as being anti-imperialist? Cleveland resisted the theft of Hawaii and other imperialist actions of the era. Isn't this a noble thing? While it doesn't make much sense to call Cleveland an anti-imperialist that we should revere today, his actions did delay American imperialism and I think deserve respect for that.

I'd also like to see Herring include the work of Kristin Hoganson in his analysis. Hoganson, in a 2002 American Historical Review article and, presumably although I haven't read it, in her in 2008 book Consumers' Imperium: The Global Production of American Domesticity, 1865-1920, argues for centering American consumers of the Victorian Era in the beginnings of American imperialism. Consumers', often women, demand for exotic foreign items for their homes helped drive U.S. trade with the developing world during these years. Importantly, Hoganson makes a convincing case for including both consumers and women in foreign policy history. Note that I'm not really criticizing Herring here, but simply suggesting useful ways for foreign policy history to go in the future.

From Colony to Superpower, Part VI

This is the sixth installment in the 20 part series Rob Farley and I have commenced to review George Herring's From Colony to Superpower: U.S. Foreign Relations since 1776. See the Herring Review tag below for previous entries.

This week's discussion covers the Civil War and Reconstruction, or 1861-1877 to be precise. According to Herring, there are two major themes in U.S. foreign policy during these years: diplomacy concerning the Civil War and the continued expansionist ideology of the Americans.

Herring argues that the Civil War was part of the nation-building conflicts around the world during the mid-19th century. It's an interesting idea, though I'm not sure that I agree exactly. Had the North actively tried to limit slavery during the 1840s and 1850s, I think this would be a stronger argument. But the South wasn't responding to increasingly northern pressure on their peculiar institution. Rather, the North caved on nearly every issue in the 1850s and yet the South still wasn't satisfied.

However, the result of the Civil War was a much stronger and more centralized United States. Increased control over the west, a more centralized currency system, and a much greater industrial capacity all resulted from the war, and the United States certainly left the war much stronger than it began it. The late nineteenth century is a story of amazing growth in the nation. While this is a story mostly for next week's discussion of the Gilded Age, there's no question that the Civil War spurred this amazing period.

What I really like about this chapter is the combination of knowledge I did not previously had with the correction of myths that are pass for almost common knowledge among a lot smart people. Like many others, I always thought that the Emancipation Proclamation basically ended any chance the Confederates had of British recognition, but Herring says that Europeans saw it as an act of desperation on Lincoln's part and that it actually spurred more calls for European intervention. Additionally, Herring stresses that while the British did need American cotton, they also had equal or greater investments in the Union and that they were loathe to risk those by recognizing the Confederacy.

Like Rob, Herring also dismisses many of the Confederate diplomatic efforts. The more I read about Jefferson Davis, the more I am convinced that he was a deeply ineffectual leader who made extremely poor appointments. His secretaries of state and diplomats were no different. His representative to Mexico alienated that nation immediately, while James Mason and John Slidell did far more good for the Confederacy becoming U.S. prisoners in the Trent affair than they ever did in their official diplomatic responsibilities. The fact that they were defending slavery, an increasingly loathed institution in Europe, certainly did not help their cause. Nonetheless, the Confederacy badly misunderstood their own position in the world when they assumed that Europe could not survive without Southern cotton. While Davis's cotton embargo did cause some hardship, the Europeans were very uncomfortable risking Northern wheat, not to mention their own investments in railroads, canals, and other pieces of American infrastructure. On top of all of this, the North had incredibly skilled diplomats such as Cassius Clay and Charles Francis Adams, who basically ran circles around their Confederate counterparts.

That the Confederacy would have little understanding of reality hardly surprises me. The slaveholders seem to have worn glasses that only allowed them to see the world as they wanted it to be, as opposed to how it actually was. That doesn't mean the Confederacy couldn't have won the war, but they faced significant disadvantages from the beginning and needed everything to go right.

Herring also usefully points out that 19th century American expansionism was a continuity, not the two distinct periods of Manifest Destiny and the Spanish-American War. Rather, Americans wanted to expand their power and territory through the mid 19th century as well, but were generally stopped by domestic politics and the Civil War from doing so. Nonetheless, during Reconstruction, William Seward, who Herring lauds as one of the nation's most effective Secretaries of State, managed to buy Alaska from the Russians. In addition, Hawaii and Samoa increasingly came into the American orbit. Nonetheless, the period saw more failures for American expansion than successes. Colombia consistently refused to allow the U.S. to build a canal across the Isthmus of Panama, the Dominican Republic resisted American ownership of a port, and instability in Cuba combined with American racism stopped us from trying to annex that long-desired island. Still, American attitudes toward power remained relatively consistent throughout the 19th century and our ambitions for new territory would find greater satisfaction at the turn of the 20th century.