Paths Not Taken : Speculations on American Foreign Policy and Diplomatic History, Interests, Ideals and Power 9780313003769, 9780275967697

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PATHS NOT TAKEN

Recent Titles in Praeger Studies in Diplomacy and Strategic Thought The Development of RAF Strategic Bombing Doctrine, 1919–1939 Scot Robertson The Outbreak of the First World War: Strategic Planning, Crisis Decision Making, and Deterrence Failure John H. Maurer Strategy in Vietnam: The Marines and Revolutionary Warfare in I Corps, 1965–1972 Michael A. Hennessy American Diplomats in Russia: Case Studies in Orphan Diplomacy, 1916–1919 William Allison American National Security and Economic Relations with Canada, 1945–1954 Lawrence Robert Aronsen Alternative to Appeasement: Sir Robert Vansittart and Alliance Diplomacy, 1934–1937 Michael L. Roi British and American Naval Power: Politics and Policy, 1900–1936 Phillips Payson O’Brien Defending the Free World: John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and the Vietnam War, 1961–1965 Orrin Schwab

PATHS NOT TAKEN Speculations on American Foreign Policy and Diplomatic History, Interests, Ideals, and Power Edited by Jonathan M. Nielson Foreword by Walter LaFeber

Praeger Studies in Diplomacy and Strategic Thought B. J. C. McKercher, Series Editor

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Paths not taken : speculations on American foreign policy and diplomatic history, interests, ideals, and power / edited by Jonathan M. Nielson ; foreword by Walter LaFeber p. cm.—(Praeger studies in diplomacy and strategic thought, ISSN 1076–1543) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0–275–96769–7 (alk. paper) 1. United States—Foreign relations. 2. United States—Foreign relations—Decision making. I. Nielson, Jonathan M. II. Series. E183.7.P287 2000 327.73'09—dc21 99–037524 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available. Copyright 䉷 2000 by Jonathan M. Nielson All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, by any process or technique, without the express written consent of the publisher. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 99–037524 ISBN: 0–275–96769–7 ISSN: 1076–1543 First published in 2000 Praeger Publishers, 88 Post Road West, Westport, CT 06881 An imprint of Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc. www.praeger.com Printed in the United States of America TM

The paper used in this book complies with the Permanent Paper Standard issued by the National Information Standards Organization (Z39.48–1984). 10 9 8 7

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For Estelle and Jim who did their best to keep me on the path.

Contents

Foreword: Thinking Otherwise Walter LaFeber Preface Introduction: The Path Not Taken

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Jonathan M. Nielson 1

John Adams: Peace at a Price? Alexander DeConde

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2

1917: What if the United States Had Not Intervened? Jonathan M. Nielson

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3

Lost Opportunities: The Diplomacy of the 1930s

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B. J. C. McKercher 4

When Nationalism Confronted Hegemony: The U.S. Challenge to the Cuban Revolution, 1959–1961 Kyle Longley

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5

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Contents

Eisenhower, Dulles, and U.S. Policy Toward Israel and the Middle East Crisis at Suez, 1956 Antonio Donno and Daniele De Luca

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A Liberal Iran: Casualty of the Cold War

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James F. Goode 7

Lyndon Johnson and America’s Military Intervention in Southeast Asia Mitchell Lerner

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Index

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About the Editor and Contributors

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Foreword: Thinking Otherwise

When the great historian Carl Becker defined a professor as a person “who thinks otherwise,” he anticipated the premise of this book. Its contributors believe that by studying closely important turning-points in U.S. history, readers can understand that historical results are not inevitable, that human choice plays the fundamental role in shaping events and their (sometimes disastrous) effects. In all, this volume argues that it is necessary to think otherwise if a serious student is to glimpse the reality that the present is not the best of all possible worlds and that different choices were available—but not chosen—to make it a better world. A more implicit argument in these chapters is that these different choices were available mainly to those who understood history. As the truism runs, the best way to comprehend the present and anticipate the future is to study the past. The distinguished diplomat, W. Averell Harriman, was once asked why he had enjoyed such a successful career. “Good judgment,” he replied. Where did such judgment come from? “Experience,” Harriman said. And where did such experience come from? “Bad judgment,” Harriman observed. Unlike him, most Americans are notable for being oblivious to their national past. They are, the common view goes, too busy with the future to be concerned about the past. A less favorable interpretation was offered in 1985 by The Times of London: “No nation learns fewer lessons from its own errors of the past than the United States.” In chapter 1, which has the best outcome (for the nation, if not for the

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president), Alexander DeConde explains why John Adams essentially surrendered his chances for reelection in order to obtain a much-needed peace for the new, highly fragile United States. Of all the officials considered in this book, Adams best and most systematically studied the past. Indeed, his generation—the founders of the nation—examined and used the past with an intensity of passion and purpose that no generation since has matched. Of the other subjects in this volume, only Woodrow Wilson, who had been a noted historian and political scientist, approximated Adams’s study of history. As Jonathan Nielson tells us, while American neutrality was possible in 1917, and while Wilson and his advisors preferred peace to war, they also wanted results that they believed only war could secure for them. It is notable that Great Britain plays an important, often the leading, role in all but two chapters. U.S. officials had to make choices from alternatives shaped by foreign, especially British, power that were often beyond Americans’ ability to shape. As James F. Goode explains, the long British treatment of Iran up to the early 1950s thus presented Washington decisionmakers with unpalatable choices when the Iranians rebelled against London’s policies. And thus, as Mitchell Lerner emphasizes, the political and anticolonial beliefs of the North Vietnamese had been branded on their minds by ancient struggles long before American troops appeared in force. At bottom, however, Americans finally made choices in many pivotal instances when alternatives were available—or, perhaps more interestingly, when domestic (not foreign) influences cut off choices. Thus B. J. C. McKercher notes that President Franklin D. Roosevelt did not cooperate as he should have with Europeans against German and Japanese aggression because of “the strength of domestic isolationist opinion.” This “strength” resulted from an error of commission in studying American history: The “isolationists” analyzed U.S. entry into World War I and misunderstood both that particular past and its relevance for the changed world of the 1930s. On the other hand, the errors in dealing with Fidel Castro in Cuba between 1959 and 1961 (as Kyle Longley explains), or in dealing with Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam (as Mitchell Lerner observes) were errors of omission. Americans had neglected their post-1898 policy that had misshaped Cuba, and they were ignorant of the centuries-long experiences that formed Vietnamese hatred of foreign influences—including the Chinese brand. Longley notes the clash with Castro did not occur in a “historical vacuum.” Cubans certainly knew this; Americans did not. Lerner reveals that U.S. officials chose from options “A,” “B,” and “C” in dealing with Vietnam, but none of them came to terms with Vietnamese history nor the primarily political (rather than military) nature of the war, so one was nearly as bad as another. The three-option approach of

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too-much, too-little, and just-right is too often less a realistic analysis than a ploy by a bureaucrat to force others to choose the alternative the bureaucrat has defined as “just right.” It less resembles reality than Goldilocks judging the porridge as too hot, too cold, and just right—and such an approach can lead officials into much the same dilemma as she experienced. Along with foreign powers, domestic pressures, and errors of commission and omission, uninformed personal ideology easily gets in the way of using history to shape effective policy. Antonio Donno and Daniele De Luca believe President Harry Truman recognized the new State of Israel in 1948 because the president thought “political expediency should not take precedence over humanitarian concerns.” That reading of Truman’s motives has been hotly debated, but that the president had a choice of alternatives in 1948 cannot be debated. Nor can it be denied that he chose recognition in part because of his reading of both the recent history of the Jews, above all the Holocaust and because of the importance of pro-Israeli voices in American politics. Thinking otherwise is a necessity for both public officials before they choose policies and for teachers who present history as an open opportunity—rather than a closed door—to understanding. This book is important because its contributors present history as an opportunity to learn about decisionmakers who chose policies that, for good or ill, have shaped the lives of readers and the larger world in which those readers must make their own choices. —Walter LaFeber Cornell University

Preface

How would history have been different if President John Adams had adopted the extreme partisan policies of the ultras in the Federalist Party, which, in all likelihood, would have led to war with France in 1798, and an Anglo-American alliance? What if the United States had not intervened in Europe in 1917 or, having intervened, the Wilson administration had been able to resolve objections to American ratification of the Versailles Treaty with Reservationists in Congress and secure membership in the League of Nations covenant? In what ways might hemispheric relations have evolved differently, with Cuba, for example, had the United States pursued less interventionist, paternalistic policies during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries? Were there credible alternatives to the Truman Doctrine and America’s global anti-Communist crusade, which, in light of the collapse of the Soviet empire and end of the Cold War, could have achieved American foreign policy objectives without the incalculable financial and human costs, and the looming dread of nuclear annihilation? Did the United States, for example, have to suffer 58,000 casualties in Southeast Asia to discover that the Johnson administration’s Vietnam policies were deeply flawed and even doomed to failure? These and other similar questions addressed in this book, go to the heart of American foreign policy and the diplomacy employed to achieve it. They compel all Americans concerned with America’s role in the world beyond our shores, to examine closely the assumptions that have

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historically driven decisions committing the United States to certain courses of action–or inaction. In the spring of 1999, President William Jefferson Clinton committed the United States, with its NATO allies, to unprecedented military intervention in Yugoslavia, in response to Serbian atrocities against the Kosovo Albanian minority. The specter of mass civilian slaughter and “ethnic cleansing,” conducted by the Belgrade regime of Slobodan Milosevic, constituted the most serious military crisis and human tragedy in Europe since World War II. What responsibility does the United States bear for assuring peace in Europe at the end of the twentieth century? What right does it have to intervene in the internal affairs of a sovereign state and impose a military-political decision in a civil war 5,000 miles away? Critics and isolationists denounce what they see as unwarranted, dangerous overextension, a squandering of American power and wealth in useless meddling and fanciful “nation building” panaceas. The so-called “Clinton Doctrine” would, they assert, set the United States on a course toward unsustainable moral crusades and idealistic universality, that could only lead to disaster. Such fears echo down the decades since the founding of this nation. As these events now unfold so dramatically, they still frame debates central to America’s role in the world. Is our decision the right one? Was there a better course of action? To be sure, such questions and speculation are an unavoidable exercise in second guessing. An ex post facto reexamination of events, decisions, and motivations, no matter how scholarly and well crafted, may never yield satisfactory answers to questions of such enormous complexity and the imponderables of human agency. These difficulties notwithstanding, such inquiry is indispensable if the presumed “lessons” of history are to have any relevance beyond the historical moment and proximate context of decision and consequence. In America’s foreign affairs there has been a delicate balance between often conflicting imperatives of interests, ideals, and power. How these imperatives have interacted to shape the constellation of American foreign policy decisions throughout our nation’s history, and, indeed, how they have served to advance or subvert attainment of America’s regional, hemispheric, and global ambitions, is the subject of this book. This book explores seminal moments of decision in American foreign policy and diplomatic history between the early national period and the Vietnam War. Each decision proved to be a turning point in the nation’s foreign affairs, thus, also having far-reaching consequences for international relations. After summary analysis and narrative discussion of known decision and outcome, each chapter offers speculative judgments about how adoption of alternative policies, different decisions, would have altered the course of history and, in doing so, better served Amer-

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ican interests. Arguably, in some instances, history would have been changed only superficially; in others, different decisions might have changed fundamentally the landscape of history, the past we know and must live with. Throughout, each of the contributors has subjected the past to critical examination as a predicate to venturing hypothetical consequences of decisions and policy choices different from those adopted, carefully weighing controlling interests, personalities, and political realities. Perhaps such an exercise can claim no more than to consider the past as it is and to ponder what it might have been. Still, these contributors attempt more than a simple “what if” guess. They examine only the most plausible alternatives based upon known contemporary circumstances and possibilities, sometimes being able to draw upon clear expression of dissenting views within the policy-making elite responsible for such decisions. Plausibility must always be measured against formidable unknowns and, perhaps such speculation, can never be more than an “academic” exercise. I would argue, however, that at least, such endeavor seeks to achieve deeper understanding of America’s character and conduct in a world so influenced by the decisions it makes. In conceiving this book, I have endeavored to provide students with informative, thought-provoking, and instructive perspective on their nation’s foreign affairs and diplomatic history. While many of the contributor’s conclusions are necessarily critical, even harshly judgmental, their insights do not necessarily lead us to attributions of blame or condemnation. Still, it is worth remembering that the verdicts of history demand accountability from those who shape it. Nevertheless, this is an invitation for them to question and to challenge the past and to resist the conclusion that because things have happened as they have, there were no alternatives, no other paths. It is a counterfactual exploration of the other side of history or the history that might have been–if.

PATHS NOT TAKEN

Introduction: The Path Not Taken Jonathan M. Nielson

Like Robert Frost’s two roads diverging in a yellow wood, way leads to way and once the choice is made, we can never return to choose the other. History is like that. It is about paths followed and paths not taken. It is about decisions and choices and the consequences, both intended and unintended, which they entrain. How far one can see down any road one might choose, knowing that history will record the choice and judge the decision, imposes a certain hesitancy and consideration of alternatives—or it should, unless one simply throws caution to the wind. Nations, or more precisely, governments rarely throw caution to the wind. But they do not always choose wisely the paths they follow. Indeed, much of human history is a dreary catalog of wrong decisions and miscalculations. Paths taken are littered with the wreckage of human misstep. It is an article of faith among most historians that without knowledge of its history, a society shares no common memory of where it has been, what its core values are, or what decisions in their past, and their consequences, account for present circumstances. Inquiry into the past is truly the only laboratory we have in which to test the consequences of decision, action, and consequence—although there is hardly consensus on such claims (see as only two examples the wonderfully penetrating discussions in Joyce Appleby, Lynn Hunt, and Margaret Jacob, Telling the Truth About History [New York, 1994] and Richard J. Evans, In Defense of History [New York: 1997]). Paths Not Taken asks one of the most important questions that we can ask of the past: What alternative course might history have taken if de-

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cisions different from those actually made had been adopted? Inherently, decision posits the choice between alternatives by those empowered to choose between possible courses of action. Such choices have repercussions ranging from the trivial to the catastrophic. They can affect the lives of individuals, threaten the survival of entire peoples and governments, shape the history of nations. It is difficult enough for historians to understand and chronicle what actually happened in the past, for historical knowledge is always fragmentary, biased, subjective, and, inevitably, an interpretive art although one that, at its best, aspires to “scientific” methodology. Few facts speak for themselves. Indeed, it is the historian who must give voice and meaning to such traces of human experience. The epistemological question, “how do we know what we know?” therefore, is sufficiently problematic. The parallel question “can we possibly know what would have happened if?” presents an entirely different order of difficulty and challenge-contingent, speculative, scattered through the desideratum of the unknowable. In my classes and seminars, I have always encouraged my students to speculate on what might have been. “Could the past have had a different, separate reality?” Properly framed, “what if” speculation is a wonderfully illuminating method of historical inquiry for several reasons. It allows students to appreciate that nothing in history is inevitable or predetermined. It breathes new life into past events long considered “finished business . . . in the past.” And it reanimates historical actors, people, whose decisions and actions gave meaning to those events, enabling us to reconsider them in a more fluid frame of historical reference. By momentarily suspending our knowledge of past outcomes, we are able to reconstruct a critical moment of decision and reassign proper weight to considerations, issues, events, and personalities surrounding them. Perhaps most important, this approach returns the individual to the central stage in history’s drama. What is the relationship between human agency and historical forces, the impersonal conjunction of events, and how do they interact to shape human experience? As these chapters confirm, human actors influence and even determine the course of history through their exercise of choice and action (which may also include the choice not to act). Yet it is also clear that the course of human affairs often seems to proceed as an irresistible convergence of events toward a single outcome. While the present may superficially resemble the past, each historical moment is unique; it can never be replicated exactly. Still in the broader sense, history’s deja vu quality reminds us that the constancy of human nature, aspirations, and institutions frequently works to narrow the range of possibilities of outcome. Perhaps the most that can be hoped for is that approaching history as the “past that might have been,” can liberate it from dusty, suffocating certainty, and reinvigorate it with imaginative speculation. Indeed—what if? The genre of “counterfactual,” “what if,” or “conjectural” history as it

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is variously called, has come to hold a certain intellectual fascination for some historians. Indeed, contingency, roads not trod—for example, Frost’s two paths in the woods—once almost exclusively the inspiration for novelists and poets, now routinely generates scholarly interest. Since the late 1980s the whole range of decisions and actions from the Truman through the Reagan administrations during the now-ended Cold War, have been subjected to skeptical, probing analysis (and second-guessing), in light of communism’s collapse. At its best, such speculative inquiry allows historians and students of the past to better understand how decisions were made within the range of options available and the dynamics of conflict or consensus surrounding them. As with factually based history, counterfactual history not only suggests a range of plausible, alternative outcomes but also explores how those outcomes might have been the better choice. Different history can range from the whimsical to the profoundly pragmatic. We know what happened—that is, the history we have experienced confirms with a proximate certainty that events happened in a verifiable way. Intriguingly, however, the history that didn’t happen can never be disproved either. Indeed, authoritative speculation may well lead to the conclusion that the alternative choice or policy would have better served American interests. It is that insight that lends to counterfactual history not only a fascination about what might have been, the history that never happened. But it allows for deeply critical appraisal of the history we have. I believe there is a striking resonance between the two, which facilitates our deeper appreciation of the past, allows us to grasp more clearly the complexities of the decisions faced by those burdened with making them, and promotes more accurate, instructive judgments about the history we have—and the one we might have had. In her book, March of Folly (New York, 1984), the wonderfully gifted historian, Barbara Tuchman, explored what she considered to be one of the most prevalent, tragic themes in human history, the “pursuit by governents of policies contrary to their own interests.” Withal, she lamented, “Mankind makes poorer performance of government than almost any other human activity.” By contrast she defined its opposite, “wisdom” in governance as the exercise of judgment acting on experience, “common sense and available information” (4–5). Sadly this attribute, she concluded “is less operative and more frustrated than it should be.” Of the various kinds of misgovernment across a spectrum of abuses from tyranny or oppresion, to excessive ambition and hubris, to incompetence and decadence, folly is most pernicious. The sheer “woodenheadedness and self-deception” that underlies the refusal of those in power to benefit from past experience and their penchant for assessing situations in terms of “preconceived fixed notions,” is often responsible for the worst human calamities. To qualify as folly, Tuchman conceived that policy decisions had to

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meet three criteria: (1) They must be perceived to be counterproductive when they occurred, not merely in hindsight; (2) there must be a feasible alternative course of action available; (3) the policy or decision adopted must be that of a group rather than an individual. Given the example and persistence of decisions demonstrably unworkable or counterproductive throughout history, Tuchman judged that folly has been government’s most ubiquitous behavior. As the authors of these chapters confirm, the conduct of American foreign affairs has not been immune to the pressure of these criteria. It can be argued that a fine line separates folly from mere inadvertence or miscalculation, ignorance, and accident. Perhaps. All of these certainly contribute to the matrix of decision and consequence; they even posit exculpatory explanation for policy failures and mistakes. But who would embrace these explanations as more satisfactory or justifiable rationale for bad decisions? Indeed, institutional culture—professional elites and bureaucracies—exist to eliminate such elements from the conduct of foreign affairs, and, presumably, that has been true of America’s foreign policy establishment. Such safeguards notwithstanding, the contributors show how the folly of decisions and policies adopted lay not in pursuit of objectives in ignorance of the obstacles, dangers, or alternatives present. Rather the folly lay in myopic, self-serving, and often obstinate insistence on pursuing the policy regardless—even when confronted with clear evidence of failure or potential for disaster, even in advance of the decision. Subsequent refusal to alter or reverse decisions, when it became clear that the objective was unattainable, that the path chosen was damaging to American interests, and the means employed were disproportionate to the stakes involved or the ends desired, only compounded the original error. The history of American foreign relations offers innumerable points of decision and consequence that lend themselves to such critical appraisal. In recent years, historians, political scientists, and scholars of international relations, have scrutinized ever more carefully how foreign policy decisions are made—and have been made in the past. Because foreign policy is so clearly an expression of executive power, presidents and their advisors—secretaries of state, cabinet and personal advisors, national security advisors, the various national security agencies, the Joint Chiefs, the foreign policy establishment, broadly defined within government and increasingly within the academic community—together shape the process and dynamic of American foreign policy. Instrumental as are these institutional frameworks, American foreign affairs is also inherently the product of its domestic politics, ethnic and religious influences, ideological tensions, socioeconomic imperatives, bureaucratic cultures, and corporatist organizational rationale. And as important as these can be, none is perhaps more instrumental than the

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personality, character, and psychological traits of those in whose hands the consequences of decisions rest. Inescapably, therefore, the internal, domestic determinants of foreign policy can be as important as the external, foreign challenges or crises that arise to compel decision. Unquestionably, then, the foreign policy environment is an extraordinarily complex nexus of international context and domestic milieu, where identifying national self-interest and further discriminating between vital and peripheral interests, all too frequently in the nation’s history have imposed the most wrenching and momentous challenges. Recognizing that there are several other possible definitions, one way of understanding diplomacy is to think of it as the “brains of power,” whose object is the rational use or threat of coercion and inducements to compel a desired behavior of a foreign government and to protect national interests short of war. Notwithstanding how reasonable that may sound as a general proposition, the American experience is replete with examples of how achieving desired policies abroad, even given the express threat of force or military intervention itself, has been extremely problematic. Indeed, at its worst, American diplomacy has been little more than thinly veiled pretext to aggression, territorial aggrandizement, and bullying. In part this stems from the inherent tension between what historian Robert E. Osgood characterized as “ideals and self-interest,” which he judged to be the underlying dynamic of American foreign affairs and diplomacy (Ideals and Self-Interest in America’s Foreign Relations [Chicago, 1953, esp. 1–23]). Historically, the difficulty, he and others have argued, lies in the constant struggle to reconcile them in a coherent, consistent foreign policy for the United States. In this sense, then, managing foreign affairs is the task of choosing among the various objectives or “ends” desired and identifying the most appropriate policies or “means” for achieving them. The task is more often than not analogous to solving a complex puzzle where, invariably, some of the pieces are missing and where others, it is hoped, will somehow fit. Throughout these chapters the diversity and often conflict among national interests considered worth protecting or advancing by those who had responsibility for doing so, emerges clearly. On the other hand, the following must also be considered: economic advantage, commercial preeminence, national prestige, balance of power considerations, collective security, national defense, power projection. In international relations, such objectives are thought to derive from “realist” considerations of national interests and objective calculations of political, economic, or strategic necessity. But American foreign affairs has been driven by the complementary— some would argue countervailing—pursuit of certain deeply ingrained cultural ideals or idealistic propensities having moral-ethical and legal-

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istic imprint on human conduct and aspirations. For example, the United States has also claimed to act in the name of individual liberty, justice, democracy, international law and order, human rights, altruism, universal peace, freedom, and self-determination. Proponents argue that such ideals are transcendent not contingent, and they constitute America’s higher purpose and exceptionalism among nations. It is this tension and inevitable disagreement over means and ends, principle and expediency, that has suffused the conduct of American foreign affairs with what Osgood characterized as a combination of “self-assertive egoism and altruistic idealism,” an amalgam that has perplexed and often exasperated America’s neighbors and allies and provoked its adversaries. Neither consistently balanced nor always clearly articulated, the sources and conduct of American diplomacy shifted inexorably during the twentieth century toward a more realist appraisal of international relations and the requisites of power in a more dangerous world. This trend began after World War I, continued after World War II, and the half-century confrontation with the Soviet Union and Vietnam. Together, these catastrophic events all but purged liberal or ‘Wilsonian’ internationalism from American diplomacy. The American-led coalition victory in the Gulf War, buttressed by the alleged “winning” of the Cold War, and leavened by the new (old?) realities of the post–Cold War world, however, again provoked debate on America’s role in the world. America’s military and economic preeminence in the world renders avoidance of engaging in this debate null and void. Historically, the United States has always preferred an unincumbered unilateralism and, at times, even isolationism in its affairs with other nations. As the twentieth century became the “American century,” America’s national interests and global responsibilities—some might say vulnerabilities—proliferated accordingly, as did the “encumbrances.” Increasingly, unilateralist preferences were tempered by the necessities for collective security, geopolitical balances, and the political economics of burden-sharing. Such realities notwithstanding, American foreign policy remains uniquely torn between resolve and restraint, compassion and coercion. Balancing the equation requires ever more difficult calculation: humanitarian and peace-keeping intervention in Somalia and Bosnia; military intervention in Iraq, Panama, Haiti, and Kosovo, each having costs and consequences that cannot always be foreseen or factored in. Such is the terrible burden of decision. In Paths Not Taken, distinguished historians of the nation’s foreign affairs critically examine moments of decision by several American presidents and their advisors and the process by which they arrived at their decisions. Each chapter stands alone; yet a common theme provides a coherence between them. In each moment of decision, viable alternatives

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were available and sometimes forcefully articulated by dissenting advisors, which, if they had been adopted, would have seriously—even profoundly—changed the course of the nation’s history and that of the nations and peoples for whom our decision had consequence. Indeed, by going beyond the standard historical account, these historians show how choices made at what the philosopher Sidney Hook called the “forking point of history,” could have been very different, and with significantly different possibilities of outcome. Moreover, in each instance, with one exception (President John Adams refused to be coerced politically into war against France in 1800 [see chapter 1]), they argue persuasively that the decision that became the history we have, proved injurious to American national interests, both as they were perceived at the time, and subsequently in history’s inevitable reckoning. In chapter 1, “John Adams: Peace at a Price” Alexander DeConde, one of the foremost historians of American foreign relations during the early national period, shows how the foreign policy of the early republic was intrinsically the expression of partisan battles between Federalists and the emerging Jeffersonian Republican opposition. President Adams chose peace over war with France, against the advice of the ultras of his party, thereby sacrificing his presidency. His decision to negotiate the Treaty of Mortefontaine in 1800 ended the Quasi-War with France, quashed a possible Anglo-American alliance, thus avoiding a bloody insurrection at home, and laid the foundations for Jefferson’s successful purchase of Louisiana two years later. Had Adams decided for war, which would have been widely popular and politically self-serving, the United States could well have found itself drawn more deeply into the Napoleonic malestrom, with dire consequences for the fragile American experiment. Adams’s decision, therefore, confirms his shrewd assessment of the alternatives before him and validates his personal and political courage in taking a course of action that was in the young nation’s best long-term interests. In many ways, chapter 2, “What if the United States Had Not Intervened?” interlaces the theme of this book, threads of which weave through each of the chapters, tying them together as a single overarching narrative inquiry into the history that might have been. Examining Woodrow Wilson’s decision to intervene militarily in the Great War in Europe, Jonathan M. Nielson explores the war’s impact on American society and its international consequences as we know them to be. He then shows how and why Wilson rejected clear alternatives to intervention, alternatives that on balance might well have better served American objectives and interests. While acknowledging that America’s contribution to the Allied victory in November 1918 was laudable, the longer term consequences of the “lost peace,” postwar disillusionment

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and political backlash against the Treaty of Versailles and the League, gainsayed all that had been claimed as justification for American intervention in the name of Wilsonian idealism. Most provocatively, Nielson shows that Wilson had clear, reasonable, and politically sustainable alternatives in April 1917, which he rejected, thus backing the United States into the risky corner of sham, legalistic neutrality. The evidence confirms that a nonmilitarist course for the United States was neither impossible, exceedingly difficult, nor necessarily inimical to Allied victory. Under enormous pressures, and given his complex traits of personality, Wilson rejected nonintervention and chose war. No president, or individual for that matter, is captive of historical forces. Wilson was unable to transcend his own hubris and rigid moral certainties as he weighed his options for extending the Progressive crusade into international affairs. Like John Kennedy’s “We will pay any price, bear any burden,” rhetoric, Wilson’s grandiose vision for making the “world safe for democracy,” committed the American people to a conflict they did not have to fight, with far-reaching consequences, both at home and abroad, for the remainder of the twentieth century. In chapter 3, “Lost Opportunities: The Diplomacy of the 1930s,” B. J. C. McKercher subjects American isolationist policies to careful reassessment and judges both the Hoover and Roosevelt administrations to have failed to advance constructive foreign policies during this critical interwar decade. Indeed, he argues that in not taking more aggressive erudite action on the reparations issue, arms limitations, and security issues, the United States missed golden opportunities—even outside the League of Nations framework—to alter the course of international relations leading to World War II. Absent an American engagement, the rise of fascism in Europe and Asia was more likely than would have otherwise have been possible. Both Hoover and FDR, lacking political courage and foresight, allowed themselves to be controlled by public opinion and congressional politics, thus abdicating international leadership, bearing some responsibility for the breakdown of the international system after 1939, and for the war that followed. Kyle Longley in chapter 4, “When Nationalism Confronted Hegemony: The U.S. Challenge to the Cuban Revolution, 1959–1961,” shows how through ill-conceived decisions by the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations, the United States surrendered the moral high ground in its bellicose anti-Castro stance after 1959, and unnecessarily damaged hemispheric relations in the process. Instead of guiding a modern revolution, Longley judges that American policy helped increase its radicalism and the need for drastic socioeconomic change. Was it inevitable that Castro would make his declaration that he was a Marxist-Leninist

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in 1961? Could the United States have worked with moderate elements to undermine the more radical excesses of the revolution? What policies were available that would have respected Cuban sovereignty while also maintaining a healthy relationship between the two nations? Each of these questions identifies important junctures, where the United States had opportunities to prevent the creation of a bitterly antagonistic relationship, one that has defined the past thirty-five years of CubanAmerican relations and condemned the hemisphere to decades of violence. American policy toward Israel and Arab nationalism during the crucial decade 1948–1957, is given careful assessment by Italian scholars, Antonio Donno and Daniele De Luca, in “Eisenhower, Dulles, and U.S. Policy Toward Israel and the Middle East Crisis at Suez, 1956.” Viewing the proclamation of the State of Israel in 1948 as the turning point for American policy in the Middle East, Donno and De Luca explore the policy disagreements between President Truman and his State Department advisors over the Palestinian question. They identify the subsequent shift in policy toward Zionist Israel as principally an expression of Truman’s moral conviction and domestic policy considerations. Thereafter, policy changes supporting Arab nationalist aspirations, as part of the Eisenhower-Dulles anti-Soviet strategy in the Middle East after 1952, became controlling. Not only concerns over Soviet expansionism but also misplaced deference to Great Britain, clouded policy decisions with dangerous, counterproductive consequences. The contributors argue that the United States could well have adopted a different policy during this formative period of America’s deepening involvement in the region, which should have been much less ambiguously pro-Israel, much more realistic about Arab nationalism, and much more effective in forestalling Soviet political inroads. Sadly, they conclude, the Eisenhower-Dulles foreign policy guaranteed the very Soviet penetration they were designed to thwart, and they did nothing to address the long-term political-religious issues of the region. In the Suez crisis of 1956, flawed American policy only further strengthened Soviet military, political, and economic influence in the Middle East. Both Eisenhower and Dulles badly misjudged America’s ability to coerce Egyptian nationalism and Nasser in subordinating Arab aspirations and interests to American policy objectives. Rather than courting Nasser, Donno and De Luca conclude that if the United States had isolated him until Soviet duplicity and unreliability had been demonstrated, and then pursued him with a generous diplomatic initiative, something like a Camp David Accord accommodation between Egypt and Israel could have been achieved twenty years before it was realized by this very same approach with Anwar Sadat. Moreover, it is pointed out that in their handling of the Suez crisis, Eisenhower and Dulles made

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possible the “very nightmare” they had hoped to avoid—more prolific Soviet threat to American strategic and economic interests and squandering of opportunities to better manage pan-Arab nationalism and antiIsraeli, anti-Western animus. What if the United States had not helped overthrow the government of Iranian leader Muhammad Musaddiq in August 1953? That question is examined in James F. Goode’s chapter, “A Liberal Iran: Casualty of the Cold War.” Seeing the overthrow of Musaddiq as the critical turning point in American-Iranian relations, Goode argues that the Eisenhower administration badly misjudged the political situation in Iran, based decisions on “myth and misperception,” and failed to choose workable alternatives short of CIA intervention. Taking a different course of action would have paid huge dividends for enhancing America’s role in the region and in the Third World generally. The “tragedy of U.S.–Iranian relations,” he concludes, was that by helping to silence the Shah’s moderate opposition, the Eisenhower administration made far more likely the rise to power of Islamic fundamentalism and the hostile government of the Ayatollah Khomeini. American actions assured that Iran’s animus toward the United States only deepened with immediate and long-term consequences of which we are all too familiar. By distancing itself from its NATO allies, France and Britain, and in unilaterally assuming the role of global policeman, for which Suez was the archetype, the United States had conceptually embraced the legitimacy of military interventionism that led inexorably to Southeast Asia a decade later. Few decisions in American foreign policy and political history have aroused such controversy, and second-guessing, as has America’s decision to intervene militarily in the civil war in South Vietnam. Chapter 7 by Mitchell Lerner, Lyndon Johnson and America’s Military Intervention in Southeast Asia,” thoughtfully examines President Johnson’s decision to expand America’s role in the war during the seven critical months between March and September 1964. President Johnson and his advisors, as former secretary of defense, Robert McNamara, now make clear, made several critical errors during this period, in their recommendations for military escalation. Some of these derived from ignorance of the militarypolitical realities in Vietnam, not to mention its history and culture. But more regrettable was the “blind devotion” to the doctrine of containment and the domino theory logic of the Cold War. Faced with three clear options: expansion of the Eisenhower-Kennedy policy of economic-military assistance; immediate and forceful military intervention—air, ground, and naval; and withdrawal, the Johnson administration rejected the viable alternatives to military engagement. Indeed, Lerner argues that withdrawal was not only possible in 1964, it would have provided the best long-term strategy for the United States.

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South Vietnam would have fallen to the communists regardless, but the United States would have spared itself its greatest foreign policy–military debacle and most tragically 58,000 dead lost in an unwinable war. By choosing nationalism and self-determination over colonialism and oppression, the United States would have better served its own interests. Certainly this would have made a difference for those thousands whose names are etched so hauntingly on the Vietnam memorial wall and for their families. It certainly would have mattered to the million Vietnamese killed during the war and the equal slaughter in Cambodia as a result of the war’s dynamic. It certainly would have mattered to Johnson and for his hopes for creating the Great Society he so boldly envisioned. But if there had been no Vietnam or “killing fields,” how might it have changed world history or the outcome of the Cold War in the larger historical sense? It is, of course, impossible to know the answers to such questions. Yet speculation is the handmaiden of the possible. We have lived these events and with the decisions that precipitated them. Yet, hauntingly, it is also true that no one can say history would not have just as easily followed the path and led, perhaps, to a “better” future. Better in what way precisely, and for whom, must ever remain surmise, indeed, some might claim—quite irrelevant. Yet the authors of these chapters share the conviction that relinquishing the courage to challenge the past we have forecloses on the futures we might conceive. Hindsight is that wonderfully clarifying mirror of our memory. It allows the historian the luxury of reflecting on events and second-guessing the decisions of those for whom the consequence of choice imposed unique constraints of time, place, action, and emotion. At its most instructive, history can recreate such moments, allowing us to understand better the risks, the uncertainties, and the possibilities inherent in the chronicle of human events. As the terrible dilemmas of 1917 and 1964 confirm, foreign policy decision often balances on the most delicate of scales and, folly all too often tips the balance in that irreversible moment of decision.

1 John Adams: Peace at a Price? Alexander DeConde

When, with the embarrassing margin of seventy-one electoral votes to Thomas Jefferson’s sixty-eight, John Adams on March 4, 1797, became the United States’s second president, he had behind him one of the most distinguished political and diplomatic careers in the nation. This Yankee, born in Braintree (Quincy), Massachusetts, graduated from Harvard College, practiced law, and quickly involved himself in the American colonies’ agitation that led to revolution. He wrote newspaper articles attacking British rule, served in the First and Second Continental Congresses, helped negotiate the treaty of Paris of 1783 that confirmed American independence, became the nation’s first minister to Great Britain, and for eight years stood in George Washington’s shadow as America’s first vice president. As Adams’s career and writings indicate, he had an impressive intellect, an impulsive temperament, a streak of vanity, and deep convictions on the influence of pride and ambition in men of power. He even developed a theory making ambition “the basis of all human behavior” and spoke frequently of having to conquer his own “natural Pride and self Conceit.”1 As did Washington and other contemporary government leaders, Adams believed the president should stand above party. This conviction complemented his perspective on executive power that “came as close to monarchical as American conditions would allow.”2 Adams also deplored partisan political strife but regarded himself a loyal Federalist.

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These attitudes affected his perspective on the war that France and England were fighting and on American policy toward it. Washington’s policy of neutrality that the French regarded as proBritish, differences over obligations to France under the alliance of 1778, and French assaults on American commerce and seamen, had brought the United States and France to the verge of war. Adams had to deal with this crisis immediately and, as it unfolded, with various aspects of it throughout his presidency. As a Federalist and out of personal conviction, he had as vice president stood behind his predecessor’s position. Now he attempted to win over Washington’s following by retaining his cabinet and, by pledging, in his inaugural address and in other statements, to continue Washington’s foreign policy. The crisis escalated almost immediately. The Directory, or France’s five-person executive body, refused to receive as the American minister Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, the South Carolina Federalist sent by Washington, thereby suspending normal diplomatic relations. The French government also unleashed privateers in the Caribbean for stepped-up attacks on American shipping. Many members of the president’s party, and others, too, demanded a declaration of war against France even though her government did not consider its depredations acts of war. As an American merchant skipper recently returned from Bordeaux put it, “there appeared a considerable coolness and displeasure in the French towards the Americans, but no disposition for war.”3 Adams reacted to the crisis by calling Congress into special session. He asked for defense measures, such as the arming of merchant ships, enlarging the navy, and support for a mission to France to work out a peaceful settlement of differences. Federalists held a majority in the Senate but Republicans, who predominated in the House of Representatives, regarded the Federalists as pro-British, considered most of the president’s proposals too warlike, and concluded he had succumbed to the war hawks in his own party. Congress, therefore, refused to vote for some of the recommended measures and approved others such as the diplomatic mission. In May 1797 Adams appointed Pinckney, John Marshall, both Federalists, and Elbridge Gerry, a friend with Republican leanings, to the mission. They were to offer France concessions similar to those given Britain in Jay’s Treaty of November 1794: to restore normal diplomatic relations and to seek indemnities for the damage French corsairs had inflicted on American shipping. They were also to negotiate a release from the alliance of 1778 that obligated the United States to defend the French West Indies. Despite this peace overture, many Republicans believed, in the words of Vice President Jefferson, “that war was the object” of the special session. Even though Congress had blocked that aim, he assumed that bellicose Federalists would still endeavor to “show our teeth to France.”4 He

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also blamed the ill temper of the “executive administrations” of France and the United States for bringing their countries to the very brink of war. Along this line, the worst was yet to come. When the American commissioners arrived in Paris on October 4 they had to deal with the Directory’s changed personnel who were more hostile to the United States than their predecessors. The new minister of foreign relations, Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Pe´ rigord, as he had with other foreign supplicants, insisted on payment of a bribe merely for the privilege of negotiating with his government. He also demanded an apology for remarks Adams had made about France that the Directory regarded as derogatory. The commissioners rejected these demands but not because the idea of a bribe shocked them. They had no money to pay for one and believed furthermore that if they agreed to pay they still had little assurance of achieving their objectives. When one of Talleyrand’s intermediaries indicated the Directory was “becoming impatient” and hinted at more violence if they did not pay, saying, “what is your answer?” Pinckney blurted, “no, no; not a sixpence.”5 After months of continuing intrigue Marshall and Pinckney decided the Directory would never receive them. They requested their passports, and in the spring of 1798 left Paris. Gerry, however, thought he must find a peaceful accommodation, notably after Talleyrand had threatened a declaration of war if he, too, departed. “To prevent war,” Gerry said, “I will stay.”6 He remained in France alone. All the while in the United States the president, Congress, and others wondered what was happening in Paris. Would there be war or peace? The British naval blockade of France and other factors delayed news from the commissioners. Finally on March 4 their first despatches telling the story of the corruption they had encountered reached Secretary of State Timothy Pickering in Philadelphia, then the national capital. The treatment of the envoys shocked him, the president, and other cabinet officials. Adams now appeared more bellicose than the extremists in his own party, or High Federalists. He decided to ask Congress to declare war. When the president sat down to write his war message he had second thoughts. He abandoned the idea of a proclaimed war in favor of fighting off the French in undeclared hostilities at sea: he could prepare the country for a possibly larger conflict and wait for France to make the formal declaration of war. In a special message on March 19 he explained the humiliation of the peace mission to Congress, renewed his request for defensive measures, and asked for authorization to engage in limited warfare. Congressional Republicans refused to believe the president’s charges. They claimed that by not sharing the despatches with them he was hiding evidence that could prevent war. So they blocked the “war” mea-

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sures he proposed. These tactics infuriated Abigail Adams, the president’s wife. “What benefit can war be to him?” she asked. “He has no ambition for military glory. He cannot add by war, to his peace, comfort or happiness.”7 Nonetheless, on April 2 the House of Representatives by resolution requested delivery of the despatches. In effect, the Republicans who voted for the resolution fell into a trap. Although Adams had not deliberately ensnared his political opponents, the opportunity to discredit them pleased him. On the following day he sent the first of the deciphered despatches to the House with one slight omission. Believing that the commissioners were still in Paris and might suffer reprisal because of his revelations, Adams substituted the letters W, X, Y, and Z for the names of Talleyrand’s agents who had demanded the bribe. When the legislators examined the diplomatic correspondence the Federalists among them reacted with joy. Seeing an opportunity for political gain, they moved to publish the despatches. Stunned Republican leaders realized that if the documents became public the people might call for full-scale war. They tried, but failed, to prevent publication. Public sentiment turned swiftly against France; war fever spread over the country; numerous Republicans deserted their party, at least on this issue; and ultra Federalists viewed an enlarged war as virtually inevitable. The extreme Federalists urged a declaration, arguing it would demolish the Republican opposition, unify the country, and assure the party power for a long time. They depicted the Republicans as unpatriotic and as in part responsible for the French hostility to the Federalist administration. Alexander Hamilton, the guiding force in most Federalist policy, penned a series of articles called “The Stand,” denouncing the French “tyrants,” urging forceful resistance, and calling for an army of 50,000 to make it possible. These tactics brought Federalists majority support in both houses of Congress. They voted for bill after bill that placed the country on a war footing. Beginning on April 27 and continuing through mid-July Congress enacted legislation for creating a navy department, expanding the navy, allowing it to capture French ships, arming merchant ships, and for discretionary power to the president to increase the regular army. With these laws the undeclared hostilities could spread to the seven seas. Ostensibly to control French agents and their American sympathizers, Congress passed four related laws known as the Alien and Sedition Acts. Arch Federalists wished to use the legislation to silence critics of the government, crush political opposition, and compel support for their war aims. Republicans and others regarded the measures as tyrannical. Congress also abrogated the treaties with France, legislation that Adams quickly signed. In addition, he and Congress took other measures that ended all diplomatic connections with France. To pay for the expanding

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war program Congress voted a direct property tax and authorized the president to borrow large sums. Adams did, however, equip the new navy that quickly began patrolling the coastline. This war frenzy affected Adams himself as though it were a narcotic. He who had long suffered public disparagement as having gained the presidency by a mere “three votes” and by being compared to his widely admired predecessor now for the first time achieved popularity, in good measure because of his truculence. He seemed to glory in his role as commander in chief, appearing “in public wearing a full military uniform with a sword strapped to his side” and delivering numerous inflammatory, warlike speeches.8 Typically the president told crowds, rather than knuckle to the French, “let us have war” or that “The finger of destiny writes on the wall the word: War.”9 Everywhere he gave the appearance of a leader eager for full-scale hostilities. This belligerent stance delighted prominent Federalists. “The President Shines like a God in the Declaration of his sentiments,” one of them reported.10 People praised Adams in song and poetry and toasted him as the nation’s foremost patriot. This warrior stance, however, alarmed Republicans and moderates concerned over what they regarded as a plunge toward an unnecessary war. “Perhaps it is a universal truth,” James Madison the Republican leader observed, “that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to provisions against danger real or pretended from aboard.” Adams, he added, “finds it easy to prey on the prepossessions of the people for their own Govt against a foreign power” but the Directory can play the same game.11 George Logan, a Philadelphia Quaker, summed up such feeling with the warning that “wars created by ambitious executives have been undertaken more to their own aggrandizement and power than for the protection of their country.”12 Whether or not Adams knew of such sentiments, privately he worried about the opposition to the war program and about indications that the French would not escalate the hostilities. He wavered, therefore, over whether he should or should not try to mobilize the nation for a big conflict. He decided again not to ask Congress for a formal declaration of war. On June 16, during this time of indecision, Marshall landed in New York. He received a hero’s welcome. War hawks toasted him with a distortion of Pinckney’s phrase, shouting “Millions for Defense but Not One Cent for Tribute.” It became the slogan of this conflict and later part of the nation’s patriotic folklore.13 Privately Marshall informed the president, as had his son John Quincy in Berlin, that France really did not want an enlarged war with the United States. Again the president’s own desire to expand the hostilities clashed with the realities of international and domestic political developments. Again

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he hesitated in pushing for war. He did, however, continue to implement the anti-French measures but not to the extent that the extreme wing of the party, desired. The High Federalists wanted large land forces. While Adams went along with the idea of building armies, he preferred relying mainly on the navy to protect the nation’s commerce and coasts. Congress empowered him to raise a provisional army, a short-lived emergency force, an additional army, and to expand the militia.14 For political reasons, on July 2 Adams placed Washington in command of these projected armies but the retired Virginian would not go into active service until land hostilities actually commenced. Trouble erupted when, as Washington desired, the president refused to appoint Hamilton inspector general, or to the second highest post in the army and hence to effective command until land hostilities commenced. Adams distrusted Hamilton for a number of reasons, including his effort to block his accession to the presidency, but most Federalists backed the New Yorker for the post. Although initially Hamilton had favored the peace mission, he also had long dreamed of heading a conquering army. At this point he desired an enlarged war because Spain had become France’s ally, and he wanted to lead an army against neighboring Spanish colonies such as Louisiana and the Floridas. “Tempting objects,” he called them. With the army and support from the British he would gain the glory of a conqueror, strengthen the bond with Britain, and reap other rewards that accompanied power. When the cabinet insisted on Hamilton’s appointment the president became increasingly aware that he did not have its full loyalty and that within his own party many disapproved of his conduct concerning the hostilities with France. At the same time High Federalists believed they could now attract enough votes for Congress to declare war, over the president’s head if necessary. For reassurance, on the evening of July 4 they held a caucus made up of dependable party leaders from both houses. To their dismay, the extremists found that while the moderate Federalists would support the existing naval conflict, they would not vote for a larger declared war. The war hawks, therefore, had to fall back on their assumption that the anti-French legislation would provoke the Directory into enlarging the hostilities. As for Adams, when Congress adjourned on July 19 he believed that the people favored a full war and that only disloyal obstructionists blocked it. French bellicosity toward the United States, however, had diminished. Contrary to what the High Federalists assumed but as Marshall had indicated, French leaders could see no benefit in expanding the QuasiWar. Even Talleyrand, after news of the X Y Z revelations had reached Paris, told the directors that France could gain nothing by expanding the hostilities. If they declared war, he warned, they would fall into an

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“Anglo-Federalist trap.” This realism—along with the initial American successes at sea, fear of an alliance between Britain and the United States that could endanger possessions (such as St. Domingue, in the Caribbean), and concern over the fate of Louisiana—all contributed to what became the French desire to reach an accommodation with Adams. That July, even though the Directory placed an embargo on American ships in French ports, it authorized Talleyrand to initiate peace negotiations. Early in August Talleyrand repeated to Gerry, as Gerry left Paris for America, that France wished to renew friendly relations with the United States. On August 28, through a French official posted at The Hague, Gerry told William Vans Murray, the Federalist minister there, the same thing. Murray and Gerry relayed the peace feelers directly to the president, who had fled yellow fever in Philadelphia for refuge in Quincy, 300 miles to the north. High Federalists, at the same time, escalated the confrontation with the president over the second post in the additional army, exploiting Washington’s still great popularity to achieve their goal. The former president told Adams he would resign his own position if Hamilton did not receive the appointment as the second-ranking general. Adams feared that if he broke with Washington he would lose much of the public standing he had acquired during the French crisis. On October 9, therefore, he grudgingly conceded that Hamilton could have the appointment he desired. Hamilton’s political victory not only humiliated Adams but also drained much of Adams’s enthusiasm for a larger war against France. The president decided, therefore, that if Hamilton had only a paper army to command, his drive for military glory might end. Accordingly, Adams allowed authority for the provisional army to lapse and held back recruitment for the additional army. The nation, he said, would not maintain a great army “without an enemy to fight,” and he saw no need for such a force. “At present,” he added, “there is no more prospect of seeing a French army here than there is in Heaven.”15 Adams could say this because he knew that the Directory had already retreated from its previous hard-line position toward the United States. It had revoked the commissions of privateers in the Caribbean, promised to respect neutral shipping, raised an embargo it had placed on American ships in French ports, and had released imprisoned American seamen. Further French overtures, through private letters from Murray, reached Adams on the day of his defeat in the wrangle over Hamilton’s military rank. Shortly thereafter the president revealed to his cabinet that his thinking on the Quasi-War had changed. He announced that if the French assured him they would receive American emissaries with respect he would send another mission to Paris to negotiate peace. This move, which made clear at least that he no longer regarded all-out war

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as inevitable, shocked the ultra Federalists. It could destroy the foundation of their war policy. During the third session of the fifth Congress that opened on December 8 the ultras called together the dependable Federalist legislators, this time in a secret caucus. Once more they sought to determine if they had the votes to obtain a declaration of war now, despite the president’s opposition. Again the ultras failed to line up a majority. Moreover, ascertainable public sentiment ran against them. The people seemed to have tired of living on the verge of a big war, of the squabbling over the raising of a standing army, and reacted negatively to the new taxes to pay for it and other war-related costs. Even the government’s attempt to borrow money ran into trouble. Few enlisted in the army, and Republicans now in increasing numbers openly opposed the war program. Jefferson and Madison, for instance, expressed their dissent in a set of resolutions that beginning in November were adopted by the Kentucky and Virginia legislatures. In February 1799 German farmers in Pennsylvania’s northern counties, led by John Fries, a fifty-year-old auctioneer, protested the war program by refusing to pay the federal property tax instituted at the height of the crisis. While involved with the Fries uprising Adams received other information from Joel Barlow, the Republican poet living in Paris, forwarded and endorsed by Washington, indicating that the French desired peace. The president also obtained the stipulated assurances from the French government, which promised to receive a new American minister with honor and decency. So, on the basis of his personal resentment toward the Hamiltonians, the data from France, and the shift of public sentiment toward peace, Adams decided on a momentous act. On February 18, without consulting his distrusted cabinet, Adams nominated Murray for the French post. Even so, the president still considered a declared war possible. As though compelled, as one biographer suggests, to reassert also his “sense of manhood,” he expressed hope that “the babyish and womanly blubbering” for peace at any price, would not lead his emissary to conclude a dishonorable agreement treaty. Adams still believed that this “cant for peace” lacked sincerity because “those who snivel for it now were hot for war against Britain a few months ago and would be now if they saw a chance.” He maintained that “in elective governments” parties embrace peace or war alike “when they think they can employ either for electioneering purposes.”16 The Hyperfederalists, as Adams referred to the war hawks, reacted to the peace initiative as though “thunderstruck.” They called him mad but also pleaded with him to reconsider his decision. Abigail told her husband that nothing he had done as president “has so universally electrified the public.”17 The ultras then tried to block the nomination but failed. They did succeed, however, in inducing the president to add two

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other more reliable Federalists to the peace mission, Oliver Ellsworth, the chief justice of the United States, and William R. Davie, the governor of North Carolina. On March 3, for the first time during Adams’s presidency, Congress closed a session without fear that full-scale war might break out at any moment. Yet this second effort to resolve the French crisis peaceably carried a high price tag. It deepened the split in the Federalist party and aggravated the distrust between Adams and his cabinet. Yet he persisted in his changed policy while also retaining his disloyal department heads. He, rather than they, however, benefited from the subsiding of the previous year’s war fever. Peace now seemed possible because of Adams’s changed demeanor and because neither France nor the United States had expanded the hostilities by authorizing their navies to engage in offensive operations or to capture unarmed private ships. The conflict had remained a half-war or as historians usually call it, the Quasi-War. Small American warships and armed merchant vessels did most of the fighting primarily against the French corsairs. The new navy, as it acquired strength, forced the corsairs to retreat to waters near their Caribbean bases where most of the naval encounters took place. As a consequence of these operations and of help from the British navy against French raiders, “during 1799 the number of merchant ships lost in the Caribbean fell almost by two-thirds.”18 With the French crisis easing, Adams on March 12 rushed off to Quincy to be with Abigail who had become gravely ill. He left the implementation of his peace policy, such as sending off Ellsworth and Davie to France, to his secretary of state. Pickering immediately set about to thwart the president’s will, especially by delaying the envoys’ departure for two months. Disease also added to the delay. Yellow fever in Philadelphia compelled the removal of government agencies to Trenton, New Jersey, thereby disrupting usual procedures. In August Benjamin Stoddert, the loyal secretary of the navy, urged Adams to come to Trenton, to direct the government in person. The president ignored the advice. In September Pickering again postponed the envoys’ departure, this time because of news of turmoil in the Directory. The president agreed. Shortly, however, after receiving another letter from Stoddert warning that other cabinet members would sabotage his peace policy and jeopardize his reelection, he suddenly departed for Trenton. He arrived on October 10 to find Hamilton, who held no official position, and other High Federalists waiting for him. Adams, who already held Hamilton’s allegedly “insidious and dark intrigues” largely responsible for the delay, was outraged when the New Yorker urged another postponement of the emissaries’ departure.19 In defiance, the president ordered the envoys to set sail as soon as possible. Accordingly, on November 3 they departed.20 Unknown to the president at this point, Hamilton, Pickering, and the

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High Federalists had won a crucial victory. The postponed departure slowed the peace process and hence would have a critical impact on the forthcoming presidential election. Adams did not realize the potential cost of the rift in his administration, so he still did nothing decisive about it. In December the president explained to Congress that duty to the nation had prompted him to accept the French peace overtures. He also expressed uncertainty as to the outcome of the negotiations but hoped they would succeed. At the same time, despite the party’s rupture over his peace policy, a caucus in Philadelphia of Federalist leaders chose him once again to lead the party in the forthcoming presidential election. Even enemies acknowledged privately that Adams’s stance on peace “had endeared him to the great body of federalists.”21 In France, meanwhile, the government experienced another upheaval. A young general, Napoleon Bonaparte, on November 9 staged a coup d’e´tat that overthrew the Directory. He replaced it with a three-man Consulate he headed and hence ruled France as a dictator. He retained Talleyrand as minister of foreign relations and continued the Directory’s peace initiative toward the United States. This upheaval in France occurred while Ellsworth and Davie were at sea. After a stormy voyage they landed in Lisbon. Other obstacles prevented them from promptly joining Murray. They did not do so until March 2, 1800, when they reached Paris. Talleyrand greeted all three commissioners cordially and First Consul Bonaparte himself received them at the Tuileries with pomp and honors. Hard bargaining and more delays (largely because of Talleyrand’s illness and Bonaparte’s military campaigning) followed. The negotiations teetered several times on failure. Finally, on the night of September 30 the French and Americans produced a compromise treaty wherein the U.S. government assumed payment to its citizens for the damages to their shipping by corsairs. France, in turn, accepted suspension but not the abrogation of the old alliance and commercial treaties that Congress had decreed. The final signing of the Convention of Peace, Commerce, and Navigation took place on October 3, 1800, during an elaborate celebration at the Chateau Mortefontaine, the country estate about eighteen miles north of Paris belonging to Joseph Bonaparte, Napoleon’s brother and the chief French negotiator of the convention. Back in the United States the solidifying of the peace sentiment appeared to confirm Adams’s judgment that he could benefit politically from his diplomatic initiative. He knew also that the ultra Federalists, including three of his cabinet members, still wanted to block peace and that even though they had failed to thwart his renomination they had decided to prevent him from winning a second presidential term. Although furious, he did not move immediately against the political foes within his official family. He tried instead to preserve whatever unity

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remained in his party so as to cause as little harm as possible to his chances for reelection. The always present danger of disunity became clearer in the spring of 1800 in New York where Hamilton reigned as chief of the Federalist Party. In elections for seats in the state legislature he fielded candidates loyal to him rather than to the party. Since the legislators would choose the state’s representatives in the electoral college, and New York was a pivotal state, Hamilton assumed he could block Adams’s second bid there and thus influence the outcome of the election nationally. The plan failed because Aaron Burr, the Republican leader in New York City, ran stronger candidates than did Hamilton. The Republicans carried the city. This Federalist defeat had far-reaching consequences. It placed Republicans in control of the New York legislature’s lower house, enabling them by a narrow margin to gain the state’s twelve electoral votes, which they cast for Jefferson, their presidential candidate. Republicans rewarded Burr with the nomination presumably for vice president. Correctly blaming the New York fiasco on that “bastard, and a foreigner” Hamilton, the president decided to put aside his quest for party unity and to rid his official family of what he called “Hamilton’s spies.” On May 6, within two days of learning of the New York loss, Adams dumped Secretary of War James McHenry and a week later Secretary of State Pickering also, who he replaced with Marshall, a moderate respected by most Federalist leaders. At the same time, even though French privateering in the Caribbean had resumed, many members of Congress also reconsidered the war emergency, especially its high costs. They assumed that with peace being negotiated the nation no longer needed to expand the army. That summer, therefore, Republicans and moderate Federalists voted to cancel the army build-up and other parts of the war program. The Adams and Hamilton Federalists now attacked each other more vehemently than they did the Republicans. The High Federalists even worked out a secret plan to manipulate the electoral votes in a way that would give the presidency to Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, the party’s designated vice presidential candidate, rather than to Adams. Upon discovering this scheme, Adams condemned the High Federalists as “British partisans.” An infuriated Hamilton then denounced the president openly. In September he circulated among Federalists a letter of fifty pages claiming that a second term would ruin the country. He urged them to support Pinckney for president, who he described as better qualified. Burr obtained a copy of the letter. When Burr threatened to publish it, Hamilton published it himself as a pamphlet. This squabbling delighted the Republicans. They not only attacked Adams personally but also his support of unpopular Federalist laws such

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as the Alien and Sedition acts and his wavering position toward the Quasi-War. They lashed out at costly standing armies and naval armaments and claimed they had forced him to send the second mission to France and hence were the true peacemakers. “Take your choice, then,” one of their spokesmen advised, “between Adams, war and beggary, and Jefferson, peace and democracy.”22 Moderate Federalists, too, played up the peace issue. They stood by the president. Despite the soundness of their case as peace advocates, they had difficulty making it clear because those who had the vote for two years had been exposed to the High Federalist desire for turning the Quasi-War into a full-fledged conflict. Despite this emphasis on peace in the campaigning, no one in the United States knew much about the state of the diplomacy in Paris. As usual, transatlantic communication moved slowly. Secretary Marshall assumed the French purposely stalled the negotiations to help bring Jefferson to power in the belief he would offer them better terms than had Adams. As for Ellsworth, Davie, and Murray, they realized that the negotiations would affect the outcome of the presidential race. Indeed, their instructions emphasized the need for a peace treaty that could reach Congress before the balloting. It could tip the election in favor of Adams. They tried, therefore, as best they could to speed up the bargaining. Understandably, without details from them the president expressed deep concern, saying “I cannot account for the long delay of our envoys.” Still, he fended off pressure “to recommend to Congress an immediate and general declaration of war against the French republic” by pointing out that in effect Congress had done so “within the meaning of the Constitution.”23 Moreover, the meager news from Paris offered no real cause for escalating the hostilities. Nor did the long silence help Adams politically. On October 14, when the voters in the states cast ballots for presidential electors, the outcome of the negotiations in Paris still had not reached the United States. The silence helped the ultra Federalists’ anti-Adams campaign but not their war program. To prevail, they banked on a failure in Paris that would trigger increased hostilities. Then full-scale war with France and possibly an alliance with Britain might again become popular. A number of the ultras even counted on renewed warfare to salvage their political fortunes. These hopes sank when on November 7 news of the Mortefontaine Convention reached the United States. Already legislators were beginning to make their way to the raw, unfinished federal capital in Washington for the convening of the second session of the sixth Congress. On November 22 in his fourth annual message Adams told the legislators that as of “the date of the last official intelligence,” the negotiations in Paris continued but with their outcome officially unknown. This message and the unofficial news of peace

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caused no great stir among the electors because both had come too late to influence them. The electors assembled in their states on December 4 to cast their ballots. A week later Davie arrived in the United States with the official text of the Mortefontaine treaty, now bereft of political value for Adams. On December 15 Adams learned he had lost the election by a narrow margin. Jefferson and Burr each received seventy-three votes to his sixty-five. Ironically, aside from the crucial loss of New York, Adams but not his party, had run stronger than he had four years earlier. On that same day the president sent the treaty to the Federalistcontrolled Senate recommending approval. Diehard ultras, who regarded it more the work of Adams than of the party, deplored it as a “shameful degradation of our country” and an “insolent triumph of France.”24 When the agreement came to a vote on January 23, 1801, the ultras still had enough clout to defeat it. Knowing that considerable sentiment, even among some High Federalists such as Hamilton, now favored the peace settlement and that they would make their views felt, Adams quickly resubmitted the document. During this second time around, on February 3, enough Federalists reversed their votes to give the treaty approval but with broad reservations. A Republican partisan, noted that extreme “Anglo-Feds” felt “chagrin & mortification . . . at having a French war once more snatched out of their hands.”25 Adams disliked the Senate’s changes but he ratified the treaty anyway. Bonaparte, meanwhile, exploited what he regarded as American goodwill flowing from the Mortefontaine agreement to further plans for rebuilding a French empire in North America. On October 1, 1800, having successfully removed the danger of an American war, the day after the signing of the convention, one of his agents had initialed a secret treaty with Spain for the reacquisition of Louisiana basically in exchange for the Kingdom of Tuscany. The First Consul also used Mortefontaine as a model for agreements setting up a new League of Armed Neutrality that came into existence on December 16. He wanted the United States to join but both Adams and Jefferson wisely refused. Joining might have set off another crisis because the British, who viewed the declarations of armed neutrality as equivalent of war, treated league members harshly. As the league therefore began falling apart, Bonaparte had also to reconsider relations with the United States because of the Senate’s reservations to the Mortefontaine treaty. President Jefferson had chosen Murray to go to Paris to handle his side of the talks and the exchange of ratifications. The bargaining began in May with the French refusing to accept the Senate’s outright abrogation of the old treaties without concessions in the matter of spoliations. Late in July Murray agreed to these terms. In December Jefferson and the Senate also accepted them.

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Thus, with the government assuming the cost of paying its own citizens for the French spoliations, the Convention of Mortefontaine became the law of the land. This treaty ended the first significant threat of war confronted by the United States since the Revolution and establishment of the federal government; it brought lasting peace with France, and terminated the nation’s first entangling alliance. It also helped secure the goodwill of Bonaparte who two years later sold Louisiana to the United States. Politically, the treaty helped neither Adams nor the Federalist Party. Indeed, the wrangling over the Quasi-War and the Ellsworth mission contributed to disaster. In thinking about his election defeat, Adams concluded that his unilateral decision to send the second peace mission to France had been the critical factor. Yet he regarded it as politically sound. Why, then, did it fail to help him win a second term? In his perspective and that of various historians since, the timing and the outcome of the negotiations were crucial. Even though concluded successfully, the negotiations lost political significance because of the delays in beginning discussions and then in the protracted debates over treaty language. Moderate Federalists believed that if the treaty of Mortefontaine had been concluded earlier so that it arrived in the United States well before the October elections the outcome would have been different. Whether or not the second-guessers were right, the unfortunate timing, the opposition of the arch Federalists to the mission, and their efforts to unseat Adams, all did come together to help pave the way for Jefferson and the Republicans to seize power. The splitting of the Federalists over the issue of war and peace, and of course the Adams-Hamilton rivalry, shattered their party as a national force. Despite all of this, Adams never regretted his decisions that compounded the fracture in his party as the price for peace. He conveniently put aside memory of his own eagerness for extended war, his truculent posturing, and his vanity to claim the role, out of an “irresistible sense of duty,” of a selfless peacemaker. Biographers generally have taken this claim at face value, maintaining that he chose to guarantee peace for his country regardless of the political consequences. In later years Adams still nurtured the contradictory attitudes of a forceful leader and a martyr. He claimed never to have had behind him “a majority strong enough to support a war, especially against France” and yet he called the quasi-hostilities “a glorious and triumphant war.” He also described the sending of the peace missions to Paris as the most “disinterested and meritorious actions” of his life. He said, “I desire no other inscription over my gravestone than: ‘Here lies John Adams, who took upon himself the responsibility of the peace with France in the year 1800.’ ”26 Even though this sentence did not find a place above Adams’s grave,

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it would have been fitting for despite his selective memory, his early pugnacity, and his personal and political reasons for seeking peace, he did not choose an escalated war as perhaps the easier way of winning reelection and saving his party. Furthermore, while he did not make his peace decisions in conscious disregard of the political consequences, he did adhere to them, gambled on a relatively quick peace to help him, lost, and paid the price.

NOTES 1. Peter Shaw, The Character of John Adams (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1976), 19, 232. 2. Stephen G. Kurtz, “The French Mission of 1799–1800: Concluding Chapter in the Statecraft of John Adams,” Political Science Quarterly 80, no. 4 (Dec. 1965): 545. 3. Iredell to Samuel Tredwell, Annapolis, May 12, 1797, in Griffith J. Mcree, Life and Correspondence of James Iredell, 2 vols. (New York, 1858; reprinted 1949), 2: 504. 4. Jefferson to James Madison, Phil., June 15, 1797, James Morton Smith, ed., The Republic of Letters: The Correspondence between Thomas Jefferson and James Madison 1776–1826, 3 vols. (New York, 1995), 2: 982. 5. Oct. 17, 1797, Marshall Journal, quoted in Marvin R. Zahniser, Charles Cotesworth Pinckney (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1967), 169–70. 6. Alexander DeConde, The Quasi-War: The Politics and Diplomacy of the Undeclared War with France, 1797–1801 (New York, 1966), 57. 7. To Mary Cranch, Phil., March 27, 1798, in Stewart Mitchell, ed., New Letters of Abigail Adams, 1788–1801 (Boston, 1947), 148. 8. John Ferling, John Adams: A Life (Knoxville, Tenn., 1992), 356. 9. DeConde, Quasi-War, 81. 10. Knox to Oliver Wolcott, Boston, May 2, 1798, The Henry Knox Papers, 1770–1825, Massachusetts Historical Society. 11. To Thomas Jefferson, [Orange], May 13, 1798, in Smith, Republic of Letters, 2: 1048–49. 12. Speech, May 12, 1798, quoted in Frederick B. Tolles, George Logan of Philadelphia (New York, 1953), 150–51. 13. See Zahniser, Pinckney, 170 n.10. 14. William J. Murphy Jr., “John Adams: The Politics of the Additional Army 1798–1800,” New England Quarterly 52 (June 1979): 239 explains the differences in the land forces. 15. Adams to James McHenry, Quincy, Oct. 22, 1798, Charles Francis Adams ed., The Works of John Adams, 10 vols. (Boston, 1850–56), 8: 613. 16. Adams to Washington, Feb. 19, 1799, Adams Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston, reel 117. For the “manhood” assertion, see Ferling, John Adams, 378. 17. To John Adams, Quincy, Feb. 27, 1799, Adams Papers, reel 393. 18. Michael A. Palmer, Stoddert’s War: Naval Operations During the Quasi-War with France, 1798–1801 (Columbia, S.C., 1987), 13.

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19. Jacob E. Cooke, Alexander Hamilton (New York, 1982), 205 who blames Adams himself for the delayed departure. 20. Most historians regard Adams’s decision to nominate the emissaries and then to send them off as one of the truly significant events of the Federalist era. They differ, however, over his motivation and over the placing of responsibility for the delay in sending them off. See John Quincy Adams and Charles Francis Adams, The Life of John Adams, 2 vols. (Philadelphia, 1871), 2: 283; Joseph Charles, The Origins of the American Party System (Williamsburg, Va., 1956), 162; Stephen G. Kurtz, The Presidency of John Adams: The Collapse of Federalism, 1795–1800 (Philadelphia, 1957), 353 and idem, “French Mission of 1799–1800,” 543–57; Arthur B. Darling, Our Rising Empire, 1763–1803 (New Haven, Conn., 1940), 341; Manning J. Dauer, The Adams Federalists (Baltimore, 1953), 230; Henry Adams, The Life of Albert Gallatin (Philadelphia, 1879), 222; Page Smith, John Adams, 2 vols. (New York, 1962), 2: 1002; Shaw, Character of Adams, 264n.; and Jacob E. Cooke, “Country Above Party: John Adams and the 1799 Mission to France,” in Fame and the Founding Fathers, ed. Edmund P. Willis (Bethlehem, Pa., 1967), 53–77. 21. Theodore Sedgwick quoted in Ferling, John Adams, 393. 22. Journalist James Callender quoted in James Morton Smith, Freedom’s Fetters: The Alien and Sedition Laws and American Civil Liberties (Ithaca, N.Y., 1956), 339–40. 23. Adams to Marshall, Quincy, Aug. 30 and Sept. 4, 1800, in Adams, Works of John Adams, 9: 80–81. 24. Gazette of the United States & Daily Advertiser (Phil.), Dec. 24, 1800, quoted along with other similar sentiment in Richard C. Rohrs, “The Federalist Party and the Convention of 1800,” Diplomatic History 12, no. 3 (summer 1988): 242. 25. Stevens M. Mason, senator from Virginia, to James Monroe, Feb. 5, 1801, Monroe Papers, quoted in Rohrs, “Federalist Party,” 251. 26. See DeConde, Quasi-War, 471 n. 26 and Adams to James Lloyd, Quincy, Jan. 1815, in Adams, Works of John Adams, 10: 113.

BIBLIOGRAPHIC ESSAY For an analytical bibliography that covers the period as a whole, see Ian Mugridge, United States Foreign Relations under Washington and Adams: A Guide to the Literature and Sources (New York, 1982). Most studies of the Federalist era in one way or another touch on the peace mission, its politics, its diplomacy, or its consequences. For a full scholarly study that places the mission in its political and diplomatic context, see Alexander DeConde, The Quasi-War: The Politics and Diplomacy of the Undeclared War with France, 1797–1801 (New York, 1966). Albert H. Bowman’s broader scholarly history, The Struggle for Neutrality: FrancoAmerican Diplomacy During the Federalist Era (Knoxville, Tenn., 1974), also places the mission in its international as well as political context but from a slightly different perspective. For essays that focus on the mission or circumstances close to it, see Stephen G. Kurtz, “The French Mission of 1799–1800: Concluding Chapter in the Statecraft of John Adams,” Political Science Quarterly 80, no. 4 (December 1965): 543–57, which praises Adams and the mission; Jacob E. Cooke, “Country Above Party:

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John Adams and the 1799 Mission to France,” in Fame and the Founding Fathers, ed. Edmund P. Willis (Bethlehem, Pa., 1967), 53–79, which is critical of Adams’s handling of aspects of the mission. See also Richard C. Rohrs, “The Federalist Party and the Convention of 1800,” Diplomatic History 12, no. 3 (summer 1988): 237–60, which concentrates on party politics; E. Wilson Lyon, “The FrancoAmerican Convention of 1800,” Journal of Modern History 12 (September 1940): 305–33; and Noble E. Cunningham, “Election of 1800,” in The Coming to Power: Critical Presidential Elections in American History, ed. Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. and others (New York, 1971). The best biographical studies are Page Smith, John Adams, 2 vols. (New York, 1962); Stephen G. Kurtz, The Presidency of John Adams: The Collapse of Federalism, 1795–1800 (Philadelphia, 1957); John Ferling, John Adams: A Life (Knoxville, Tenn., 1992); and Ralph A. Brown, The Presidency of John Adams (Lawrence, Kans., 1975). Other significant studies that touch on the mission are Marvin R. Zahniser, Charles Cotesworth Pinckney (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1967); Zahniser, “The First Pinckney Mission to France,” South Carolina Historical Magazine 66 (October 1955): 205– 17; Manning J. Dauer, The Adams Federalists (Baltimore, 1953); Joseph Charles, The Origins of the American Party System (Williamsburg, Va., 1956); Ulane Bonnel, La France, les E´ tats Unis et la guerre de course (1797–1815) (Paris, 1961), which focuses on the naval hostilities; Gerard H. Clarfield, Timothy Pickering and American Diplomacy, 1795–1800 (Columbia, Mo., 1969); Arthur B. Darling, Our Rising Empire, 1763–1803 (New Haven, Conn., 1940); David M. Fitzsimmons, “Tom Paine’s New World Order: Idealistic Internationalism in the Ideology of Early American Foreign Relations,” Diplomatic History 19, no. 4 (fall 1995): 569–82. Peter P. Hill, William Vans Murray, Federalist Diplomat: The Shaping of Peace with France, 1797–1801 (Syracuse, N.Y., 1971); Lawrence S. Kaplan, Colonies into Nation: American Diplomacy 1763–1801 (New York, 1972); E. Wilson Lyon, “The French Directory and the United States,” American Historical Review 43 (April 1938): 514–32; Forrest McDonald, Alexander Hamilton (New York, 1979); Bradford Perkins, The First Rapprochement: England and the United States, 1795–1805 (Philadelphia, 1955); William Stinchcombe, The XYZ Affair (Westport, Conn., 1980); Paul Varg, Foreign Policies of the Founding Fathers (East Lansing, Mich., 1963); and titles in the notes.

2 1917: What if the United States Had Not Intervened? Jonathan M. Nielson

In his best-selling book, Don’t Know Much About History, historian Kenneth Davis asked the question that still puzzles many Americans, “How did a dead archduke in Sarajevo get America into a world war?”1 This chapter begins with a rephrasing of the question as it was posed by Otis L. Graham Jr. and Morton Borden who wondered, “what if the United States had remained neutral in 1917?” While acknowledging the commonly heard assertion that “nothing is more futile than speculation on what might have been,” they proceeded in the belief that ignoring conjecture suffocated history, leading to a “deadening and misleading sense of fatalism and foreclosing on the numerous exciting options, whose impact and interaction it is the task of the historical imagination to revive.”2 Seldom in a nation’s history do more grave questions arise than those of war and peace. Few other periods in American history, therefore, have compelled so critical examination by historians than the five years between 1914 and 1919, which marked a turning point in America’s democracy and in its role in the world.3 America’s decision to intervene in support of the Allies, or Entente, financially and materially between 1914 and 1917; its decision thereafter to intervene militarily in 1917 in Europe’s Great War; its instrumental role in imposing the Armistice and in drafting terms of the Treaty of Versailles; and, finally, its consideration and rejection of the treaty and the League of Nations, all suggest the extraordinary breadth of challenge and consequence of decision during this critical half-decade. Indeed, because the consequences of the war for the United States for

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the remainder of the twentieth century were so profound, it is appropriate that historians have subjected them to such exhaustive analysis and, not surprisingly, have disagreed, often bitterly, in their interpretations and conclusions. The vast majority of historians writing during and immediately after the war supported American intervention. The only dissenting voices came from a few writers who believed the United States should have joined the war at its outset or came from socialists and liberals who believed intervention had been a mistake.4 By the mid-1920s, however, postwar disillusionment turned to often scathing criticisms. A revisionist school came to dominate interwar scholarship, and much harsher judgments left few aspects of President Thomas Woodrow Wilson’s policies and decisions unchallenged. Predictably after World War II, historians revisiting Wilson’s decisions found more to praise than to condemn. Such are the the cycles of historical scholarship and the gravity (and dangers) inherent in presidential leadership in times of national crisis.5 Most historians have judged favorably the necessity for checking German and Austro-Hungarian ambitions in Europe once war began, although debate over the war’s origins and responsibility will never find consensus. Perhaps it is sufficient to acknowledge that there were no wholly innocent parties in the human folly and tragedy of 1914.6 However, disenchanted with the war’s failure to produce a “world made safe for democracy,” and the rationale justifying the decimation of an entire generation, a tear in the fabric of history itself, scholars by the mid-1920s were questioning whether Allied victory was dependent on American military intervention; whether German diplomacy, strategic design, and tactical use of the submarine compelled an American declaration of war; and whether Wilson’s rationale for intervention unnecessarily committed the nation to a conflict it could, and perhaps should, have avoided while still achieving its foreign policy objectives short of war.7 In the eight decades since the Great War the role of president as commander in chief and chief diplomat in committing the nation’s armed forces to foreign conflicts, Congress’s constitutional mandate notwithstanding, has hardly diminished. That role has animated scholarly and public debates, which remain relevant at the beginning of the twentyfirst century. Indeed, they resonate so powerfully because the questions they frame are so central to the challenges the United States continues to confront in the world. When and under what circumstances, in the absence of direct aggression against the United States, is military intervention the inescapable decision? What constitutes so vital a national interest that only military intervention can advance it? Should the United States act unilaterally or in concert with others to achieve its objectives? When is intervention mor-

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ally justified? What constitutes moral behavior in international conduct and, once defined, what, if any, is the place of morality in foreign policy? Such questions have animated and, at times, confounded American diplomacy since the time of George Washington, and they reveal the polarity of two conflicting yet complementary schools of thought central to the conduct of U.S. foreign policy.8 From the early years of the Republic, Americans believed their nation had a special destiny; it was part of their creation myth. It became an article of faith that America’s experiment in democratic-republican government would provide a shining example, a “City upon a Hill,” and model for all nations, whose actions should be guided by America’s political and moral principles and by its example. The logical consequence of that alluring presumption was the assertion crystallized so succinctly by President Harry S. Truman’s secretary of state, Dean G. Acheson, thirty years later that “only the United States had the power to grab hold of history and make it conform.”9 Such conviction had coalesced loosely by 1914 into a transatlantic or internationalist ethos among intellectuals, academics, socialists, pacifists, artists, and liberal progressives in both Europe and the United States. Its adherents espoused foreign policy positions suffused with moral idealism, a world-view emphasizing international cooperation, the brotherhood of humanity, peace, justice, and human rights.10 Alternately and juxtaposed against such ideals evolved a cold-eyed realism, which saw the world in terms of interests, competition, conflict, and power. Among the harsh realities of international relations, moral considerations were simply irrelevant, naive at best, and inherently dangerous.11 Wilson subscribed fervently to those ideals advanced by liberal internationalists and progressives at home and abroad, animated by his nearly evangelical belief in American exceptionalism. Thus, Wilson found it entirely appropriate, indeed a moral imperative, to enter into a covenant with power for achieving liberal progressive ends in the world. So that for Wilson “the decision in 1917 was emotional, grounded in the belief, indeed the conviction, that right, in the person of the Allies, was battling wrong, personified by the Central Powers . . . evil was weighing in the balance against good,” and America was the world’s salvation.12 Wilson’s “great virtue—and his great hubris—was that he yearned, personally and God-like, to sculpture the world. . . . His ambition was, indeed, to fling a vision in the face of mankind and challenge it to respond. He answered only to his conscience and his conscience answered only to God. Unfamiliar with foreign policy and unlike his predecessor, Theodore Roosevelt, tempermentally and experientially unprepared for war, he felt armed,” nevertheless, “by his conviction that he was born to save the world from itself.”13

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Much has been written about the prolific influence of Puritan Protestantism in American foreign policy, impulses that have uniquely pervaded American diplomacy with claims that divine mission or “manifest destiny” sanctioned the nation’s actions and conduct. America as exemplar became a kind of secularized, providential, redeemtive ethos, a national self-indulgence that Wilson embraced and wedded to an aggressive nationalism and internationalist crusade. Thus, Wilson tapped deeply held beliefs when he intoned that the United States was “the great idealistic force in history,” and that it embodied a “spiritual energy . . . that no other nation can contribute to the liberation of mankind. We have come to redeem the world,” he proclaimed, “by giving it liberty and justice,” and by using its power righteously America had the “infinite privilege of fulfilling her destiny.”14 President Wilson was a dour, serious man, an academic intellectual imbued with deeply held Presbyterian beliefs, a man of stately if not imperious bearing, exuding traits of personality more than a few found somewhat overbearing. He was neither the first nor would he be the last president to grapple with questions of war and peace. However, in his military interventions, seven during his administrations, he went far beyond his more ardently nationalistic predecessor, Theodore Roosevelt, in his resort to using military power for advancing American foreign policy. Indeed, in Wilson’s conception of foreign policy “force was an adjunct to diplomacy,” and the force of America was the “force of moral principle.” No previous president so well integrated the use of force to policy and while Wilson, himself, embraced pacifist ideals, he had no compunction about using force for noble ends. “There is nothing noble or admirable in war itself,” he recognized, “but there is something very noble and admirable occasionally in the causes for which war is undertaken.” Such war should be fought “without stint or limit.” Thus, in Wilson’s mind there was a clear distinction between militarism and force. “Militarism . . . is a spirit. It is a system. It is a purpose. The Purpose of militarism is to use armies for oppression.” In this conviction, Wilson condemned both German militarism and British “navalism” as coercive to world peace and stability.15 As Wilson told Americans in his Flag Day speech of June 14, 1917, “The extraordinary insults and aggressions by the Imperial German government left us no self-respecting choice but to take-up arms in defense of our rights as a free people and of our honor as a sovereign government.” As his most prolific biographer, Arthur S. Link, has confirmed of Wilson’s view of America’s annointed role, its “mission in the world was not to attain wealth and power, but to serve mankind through leadership in moral purpose and in advancing peace and world unity.” And as the nation’s chief emissary in this crusade, he acted virtually as his own secretary of state especially after August 1914. According to Newton

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Baker, his secretary of war, Wilson “personally dominated, as the head of no other nation perhaps dominated, the international relations of the country.” Accordingly, Wilson was either a masterful practitioner of a “higher realism,” using the power of the presidency and his own charismatic leadership, to lead the world toward a brave new era of enlightened statesmanship, order, and collective security. Or he was a naive, overly idealistic moralist, who burdened American foreign affairs with inflexible, preachy, and messianic zealotry, to justify involving the United States in a European war, with all of its horrors, costs, and political minefields.16 Historians, for understandable reasons, have used the term “missionary diplomacy” to characterize Wilson’s foreign policy and distinguish it from his predecessors Roosevelt and Taft, and Wilson’s most fully developed expression of evangelism abroad came in response to World War I. His defense of neutral rights, his attack on the barbarism of submarine warfare, his declaration that America was “too proud to fight,” were reminders to the country of the differences that set it apart from the Old World. Thus, the transcendent issue for Wilson in American intervention and in peacemaking was whether the United States could refuse moral leadership of the world, and this was the predicate for all his subsequent decisions leading to April 1917. Yet for all of the war’s ghastly slaughter “over there” and Europe’s self-inflicted wounds, the war’s impacts on American society and institutions, and on the nation’s perception of itself, were profound. If the economic and political upheavals of 1893–1898 were a “psychic crisis” for the United States, America’s experience between 1914–1919 was a national neuroses, an emotional wrench, ripping away a naive complacency and presumptive insularity from a dangerous world that did not comport to American values. The disassociation compelled a societal introspection of enormous consequence. Indeed, the war’s repercussions “over here” burden the decision to intervene with even greater consequence.17 Perhaps no one better grasped the terrible meaning of the conflict than British writer and historian H. G. Wells. “No war has ever destroyed human happiness so widely,” Wells judged in 1916. “It has not only killed and wounded an unprecedented proportion of the male population of all the combatant nations, but it has also destroyed wealth beyond precedent.” Far worse he judged, “It has also destroyed freedom—of movement, of speech, of economic enterprise. Hardly anyone alive has escaped the worry of it and the threat of it.” Surely this is what Wilson hoped to spare the American people in his attempts to invoke America’s ideals and power in the Allied cause while with principled resolve remaining untouched by the war itself. Perhaps only a man with no experience or particular interest in foreign affairs could believe that he could sustain objectives so diametrically contradictory and in defiance of his-

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torical experience. Neutrality was an article of faith and principle but it was also a contrivance constructed of political, economic, and strategic necessity.18 Writing to Wilson in December 1914, U.S. ambassador to England Walter Hines Page, counselled the president from London, “There is not the slightest feeling of vengeance here . . . not the slightest hatred of Germany. The moment Germany will or can give up what we call militarism forever, peace will come instantly—with no revenge, hatred, but of course with the reinstatement of Belgium.” And he warned prophetically, “The German armed threat must disappear” as there is “no talk of stopping the war to let it recur 10–20 or 40 years hence . . . to gratify a vast military machine which might fight somebody at sometime to justify its existence.” Clearly for Wilson, as he made explicit in numerous public and private statements, what was understood as “militarism” to the generation of the early twentieth century, constituted for him the greatest threat to world peace, stability, and prosperity. And although by no means uniquely embodying militarism in Europe, Germany and the Hohenzollern crown symbolized for Wilson its worst attributes. Approving America’s role in the Spanish American War and playing upon the president’s idealism, Ambassador Page assured Wilson that “we should do for Europe on a large scale essentially what we did for Cuba on a small scale and thereby usher in a new era in human history”; and he affirmed “the defeat of Germany will make for the spread of the doctrine of our fathers and our doctrine yet.”19 As Wilson confronted the crisis of his generation, his official public position on neutrality, his aversion to militarism, and his sincere desire to keep the United States out of war, conflicted with his abiding admiration for British institutions, a deeply held Anglo-American cultural bias, sympathies for France and Belgium, and moral outrage at German aggression. In the contradiction of such impulses, Wilson made decisions that deepened American involvement on the side of the Allies almost from the beginning of the war. Wilson faced two fundamental challenges in 1914: The first was to keep the United States out of war, the second was to protect American rights. Implicitly, however, there was a third challenge; how to enlist the force of “right” on the Allied side without provoking war with the Central Powers. In April 1917 Wilson concluded that he could not reconcile the dilemma these challenges posed, and he dropped all pretense to neutrality with America’s military intervention. And yet among the constellation of policy considerations—military, political, economic, and diplomatic—none compelled Wilson to act as he did in the absence of alternative decisions. Wilson was neither wholly a prisoner of circumstances beyond his control nor a dupe of special interests; he chose war, the use of military power, however reluctantly, with deliberate calcula-

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tion, clear objectives, and explicit hopes for what America’s entry into the war would make possible.20 In nearly every foreign policy challenge requiring a decision between 1914 and 1917, Wilson was forced to grapple with conflicting interests: law, morality, power, ideals, national prestige, and domestic politics and attempt to reconcile their consequences. In some instances there was congruence; inevitably in others, decisions produced clear antagonism between interests; and in still others, Wilson could only await developments and decisions in the Foreign Office, the Chamber of Deputies, the Reichstag or Chancellory. Wilson had no illusions as he lectured Americans in January 1916, I know you are depending on me to keep this nation out of the war. So far I have done so and I pledge you my word on that. God helping me, I will—if it is possible. But you have . . . bidden me to see to it that nothing stains the honor of the United States, and . . . there may come a time when I cannot preserve both honor and peace. . . . Do not expect of me an impossible and contradictory thing.

But were “honor and peace” truly countervailing objectives or did a narrowly legalistic insistence on the former make the latter impossible?21 Historians have argued, often passionately, this single, central question recognizing that it was for Wilson both justification and pretext for American intervention. “Without the submarine campaign,” Charles Seymour, one of Wilson’s staunch contemporary defenders, argued, “we should not have entered the war, whatever other circumstances were operative.” Not all were convinced. Another contemporary, the influential Walter Lippmann, argued that between 1914 and 1916, “Wilson vacillated between the assertion of American rights and reluctance to face the consequences of asserting them, between the dread of a German victory and dread of a war to prevent a German victory.” That irresolution prevented the United States from exerting the influence it otherwise might have had on the issue of neutrality. Wilson, himself, seemed to realize how precarious his position was when acknowledging in October 1916, that he believed “the business of neutrality is over. . . . War now has such a scale that the position of neutrals sooner or later becomes intolerable.”22 Wilson was urged by a few to intervene immediately and was criticized harshly by some for not doing so as the war progressed. Within the first months, Roosevelt, although himself conflicted, led criticism of Wilson for his “hipocrisy” and “timidity,” calling for the heroic assertion of American ideals in Europe. He backed the call to put the nation on a war footing through aggressive military preparedness by Republican and ultranationalist senator Henry Cabot Lodge and his son-in-law Representative August Belmont. Amidst the reaction to the Lusitania crisis Roosevelt called openly for American intervention and condemned

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“Professor Wilson’s disgraceful, emasculated diplomacy.” Stung by such rebuke, Wilson nevertheless vascillated, measuring personal outrage against the dangers he saw in precipitous action.23 Prophetically and with tragic irony, Wilson identified in December 1914 precisely the undesirable outcome of the war that he would help guarantee, telling a journalist the best thing for Europe would be military “deadlock.” The possibility “of a just and equitable peace, and of the only possible peace that will be lasting, “Wilson offered, will be the happiest if no nation gets the decision by arms, and the danger of an unjust peace, one that will invite further calamities, will be if one nation or group of nations succeeded in enforcing its will upon the others.” Whatever else it was, Wilson’s decision to intervene in 1917 was a prescription for further calamities.24 The tragic loss of life on the ill-fated Lusitania on May 7, 1915, including 128 Americans, was followed over the next twenty-three months with the torpedoing of eight other ships bringing the loss of American lives to 213. Compared to losses suffered by the belligerents and neutrals alike at the hands of submarines in the North Atlantic and Mediterannean these were trifling. Yet Wilson’s outrage did not grow so much in proportion with the loss of life as with Germany’s defiance of his principles and warnings.25 Two days after the Lusitania sinking Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan recommended to Wilson a prohibition on Americans taking passage on ships carrying war material to the Allies, believing that Germany had a “right to prevent contraband from going to the Allies,” and that allowing civilians essentially to serve as human shields on ships inviting such attacks was not only callous but courted confrontation and probably war. Bryan’s protest was to no avail. All of Wilson’s principle advisors, Colonel Edward M. House, Robert Lansing, and Page discredited Bryan’s advice with Lansing’s arguments carrying special weight. Indeed he urged direct intervention “economically not only to help the Allies but in America’s self-interest.” Failure to act he warned would bring, “industrial depression, idle capital, idle labor, numerous failures, financial demoralization, and general unrest and suffering among the laboring classes.” Wilson found such arguments exceedingly persuasive.26 Despite Britain’s routine—illegal use of neutral flags, especially the U.S. flag, to disguise the registry of its merchant and passenger ships as they entered the war zone—Wilson all but excused the violation of international law. Moreover, the administration made a specious distinction between offensive and defensive armaments to make it possible for British ships to enter American ports, ignoring German protests that this was also blatantly unneutral. This issue was significant because under international law belligerent “warships,” including armed merchants, upon entering a noncombatant’s port, were to be interned for the duration.27 After the Lusitania sinking the issue of arming American merchants in

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self-defense against submarine attack became heated. In January 1916 Lansing made public his proposal that all merchants be disarmed, accepting German arguments that Allied arming forced submarines to attack without fair warning, or “visit and search,” as a tactical necessity. Despite his pro-Allied sympathies, Lansing did not see how the United States could demand “strict accountability” while demanding that German submarines make themselves vulnerable to attack. So alarmed were House and Page, amidst British protests that Lansing’s proposal was merely contrived to secure a generous settlement of the Lusitania claims, that they pressured Wilson to reject the policy.28 By early March, Wilson had decided that he would neither prohibit the arming of merchants nor Americans from sailing on “defensively” armed ships. Here was one more decision that placed Americans in harm’s way, insured confrontation with Germany, and carried America toward intervention. “Certainly had there been no submarines to menace American lives, property, and the United States definition of international law, there would have been no American soldiers sent to France.”29 Thus, when two members of his own party, Representatives Jeff McLemore of Texas and Thomas P. Gore of Oklahoma, presented Wilson with a sensible political and publicly popular way to reduce if not eliminate the risk of war with Germany, in their resolution of late February 1916, Wilson bristled at congressional presumption. The president, his cabinet, advisors, and diplomatic representatives abroad, strained credulity in choosing to predicate irreducible American ideals, interests, sovereignty, and national prestige, on one American’s insistence on the right to sail wherever he wished. This preposterous if not reckless assertion struck Wilson’s critics as enormously frivolous if not for its enormity of consequence.30 The necessary condition and pretext for war was the German submarine, but the underlying sufficient rationale for Wilson’s decision was more profound. It sprang from nothing less than the consensus among American business, financial, political, and foreign policy elites by 1917, that American revolutionary ideals of political democracy and capitalism were to become not merely hemispheric exemplars, but a global force for the perfection of humanity and inaugural of the American century.31 Among all the possible answers and proximate causes that historians have identified, one inescapable conclusion is that decisions for war and peace across Europe were in the hands of its political, military, and diplomatic leadership. Most Americans in 1917 had never heard of these men, but collectively they bore responsibility for the Great War and its nearly 11 million military dead. Likewise in the United States the decision for intervention, while Wilson’s alone, was shared by others: House, Lansing, Page, Roosevelt, Lodge, and other elites who influenced the decision for war.32 In the critical thirty-one months between August 1914 and April 1917,

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Wilson depended almost exclusively on House’s advice and the foreign intelligence he provided in his prolific contacts with diplomatic representatives of all the belligerent powers. House was the gatekeeper as well as the filter and analyst for the president. Wilson trusted no one more. Thus House was instrumental in representing to Wilson the policy views and diplomatic negotiating positions of all the principals: British foreign secretary Edward Grey and, with advent of the Lloyd George government, Sir William Wiseman, Ambassador Cecil Spring-Rice, and Grey’s secretary Sir William Tyrrell; French ambassador M. Jusserand and Jules Gambon of the Foreign Office; German ambassador Count Johann M. von Bernstorff and German chancellor Theobold von BethmannHollweg; and Austrian ambassador Dr. Constantine Dumba. House then balanced what he gleaned from these often very intimate and candid sources, with intelligence he solicited especially from ambassadors Walter Hines Page in London, James W. Gerard in Berlin, and William G. Sharp in Paris, in addition to an extraordinary breadth of unofficial correspondence and private meetings. Thus House was in an unprecedented position of presidential influence, and in few instances did the “Governor” stray far from his counsel through the crises of neutrality and war.33 Indeed Wilson dispatched House to the belligerent capitals on three separate peace missions: the first was during May-July 1914, although he had been in Europe for six months (June-December 1913); a second longer trip was January-June 1915; and a last attempt for peace was January-February 1916. The best traveled of any presidential advisor, he was by far the best connected and informed, and Wilson’s reliance on him was immense.34 While House worked dutifully to explore the possibilities for American mediation and enhanced world position, the “Great Adventure” as he called it, he confronted steadily hardening positions, recalcitrance, and, above all, an unwillingness by either Britain or Germany to trust the other. This became especially apparent following House’s “Freedom of the Seas” initiative of March 1915, which would have, in his view, removed all provocative issues. Such a declaration would have restricted the contraband list, allowing for the “indemnity of private property at sea,” and the freedom of neutrals and belligerents alike to trade in neutral ports, subject to “right of visit.” While Britain and the United States had agreed in principle to these proposals at the First and Second Hague Congresses and the London Declaration, and Bethmann-Hollweg accepted, the British cabinet rejected it. Adopting their enemy’s strategy, the British Admiralty pressed ahead with unrestricted submarine warfare in the North Sea. As House prepared to return to the United States he confided to Wilson, “I have concluded the war with Germany is inevitable.”35 Wilson all but ignored Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan, who

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virtually alone in the Cabinet, called for strict neutrality and disinterested mediation of the conflict. Increasingly marginalized through the first year of the war Bryan finally resigned in June 1915, estranged by Wilson’s insistence on holding Germany to “strict accountability,” a policy Bryan believed, correctly, that made American intervention inevitable. Equally incompatible with the administration’s claimed neutrality, he believed, was Wilson’s refusal to prohibit shipments of arms, munitions and other “contraband,” or block the travel of Americans into the war zone, which only invited German retaliation. Finally, Wilson’s decision to respond to each transgression of American neutrality with stern warnings and condemnation, while all but excusing British violations of international law, struck Bryan as duplicitous if not sinister.36 Despite Germany’s secret decision to halt submarine attacks on neutral merchant and passenger ships after June 1915, the German General Staff felt compelled by the military situation and Britain’s decision, following the Lusitania and Arabic sinkings (May-August 1915) to arm merchant ships and to resume submarine warfare in February 1916. Wilson persisted in believing, at least through the summer and fall of 1916, that he might be able to persuade the combatants through sheer moral force of American interposition to end the war. The House missions were thus both diplomatic gambit and intelligence-gathering forays into the labyrinthine maze of war politics. Given House’s staunch proAllied sympathies, his discussions and representations reflected not only the clear bias of Wilson’s views but also his own deep suspicions of German duplicity. Thus, American policy was never willing to force issues with Britain and was unwilling to vigorously exploit potential openings with Germany and Austria. One is struck by the sense of “missed opportunities” in reading House’s cables of discussions with BethmannHollweg, Bernstorff, and Dumba. At the end of his last mission in the “House-Grey Memorandum,” an understanding was reached allowing for American peace overtures should Allied military fortunes improve. Wilson pledged provisionally to enter the war against Germany if the latter refused to negotiate a settlement based on Allied war aims. Secretly House assured the British government that the peace initiative was little more than a ruse in advance of American intervention.37 The inevitable consequence of resumed confrontations in the North Atlantic was the Sussex Crisis of March 1916, prompting Wilson to issue an ultimatum threatening the severing of diplomatic relations, if such attacks continued. Germany’s surprising concessions in the “Sussex pledges,” and stalemate on the Western Front, provided Wilson a diplomatic and political victory and Democratic progressives a campaign issue in the 1916 presidential election.38 In one of the war’s cruelest ironies, Wilson in his insistence on preserving the ideal of America’s neutral rights while also insisting that the

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United States wanted only to end the war quickly, reached a decision that insured it would continue for another two-and-a-half years. Wilson’s stern protest notes to Germany following the Sussex Crisis, heralded then and by most historians as a “great diplomatic success,” had unforeseen consequences in Germany. While Wilson’s protest did exact from the kaiser his pledge to restrict submarine warfare, it also precipitated the withdrawal of U-boats from British waters and, critically for Germany, the firing of Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz. His replacement, Admiral Eduard von Capelle, refused to authorize the massive submarine construction program Tirpitz wanted for early 1917. Thus, unwittingly, Wilson probably saved the Allies from defeat during the dark days of 1916– 1917, while also undoubtedly prolonging the war.39 Unaware of such developments, and deeply split on the war, American public opinion overwhelmingly supported peace, even a compromised neutrality that avoided war. Thus claiming the moral high ground that Wilson “kept us out of war,” and painting the Republican candidate, Charles Evans Hughes, as the war candidate, Democrats won one of the closest elections in American history. “God ordained that I should be the next president of the United States. Neither you nor any other mortal,” Wilson imparted to William McCombs, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, following his victory, “could have prevented that.”40 In a campaign that presaged Democratic tactics to be employed to defeat another Republican candidate forty-eight years later, Hughes was portrayed as the great danger. “You are working—not fighting; alive and happy—not cannon foder; Wilson and peace with honor or Hughes with Roosevelt and war,” Democratic newspapers ran the day before the election. Still, Wilson had little choice, his own pro-Allied convictions notwithstanding, but to prevaricate, not daring to risk splitting his political base by some rash action. “The United States does not want to go to war and the elections have clearly shown that the great mass of Americans desire nothing so much as to keep out of war,” British ambassador Cecil SpringRice informed St. James’s. “It is undoubtedly the cause of the President’s reelection.”41 While Wilson reaped the political benefits of his pledge to keep the nation out of war, he quietly proceeded to aid the Allied war effort with a shrewd blend of neutral public statements and unneutral private actions, claiming disingenuously that the Central Powers had unfettered access to American financial and material aid. British control of the seas and anti-German animus in the United States made such claims transparently specious. American exports to Britain and France rose from $754 million in 1914 to $2.748 billion by 1916; while exports to Germany plummeted from $345 to $2 million. Moreover, American bankers, upon Wilson’s authorization in the fall of 1915, loaned the Allies an additional

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$2.3 billion by 1917, the Central Powers a mere $27 million. Indeed, American financial support was perhaps its most powerful, unneutral of weapons, for as Secretary Bryan noted in opposing such loans, “Money is the worst of all contrabands because it commands everything else.”42 American policy amounted to a de facto embargo of financial and material assistance to the Central Powers, which Wilson adamantly refused to impose on the Allies, claiming that a ban on American exports would cause undue injury and hardship to the nation’s private sector and compromise American sovereignty and dignity. With the administration’s blessing, the nation’s industrial, manufacturing, agricultural, shipping, munitions, and financial sectors proceeded to exploit the war, Allied necessity, and Wilsonian “neutrality,” to reap unparalleled profits. Withal, domestically, war commerce abruptly ended the moderate recession that had dragged on the American economy since 1911.43 In aggregate, the war’s impact accelerated a fundamental shift in America’s balance of trade until by 1918, it was five times greater than it had been in 1914. By 1916 40 percent of Britain’s war materiel needs was supplied by the United States, although despite this dependency, it was France not the United States that was the arsenal of democracy in World War I. And in the end it was capacity as much as courage that mattered. “As in earlier, coalition wars, the marked superiority in productive forces . . . proved decisive.”44 At home, the administration’s pro-Allied commitment transformed virtually every aspect of the American economy as it was mobilized for total war. Together these developments propelled the United States toward an increasingly centralized, corporatist state, with the federal government amassing unparalleled concentrations of power. Once war was declared, the government moved expeditiously: first to win the hearts and minds of a deeply divided, hesitant nation; then beginning in the summer of 1915, with passage of legislation creating the first of nearly 5,000 government executive agencies and boards to harness the nation’s immense industrial capacity for Allied need. Thus, a wholly new relationship was created between the government, business, and university research institutions, a fledgling military-industrial complex that would become more firmly institutionalized after World War II. With the blessing of the administration all antitrust enforcement ceased for the duration, and, given labor’s patriotic acquiescence on this, wages, and other issues, the stage was set for two decades of postwar violence. The War Industries Board oversaw this vast mobilization, which, by 1919 helped assure that American corporate profits more than tripled. The national debt, which in 1914 stood at barely $2 billion had jumped by 1920 to over $30 billion. The war’s cost of $32 billion could only be financed by increasingly progressive federal taxation of incomes and the issuance of so-called Liberty and Victory Bonds. Inflation, virtually non-

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existent before the war, exploded to double consumer prices. These and other changes were permanent and of mixed consequences not fully appreciated for a generation. Demographic shifts and changes in societal norms transformed what it meant to be an American. Indeed, at least one prominent historian argued that America was not a democracy until after World War I.45 Within eighteen months the largest army in American history was mobilized and transported 3,000 miles overseas to fight in the trenches of France. In a radical departure from America’s tradition of patriotic military volunteerism, 24 million men were compelled to register for Selective Service and of those 2.8 million were called into service. Including the National Guard and volunteers, including those serving with British and French units from the beginning of the war, 4.7 million men saw military duty, and of those, Pershing took slightly more than 2 million men with him to France.46 Alone this massive mobilization and Selective Service brought irreversible demographic and social changes in American life and society that would not otherwise have occurred. It is difficult today to appreciate how heated and bitter were the public debates on what resort to a European style military system would mean for American life and institutions. While Roosevelt praised its democratizing influences, many liberal progressives saw it as nothing less than the national “passage between individualistic and collective eras.”47 Among liberal progressive opponents of the war there was fear that Wilson’s decision for war posed a threat to their vision for America. That Wilson had decided to “go on the side of the large armament people,” struck Oswald Garrison Villard, publisher of the New York Evening Post, as “anti-moral, anti-social, and anti-democratic.” Intervention would only further burden the “already overtaxed and overgoverned masses,” and he warned Wilson he was “sowing the seeds of militarism, raising up a military and naval caste,” even as Wilson condemned Germany and England for embracing them.48 Certainly for progressives among the war’s lamentable, unintended consequences was the creation of the massive bureaucracy and concentrations of power that destroyed any hopes that Wilson’s New Freedom vision for America would materialize. Speaking as a true Jeffersonian, Wilson told Americans during the 1912 campaign, “Liberty has never come from government,” or coroprate paternalism, “but from the “limitations of government power.” It was a bitter irony Wilson clearly recognized. “We have almost ended their control of government, but if we go into war,” he warned prophetically of the next two decades, “Big Business will come back and control for twenty years.”49 Wilson feared what war would do to American society, to its character, given its deep ethnic and class divisions, and his fears proved justified.

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“What I have tried to do is to get rid of any class divisions . . . any class consciousness and feeling. The worst thing that could happen to America,” he cautioned, “would be that she be divided into groups . . . where men and women were at odds with one another.” And yet the war was a self-fulfilling prophecy, which Wilson, himself, was not only unable to escape but exacerbated. Despite his own contempt for ethnic Americans and “hyphenates,” he was only too willing to exploit the political support of certain minorities against others, and his pro-English, antiGerman bias fed into the vicious intolerance that undermined civil liberties and democracy itself and helped spread the bacillus of fear.50 Across a wide spectrum of liberal progressive hopes to recast American society and institutions in a process of pragmatic modernization, social improvement, moral efficiency and management, war all but killed the reformist impulse. It was not to be revived until a new crisis, whose origins were to be found in the economic ravages and dislocations of the Great War, the Great Depression, dragged the United States and the world into economic disaster in the 1930s.51 The root of all of these profound changes branched out from Wilson’s decision to intervene, first passively under the guise of neutrality in 1914, then with missionary zeal in 1917. In some cases, Wilson anticipated the danger and prospect of the war’s corrosive effects; in others, American participation in the war had unintended consequences Wilson could not have anticipated. Absent intervention, how different might the evolving course of American society have been? Could Wilson have done anything short of war to compel respect for American rights? Like Jefferson and Madison in their confrontation with Britain and France over similar issues leading to the War of 1812, Wilson could have imposed a strict embargo on American exports and travel into the war zone, reducing, if not eliminating, the issue of submarine sinkings that so drove Wilson’s decision to intervene. As he told his cabinet, “any little German commander can put us into war at any time to some calculated outrage,” not to mention accidents in the “fog of war.”52 The United States was not the only neutral during the Great War. Seven European nations declared and, all but one, preserved their neutrality throughout the conflict. Some like the Netherlands, the most vulnerable, Switzerland, and Denmark, fully mobilized in armed neutrality. Others, Norway, Sweden, Spain, and Portugal, were able to preserve their neutrality in less threatening circumstances, although Portugal, in allegiance to Britain, joined the Allies in 1916. In various ways these governments—in the shadow of war themselves—torn by factions urging intervention on behalf of the Entente or the Central Powers, financially profited from the war’s opportunities but did so by observing strict impartiality.53 Wilson had clear appreciation for how his policies were viewed in

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Germany and how small the window of opportunity was for affecting the war dynamic. “It is felt here we are partial to England,” American ambassador Fritz Gerard cabled Wilson in February 1915. “The feeling just now is very tense against America. The sale of arms is at bottom.” Wilson could not plead ignorance of the impact of American policy. “No German ever forgets,” Gerard impressed on him,” the selling of arms and supplies by Americans to the Allies. The question of legality or treaties never enters his mind: he only knows that American supplies and munitions killed his brother, son, or father.”54 German American propagandists excoriated America’s moral relativism and self-righteous prattling about humanity while manufacturing “poisoned shrapnel and picric acid for profit. Ten thousand German widows, ten thousand German orphans, ten thousand graves bear the legend ‘made in America.’ ”55 Underlying Wilson’s inflexibility on this issue was his refusal to appreciate how the advances in military technology had rendered obsolete nineteenth-century norms of international law relative to neutrality and freedom of the seas and engagement. As the world’s preeminent naval power, Britain’s interest in defining neutral rights, blockade, and contraband to its strategic advantage was obvious.56 Wilson, appropriately cautious in 1914, could well have leveraged American economic power to exact concessions on neutral rights from Britain three years later. Given Britain’s military necessity by early 1917, it is certainly possible to conceive of such a quid pro quo for ending British violations. On June 28, 1917, Ambassador Page cabled Wilson, Unless we come to their rescue all are in danger of disaster. . . . I do not say that the British would have been actually beaten (tho’ this may have followed), but I do say that they would have quickly been on a paper money basis, thereby bringing down the financial situation of all the European Allies; and the submarine success of the Germans would or might have caused a premature peace.57

The one concession made to Wilson, Britain’s agreement to compensate American claimants for damages after the war, could, arguably, have been exacted from Germany rather than the uncompromising demand for strict accountability. As a careful student of Wilson’s foreign policy concluded, “In his final reckoning with the logic of strict accountability, which Wilson had constantly feared but was powerless to escape, there is an element of tragedy that befalls men, who due to their nature, become victims of events beyond their control.” There was certainly no equivalence between loss of property and loss of life, a distinction about which Wilson was adamant. Still, it is clear that Wilson was comfortable in applying principle loosely or strictly as it suited his objectives.58

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Indeed, it can be argued that Wilson misread the lessons of history; 1914 was not 1812, and the United States was in a far different position relative to Germany than it had been to the antagonists during the Napoleonic Wars. In his dismissal of the need to analyze more carefully the changed realities of neutrality, and indeed to leave such matters to Bryan’s prointerventionist successor, Robert Lansing, Wilson quite possibly missed an opportunity to change the dynamics of the war and the issues that committed the United States to it.59 Whereas it is doubtful that German ambassador Bethmann-Hollweg could have persuaded the kaiser and certainly the General Staff and the war party in the Reichstag, of the advantages of American mediation toward a negotiated peace early in the war, and, indeed, failed to do so in conjunction with Bryan’s attempt in the fall of 1914, the situation was very different, militarily, by early 1917. Given a different war dynamic, Bethmann-Hollweg might have escaped his expulsion from government in July 1917 and facilitated diplomatic negotiations ending the war prior to American intervention.60 To understand Wilson’s decision, it is essential to recall the military situation that confronted him and the Allies. By the fall of 1917, the war on the Western Front, virtually stalemated since the abortive offensives and counteroffensives of 1914, had taken a dramatic turn. Russia—the Entente’s most powerful ally, convulsed by revolution and defeatism, had capitulated in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk in November 1917, by which Germany obtained vital food and oil resources of the Ukraine and Caucasus—ended the war on the Eastern Front and made possible the infusion of a million troops into the German fortifications between Soissons and Arras. Germany, still facing French and British armies in strong defensive positions in the West, suffering reverses in Palestine and Turkey, and losing the war at sea, strategically had virtually won the war that had begun in 1914, achieving most of its war aims. Indeed, “with no considerable assistance from her allies,” Germany had “held the rest of the world at bay, had beaten Russia, had driven France, the military colossus of Europe for more than two centuries, to the end of her tether, and in 1917, had come within an ace of starving Britain into surrender.”61 The British declaration of the North Sea approaches to Germany as a war zone on November 2, 1914, imposed a distant blockade of Germany, which by the eve of American intervention was causing severe food shortages and acute civilian deprivations, as well as war production problems. These sufferings, massive casualties, which on the eve of American intervention exceeded 1.2 million dead, had eroded seriously public support for the war. All the parties, even the Social Democrats, which had voted for war in 1914, voted for a peace of reconciliation in April 1917.62 From the onset of war in every belligerent power there were vocal

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albeit minority peace parties and movements, which steadily gained voice as the casualty lists grew and civilian suffering deepened into cynicism, political protest, and dissent. At home Wilson’s intolerance was vehement, approving government censorship, repression of civil liberties, giving tacit approval of hyperpatriotic vigilantism, and demanding public loyalty and obedience. And yet these were precisely the subversive currents he hoped to exploit in efforts to undermine the war spirit in Germany and Austria.63 There dissent faced equally harsh reprisals. As Count Czernin, the Austro-Hungarian minister of Foreign Affairs lamented, “Everyone in Wilhelmstrasse, from Bethmann to Kuhlmann, wanted peace, but they could not get it simply because . . . leaders of the German military party . . . attained such enormous power . . . and got rid of anyone who ventured to act otherwise than as they wished.”64 The prospects were uncertain. Yet if Wilson had vigorously pursued peace initiatives uniting and lending his powerful moral authority to national peace organizations, such as David Starr Jordan’s Emergency Peace Federation, the People’s Council of Americans for Democracy and Peace, and the most powerful American Union Against Militarism, he might have been able to form a powerful antiwar coalition with peace groups in Europe. The Social Democrats and peace faction led by Matthias Erzberger and Rosa Luxemburg in Germany and international groups such as the Woman’s International League for Permanent Peace, among others, were a powerful counterpoint to war whose power could have been better marshalled by Wilson, for example, in an international council of neutrals held in Washington, D.C., proposed by the Dutch foreign minister van Rappard, in February 1917.65 Still, such reticence did not prevent Wilson and Allied governments from vigorously pursuing the policy of “driving a wedge” between enemy political and ideological factions. Wilson made clear the distinction between the German militarists and the German people in his War Message of April 2, 1917. And Lord Northcliffe, head of the British War Mission and director of Propaganda in Enemy Countries, explicitly used Wilson’s oratorical idealism in attempts to exploit antiwar sentiment in Berlin and Vienna. And, of course, Germany used these tactics with dramatic success in its attempts to subvert Russian instability.66 When Wilson went before the joint session of Congress on April 2, 1917, to ask for a declaration of war against the Central Powers, he did so armed not only with the conviction that he was right, but with the weight of three years of carefully managed propaganda brought to full momentum. Germany’s decision to renew unrestricted submarine warfare, and the colossal stupidity of the Zimmermann Telegram, whose release Britain timed to have maximum affect in the United States, only strengthened the forces coalescing for war. In the two years since the

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Lusitania crisis, Wilson had skillfully employed his most impressive political skill-swaying public opinion. While only 6 of 1,000 newspaper editors had favored war in 1915, there was much more of an even split by 1917, even though generally public, academic, intellectual, and political opinion remained anti-interventionist.67 Gradually Wilson had been able to prevail over the Bryanite wing of the Democratic Party, skillfully using the issues of preparedness and the submarine menace to move the party away from its anti-imperialist, noninterventionist stance. Thus, despite Senate opposition led by Progressive reformer Robert M. La Follette and a significant antiwar faction in the House led by Majority Leader Claude Kitchen, and by pacifist, women’s suffrage activist Jeanette Rankin, opponents could not overcome the passion and momentum for war. After thirteen hours of debate in the Senate and seventeen in the House over four days, the war resolution passed 90–6 and 373–50, overcoming the opposition of western and midwestern Bryan Democrats and insurgent Republicans. Thus, Wilson could not claim a national consensus for war; rather he had seized control of war politics and made it conform to his will.68 For many it seemed that they were being swept along forces they could not control. Representative Fred Britten of Illinois remarked on the floor of the House there was “something in the air . . . destiny or some super human movement, something stronger than you and I can realize or resist . . . forcing us into this declaration of war when down deep in our hearts we are just as opposed to it as are our people back home.”69 The adage that “politics ends at the water’s edge” in national crisis, suggests a unifying patriotic harmony of struggle against a common enemy. Historically that has certainly been true in cases of direct aggression against the United States. Yet World War I for the United States did not fit that test. To the contrary, it revealed how complex, divisive, and conflicting the decision to intervene militarily can be; and, in such circumstances, how patriotic consensus, if at all possible, is contingent upon a president’s ability to convince Americans that no other course of action is possible or defensible. When the United States declared war on the Central Powers, Wilson’s quasi-neutrality was shorn of all pretense to impartiality and became full, unambiguous mobilization for direct intervention. Upon the foundation of preparedness was assembled a massive military effort that General John J. Pershing, commander of the American Expeditionary Force (AEF), assured Colonel House was essential to victory. “The Allies are done,” Pershing told House in July 1918. “If America could not assure a victory in 1919,” he warned, “the Allies will make peace.” Implicit was his inference that it would be a peace that the United States could have only marginal leverage in shaping. Clearly Wilson, after his peace initiative of December 1916 and subsequent commitment to the League of

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Nations and deepening belief that only American example and leadership could save the world, was not interested in a peace not bearing its stamp.70 The list of “what ifs” is perhaps endless; tantalizing speculations abound. If German intelligence had been better, had alerted the Imperial General Staff of France’s near collapse in April–June 1917, Germany would undoubtedly have driven France out of the war entirely in a matter of weeks. Such a dramatic reversal, with American military intervention still months from possibility, would almost certainly have brought a British offer to negotiate a settlement.71 Periodically between 1914 and American intervention in 1917, diplomatic opportunities presented themselves that could have led to a negotiated peace that Bethmann-Hollweg, Spring-Rice, Dumba, and House all acknowledged, including the key issues of German evacuation of Belgian and French territory, and the arrangement for a shared war indemnity by all the powers.72 If Germany would have agreed to withdraw from Belgium and northern France—in exchange for recognition of its immense gains in the East and strategic position as a bulwark against Bolshevism—it could well have had a military and political solution largely on its own terms. In the latter circumstance it is not at all certain that Britain would not have left France to its fate on the Continent and, regardless, there would have been no American intervention. How would a German-Soviet confrontation in the 1920s rather than the 1940s have changed the course of history, given what we know of subsequent events? What would its impacts been on the Russian Revolution and counterrevolution and Allied intervention?73 Would a negotiated peace in 1917 or 1918—allowing both the Entente and Central Powers to claim “victory” as a way to end honorably a stalemated, increasingly unsustainable conflict, one confirming a status quo equilibrium of power—have been so unthinkable? Presuming it retained power in the absence of a socialist revolution, would a Wilhelmine Germany of the 1920s and 1930s have been so fertile a ground for fascism and the anti-Versailles revanchism that fueled its rise? Such questions have no concrete answers, and yet speculation compels sobering reflection, given what the world knows of the legacy of defeatism and irredentism. Defeat and revolution bred diverse extremist solutions, “nihilist pacifism and violent nationalism, a brutal antisemitism and an idealist internationalism; it generated countless crosscurrents of irrationalism and mysticism, a searching examination of religion, the arts, and life itself,” that, afterall, nurtured and legitimized Hitler’s ambitions.74 Wilson could have made one of two alternative decisions in April or even the summer 1917 short of military intervention. First, instead of a

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declaration of war he could have asked Congress for adoption of strict, impartial, armed, principled neutrality that placed America above the war in Europe as Wilson had pledged in 1914; imposition of a specific munitions and general “contraband” embargo; prohibition of casual American travel into the European war zone; emergency temporary government subsidization of key industries most affected by loss of British and French markets, which would in any event have been far less costly than the war itself; and an unambiguous reassertion of the Monroe Doctrine and American determination to defend the hemisphere against any foreign aggression. As the Nye Committee concluded in its investigations into the alleged complicity of munitions makers and banking interests in American intervention, “Loans to belligerents militate against neutrality. . . . They are especially unneutral when used to convert this country into an auxiliary arsenal for that belligerent who happens to control the seas, for that arsenal then becomes the subject of military strategy of the other belligerent.”75 Such a principled, honest neutrality might well have resulted in a victory by the Central Powers sometime before 1917, although that is far from certain. It would almost certainly have meant no American intervention, at least not on the pretext of German violations of freedom of the seas claims, neutrality, sovereignty, and national prestige. Second, Wilson could have pressed for continued, even expanded, financial and materiel support for the Allies, but limited American assistance in this supportive role, preserving its freedom of action and nonentanglement while still striking a blow for those ideals Wilson championed. In either case, it is certainly possible that he could have obtained political and wide public support, given the Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress, and antiwar sentiment within the Wilsonian coalition of liberal progressives, Bryan Democrats, progressive Republicans, Socialists, suffragettes, labor, and western agrarians. Absent the direct provocation of U-boat depredations and ancillary incitement of the Zimmerman Telegram, might Wilson have been seeking some other justification for departing so dramatically from American policy of nonintervention outside the Western Hemisphere and unilateralism—even as an “associated” power? That, of course, begs the question whether preserving neutrality was Wilson’s only or even principal concern. Indeed, the arguments for neutrality make sense only if the United States had no interest in the outcome of the war. Despite Wilson’s admonitions for “neutral thought and action,” virtually no one in the cabinet, including the president, believed the war was inconsequential to American national interests, foremost its economic interests and, perhaps, even its security. Observed Robert Lansing, “this is no war to establish some abstract principle of right. It is a war in which the future of the United States is at stake.”76

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And yet in public and private, Wilson consistently explained American interests and policy not in cold geopolitical arguments but in appeals to soaring principles and ideals, a gospel and vision of world order. “We have come to redeem the world by giving it liberty and justice,” Wilson proclaimed. “Our object now is to reafirm the principle of peace and justice in the world as against autocratic power . . . we are but one of the champions of the rights of mankind . . . we shall be satisfied when those rights have been made as secure as the faith and freedom of nations can make them,” he avowed in his war message.77 While such soaring rhetoric properly confirms Wilson as a rigid moral idealist, attempting to understand his decisions in that one-dimensional perspective is simplistic and inaccurate. Contemporaries certainly struggled to fathom his complexities of character, intent, and expression. It is merely one among many ironies that no other president before or since, while condemning their use, nevertheless resorted to military force and intervention more robustly than did Wilson.78 Wilson, like his more flamboyantly bellicose predecessor, Theodore Roosevelt, understood that the presidency could be, in Roosevelt’s phrase, a “bully pulpit,” to lead and to inspire. He knew that if, in a nation as divided and uncertain as the United States was in 1914 on the issue of intervention, he was to have any chance of convincing Americans of the necessity for becoming entangled in a conflict an ocean away, he would have to appeal not to some arcane, cold calculus of balanceof-power and secret diplomacy, although he spoke of these too; but, rather, to Americans’ innate sense of justice, decency, and patriotism.79 Thus, in his public pronouncements and even his private correspondence, he chose to predicate American intervention on emotional, transcendent ideals, in almost sermonlike epistles, to consecrate the nation’s crusade. As educator John Dewey warned in 1917, the American people would not fight the war with their “heart and soul until the Allies are fighting on our terms for our democracy, and civilization, and ideals.”80 And yet it was abundantly clear that nothing in Europe’s history suggested that “competitive interests and watchful jealousy among nations” could be expunged from international relations, or a concert of interests possible, or, if discovered, sustainable. Wilson saw no contradiction in championing the forces of democracy and justice while imposing a new world order that would enforce moralistic norms of conduct and behavior through Big Power condominium. As in all wars, after all, to the victors went the spoils. Still, Wilson’s vision imbued his idealism with the hope and, tragically, the false illusion of possibility.81 Like future presidents when calling upon the nation to make difficult, costly, and, perhaps, ultimate sacrifices (as they were to do once again in Europe in the shadow of the Great War, in Korea, in Southeast Asia, in a Cold War global crusade against communism, with all of their in-

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herent dangers), Wilson did so in language resonating in the deepest reservoir of nationalistic pride, and thus tapped into powerful emotions of fear, outrage, and righteousness. So armed Wilson could wield the sword of the Republic with the sanction of providential authority. Such moral certainty has its dangers. Certainly it helps us understand even in victory, the profound sense of betrayal and disillusionment experienced by many Americans in the wreckage of promises undelivered as the guns fell silent. It may well be true, as Richard Hofstadter concluded that while the war marked the “apotheosis” of the, “Progressive spirit,” there was nothing Wilson could have done to prevent a reaction against both the war itself and the Progressive movement that preceded the war. Yet he also judged that Wilson, precisely “by pinning America’s role so exclusively to high moral considerations and to altruism and self-sacrifice, by linking the foreign crusade as intimately as possible to the Progressive values,” insured that the reaction against Progressivism and moral idealism was as intense as it became. Willing to accept Wilson’s decision to intervene, Hofstadter saw implicit dangers in his justification. By telling the American people that they were not merely defending themselves but, rather, as “citizens of the world they were undertaking the same broad responsibilities for world order and democracy that they had been expected as their moral responsibility to assume for their own institutions,” Wilson signaled that the crusade for reform and democratic institutions, difficult as it was at home, was now to be extended to the world at large. In a word, Wilson had overreached himself and the nation: by grasping for a vision of the world he could conceive but not deliver; by failing to understand the limits of power and how even the most morally enobling crusades can be corrupted by human folly and hubris.82 The decisions confronting Wilson in 1917 posed inherent, inescapable dilemmas that are far more easily resolved in the hindsight of historical perspective. In passing judgment, one should never forget that “neither Wilson nor his advisors could ever see very clearly the probable results of their decisions.” History is too random, contingent, and unpredictable. As the nineteenth-century English historian Frederic Maitland cautioned, “It is very difficult to remember that events now in the past were once far in the future,” warning students of history to be wary of “presentism” in judging decisions that can only be understood in the context of their time and circumstance.83 The internationalist or globalist ethos has proven remarkably durable in the face of nationalist particularism and conflicts of local religious, ethnic, and separatist origin. The hopeful idealism of Wilson’s generation, however, all but bled itself dry in the horrors of the second half of the twentieth century. The United States after 1917, and especially after 1945, all but abandoned its self-proclaimed mantle of revolutionary cru-

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sader for self-determination and progressive liberalism, becoming, instead, a conservative even reactionary force for order and often authoritatian status quo regimes. When it intervened, it did so for far less ambitious, ambiguous objectives. Increasingly, foreign policy experts argued that the United States cannot intervene unilaterally to depose regimes or factions it disapproves of around the world, or even in its own hemisphere, because it would be to commit the United States to perpetual and ruinous wars in spasms of “self-intoxication and selfrighteousness.” Thus, the United States should not intervene militarily “to establish democracy, or to make the world a better place, or to combat uncongenial ideologies and religions. America,” they argue, “cannot set the impossible and self-destructive task of correcting all the world’s wrongs or converting all the world’s peoples to the blessings of American ideals.”84 Presidents must measure what is desirable against what is attainable in the national interest. That seems an appropriately instructive restraint in the new paradigm of limits. Such proscriptions make Wilson vulnerable to the judgment of history that he failed to strike this balance in his decision to intervene in 1917. Others more cynically might simply conclude that Wilson was “damned if he did and damned if he didn’t.” Yet however battered in the frequently harsh realities of America’s experience in the world since Wilson’s decision, appeals to lofty ideals and principles retain moral force as an expression of the nation’s foreign policy. How far and to what cost militarily to pursue human rights and idealism in the name of democracy and justice; how far to pursue selfinterest in the name of power, advantage, and security, were to be challenges of policy and decision faced by subsequent presidents John Kennedy in Cuba and Southeast Asia; by Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon in Vietnam; by Jimmy Carter in El Salvador; by Ronald Reagan in El Salvador, Grenada, Lebanon, and Nicaragua; by George Bush in Panama and the Gulf War; by Bill Clinton in Somalia, Bosnia, Haiti, Iraq, and Kosovo. Indeed, the American president closest to the Democrat Wilson in his crusading moralism and trumpeting of America’s divine mission was the Republican Ronald Reagan in the 1980s. In language that could have been Wilson’s, Reagan pledged the United States to an ideological crusade against the USSR and communism, which he saw as “the focus of evil in the modern world.” His “New Patriotism” brought together impulses with which Wilson would have been entirely comfortable. Among national security and balance-of-power considerations, it was an amalgam of evangelical, born-again Christianity and older precepts of “Manifest Destiny,” which Reagan would wield as a righteous weapon in the global struggle between “right and wrong and good and evil.”85

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In the end, perhaps one is understandably torn, on the one hand drawn powerfully to Wilson’s vision and uplifting hope for a better world and soaring faith in America’s mission; on the other hand skeptical of idealistic nostrums in the face of historical experience and cynicism about human nature’s capacity for transcending its baser instincts. Wilson’s failure was not in his vision so much as in his myopic perception of how best to achieve it, and that, after all, is one indispensable factor in the complex calculus of presidential leadership. And yet that distinction must always be measured against the challenges of character and decision, domestic and foreign, a president faces during his tenure in office. By that criteria Wilson will always stand among the handful of presidents whose stature ranks them among our “greatest.”86 Nevertheless, the path Wilson chose in 1917 may not have been the one he should have taken. George Kennan, distinguished statesman, diplomat, and presidential advisor, alternatively offered the following: “When war broke out . . . Wilson . . . could have ignored the nonsensical traditions of technical neutrality . . . using American influence to achieve the earliest termination of the war nobody could really win.” He could have refrained from moralistic slogans, refrained from picturing American interests as a crusade, kept open . . . lines of negotiation with the enemy, declined to break up his empires and overthrow his political system, avoided commitments to the extremist war aims of the allies, retained . . . freedom of action, exploited . . . America’s bargaining power flexibly with a view to bring its full weight to bear at the crucial moment in order to achieve a termination of hostilities with a minimum of prejudice to future stability of the Continent.

Wilson could have done all of that. Had he done it Kennan asked, was there “any guarantee that this would have produced a better outcome and a happier future? Of course not,” he thought but reflected, “I can only say I fail to see how it could have produced a much worse one.”87 Surveying Wilson’s decisions and the consequences of American intervention, Graham and Borden concluded their essay by observing that “the situation was open for an alternative future, not vastly different from the one we lived, but different enough to stir the imagination.” One agrees. But the suspicion persists that given very real options of policy and action available to Wilson in 1917, not only was an alternative future different enough to stir the imagination, but the future that can be imagined could well have changed the course of the twentieth century and American history.88 “My Name is Might-Have-Been,” wrote Dante Gabriel Rossetti, “I am also called No-More, Too-Late, Farewell.”89 Perhaps it is futile to speculate on “might-have-beens”; the past is the past and there is nothing

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we can do about it. Still “pasts” were possible that we did not live, and in 1917 there were many other paths than the one chosen. At this distance and remove from the catastrophic events of 1917, where such paths might have led can be no more than surmise. Yet, even if one considers Wilson’s marshalling of American idealism to have fallen far short of his vision for a warless, democratic world, perhaps the challenge lies in distinguishing the failure of policy from the scope and persistence of ambition. For Wilson recognized and powerfully advanced the assertion that the power of American democracy was the lynchpin of a “liberal grand strategy” for securing America’s interests and for claiming the blessings of liberty for humanity.90

NOTES 1. Kenneth Davis, Don’t Know Much About History: Everything You Need to Know about American History But Never Learned (New York, 1996), 236. 2. Otis L. Graham Jr. and Morton Borden, Speculations on American History (Lexington, Mass., 1977), 103–18. 3. Gerald Combs, American Diplomatic History: Two Centuries of Changing Interpretations (Berkeley, 1983), 132–52, provided the best historiographical discussion. 4. See for example Charles Seymour, Woodrow Wilson and the World War (New Haven, 1921); Newton D. Baker, Why We Went to War (New York, 1936); Frederick L. Paxson, Pre-war Years, 1912–1917 (Boston, 1936); Scott Nearing, The Great Madness (New York, 1917); John Kenneth Turner, Shall It Be Again (New York, 1922) offers a socialist perspective; John H. Latane, From Isolation to Leadership (New York, 1918), criticized Wilson for not recognizing the German threat; John Bach McMaster, The United States in the World War, 2 vols. (New York, 1918– 1920); and John S. Basset, Our War in Germany (New York, 1919). 5. See Warren I. Cohen, The American Revisionists: The Lessons of Intervention in World War I (Chicago, 1967), which offers the most comprehensive survey; Walter Lippmann, United States Foreign Policy: Shield of the Republic (Boston, 1943); Dexter Perkins, America in Two Wars (Boston 1944); Thomas A. Bailey, Woodrow Wilson and the Lost Peace (New York, 1944), 13–14; Richard Leopold, “The Problem of American Intervention,” World Politics 2 (April 1950): 405–25; Ernest R. May, American Intervention: 1917–1941 (Washington, D.C., 1960), 1–11; Robert H. Farrell, Woodrow Wilson and World War One (New York, 1985); Lawrence E. Gelfand, “The Dimensions of American Participation in War and Peacemaking, 1917–19,” in The National Archives and Federal Research, ed. Milton O. Gustafson (Athens, Ga., 1974); Elie Halvey, “The World Crisis of 1914–1918: An Interpretation,” in The End of Tyrannies, trans. R. K. Webb (Garden City, N.J., 1965), 209–47. 6. A. J. P. Taylor, The Outbreak of the First World War: Struggle for Mastery in Europe (Oxford, 1954), chap. 22; L. Albertini, The Origins of the War of 1914, 3 vols. (London, 1952–57); L. F. C. Turner, Origins of the First World War (London, 1970); J. Fall, The Origins of the First World War (London, 1984); Donald Kagan, On the Origins of War and the Preservation of Peace (New York, 1995); and Martin Gilbert, The First World War: A Complete History (New York, 1995) represents the

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most recent scholarship. For specific responsibility see Paul Kennedy, The Origins of the Anglo-German Antagonism, 1860–1914 (New York, 1980); V. R. Berghahn, Germany and the Approach of War (London, 1974); J. S. Steiner, Britain and the Origins of the First World War (London, 1977); J. F. C. Kreiger, France and the Origins of the First World War (London, 1983); D. C. B. Lieven, Russia and the Origins of the First World War (London, 1983); F. R. Bridge, From Sadowa to Sarajevo: The Foreign Policy of Austria-Hungary (London, 1972); J. R. B. Bosworth, Italy and the Approach of the First World War (London, 1983); Fritz Fischer, War of Illusions: German Policies from 1911–1914 (London, 1972); and George F. Kennan, The Fateful Alliance: France, Russia and the Coming of the First World War (New York, 1984). 7. A selective list of those questioning scholars would include Harry Elmer Barnes, The Genesis of the World War: An Introduction to the Problems of War Guilt, 2nd rev. ed. (New York and London, 1927); Charles A. Beard, The Devil Theory of War, 2 vols. (New York, 1936); Walter Millis, Road to War: America 1914–1917 (Boston and New York, 1928); Charles Callahan Tansill, America Goes to War (Boston, 1938); and Fred Bausman, Facing Europe (New York and London, 1926). 8. See for example W. G. Carleton, The Revolution in American Foreign Policy: Its Global Range (New York, 1963); Richard Van Alstyne, American Crisis Diplomacy: The Quest for Collective Security, 1918–1952 (Stanford, 1952); Walt W. Rostow, The United States in the World Arena (New York, 1960); and William A. Williams, The Tragedy of American Diplomacy (Cleveland, 1959). For the most comprehensive historiographical survey, see Michael J. Hogan and Thomas G. Paterson, eds., Explaining the History of American Foreign Relations (New York, 1991); and Michael J. Hogan, ed., America in the World: The Historiography of American Foreign Relations (New York, 1995). 9. As quoted in Gaddis Smith, Dean Acheson (New York, 1972), 416. See also Robert Endicott Osgood, Ideals and Self-Interest in America’s Foreign Relations: The Great Transformation of the Twentieth Century (Chicago, 1953), esp. chap. 5; Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., The Cycles of American History (Boston, 1986), esp. 3–22, 51–86; Albert K. Weinberg, Manifest Destiny: A Study of Nationalist Expansion in American History (Baltimore, 1935); Frederick Merk, Manifest Destiny and Mission in American History (New York, 1963); and Norman Graebner, Manifest Destiny (New York, 1968). 10. Arnold Wolfers, “Statesmanship and Moral Choice,” World Politics 1 (January 1945): 175–95; David S. Patterson, Toward a Warless World: The Travails of the American Peace Movement, 1887–1914 (Bloomington, 1976); Barbara S. Craft, “Peace-Making in the Progressive Era: A Prestigious and Proper Calling,” Maryland Historian 1, no. 2 (1970): 121–44; Peter Filene, “The World Peace Foundation and Progressivism, 1910–1918,” New England Quarterly 36, no. 4 (1963): 478–501; R. S. Herman, Eleven Against War: Studies in American Internationalist Thought, 1898–1921 (Palo Alto, 1963); Charles Chatfield, For Peace and Justice: Pacifism in America 1914–1941 (Knoxville, 1971), chaps. 1–3; Kenneth W. Thompson, “Moral Reasoning in American Thought on War and Peace,” Review of Politics 39, no. 3 (1977): 386–99; C. Rowland Marquand, The American Peace Movement and Social Reform, 1898–1918 (Princeton, 1973); Arthur K. Ekirch Jr., Ideas, Ideals, and American Diplomacy: A History of Their Growth and Interaction (New York, 1966); Lloyd E. Ambrosius, “The Orthodoxy of Revisionism: Woodrow Wilson and the New

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Left,” Diplomatic History 1 no. 3 (1977): 199–214; and Warren F. Kuehl, Seeking World Order: The United States and International Organization to 1920 (Nashville, 1969). 11. John Milton Cooper Jr., The Warrior and the Priest: Woodrow Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt (Cambridge, Mass., 1983), offers a fascinating comparison; George F. Kennan, American Diplomacy, 1900–1950 (Chicago, 1951); A. T. Mahan, Armaments and Arbitration: On the Place of Force in the International Relations of States (New York, 1912); Kenneth W. Thompson, “Moral Reasoning in American Thought on War and Peace,” Review of Politics 39, no. 3 (1977): 386–99. 12. For Wilson’s description of his policies, see Arthur S. Link, Papers of Woodrow Wilson, 69 vols. (Princeton, N.J., 1966– ), 29: 452–53, 468–70, 488, 493. The literature is massive but see, for example, Harley Notter, The Origins of the Foreign Policy of Woodrow Wilson (Baltimore, 1937); John Milton Cooper Jr., “An Irony of Fate, Woodrow Wilson’s Pre World War I Diplomacy,” Diplomatic History 3, no. 4 (1979): 425–38; Ernest R. May, The World War and American Intervention, 1914– 1917 (Cambridge, 1959); Lloyd E. Ambrosius, Wilsonian Statecraft: Theory and Practice of Left Internationalism During World War One (New York, 1991); Harvey A. De Weerd, President Wilson Fights His War: World War I and the American Intervention (New York, 1168); Edward H. Buehrig, Woodrow Wilson and the Balance of Power (Bloomington, 1955); Daniel M. Smith, Robert Lansing and American Neutrality, 1914–1917 (Berkeley, 1958); idem, The Great Departure, the United States and World War I 1914–1920 (New York, 1965); idem “National Interest and American Intervention, 1917,” Historiographical Appraisal 52, no. 1 (June 1965): 5–24; Arthur S. Link, Wilson the Diplomatist: A Look at His Major Foreign Policies (Baltimore, 1957), revised as Wilson: Revolution, War and Peace (Arlington Heights, Ill., 1979); idem, “The Higher Realism of Woodrow Wilson,” Journal of Presbyterian History 41 (March 1963): 1–13; idem, Campaigns for Progressivism and Peace 1916–1917 (New York, 1954), idem, “Wilson’s Struggle for Neutrality (Princeton, 1960); Kennan (1951), as cited, 50–65; N. Gordon Levin Jr., Woodrow Wilson and World Politics: America’s Response to War and Revolution (New York, 1968); and Kendrick Clements Woodrow Wilson, World Statesman (Boston, 1987); and for Wilsonian internationalism in context see Priscilla Roberts, “The Anglo-American Theme: American Visions of an Atlantic Alliance, 1914–1933,” Diplomatic History 21, no. 3 (summer 1977): 333–64. 13. As quoted in the brief biographical sketch, “Woodrow Wilson,” The American Presidents (New York, 1976). 14. Ernest L. Tuveson, Redeemer Nation: The Idea of America’s Millennial Role (Chicago, 1968); quote cited is from Woodrow Wilson, Messages and Papers, 2 vols., ed. Albert Shaw (New York, 1924), 2: 815, 872, 1086. 15. For Wilson’s personality changes and discussion see Alexander L. George and Juliette L. George, Woodrow Wilson and Colonel House: A Personality Study (New York, 1956); John Morton Blum, Woodrow Wilson and the Politics of Morality (Boston, 1956); Frederick S. Calhoun, “Power and Principle”: Armed Intervention in Wilson’s Foreign Policy (Kent, 1986), and idem, Uses of Force and Wilsonian Foreign Policy (Kent, 1993), 1–10 esp., both are indispensable for their insights and conclusions regarding Wilson’s conception of force and moral purpose; and Cooper, Warrior and the Priest, 59–62, 119–20, 239–42; Osgood, Ideals and Self-Interest, 104– 7, 175–78.

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16. As quoted in Link, Wilson: Revolution, War and Peace, 6–7; for Baker’s assertion see Newton D. Baker, Woodrow Wilson: Life and Letters, 8 vols. (New York, 1927–1939), 5:157; Charles Seymour, American Diplomacy in the Great War (Baltimore, 1934); Walter Lippmann, “For a Department of State,” The New Republic 20 (September 17, 1919): 195; Seward W. Livermore, “Deserving Democrats; The Foreign Service Under Woodrow Wilson,” South Atlantic Quarterly 69, no. 1 (1970): 140–60; contrast Link, “The Higher Realism”; with, for example, Henry Kissinger, Diplomacy (New York, 1994), 44–48 and passim. 17. Richard Hofstadter, “Manifest Destiny and the Philippines,” in America in Crisis: Fourteen Crucial Episodes in American History, ed. Daniel Aaron (New York, 1952), 173–203; and David M. Kennedy, Over Here: The First World War and American Society (New York, 1980), arguably the best single volume on the war’s impact at home. 18. H. G. Wells, What’s Coming? as quoted in Martin Gilbert, A History of the Twentieth Century (New York, 1997), 429; Jack S. Roth, ed., World War I: A Turning Point in Modern History (New York, 1967); and B. E. Schmitt and H. C. Vedeler, The World in the Crucible, 1914–1919 (New York, 1984). 19. Page to Wilson, December 15, 1914, quoted in Gilbert, A History, 1: 346; Mary R. Kihl, “A Failure in Ambassadorial Diplomacy,” Journal of American History 57, no. 3 (1970): 636–53 for Page’s relationship with British ambassador Sir Cecil Spring-Rice; Calhoun, “Power and Principle,” 250–67; Jonathan Steinberg, Yesterday’s Deterrent: Tirpitz and the Birth of the German Battle Fleet (New York, 1965); Bernhard Menne, Krupp, or the Lords of Essen (London, 1937); and Wilson’s address to the National Press Club, 15 May 1916. See Ray Stannard Baker and William E. Dodd Jr., eds., Woodrow Wilson: War and Peace: Presidential Messages, Addresses, and Public Papers (1917–1924) (New York, 1927), 26: 171. 20. Calhoun, Uses of Force, 1–5; idem, “Power and Principle,” 250–67; Wilson’s speech to the National Press Club, in Baker and Dodd, Public Papers, 20: 171. 21. Bernadotte E. Schmitt, “American Neutrality, 1914–1917,” Journal of Modern History 8, no. 2 (1936): 200–211. 22. As quoted in Baker, Woodrow Wilson: Life and Letters, 5:74. Seymour, American Diplomacy, 90–93; Walter Lippmann, United States Foreign Policy, 25–39; Osgood, Ideals and Self-Interest, 178–84; Link, Papers of Woodrow Wilson, 38: 418. 23. Cooper, Warrior and the Priest, 283–84, 317–18. 24. Memo of interview with the president, December 14, 1914, Link, Papers of Woodrow Wilson, 31: 458–59. 25. Compare Thomas A. Bailey and Paul B. Ryan, The Lusitania Disaster (New York, 1975), with Edwin Sampson, The Lusitania (Boston, 1973), which claims British complicity in the sinking. 26. Quoted in Paolo E. Coletta, William Jennings Bryan, 3 vols. (Lincoln, 1964– 69), 2: 343; William Jennings Bryan and Mary B. Bryan, Memoirs (Chicago, 1925), 398–99; Kendrick A. Clements, William Jennings Bryan: Missionary Isolationist (Knoxville, 1982); Paul Birdsall, “Neutrality and Economic Pressures 1914–1917,” Science and Technology 31 (1939): 221, for Lansing’s view; as quoted in Burton J. Hendrick, Life and Letters of William Jennings Bryan, 3 vols. (New York, 1922–25), 2: 2. 27. Charles Seymour, Intimate Papers of Colonel House Arranged as a Narrative, 4 vols. (Boston, 1926–28), 1: 433–35; and see generally Osgood, Ideals and Self-

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Interest, 175–88, 229–34; Edward H. Buehrig, “Wilson’s Neutrality Re-examined,” World Politics (October 1950); and Charles Seymour, “The House-Bernsdorff Conversations in Perspective,” and Bernadotte Schmitt, “The Relation of Public Opinion and Foreign Affairs Before and During the First World War,” both in A. O. Sarkissian Studies in Diplomatic History and Historiography in Honor of G. P. Gooch, ed. A. O. Sarkissian (London, 1961). 28. Alice M. McDiarmid, “The Neutrality Board and American Merchantmen, 1914–1917,” American Journal of International Labor 69, no. 2 (1975): 374–81; Seymour, Intimate Papers, 1: 215–19. 29. This seems to be the consensus among historians of American Foreign Relations; as quoted in Thomas G. Paterson, J. Gary Clifford, and Kenneth J. Hagan, American Foreign Policy: A History, 2 vols. (Lexington, Ky., 1985, 3rd ed.), 2: 273. 30. Congressional Record, 64th Cong., 1st Sess.: 2756, 2958, 3120; Baker and Dodd, Woodrow Wilson: War and Peace, 11: 122–24; Tansill, America Goes to War, 465–86, 496–97; for public debate see, Editorial, “Wilson to Senator William B. Stone,” Literary Digest 52 (March 11, 1916): 125–27. 31. Ross Gregory, The Origins of American Intervention in the First World War (New York, 1971); Thomas J. Knock, To End All Wars: Woodrow Wilson and the Quest for a New World Order (New York, 1992); Arno Mayer, Political Origins of the New Diplomacy, 1914–1918 (New Haven, 1959); and idem, The Politics and Diplomacy of Peacemaking: Containment and Counter Revolution at Versailles, 1918– 1919 (New York, 1967); and Levin, Woodrow Wilson and World Politics all of which discuss America’s changing international role. 32. Norman Davies, Europe: A History (New York, 1996), 881–96; B. H. Liddell Hart, History of the First World War (London, 1930), 1–27; Kissinger, Diplomacy, 168–200. 33. Indispensable is Seymour, Intimate Papers, for House’s influence on Wilson; George and George, Woodrow Wilson and Colonel House; Cooper, Warrior and the Priest, 293–96. 34. A useful discussion of House’s role is found in Osgood, Ideals and SelfInterest, 160–63; John Milton Cooper Jr., “The British Response to the House-Grey Memorandum: New Evidence and New Questions,” Journal of American History 59, no. 4 (March 1973): 958–71; Seymour, Intimate Papers, 1: 247–276, 361–467; 2: 43–199. 35. Seymour, Intimate Papers, 1: 405–12; 2: 454. 36. Karl E. Birnbaum, Peace Moves and U-Boat Warfare: Germany’s Policy Toward the United States, April 18, 1916–January 9, 1917 (Stockholm, 1958). 37. Arthur S. Link, Confusion and Crisis, 1915–1916 (Princeton, 1964), 125; Seymour, Intimate Papers, 2: 194–204; John Milton Cooper Jr., Walter Hines Page: The Southerner as American, 1855–1918 (Chapel Hill, 1977), 329–30. 38. Seymour, Intimate Papers, 2: 225–48; Foreign Relations of the United States, 1916, Supplemental: 259–60, for the text. Germany made it clear that its pledge was contingent on Wilson’s gaining Britain’s agreement to lift the food blockade, but this was never entertained seriously at St. James’s. 39. Clark G. Reynolds, Command of the Sea: The History and Strategy of Maritime Empires (New York, 1974), 465; Paul Kennedy, The Rise of the Anglo-German Naval Antagonism, 1860–1914 (Boston, 1980); and P. K. Lundeberg, “The German Naval

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Critique of the U-Boat Campaign, 1915–1918,” Military Affairs 27, no. 3 (1963): 105–18. 40. An interesting look at public opinion is A. Russell Buchanan, “American Editors Examine American War Aims and Plans in April 1917,” Pacific Historical Review 9, no. 3 (1940): 253–65; Osgood, Ideals and Self-Interest, 130–33; for the election see S. D. Lovell, The Presidential Election of 1916 (Carbondale, 1980); David Sarasohn, “The Election of 1916: Realigning the Rockies,” Western Historical Quarterly 2 (July 1980): 285–305; William M. Leary, “Woodrow Wilson, Irish Americans and the Election of 1916,” Journal of American History 54 (1967): 57–72; quotes cited from John West Davidson et al., Nation of Nations: A Narrative History of the American People, 2 vols. (New York, 1990, 2nd ed.), 2: 863. 41. Stephen Gwynn, ed., The Letters of Cecil Spring-Rice, 2 vols. (Boston, 1929), 2: 354–55; one preelection pamphlet reminded American mothers that Wilson had “saved their sons and their husbands from unrighteous battlefields.” 42. John Milton Cooper Jr., “The Command of Gold Revealed: American Loans to Britain, 1915–1917,” Pacific Historical Review 45, no. 2 (1976): 209–30; Burton I. Kaufman, Efficiency and Expansion: Foreign Trade Organization and the Wilson Administration, 1913–1921 (Westport, 1974); Roberta A. Dayer, “Strange Bedfellows: J. P. Morgan Co., Whitehall and the Wilson Administration During World War I,” Business History 18, no. 2 (1976): 127–51; Richard Van Alstyne, “Private American Loans to the Allies, 1914–1916,” Pacific Historical Review 2, no. 2 (1937): 180– 93; Seymour, Intimate Papers, 3: 96–100; Carl P. Parrini, Heir to Empire: United States Economic Diplomacy, 1916–1923 (Pittsburgh, 1969); Michael J. Hogan, Informal Entente: The Private Structure of Anglo-American Economic Diplomacy, 1918–1928 (Columbia, 1977); Bryan quoted in Baker, Woodrow Wilson, 5: 175. 43. Martin J. Sklar, “Woodrow Wilson and the Political Economy of Modern United States Liberalism,” Studies on the Left 1 (1960): 17–47; Grosvenor B. Clarkson, Industrial America in the World War: The Strategy Behind the Lines, 1917–1918 (Boston, 1923); David M. Kennedy, “The Political Economy of World War I,” Reviews in American History 2 (1974): 102–7. 44. David M. Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers (New York, 1987), 27. 45. David M. Kennedy, “War and the American Character,” Stanford Magazine 3 (1975): 1488; Paul A. C. Koistinen, “The Industrial-Military Complex in Historical Perspective: World War I,” Business History Review 41 (1967): 37–63; Frank L. Grubles, The Struggle for Labor Loyalty: Gompers, the AFL and the Pacifists, 1917–1920 (Durham, 1968); Paul W. Glad, “Progressivism and the Business Climate of the 1920s,” Journal of American History 53 (1966): 75–89; John M. Clark, The Cost of the World War to the American People (New Haven, 1931); Robert D. Cuff, The War Industries Board: Business-Government Relations During World War I (Baltimore, 1969); Charles Gilbert, American Financing of World War I (Westport, Conn., 1970); Robert Himmelberg, “The War Industries Board and the Anti-Trust Question in November 1918,” Journal of American History 552 (1967): 387–403; William E. Leuchtenburg, The Perils of Prosperity, 1914–1932 (Chicago, 1958); Charles A. Beard, The Republic (New York, 1962), 29–33. 46. Allan R. Millett and Peter Maslowski, For the Common Defense: A Military History of the United States of America (New York, 1984), 328–60; John K. Ohl, “Hugh S. Johnson and the Draft, 1917–1918,” Prologue (summer 1976): 85–96.

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47. John L. Gaddis, “The Corporatist Synthesis: A Skeptical View,” Diplomatic History 10, no. 4 (fall 1986): 357–62; Michael J. Hogan, “Corporatism: A Positive Appraisal,” Diplomatic History 10, no. 4 (fall 1986): 363–72. 48. Villiard to Wilson, October 1915 as quoted in Kennedy, Over Here, 32–33. 49. See Baker, Woodrow Wilson, 7: 77; Speech in New York, September 9, 1912; Link, Papers of Woodrow Wilson, 25: 124. 50. Kennedy, Over Here, 24; Jonathan M. Nielson, American Historians in War and Peace (Dubuque, 1994), esp. 15–37; Robert D. Ward, “The Origin and Activities of the National Security League, 1914–1919,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review 47 (June 1960): 51–65; H. C. Peterson and Gilbert Fite, Opponents of War, 1917–1918 (Seattle, 1968); Zachariah Chafee Jr., Free Speech in the United States (Cambridge, 1941); William Preston Jr., Aliens and Dissenters: Federal Supression of Radicals, 1903–1933 (New York, 1966); Alexander DeConde, Ethnicity and Race in American Foreign Policy: A History (Boston, 1992), 78–82; John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of Nativism (Princeton, 1963), 200–248; and A. O. Hilton, “Freedom of the Press in Wartime, 1917–1919,” Southwestern Social Science Quarterly 28 (1948): 346–61. 51. Seymour, Intimate Papers, 1: 303–36. 52. Bryan and Bryan, Memoirs, 397, presents the arguments. 53. Gilbert, History of the Twentieth Century, 341–42. 54. As quoted in C. Hartley Grattan, Why We Fight (Indianapolis, 1969), 155– 56, 163–64. 55. George Vireck as quoted in Gregory, Origins of American Intervention, 131. 56. Seymour, Intimate Papers, 2: 205–16; Sir Arthur Hazzlet, Vice Admiral, R.N., The Submarine and Sea Power (London, 1967); Lundeberg, “German Naval Critique”; idem, “Undersea Warfare and Allied Strategy in World War I,” The Smithsonian Journal of History 1, no. 3 (fall 1960): 1–30, and no. 4 (Winter 1967): 49–72; David F. Trask, Captains and Cabinets: Anglo-American Naval Relations 1917–1918 (Columbia, 1972); Robert M. Grant, U-Boats Destroyed: The Effects of AntiSubmarine Warfare, 1914–1918 (London, 1964); Seymour, American Neutrality, 1– 11, 168–71; Arthur J. Marder, “The Lessons of History on Sea Power: The Royal Navy and the Lessons of 1914–1918,” Pacific Historical Review 41, no. 4 (1971): 413–43; Osgood, Ideals and Self-Interest, 182–88, 191–92, 229–34. 57. Walter Hines Page to Wilson as quoted in Gilbert, History of the Twentieth Century, 459–60. 58. Osgood, Ideals and Self-Interest, 192. 59. Smith, Robert Lansing and American Neutrality; idem, “National Interest and American Intervention, 1917,” Historiographical Appraisal 52, no. 1 (June 1965): 5– 24; and Osgood, Ideals and Self-Interest, 163–68. 60. Seymour, Intimate Papers, 3: 149–51; and K. H. Jarausch, The Enigmatic Chancellor: Bethmann-Hollweg and the Hubris of Imperial Germany (New Haven, 1969). 61. Quoted in Liddell Hart, History of the First World War, esp. chaps. 7–8; Gilbert, A History, 433–81; Seymour, Intimate Papers, 3: 437–39; and William H. McNeill, The Pursuit of Power: Technology, Armed Force and Society Since A.D.1000 (Chicago, 1982), 317–345. 62. K. Hardach, The First World War, 1914–1918 (London, 1977); J. Kocka, Facing Total War: German Society 1914–1918 (Leamington Spa, Eng., 1984), chaps. 2–4; J.

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Williams, The Home Fronts: Britain, France, and Germany, 1914–1918 (London, 1965); and A. J. Ryder, The German Revolution of 1918 (Cambridge, Mass., 1967). 63. George T. Blakey, Historians on the Homefront: American Propagandists for the Great War (Lexington, Ky., 1970); Carol Gruber, Mars and Minerva: World War I and the Uses of Higher Learning in America (Baton Rouge, 1975); Nielson, American Historians in War and Peace, chaps. 1–2; Donald Johnson, The Challenge to American Freedoms: World War I and the Rise of the American Civil Liberties Union (Lexington, Ky., 1963); Timothy J. Lyons, “Hollywood and World War I, 1914–1918,” Journal of Popular Film 1 (1972): 15–30; H. C. Peterson, Propaganda for War: The Campaign Against American Neutrality, 1914–1917 (Port Washington, N.Y., 1961); and Robert D. Ward “The Origin and Activities of the National Security League, 1914–1917,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review 47 (1960): 51–65. 64. See House to Wilson, London, February 15, 1915 as quoted in Seymour, Intimate Papers, 2: 289–91; Gilbert, A History, 353–54, 435. 65. House to Wilson, February 10, 1917, as quoted in Seymour, Intimate Papers, 2: 445–46; Geoffrey Barraclough, The Origins of Modern Germany (New York, 1963), 436–39. 66. Seymour, Intimate Papers, 3: 58–59, 365; idem, Northcliffe to David Lloyd George, August 15, 1917, 3: 141; the Northcliffe Mission, 3: 84–95; Alfred Erich Senn, The Russian Revolution in Switzerland, 1914–1917 (Madison, 1971), for German intrigue and Lenin. 67. Barbara Tuchman, The Zimmermann Telegram (New York, 1966); Link, Papers of Woodrow Wilson, 41: 519–27; Carol Resek, ed., War and the Intellectuals: Essays by Randolf Bourne, 1915–1919 (New York, 1964); George H. Knowles, “American Intellectuals and World War I,” Pacific Northwest Quarterly 59 (October 1968); Joseph Ratner, ed., Character and Events: Popular Essays in the Social and Political Philosophy of John Dewey, 2 vols. (New York, 1929), 2: 560–70; Kennedy, Over Here, 48–92; J. A. Thompson, “American Progressive Publicists in the First World War, 1914–1917,” Journal of American History 58, no. 2 (1971): 364–83. 68. Cooper, Warrior and the Priest, 298–99; Peterson and Fite, Opponents of War; Alex M. Arnett, Claude Kitchen and the Wilson War Policies (Boston, 1937); and Hanna G. Josephson, Jeanette Rankin, First Lady in Congress: A Biography (Indianapolis, 1974). 69. Seward W. Livermore, Politics Is Adjourned: Woodrow Wilson and the War Congress, 1916–1918 (Middleton, 1966); speech by Norris and other opponents of intervention found in the war debate, Congressional Record, 65th Cong., 1st Sess., April 3–6, 1917. 70. For the AEF combat operations in 1918 and their impact on the end of the war see, for example, Kennedy, Over Here, 144–90; Millett and Maslowski, For the Common Defense, 350–58; and Edward M. Coffman, The War to End all Wars: The American Military Experience in World War I (New York, 1968); David Bellows, “A Marine at the Front,” American History Illustrated (February 1971): 30–42 provides a gripping first-hand account. 71. For the French mutinies of May-July 1917, which came at the same time as the Russian military collapse in the East and the Austrian breakthrough in Italy, see Liddell Hart, History of the First World War, 302–4; Theodore Ropp, War in the Modern World (New York, 1962), 239–74, with excellent analysis and sources.

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72. Seymour, Intimate Papers, 1: 338, 342, 370–91; 2: 7, 422–35, 448–50; David S. Patterson, “Woodrow Wilson and the Mediation Movement, 1914–1917,” The Historian 33 no. 4 (1971): 535–56; Cooper, “The British Response to the HouseGrey Memorandum,” 958–71; Sterling Kernek, “The British Government’s Reaction to President Wilson’s ‘Peace Note’ of December 1916,” Historical Journal 13, no. 4 (1970): 721–66; Gaddis Smith, “The Ghost of Woodrow Wilson,” in Morality, Reason and Power: American Diplomacy in the Carter Years (New York, 1986); 12–18; Link, Wilson: Revolution, War, and Peace, chap. 4 (82–86); cf. Arno Mayer, Wilson vs. Lenin: Political Origins of the New Diplomacy, 1917–1918 (Cleveland, 1964); chap. 9 and Epilogue; and Levin, Woodrow Wilson and World Politics, Introduction and Part 1; and Robert Dalleck, The American Style of Foreign Policy: Cultural Politics in Foreign Affairs (New York, 1983), 62–91 (esp. 76–85); Link, Wilson and the Progressive Era, 1910–1917 (New York, 1954), 160–69, 174–90, 197– 205, and idem, Wilson and the Struggle for Neutrality (Princeton, 1960), chap. 7, 10–13 and 17–19, and idem, Wilson and the Campaigns for Progressivism and Peace, 1916–1917 (Princeton, 1965), chap. 5. 73. For an interesting adjunct to such speculation, see Robert L. Messer, “Paths Not Taken: The US Department of State and Alternatives to Containment, 1945– 1946,” Diplomatic History 1, no. 4 (fall 1977): 297–319. 74. Elizabeth Wickersham, “The Origin of Fascism,” History Today (December 1967); and for an excellent overview, see Edward Hallett Carr, The Twenty Years Crisis, 1919–1939 (London, 1939). 75. For a general discussion of these alternatives and the issues Wilson grappled with see, for example, Jeffrey J. Stafford, Wilsonian Maritime Diplomacy, 1913– 1921 (New Brunswick, 1978); William C. Redfield, “America’s International Trade as Affected by the European War,” Annals 60 (1915); Thomas A. Bailey, “The United States and the Blacklist During the Great War,” Journal of Military History 6, no. 1 (1934): 14–35 and idem, The Policy of the United States Towards Neutrals, 1817–1918 (New York, 1965); Robert D. Schulzinger, American Diplomacy in the Twentieth Century, 2nd ed. (New York, 1990), esp. 62–82, 82–103; Ruhl Bartlett, Policy and Power: Two Centuries of American Foreign Relations (New York, 1983), 137–62 (esp. 142–47); Julius W. Pratt, “The British Blockade and American Precedent,” United States Naval Institute Proceedings 46, no. 11 (1920): 1789–1802; Carleton Savage, “Policy of the United States Toward Maritime Commerce in War, 2 vols. (Washington, D.C., 1934), 2; Marion C. Siney, Allied Blockade of Germany, 1914–1916 (Ann Arbor, 1957); John M. Clark, The Cost of the World War to the American People (Washington, D.C., Carnegie Endowment for Peace, 1931). For the Nye Committee testimony and its influence, see John E. Wiltz, In Search of Peace: The Senate Munitions Inquiry, 1934–36 (Baton Rouge, La., 1963), 20–25, 224–31. 76. Robert A. Lansing, “The War of Self-Defense,” Committee on Public Information Pamphlet reproduced in Current History 6 (July-September 1917): 455–59; Nye Committee Report in 79th Cong., 2nd Sess., no. 944, Pt. 3 (Washington, D.C., 1936), 1–4, 7–8; Gordon A. Craig, “No More Parades,” New York Review of Books (April 20, 1995), 9. 77. For Wilson’s views, see for example, Robert Dalleck, “Hail to the Chief”: The Making and Unmaking of American Presidents (New York, 1996); 15–18; Wilson, Messages and Papers, 1: 372–83, 777; 2: 815, 822, 1086; Baker and Dodd, Private

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Papers, 2: 294; Commencement Address to Naval Academy Graduates, June 5, 1914 in Link, Papers of Woodrow Wilson, 29: 4; 30: 146; 31: 422–23; 35: 295–97; idem, Address at the United States Military Academy at West Point, June 13, 1916, 37; 212ff.; idem, Address Before the League to Enforce Peace, May 27, 1916, 37: 113ff. 78. Calhoun, “Power and Principle,” 250–67 and idem, Uses of Force, 1–10; Lloyd C. Gardner, A Covenant with Power: America and World War Order from Wilson to Reagan (New York, 1984), esp. 3–27. 79. Kissinger, Diplomacy, discusses how Wilson defined “foreign” very differently than did President George Washington: 475–78; see also, Norman A. Graebner, America as a World Power: A Realist Approach from Wilson to Reagan (Wilmington, Del., 1984), 13–28. 80. Dewey, “In a Time of National Hesitation,” Seven Arts 2 (1917): 5–6. 81. Nielson, American Historians in War and Peace, 40. 82. Richard Hofstadter, The Age of Reform (New York, 1955), excerpted in Arthur Mann, ed., The Progressive Era (Hinsdale, Ill., 1975), 170–74. 83. Frederic Maitland, as quoted in Schlesinger, Cycles of American History, 216. 84. Ronald Steel, “The Domestic Care of Foreign Policy,” Atlantic Monthly (June 1995): 85–92; and one only needs survey the scholarly articles found periodically in Foreign Affairs, The National Interest, Foreign Policy, and publications of the Foreign Policy Institute to appreciate the ongoing debate. 85. Robert J. McMahon, “Making Sense of American Foreign Policy During the Reagan Years,” Diplomatic History 19, no. 2 (spring 1995): 67–84; and Dalleck, “Hail to the Chief,” 66–68. 86. “The Schlesinger Poll” taken annually between 1948 to 1996, see A. M. Schlesinger Jr., “The Ultimate Approval Rating,” New York Times Magazine, December 1996, 46–51; Wilson consistently ranks fourth or fifth. 87. Kennan, American Diplomacy, 63–64. 88. Graham and Borden, “1917, What if . . . ,” 117; The Moral Dimensions of International Conduct, The Jesuit Lectures: 1982 (Washington, D.C., 1983), esp. 85– 103; Robert Kagan, “The Benevolent Empire,” Foreign Policy (summer 1998): 24– 35; Robert Maynes, “The Perils of and for an Impartial America,” Foreign Policy (summer 1998): 36–48. 89. As quoted in Gilbert, A History of the Twentieth Century, 535. 90. See G. John Ikenberry, “Why Export Democracy,” Wilson Quarterly 56 (spring 1999): 56–65.

3 Lost Opportunities: The Diplomacy of the 1930s B. J. C. McKercher

As Europe is our market for trade, we ought to form no partial connection with any part of it. It is the true interest of America to steer clear of European connections. —Tom Paine, 17761

Isolationism as an element in American foreign policy in the 1930s, the period between the Wall Street crash of October 1929 and the beginning of World War II in Europe in 1939, is a complex question.2 George Washington’s 1796 valedictory caution to his countrymen to avoid entangling alliances had been accepted subsequently by American public opinion and politicians as almost divine inspiration. Accordingly, between 1796 and 1930, no U.S. government had concluded an alliance with any other power or group of powers. Indeed, after American entry into the Great War in April 1917, President Woodrow Wilson’s administration styled the United States as a power “associated” with the anti–Central Power Allied alliance; in October 1919, the Senate prevented American membership in the League of Nations, the new international organization designed to preserve international peace and security; and in both the 1920s and 1930s, Congress blocked successive presidential attempts to have the United States join the World Court.3 In the interwar period, and especially in the 1930s, the majority of Americans represented by their congressmen and senators, and with powerful isolationist groups and newspaper organizations in the background, not only genuflected to the

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tradition of isolationism; they also seemed to demand that their government keep their country cocooned from Great Power machinations outside the Western Hemisphere.4 Thus, the two presidents of the decade— the Republican, Herbert Hoover (1929–1933), and the Democrat, Franklin Roosevelt (1933–1945)—refused to involve their administrations in resolving the political crises in Europe and the Far East that distinguished those ten years. Indeed, after 1935, Congress passed a series of neutrality laws designed to prevent the Roosevelt administration from pursuing interventionist diplomacy abroad. Like their forbearers since at least the seventeenth century, interwar Americans on the whole saw themselves as a breed apart from the rest of the world, especially old Europe.5 The United States had supposedly developed as a bastion of democratic republican ideals, the one place in the world where those ideals had been put fully into practice, and where the rebarbative elements of the Old World—class differences, tyrannical governance, and colonialism—had been kept at bay. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness constituted the right of all Americans, and political connections to the old world, whether by membership in the League, formal alliance, or undertaking needless foreign adventures, could only undermine those pursuits. Modifying Tom Paine’s famous phrase to fit the 1930s, one could say that most Americans in that decade saw the world as their market for trade, and they ought to form no partial connection with any part of it; they should stay clear of international connections. Naturally, by the 1930s, transforming these ideals into practical politics had demonstrated to many foreigners and some Americans a certain American hypocrisy.6 The Civil War of 1861–1865 had shown both Americans and the wider world that the United States was not immune to bloody warfare. A class structure had existed in the United States since its birth, and its divisions had become strikingly apparent during the massive demographic and economic growth of the country in the period after 1850. Most crucially, pre-1917 wars with Mexico and Spain, American desires to expand markets in Japan and China, and American annexations of territory in the Caribbean, Panama, and the Pacific Ocean were obviously the actions of an “imperial” power. Most Americans could never equate their acquisition of overseas holdings with European “colonialism” although a minority of contemporary American academics and others were beginning to argue that this was the case. Of course, strict isolation was impossible in the 1930s. At particular times before, American leaders had been unafraid to involve the United States in foreign wars to protect American national interests. The Spanish American War and American intervention in the Great War come quickly to mind. Before and after 1930, American governments also signed treaties that regulated international trade and commerce; they

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established formal diplomatic relations with most other powers great and small; and they permitted an observer mission at the League headquarters in Geneva.7 Hoover and Roosevelt also governed a capitalist state with an economy whose constituent financial, industrial, and agricultural sectors saw overseas markets and investment as essential to their survival during the international economic crisis spawned by the Great Depression. Hence, Washington pursued an aggressive economic diplomacy that sought to entrench American financial and trading interests in Canada, Latin America, Europe, the Middle East, and the Far East.8 Because American lenders had contracted war loans to Britain, France, and their allies between 1914 and 1918, and peacetime loans to defeated Germany in the 1920s, the American government found itself forced in the 1930s to involve itself in the process by which these various loans were to be paid back.9 For reasons devolving from a desire to retrench and the pressures of public opinion, American governments in the 1930s—as they had in the 1920s—involved themselves in a series of international arms limitation conferences; this even included participation in the League-sponsored World Disarmament Conference that convened in February 1932 after six years of preparatory diplomacy.10 Not surprisingly, the political and economic strands of American foreign policy sometimes intertwined. Through American reconstruction loans made to Germany in the 1920s, the war debt issue was connected with the health of the German economy and the ability of Germany to pay reparations to its former enemies. And American firms competed with firms from the other Great Powers over air routes, cables, access to raw materials like oil and rubber, and more.11 Still, as the 1930s began, political isolationism—keeping the United States aloof from the swirl of Great Power politics outside of the Western Hemisphere—remained as strong as ever in the United States. The American government argued that it had no business enmeshing itself in international politics unless trade and financial questions were involved, something that vigilant isolationist politicians like Senator William Borah of Idaho, Senator Hiram Johnson of California, and others worked to ensure. Given that American foreign policy is almost always shaped by the vagaries of domestic political rather than external considerations, a function of constitutional checks imposed on the president’s ability to conduct foreign policy, congressional isolationism constrained White House diplomacy throughout the 1930s. Not surprisingly, on the three major issues that preoccupied the other Great Powers in the 1930s—war debts and reparations, arms limitation, and the maintenance of international peace and security—neither the Hoover nor the Roosevelt administrations offered what could most charitably be called constructive policies. When the Wall Street collapse ushered in the Great Depression in the

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Americas, Europe, and the Far East, the war debt and reparations agreements hammered out in the 1920s crumbled; indeed, the final revision of German debts, the Young Plan, was endorsed at a conference at the Hague in January 1930 just as the financial crisis in the United States spread abroad. By mid-1931, with Germany’s industry and trade savaged by depressed prices and high employment, the German government could no longer pay reparations to the former Allies nor honor its debts to American lenders. This produced a chain reaction in that the former Allies, chiefly Britain, France, and Italy, as well as lesser powers like Belgium, could not pay their war debts to the United States. By the Hague agreements, German transfers to these powers were reduced, although they covered these powers’ annual “outpayments,” their war debt payments to the United States. In this way, the European powers connected war debts and reparations. But because of pressures from Congress and Wall Street, Hoover’s administration did not recognize this connection. When a central agency, the Bank of International Settlements, was established after the Hague conference to receive and distribute reparations, the American government refused to join. As Henry Stimson, Hoover’s secretary of state, observed: “We should have drifted into the position of debt-collector against Germany and that would have gone far to prevent any reconciliation between this country and her.”12 And despite the added financial stress that paying war debts to the United States entailed, Hoover could not entertain debt reductions. Congress’s opposition would be immediate, a revised agreement would meet the same fate as the Treaty of Versailles, and ratification of White House– sponsored domestic legislation would be threatened.13 To prevent the breakdown of the war debt agreements, Hoover took the initiative in June 1931 of announcing a proposal for a one-year moratorium on all intergovernmental debts.14 He surmised that this would allow the European powers some breathing space both before an anticipated up-turn in international trade and after a reduction in arms spending (resulting from the impending World Disarmament Conference) provided adequate public monies to continue debt payments. But by December 1932, when payments were to resume, the war debt–reparations crisis had not abated, the grip of the Depression had not lessened, and the Disarmament Conference was foundering. All Hoover and Stimson did was to promote the convening of a World Economic Conference which, though there would be no discussion of war debts and reparations, might examine other pressing issues such as “commodity prices, international exchange, trade impediments and kindred subjects.”15 Stimson had two conditions. The British had to issue invitations to the conference; and the conference had to meet after Hoover’s anticipated reelection in November 1932. But Roosevelt won the election. Although the new administration agreed to participate in the World Economic

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Conference, which met in London in June-July 1933, Roosevelt effectively destroyed any possibility of American cooperation with the other powers when, on July 2, he forced the American delegation to rescind an agreement it had made with the British on currency stabilization, an agreement the basis of which Roosevelt had suggested.16 Bowing to domestic pressures, the president indicated that he deprecated the conference making any decisions that would impinge on the domestic policies of his government. Roosevelt’s action had a direct impact on war debts. In July 1932, at Lausanne, the powers to which Germany owed reparations agreed to annul German reparations and repudiate intergovernmental debt among the participants. However, because the European powers refused to divorce war debts from reparations, the agreement remained provisional, hinging on Washington’s willingness to suspend intergovernmental debts owed the United States. In December 1932, all the powers except Britain and Finland refused to resume debt payments. With Roosevelt’s concurrence, the British made token payments until December 1933, all the while lobbying for cancellation. When American legal authorities ruled in early 1934 that token payments equaled default, the British refused to pay more. More concerned with the domestic economy—so important to his political existence—Roosevelt did nothing; the whole system of war debt payments collapsed. Playing on the notion of perfidious foreigners, Senator Johnson secured passage of a bill that prevented borrowing in the United States by powers that had defaulted on their debts.17 The divide between the United States and the major European powers, especially Britain, widened. Concurrent with the war debt–reparations question was the diplomacy surrounding arms control. In the 1920s, the success of international efforts to restrict armed forces had been mixed. An American-sponsored conference in Washington in 1921–1922 had seen the limitation of aircraft carriers and capital ships, those over 10,000 tons like battleships—the naval treaty was tied to a four-power agreement affirming the postwar status quo in the Pacific Ocean and a nine-power treaty guaranteeing the sovereignty of China. Naval limitation was fixed in a building ratio for Britain, the United States, and Japan, the major naval powers, of, respectively, 5:5:3. The Japanese accepted the lower figure in exchange for a British pledge to fortify no naval bases east of Singapore and an American one to fortify no bases west of Pearl Harbor. In late 1925, following successful British, French, German, and Italian negotiation of the Locarno Treaty, an agreement that brought security to Western Europe, the League formed a commission to prepare for a World Disarmament Conference. The Preparatory Commission began deliberating in March 1926, but it soon bogged down because of the different security requirements of land-based powers, led by France and its Eastern European allies, and

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maritime ones, led by Britain, the United States, and Japan. To steal a march on the League, another American-sponsored naval conference, called by President Calvin Coolidge, met in Geneva in the summer of 1927. Its purpose entailed limiting warships below 10,000 tons, especially cruisers, the chief weapon for attacking and defending seaborne lines of communication. But the conference failed when Britain refused to concede cruiser parity to the United States—cruisers were essential for British national and Imperial defense and for Britain being able to honor its commitment to the League to enforce economic sanctions against any transgressors of peace via naval blockade. This deadlock was broken in 1930 at the London Naval conference, in large part because Hoover and Stimson realized that cooperation with the British was the only way to achieve naval arms limitation.18 Thus, the London naval treaty extended the Washington treaty until the end of 1936, while the Preparatory Commission labored to devise a general draft disarmament treaty that could serve as the basis of negotiations at the World Conference. When changes in the government in Paris in 1931 produced a softening of the French position, a draft treaty emerged from the Preparatory Commission; the World Disarmament Conference was scheduled to open in February 1932. Like the negotiations within the Preparatory Commission, the main conference witnessed the emergence of a stalemate that delayed acceptance of the draft treaty.19 A newer French government wanted additional security guarantees against the possibility of a revived Germany; chafing at the restrictions that the Treaty of Versailles had placed on their armed forces (a 100,000 man army, with no conscription, a small navy, and no air force), the Germans demanded “equality of treatment” within the eventual disarmament treaty. Concerned about this deadlock, which might have an impact on war debts once the “Hoover moratorium” ended late in the year, Hoover suddenly announced a disarmament plan in June: all armies to be reduced by one-third; the Washington treaty number and class tonnages of battleships, plus submarines, to be cut by one-third; those of aircraft carriers, cruisers, and destroyers by onequarter; and a complete prohibition of bombers, chemical and bacteriological weapons, large mobile guns, and armor.20 The desperate action of a leader who faced the voters in four months, the Hoover plan could satisfy American defensive needs: the United States had a small army, a minuscule air force, and adequate naval forces to patrol the oceans that separated the United States from potential invaders. However, Hoover’s proposals failed to take into account the strategic requirements of the other Great Powers. These powers rejected this plan,21 and the conference sputtered onward. After this debacle, Hoover’s government simply sat back and let the European powers negotiate amongs themselves, a situation aided by the impending presidential election. When Roosevelt took office, he continued this policy of doing nothing. He was more

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anxious about meeting the domestic financial and economic crisis created by the Depression. All he did was to issue a statement in May 1933 that his government would allow the other major powers to take the initiative in arms control, his only suggestion being that “all the nations of the world should enter into a solemn and definite pact of non-aggression.”22 He failed to elaborate and, as disarmament discussions had shown since 1926, security pacts needed to be supported by more than words. The World Conference lasted until June 1934 when, following the withdrawal of Nazi Germany in October 1933, the chance for a general disarmament agreement was recognized to have disappeared. Although the European powers began to rearm in 1934,23 there was still an opportunity for further naval arms limitation. The 1930 London naval treaty had bound its signatories to attend a future meeting to extend the Washington naval system. Accordingly, the second London naval conference convened from December 1935 to February 1936.24 It ended in failure because of Japanese insistence on full naval equality with Britain and the United States and American resistance to this demand. Preliminary negotiations held by the three powers for more than a year prior to December 1935 suggested that the conference would falter over this deadlock. After meetings in London between October and December 1934, the British had suggested a compromise whereby each power would make a “unilateral declaration as to its building programme over a fixed period of years.”25 These were to be justified in terms of the “sense of security” necessary for self-defense. British diplomatists reckoned that unless some sort of agreement was reached, the Japanese would use the excuse of the end of naval limitation to build the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) up to or beyond the strength of either the Royal Navy (RN) or the United States Navy (USN). Neither Washington nor Tokyo would budge, especially the Roosevelt administration, which would not formally agree to Japanese naval expansion.26 Once the conference opened, compromise proved impossible; the Japanese withdrew on January 15, 1936. While Japan’s withdrawal destroyed any possibility of quantitative limitation, it opened the way for an Anglo-American agreement initialed on March 25: annual proclamations of building programs; capital ship displacement fixed at 35,000 tons, with gun calibers reduced from sixteen to fourteen inches contingent upon Japanese—and, later, Italian—acquiescence; aircraft carriers limited to 23,000 tons; cruisers exceeding 10,000 tons banned until December 31, 1942; prototype vessels between 10,000 and 17,500 tons prohibited; and an escalator clause “in case of war” or should building occur “outside the qualitative limits by non-contracting Powers.”27 Still, the result was Japan’s withdrawal from the regime of naval arms limitation and the end of any pretense of naval arms limitation. While the British began to strengthen their naval forces, the Roosevelt administration did nothing for more

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than two years in order to save public funds. Only after 1937, because of the worsening international situation, did the Americans begin to build up their fleet.28 By that time, the United States had fallen behind both the British and Japanese in naval construction. The response of both the Republican and Democratic administrations to the threats to international peace and security in the 1930s was also constrained by isolationism. In this sense, the official American attitude concerning this issue throughout the decade was defined in January 1932, when the Hoover administration responded to Japan’s invasion of China. Four months earlier, in September 1931, the Kwantung army, the military arm of Japan’s colonial government in Korea, had suddenly attacked the Chinese province of Manchuria; without the concurrence of the civilian cabinet in Tokyo, Kwantung leaders had acted to incorporate this raw material rich and industrially developed region into the Japanese empire. The other Great Powers, especially Britain, decided that military intervention would not dislodge the Japanese from their conquest.29 Moreover, wanting stability in the region, the better to protect their own imperial and trading interests, they looked for a modus vivendi with Japan. Because of Chinese pressures, the League sent a commission of enquiry to the Far East to investigate and report on the situation; and the Hoover administration agreed that an American, General Frank McCoy, could serve as a commissioner. However, while it lacked the will and naval and military resources to confront Japan, Washington greeted Japan’s action with decided distaste. On January 7, 1932, therefore, Stimson announced that the United States would not recognize “the legality of any situation de facto, nor does it intend to recognize any treaty or agreement entered into between those Governments, or agents thereof, which may impair the treaty rights of the United States or its citizens in China . . . and that it does not intend to recognise any situation, treaty or agreement which may be brought about by means contrary to [existing] covenants and obligations.”30 The Stimson doctrine—the doctrine of nonrecognition—set the tone for subsequent American diplomatic responses to the aggressive policies of Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and militaristic Japan in the 1930s. American diplomatists recognized the threats to international security posed by the totalitarian powers. For a variety of reasons, however, neither Republican-controlled nor Democratic-controlled Washington pursued what can be labeled forward foreign policy strategies to meet totalitarian ambitions. Forward policies can best be defined as those requiring active intervention in Great Power politics to counter perceived threats either unilaterally or by working with other powers sharing the same concern; in each case, diplomatic pressure, economic sanctions, or military confrontation might be employed to resist those powers threatening the international order. The tradition of isolationism, the strength of isola-

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tionist organizations, politicians, and newspapers, and American exceptionalism united to stymie forward policies.31 Added to this attitude was a belief shared by even Roosevelt that the international crises of the decade were as much the responsibility of Great Britain and France as they were those of the Germans, Italians, and Japanese.32 And, finally, despite foreign policy strategies designed in Berlin, Rome, and Tokyo to restructure the international order in their favor in Europe and the Far East, American leaders generally saw little immediate threat to U.S. foreign markets and national security. For instance, in the Western Hemisphere, particularly in Latin America, the American government and American business and trading efforts successfully resisted German economic and political penetration to maintain U.S. hegemony in the region.33 Perhaps the best example of this determination to avoid forward American foreign policies after the enunciation of the Stimson doctrine came in the autumn of 1935. Misjudging the willingness of Britain and France to acquiesce in the expansion of Italy’s East African empire (Italy had joined Britain and France in April 1935 in a loose agreement to contain German expansive tendencies in Europe), Benito Mussolini, the Italian dicator, ordered the military conquest of Abyssinia. Working within the League, the British and French endeavored to pressure the Italians to withdraw.34 The League accordingly prepared to impose economic sanctions against Italy, especially an embargo of petroleum since Italy was a net importer of this crucial industrial commodity. But League sanctions would not be effective without the support of the United States, the world’s leading producer of petroleum. Several times between midOctober and early December, the British foreign secretary, Sir Samuel Hoare, sought American cooperation with the League. Each time he was rebuffed.35 To bring stability to East Africa and to save their anti-German arrangement with Italy, Hoare and the French foreign minister, Pierre Laval, concluded a secret plan to give Mussolini control of seven-eighths of Abyssinia and allow the Abyssinian emperor to control a rump state with access to the sea.36 This plan faltered when it was disclosed prematurely. Hoare and Laval were both forced to resign. Anglo-Italian relations soured when Hoare’s successor, Sir Anthony Eden, adopted a hard line against Rome. And, after Abyssinia fell to the Italians in May 1936, Mussolini began a process of aligning with Germany on the continent. Just before this crisis, Roosevelt told Robert Bingham, his ambassador in London: “Many years ago I came to the reluctant conclusion that it is a mistake to make advances to the British Government; practical results can be accomplished only when they make the advances themselves.”37 These words were disingenuous. The Germans, the French, and especially the British had sought to work with the Americans over a range of issues since the success of the 1930 London naval conference: over the World Disarmament Conference, war debts and reparations, the World

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Economic Conference, the Manchurian crisis, Abyssinia, and more. Each time, the Hoover and Roosevelt administrations had avoided cooperation. The reason lay with the strength of domestic isolationist opinion, something given tangible expression in the neutrality laws. Even when Japan began new military operations against China after July 1937 and European war broke out between Nazi Germany, on one side, and Britain and France, on the other, in September 1939, the American government did everything possible to avoid close cooperation with the antitotalitarian powers. Over China, Roosevelt and his secretary of state, Cordell Hull, told the British that they would pursue “parallel” rather than cooperative actions to achieve stability.38 But parallel action did not include armed intervention and, as totalitarian vigor showed, only forward policies were going to allow for effective resistance to their zeal. Admittedly, Roosevelt’s administration aided Britain and France economically after September 1939—loosening the strictures of the Johnson Act and the neutrality laws.39 But it took the near defeat of Britain after June 1940, when France fell before the German onslaught, for Washington to support Britain by forward policies over the opposition of domestic isolationists.40 The question, therefore, arises: might U.S. foreign policy in the 1930s have altered the course of international politics had American leaders been able to overcome the strictures of political isolationism when confronting the dilemmas posed by war debts and reparations, arms limitation, and security problems? The simple answer is yes. Concerning war debts and reparations, little doubt exists that American determination to collect war debts in the three years after the 1930 Hague conference blocked a resolution of these intertwined problems; most important, this determination was concurrent with the Great Depression ravaging international trade, despoiling industrial economies globally, and, with the advent of high unemployment, witnessing the advent of widespread political extremism in Germany to meet the crisis. In this context, if American policy had endorsed cancellation, the German question would have evolved differently before early 1933. This is because cancellation would have helped undermine the electoral appeal of the National Socialist German Workers Party—the Nazi Party—in German political life. Since the Nazis were making great political capital out of attacking reparations even before the Hague conference, cancellation would have done much to prevent the rise to power of its leader Adolf Hitler, in January 1933. Without Hitler, the course of German foreign policy for the remainder of the decade would have been fundamentally different. In the early 1930s, the Great Depression ravaged the German economy, destabilizing its currency and external trade, precipitating mass unemployment, and necessitating government retrenchment that undermined social policies like poor relief. Tied to widespread German resentment

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about the supposed harshness of the Treaty of Versailles, domestic German politics polarized between radical parties on the left and right. In a series of elections held between March 1930 and November 1932, the Nazi Party emerged as a force to be reckoned with: in general elections in September 1930, July 1932, and November 1932, it received, respectively, 18.3, 37.4, and 33.1 percent of the votes cast.41 Significantly, the Nazi vote peaked in July 1932, when Hitler lost the presidential election to the incumbent, Paul von Hindenburg. Nonetheless, a large element in Hitler’s appeal to German voters lay in his public denunciation of reparations forced on Germany in 1919.42 The outflow of German public money to Germany’s former enemies, and at the moment when the German economy was in dire straits, created great resentment among the German people that Hitler and other radical nationalists exploited. If American policy had been unaffected by isolationism, there were two chances in the early 1930s that might have resolved the war debts and reparations question and undermined Nazi electoral appeal. The first was in June 1931. Hoover and Stimson recognized the parlous state of the German economy—and its succor of political extremism—by MayJune 1931.43 This recognition led to the moratorium. But if, instead of a postponement of intergovernmental debt payments, there had been a bold policy of full repudiation by Washington, the appeal of the Nazi Party among German voters would have been lessened. The decline in the Nazi vote in the two elections in 1932, plus Hitler’s loss to Hindenburg in the presidential vote, shows that the Nazis were losing electoral appeal. Moreover, the reparations question also existed as an issue that Hitler used to advance his political fortunes against other German politicians. For instance, in January 1932, he rejected attempts by the then chancellor, Heinrich Bru¨ ning, to delay the presidential elections scheduled for the summer until the reparations and arms limitation questions could be solved.44 His purpose was to weaken Bru¨ ning who, despite preparing for what became the Lausanne conference, supported making reparations payments. If Hoover’s moratorium had been Hoover’s cancellation, the Nazi leader would have lost a powerful weapon in his political armory before Germany’s critical political year of 1932 began. But even with the moratorium in place—it was to lapse in June 1932 and payments to resume in December—a second opportunity for American repudiation of intergovernmental debts presented itself. The Lausanne conference in July showed the impact that the Great Depression had on France, the leading anti-German European Great Power that had always demanded the full payment of reparations. Thanks to pressures from the British chancellor of the exchequer, Sir Neville Chamberlain, Paris was persuaded by July 1932 that a hard line over reparations only exacerbated Germany’s domestic economic and political dilemma and prolonged the economic crisis in Europe.45 After careful and prudent

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study of the issue, the delegates at Lausanne agreed to collect only enough reparations to meet their outpayments to the Americans and, if the Americans agreed to cancel all war debts, all reparations payments would be cancelled as well. Coming at the same time as Germany’s combined general and presidential elections, Lausanne was a signal achievement for British economic diplomacy. It cannot be doubted that if the Hoover administration had immediately agreed to transform the moratorium into a cancellation, and then trumpeted the decision as a central element of international economic reconstruction, the Nazi Party vote in November would have declined even further than it did. And Hitler would have been in a much weaker position during the political crisis that ensued after November and led to his rise to the German chancellorship on January 30, 1933. In the same way, if American arms limitation policies had been free of the restraints of isolationism, the quest for international security could have been made easier. The issue of arms limitation had two dimensions: policy concerning the World Disarmament Conference that, in spite of its name, largely concerned the search for stability in Europe; and policy concerning naval arms limitation that, tied to the balance of power in the western Pacific Ocean, involved the extension of the London naval treaty. Of course, some isolationist opinion in the United States was opposed to formal American participation in any kind of international negotiations. Added to this, beginning in 1934, an isolationist senator, Gerald Nye, launched an investigation into the American arms and munitions industry. With contemporaneous best-seller books with evocative titles like the Merchants of Death, Nye’s committee charged, but failed to prove, that Woodrow Wilson’s administration entered World War I— Europe’s war—to safeguard its Allied loans.46 Yet, the impact of isolationism on American arms limitation policies in the period before late 1935, when it was clear that both the World Disarmament Conference and the Washington and London systems of naval limitation were dead, had little to do with pressures from domestic American isolationists. It came, instead, from the impact of the geographical isolation of the United States on American leaders. Protected from direct attack by wide oceans and weak neighbors, and reflecting American exceptionalism, the Hoover and Roosevelt administrations failed to appreciate the strategic difficulties faced by powers lacking those two luxuries.47 Although both Hoover and Roosevelt could never have forced the European Great Powers to undertake massive arms cuts, each had an opportunity to direct the World Disarmament Conference onto the track of productive talks. By June 1932, the first four-month session of the conference ended without results because of a renewed call by the French for security before they disarmed and the German desire for “equality of treatment” by the other powers.48 French demands were simply a

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repetition of the arguments they had made to the Preparatory Commission before mid-1931. Germany’s effort centered on getting around the inequalities forced on them by disarmament provisions of Versailles: a 100,000 man army with no conscription, a small navy, and no air force. Hoover’s response to the impasse was his disarmament plan in June 1932: a laudable but unrealistic attempt to differentiate between defensive and offensive weapons. Arbitrary cuts to the other Great Powers’ land, sea, and air forces, however, plus the prohibition of specific classes of weapons, ignored legitimate French concerns, failed to mollify the Germans, and worried other powers like Britain that had substantial home and imperial defense requirements. Hoover’s plan could have broken the deadlock at Geneva if there had been previous consultation with the delegations of the other Great Powers and, on the basis of these discussions, a plan that juggled the diverse armed forces requirements of those powers. No doubt exists that the British wanted to cooperate with the Americans on this issue—and Neville Chamberlain wanted to reduce spending public monies on arms. On this basis, Hoover’s disarmament proposals could have first been presented to London and framed to ensure adequate British land, air, and naval strength to protect the home islands, colonies, and maritime routes to both overseas markets and the Empire. With British backing, concerted American efforts could have been found to break the Franco-German impasse: leaving France enough forces, particularly ground forces, to balance a Germany granted, “equality of treatment.” Such a break was not impossible. Just at this moment, the discussions leading to the Lausanne conference had seen French opposition to continuing the reparations regime melt away. The result had been Anglo-French-German agreement over the level of reducing reparations and the eventual means of ending them. Equality of treatment was no more emotive than reparations. An American plan that understood that the other Great Powers were not geographically isolated from threatening neighbors—and a diplomacy of consultation—could have helped break the deadlock in 1932. And, as with reparations, with the July 1932 German elections just weeks away after Hoover’s announcement, Hitler’s appeal to German voters would have been undermined seriously. Although the French finally relented over German equality of treatment in December,49 it was too late to endanger Hitler’s political position in Germany. Roosevelt’s chance to break the disarmament deadlock in Geneva came between January and March 1933. On January 30, Sir Ronald Lindsay, the British ambassador in Washington, met the president-elect, who wanted debt revision included in “a comprehensive programme” involving tariff agreements, limitations on tanks and artillery, a scaling down of battleships, and, by prohibiting military aircraft, the elimination of aircraft carriers.50 Although debt discussions continued intermittently

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until June,51 when the British made a token payment and the World Economic Conference began, Roosevelt never followed through on his arms limitation proposals. His only effort in this regard came in his May statement about a nonaggression pact and having the other major powers take the initiative in arms control.52 New German elections were to be held on March 5 to confirm Hitler’s government, a coalition of the Nazis and the right-wing Nationalist Party. In these elections, the NaziNationalist coalition won by the slimmest margin: 1.9 percent.53 With the French having conceded equality of treatment and the British still desirous of Anglo-American cooperation, Roosevelt could have done much to blunt Hitler’s electoral appeal in Germany by seeking immediately wider support for his proposals to help the World Disarmament Conference succeed. A Hitler who could not appeal to German voters by playing on their resentment about the weakness of the German armed forces was a weakened Hitler. A U.S. government that was willing to participate effectively in the World Disarmament Conference would have been a United States that helped rob Hitler of the German chancellorship. Roosevelt also found himself involved in naval limitation, the result of the 1930 London naval treaty fixing 1935 as the date for the conference to renew the existing system of naval limitation. This dilemma focused largely on East Asia. Following the Manchurian crisis, the Japanese government came to be dominated by generals and admirals. Given the nature of this government—and the fact that tremendous opposition had erupted in Japan against the 1930 London naval treaty that led to the assassination of the Japanese premier—there seemed little possibility of Japan accepting a building ratio less than that of Britain or the United States. Tripartite Anglo-Japanese-American exploratory talks in London in October-December 1934 confirmed the Japanese demand for parity with the British and Americans.54 Japanese delegates suggested a “common upper limit” for overall warship tonnage whereby each power could decide its specific requirements. They tied this proposal to a suggestion that offensive warships—battleships, aircraft carriers, and heavy cruisers—be abolished or their numbers reduced. Either avenue would supposedly augment security by enhancing defense. American delegates were adamant that existing ratios be maintained. Their arguments reflected British ones concerning the RN: the USN was a two-ocean navy; the IJN was a regional force; conceding quantitative parity to Japan would give the IJN preeminence in Far Eastern waters. But these bargaining positions remained nothing more than diplomatic eye-wash; the Japanese and the Americans were each prepared to see the naval treaty lapse, especially if failure could be ascribed to the other.55 Roosevelt’s administration entertained deep suspicions about Japanese ambitions in China, especially after April 1934, when Amau Eiji, a government spokesman, declared publicly: “Owing to [the] special position of Japan

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in her relations with China, her views and attitude respecting matters that concern China may not agree in every point with those of foreign nations; but it must be realised that Japan is called upon to exert the utmost effort in carrying out her mission and in fulfilling her special responsibilities in East Asia.”56 In the year between the preliminary naval talks and the convening of the second London conference in December 1935, neither Washington nor Tokyo felt it expedient to outline possible lines of compromise. Both rejected a British effort before the conference to issue “a unilateral declaration” of their future building programs.57 When the conference convened, continuing Japanese-American deadlock led to Japan’s withdrawal from the conference in January 1936, thereby ending the system of naval limitation that had existed since 1921. Although the British and Americans concluded their separate agreement by March,58 the Japanese began a program of naval expansion that added to their growing strength in East Asia—they had already begun to build in violation of the 1930 treaty before December 1935. The constellation of power in the western Pacific Ocean began to change at middecade in a way that the Japanese were strengthened at American expense, and there began, in one famous phrase, the “race to Pearl Harbor.” Roosevelt would have had an opportunity to lessen JapaneseAmerican tensions over the naval question if he had taken the initiative to use the period between the London preliminary talks and the naval conference either to build on the British declaration of building programs or seek a solution of his own making. The British initiative was designed to ensure that the system of naval limitation was preserved by forcing each power to justify its naval requirements; since those of the IJN were not as burdensome as those confronting the RN and USN, Britain and the United States would have retained naval superiority over Japan. The American difficulty in 1934–1935 was that neither the Hoover nor Roosevelt administrations had built the USN to the levels permitted by the Washington and first London naval treaties.59 Roosevelt could have met the Japanese hard line in early 1936 by embarking on a program of naval construction to bring the American fleet up to treaty levels. This would have meant side-stepping isolationists, pacificists, and domestic critics like Nye, who equated defense spending with industrial profiteering and international danger. But it would have shown Tokyo that the United States was committed to building the USN to its allotted levels, the political and strategic implications of which would have been an explicit commitment to protect its financial and humanitarian investments in China and other places in East Asia. As Joseph Grew, the American ambassador in Tokyo, advised the president in December 1934: “Theodore Roosevelt enunciated the policy ‘speak softly and carry a big stick.’ If our diplomacy in the Far East is to achieve favorable results, and if

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we are to reduce the risk of an eventual war with Japan to a minimum, that is the only way to proceed.”60 The deterrent value of Franklin Roosevelt’s big sick—an expanding USN—would not have been lost on the Japanese.61 In terms of the third issue that preoccupied the other Great Powers in the 1930s—maintaining international peace and security—both the Hoover and Roosevelt administrations had ample opportunities to pursue forward policies that could have helped contain the dangerous ambitions of Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and militaristic Japan. Given the constraints of isolationism, this would not have involved either unilateral American action (with the danger of unilateral military action) or the conclusion of an alliance. It could have been done by arguing, disingenuously, that American policy was independent of London and Paris, this while directing this policy along the lines followed by the League’s two leading powers. Such an approach would have favored American interests. Like Britain and France, the United States lacked the armed strength to meet on its own the triple threat posed by Germany, Italy, and Japan. Like Britain and despite the Depression, the United States had substantial wealth that could have been used to pressure Berlin, Rome, and Tokyo. And, crucially, neither Paris nor London saw the value of a formal alliance until late in the day, after the German absorption of Czechoslovakia in March 1939. It follows, therefore, that forward American diplomatic strategies to ensure peace and security would have been helpful via cooperative rather than parallel action. There were three opportunities for American diplomacy to change markedly the course of international history in the 1930s: during the first phase of the Manchurian crisis; during the Abyssinian crisis of 1935– 1936; and during the German-provoked Austrian, Sudeten, and Czech crises in the year after March 1938 that led to the outbreak of European war in September 1939. During the first weeks of the Manchurian crisis, the British government looked to deter Japanese adventurism by working with other powers whose interests were threatened by the actions of the Kwantung army. In these calculations, the viability of both the League Covenant and the Washington treaties was paramount. Although some elements in the British Foreign Office and cabinet sympathized with Japanese efforts to protect their interests in Manchuria, there was the general view that Britain should work through the League to encourage Sino-Japanese negotiations to reach a peaceful settlement.62 In Washington, Stimson shared this concern: “the whole world looks on to see whether the treaties are good for anything or not, and if we lie down and treat them like scraps of paper nothing will happen, and in the future the peace movement will receive a blow that it will not recover from for a long time.”63 Not surprisingly, Stimson was prepared to have the United States cooperate with the League, even over sanctions, to

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pressure Japan. Worried about the possibility of war and the parlous state of the USN, and with an eye on the isolationists, Hoover disagreed.64 His initial response was equivocation. He allowed American diplomats to attend a League council that assessed the crisis but, later, ordered them to withdraw because of isolationist criticism.65 Then, after first opposing a League commission of enquiry into the crisis (the weak sister of sanctions), he endorsed such a commission and allowed McCoy to join as full member.66 When it was clear by early January 1932 that Tokyo would not order the Kwantung army out of Manchuria, the doctrine of nonrecognition became the final—and inadequate—American response. But if Hoover had supported Stimson, there is every chance that the Kwantung army in Manchuria would have been stymied. Two general reasons for this assertion suggest themselves. In the first place, American cooperation with Britain and the League could have been done in a way to permit administration arguments that American action was independent of Geneva—for instance, an emphasis on the Washington treaty, rather than the Covenant, as the lynchpin of East Asian security. Such an approach could have been coupled with a moralistic appeal to domestic American opinion (over the heads of isolationist congressmen and pressure groups) that both China and Japan should accept existing principles of international law. In fact, this appeal underpinned the doctrine of nonrecognition. The administration could, thereby, have masked the pursuit of narrow national interests by cooperating with Britain and the League, both of which, like the United States, were working to uphold Chinese sovereignty, meet Japan’s legitimate grievances, and sustain the sanctity of international agreements. Japanese annoyance with outside interference, of course, was a possibility. Yet, the combined strength of the RN and the USN, on one hand, and the dominance of London and New York in international finance, on the other, outdistanced that of the IJN and Tokyo financial institutions.67 In the second place, discord existed at the highest political levels in Tokyo after the crisis began; this disharmony saw the replacement in December 1931 of a moderate civilian cabinet with one populated by militarists.68 At this juncture, the Japanese emperor told a senior advisor: “The person who will lead the succeeding Cabinet must be earnestly cautioned . . . about the mismanagement and high-handedness of the Army. In short, the Army’s medddling in domestic and foreign politics, endeavouring to have its own way, is a situation which we must view with apprehension for the good of the nation.”69 Consequently, like Hitler and his quest for the German chancellorship, there was nothing inevitable about the hardiners controlling the Japanese government. Led by Britain, the League had the opportunity to show the Japanese, moderates and militarists alike, that Japan could not slice

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off the rich province of another country with impunity. Hoover administration support of the League, although it would have been presented less than honestly to the American public, would have helped the moderates in the crucial domestic political struggle in December 1931. The naval and economic weapons of U.S. diplomacy would have strengthened League efforts to deter the hotheads of the Kwantung army by aiding the arguments of the moderates in Tokyo. As late as October 1932, just as the League moved to censure Japanese policy in Manchuria via the report of the Commission of Enquiry, Prince Saionji Kimmochi, a moderating influence at the Imperial Court, could argue: “As I said once before, at the time of the London treaty, the cardinal point that will make it possible for Japan to securely hold its world position is for Japan to take the role of a leader, together with Great Britain and the United States.”70 The need to take a stand in late 1931 remained essential if the Washington system and the Covenant were to remain untarnished. A Japan led by moderates was preferable to one led by militarists; and moderate Japanese foreign and imperial policies, though they would certainly have presented problems for Washington and the other Western capitals, were preferable to those based on the unsheathed sword. Clearly, powerful circles in Japan distrusted the army and looked to work with the United States and Britain. The opportunity for the United States to cooperate with Japan, but to do so with resolution, existed between September and December 1931—just as it did so at the World Disarmament Conference and the second London naval conference. If there had been that resolution, there would not have been that diplomatic road to Pearl Harbor. Similarly, the Abyssinian crisis would have had a markedly different result if the Roosevelt administration had backed British and French efforts to end Italian military operations by the application of a League oil embargo. In this equation, unlike Manchuria, there was no risk of employing the USN to enforce League sanctions; and, more telling, American cooperation with the League would not have compromised the new neutrality laws, which came into force in August 1935. Roosevelt could easily have supported decisions made by the League’s Sanctions Committee in early November to embargo oil exports to Italy, thereby bringing the mechanized elements of the Italian armed forces (air force, navy, armor, and motorized divisions) to a halt. Remember, the United States was then the world’s largest producer of petroleum. Roosevelt could have argued that he was not aligning with the League but, instead, was meeting obligations undertaken when the United States signed the Kellogg-Briand Pact. Negotiated in 1928, this pact compelled its signatories, which included Italy and the United States, from using war as an instrument of national policy.71 Although the pact’s goal might seem

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reasonable, its elastic provisions left enough room for signatories to pursue forward policies against transgressor powers if they wished. As the potential for crisis in East Africa heated up in the summer of 1935, the British sought American diplomatic backing should fighting between Italy and Ethiopia break out. The Roosevelt administration responded weakly that it would do nothing beyond seeking to have Italy respect the Kellogg-Briand Pact.72 Additionally, Hull told the British ambassador that “the United States had no disposition to get in the way of the British Government but would let it proceed with the leadership it had already assumed.”73 Despite the British making subsequent “advances”—as Roosevelt told Bingham in July, the sine qua non for him to involve the United States in security issues—Washington did nothing. Roosevelt’s timidity resulted from an overreaction to the passage of the neutrality laws and his need to work with isolationist legislators to get New Deal legislation passed.74 Nonetheless, it played a major part in the construction of the Hoare-Laval plan, the estrangement of Italy from Britain and France, and the subsequent rapproachement between Hitler and Mussolini that led to the creation of the Italo-German Axis. But if Roosevelt and Hull had faced down the isolationists and utilized the Kellogg-Briand Pact as the basis for the United States joining the oil embargo—as a partner with the League, not its servant—the crisis would have ended differently. In the first place, the Italian offensive in Abyssinia would have ground to a halt, which it almost did in December when the Ayssinians counterattacked and Italy only had enough oil reserves for three months.75 Flowing from this, Mussolini would have been forced to seek a diplomatic agreement with the Abyssinians that would give him some success to brandish before the Italian people. As much as the pursuit of imperial glory and the acquisition of strategic and material gain, Mussolini had embarked on his East African adventure to bolster the domestic appeal of his regime that had flagged because of failure to overcome the worst effects of the Depression.76 In August 1935, the British and French had proposed a settlement to the Italians that was similar to the later Hoare-Laval plan. Italy would get control of most of Abyssinia while the Negus, Haile Selassie, would retain nominal sovereignty over his kingdom.77 This Anglo-French scheme had nothing to do with spheres of interest in Africa. Instead, it had everything to do with European security. The British and the French needed Italy to help contain Hitler’s zeal on the continent. This lay at the basis of the August and Hoare-Laval plans, both of which were designed to augment Italian amour propre, thereby maintaining the Anglo-Italian-French triplice to counter Germany. Here lies the central importance of American participation in the oil embargo. An Italy unable to achieve military victory on the battlefield

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would have been forced to accept an equivalent of the August proposals, and the diplomatic repercussions of such a course cannot be overemphasised. Mussolini’s desires would have been curtailed for some time. A weakened Italy would have been unattractive to Hitler as a possible German ally. And, ironically, because Italy could not afford to remain isolated in Europe (essentially why Mussolini later sought an Italo-German rapprochement78), Rome would have been forced to continue its connection with London and Paris in the European balance of power. Just as important, British leaders and others believed that the Abyssinian crisis was a defining moment in international politics. League success in forcing Italy to the bargaining table would have shown that, despite its record in Manchuria, the organization could utilize its resources to keep troublesome powers in check. This lesson, it was surmised, would not be lost in Berlin.79 However, by early 1936, the failure of the oil embargo and seeming weakness of the League, and by implication Britain and France, emboldened Hitler to remilitarize the Rhineland in March 1936. Although forbidden by the Treaty of Versailles, this act showed Hitler’s disregard for the League and its two leading members; it also led him to surmise that he could entice Italy into the German orbit.80 Consequently, American participation in the embargo, again, as a partner with the League, would have helped immeasurably in strengthening Geneva’s ability to maintain peace and security in Europe. Like Hoover before him, Roosevelt could have cooperated with Britain and France to maintain international peace and security. In this case, the United States could have helped to limit bloodshed in Abyssinia, bring Mussolini into line, and buttress the collective security provisions of the Covenant, especially against Nazi Germany. It would have meant recognizing the absence of morality in international politics—the Abyssinians were going to suffer no matter what—but it would have provided stability at an important point in the world in the 1930s. Stability in Europe was threatened by Hitler’s policies toward Austria and Czechoslovakia between March 1938 and March 1939. By the beginning of 1938, Hitler had accomplished much in his quest to make Germany the greatest of the European Great Powers: chiefly by rearming and undertaking massive state spending to alleviate unemployment and build the infrastructure necessary for a modern state. With Mussolini now his ally in all but name, he looked to absorb into Germany neighboring German-speaking territories that had either been lost in 1919 or had previously comprised the Hapsburg Empire. Roosevelt understood the dangers to European security posed by Hitler, something driven home to him by William Dodd, the American ambassador in Berlin from 1933 to 1937.81 Although assessments from other American diplomats were mixed in their perception of the European situation,82 Roosevelt grasped the danger to international security.

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Indeed, in December 1937, he showed uncharacteristic resolution when, after Japanese airplanes attacked and sunk American and British vessels during the China crisis, his administration demanded compensation and a formal apology for American losses. Neville Chamberlain, now the British prime minister, was so impressed that he observed: “It is always best & safest to count on nothing from the Americans except words but at this moment they are nearer ‘doing something’ than I have ever known them and I cant [sic] altogether repress hopes.”83 But such hopes were dashed when Washington refused to cooperate with Britain.84 And what was true for East Asia was doubly so for Europe. By January 1938, Chamberlain decided that the Americans would avoid forward policies; their record from the World Disarmament Conference onward had shown this. The leitmotif of British foreign policy toward the totalitarian powers then became one of seeking compromises within what Chamberlain called “the double policy of rearmament and better relations with Germany and Italy.”85 Yet, in January 1938, as German pressures on Austria began to mount and the bloody course of the Spanish Civil War unfolded, Roosevelt secretly—and unexpectedly—approached Chamberlain with a “peace plan.” Since October 1937, Roosevelt and one of his senior advisors, Sumner Welles, the undersecretary of state, mulled over the possibility of “a world conference” to establish “basic principles” of international law, establish rules for land and naval war, including neutral rights, and guarantee freedom of access “on the part of all peoples to raw materials.”86 On January 12, 1938, Roosevelt moved, having Welles explain its contents to Ambassador Lindsay and indicate that the president “was communicating his scheme to His Majesty’s Government alone.”87 If supported by the British, he would invite the governments of several smaller European powers, plus some Latin American states, to meet in Washington and then “warn” Paris, Berlin, and Rome of “the general lines of his scheme.” The matter simmered into February, as neither Chamberlain nor other ministers were enamored of the idea. They believed that it could undermine openings they were hoping to make to Hitler and Mussolini. Though supporting Chamberlain’s desire to encourage Washington, the cabinet Foreign Policy Committee wanted to escape a joint Anglo-American undertaking. “While the Dictators and Japan may decide it to be impolitic to reject the scheme out of hand,” Chamberlain instructed Lindsay, “they are almost sure in their hearts to dislike it.”88 Chamberlain said the same thing to Roosevelt.89 The difficulty with Roosevelt’s plan lay in its conscious neglect of security enforcement provisions. On February 18, when the president went on a five-day vacation, Lindsay learned that the plan would be announced on his return. By February 23, events got away from Roosevelt. By this time, Hitler provoked a crisis with Vienna that led by mid-

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March to the absorption of Austria into the German Reich.90 The United States did nothing of substance to censure Hitler’s actions over Austria, though, admittedly, neither did Britain and France. But unlike the United States, Britain and France faced threats in Europe and the Mediterranean from Germany and Italy. It might have been immoral, but Chamberlain had struck upon a policy to remove points of difference between Britain and the two dictator powers in Europe: appeasement backed by rearmament. Over the next year, he endeavored to find grounds for compromise, the zenith of appeasement coming in September 1938 with the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia at the Munich conference: the German-speaking region of Czechoslovakia was ceded to Germany, while-the “rump” of the country was to be guaranteed by Britain, France, Germany, and Italy.91 Roosevelt supported Chamberlain over his peaceful settlement of the Czech question.92 However, in mid-March 1939, the Germans absorbed the Czech rump into the Reich and set up a proGerman puppet regime in Slovakia. Appeasement was in tatters. Working with the French, the British response was a “guarantee” of Poland’s sovereignty—Poland seemed next on Hitler’s carte du balle—the imposition of conscription, staff talks, and an effort to find other European allies to contain Germany.93 Roosevelt’s reaction entailed sending Hitler a public note that asked if he was willing “to give assurance that your armed forces will not attack or invade the territory or possessions” of twenty-three European states, as well as seven Middle Eastern states including Turkey.94 If such an assurance was made, he offered to acquaint those thirty governments with Hitler’s response and secure reciprocal assurances not to attack Germany. With this accomplished, three sets of international discussions might be held. The United States would participate in those dealing with arms limitation and improving international trade; the third would involve “those governments other than the United States which are directly interested . . . [in] political discussions as they may consider necessary or desirable.” Hitler literally laughed off this American overture at a hastily called meeting of the Reichstag. He then turned to settling the Polish question in Germany’s favor; and, whether or not by miscalculation, he stumbled into war with Britain and France on September 3, 1939 after German armies attacked Poland.95 Thus, during the crises of 1938–1939 when Hitler moved to restructure the European balance in Germany’s favor, Roosevelt made two illconceived attempts to goad the European Great Powers to settle their differences through conferences. In each case, the United States would not make a commitment to participate in making or enforcing any decisions concerning security guarantees that resulted from them. But if in either 1938 or 1939, Roosevelt’s Washington had had the courage to cooperate fully to fashion effective diplomatic structures to ensure peace,

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backed by American armed force in league with that of Britain and France, U.S. foreign policy could have altered the course of international politics at a crucial point in the 1930s. Great efforts need not have been expended to find an effective security regime. A useful precedent already existed: the treaty of Locarno, the agreement whereby outside powers (Britain and Italy) guaranteed the inviolability of the Franco-German border, and future changes to Germany’s eastern frontiers were to be made by international arbitration. Locarno had brought Germany back into the comity of nations in 1925 and had served as the basis of European security for a decade. It only broke down in March 1936 when Britain and France, preoccupied with Abyssinia, could not prevent Hitler’s remilitarization of the Rhineland. Nonetheless, Locarno continued to engage the thinking of a range of European leaders, including the British politician, Winston Churchill.96 The critical point with both January 1938 and April 1939 was that each was a moment when Roosevelt could have thrown American support, including the possibility of military invention, behind a Locarno-like initiative. He broached his peace plan at a pivotal juncture, when Chamberlain, especially, reckoned that Anglo-American cooperation beyond “words” was possible. Washington could have joined with Britain in December 1937 in establishing a solid front over the Japanese sinking of those vessels in China. Then, he could have promulgated the plan for Europe with the explicit provision that the United States would join in assuring the basic principles of international law, establishing rules for land and naval war, including neutral rights, and guaranteeing freedom of access “on the part of all peoples to raw materials.” With this done, the course of European policy would have been markedly different because of the impact of such an opening on British thinking. By the beginning of 1938, in part because of American unreliance, Chamberlain was about to embark on his appeasement of the totalitarians that failed to prevent the outbreak of general European war. But if Roosevelt had been willing to cooperate openly with Britain—an effort in January 1938 to initiate low-level secret discussions ended when they were discovered by isolationist American politicians97 —Hitler would have been presented with solid opposition to German expansionist policies. Again, what was true in early 1938 would have had equal force a year later. If Roosevelt had backed up his April 1939 three-conference initiative with a commitment to support Britain and France over Poland—and by 1939 American rearmament was underway—Hitler would have met a major obstacle. This is not to say that the British would have jettisoned appeasement in 1938. The essence of such a policy was sound: remove differences with the totalitarians to keep the peace while having armed strength at the ready to deter aggressive acts. Moreover, in Chamberlain’s mind, removing these differences might weaken the diplomatic glue that was

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binding Italy to Germany.98 An Anglo-French front in Europe and the Mediterranean, supported by the United States, would have allowed London, Paris, and Washington to present Berlin and Rome with a combination of military and economic resources that would have forced the dictators to assume conciliatory policies. In 1938 and 1939, Hitler ignored the United States in his diplomatic calculations because Roosevelt refused to pursue a forward policy.99 And, in 1939, he gambled that neither Britain nor France would honor its guarantee to Poland, something he tried to secure by concluding a nonaggression pact with Bolshevik Russia in August; Russia was the one remaining Great Power in Europe that could ruin his ambitions if it aligned with Britain and France.100 But a United States willing to work as a partner with London and Paris to assure the existing frontiers of Europe would have seen a less bold Hitler. This assertion is given added strength by the fact that when Britain and France declared war on Germany in September 1939, Mussolini was convinced that Hitler would lose. The result was Italian neutrality until June 1940,101 when France was on its knees and the British army was retreating to its home islands. A firm American connection with the AngloFrench Powers a year or two earlier would have added significantly to Mussolini’s discomfort, and this would have made the German position more exposed. Thus, in the year between March 1938 and April 1939, Roosevelt had two opportunities to support the Anglo-French containment of Germany, force Hitler to curtail his goals in Europe, and weaken, if not destroy, the Italo-German relationship. There is no doubt that isolationism as an element in American foreign policy in the 1930s is a complex question for historians. As a general principle—and as an article of faith for both governments and the general population—it had guided U.S.-diplomatic strategy since George Washington’s day. In the decade before the outbreak of World War II in Europe, despite substantial American economic interests outside of the Western Hemisphere, the Hoover and Roosevelt administrations continued the isolationist tradition. The pressures of public opinion and the vagaries of congressional politics prevented the pursuit of forward external policies to help other powers overcome the threats to the post1919 international order posed by war debts and reparations, arms limitation, and security problems. Given the domestic strictures on both Republican and Democratic foreign policies, adherence to isolation was understandable—though, perhaps, not excusable. However, if Hoover, Roosevelt, and their advisors had had the political courage to engage the United States in the international political questions of the 1930s, the course of those ten years would have been markedly different. Welded to its financial and economic strength, American political influence could have reduced the aggressive bent of Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and

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militaristic Japan. At a particular stage, flexibility in Washington over war debts and reparations might also have prevented Hitler’s rise to power. However, even after Hitler became chancellor and the Japanese conquered Manchuria, several chances existed for forward American foreign policies to contain totalitarian ambitions: over the World Disarmament and second London naval conferences; over Abyssinia; and over the Austrian and Czech crises in 1938–1939. American leaders did not have to act unilaterally. Britain, France, and, before 1933, even Germany looked to cooperate with the United States. It was a pity that neither the Hoover nor Roosevelt administrations would respond; it was a greater pity that they could have done so.

NOTES 1. Quoted in B. Perkins, The Cambridge History of American Foreign Relations, vol. 1, The Creation of a Republican Empire, 1776–1865 (Cambridge, 1993), 24. 2. Cf. R. A. Divine, The Illusion of Neutrality (Chicago, 1962); W. S. Cole, Determinism and American Foreign Relations During the Franklin D. Roosevelt Era (Lanham, MD, 1995); J. D. Doenecke and J. E. Wilz, From Isolationism to War, 1931–1941 (Arlington Heights, IL, 1991); M. Jonas, Isolationism in America, 1935– 1941 (Chicago, 1990); W. L. Langer and S. E. Gleason, The Challenge to Isolationism, 1937–1940 (New York, 1952); C. F. Phillips, The American Neutrality Problem (New York, 1939); R. Powaski, Toward an Entangling Alliance: American Isolationism and Europe, 1901–1950, new ed. (New York, 1991). For a recent analysis of the historiography of interwar American foreign policy, which places this historiography in its competing schools of thought, see B. J. C. McKercher, “Reaching for the Brass Ring: The Recent Historiography of Interwar American Foreign Policy,” Diplomatic History 15 (1991): 565–98. 3. Cf. R. Accinelli, “The Hoover Administration and the World Court,” Peace and Change 4 (1977): 28–36; idem, “The Roosevelt Administration and the World Court Defeat, 1935,” Historian 40 (1978): 463–78; idem, “The Militant Internationalists: The League of Nations Association, the Peace Movement, and U.S. Foreign Policy, 1934–38,” Diplomatic History 4 (1980): 19–38; L. E. Ambrosius, Woodrow Wilson and the American Diplomatic Tradition: The Treaty Fight in Perspective (New York, 1987); idem, “Ethnic Politics and German-American Relations after World War I: The Fight over the Versailles Treaty in the United States,” in H. Trefousse, ed., Germany and America: Essays on Problems of International Relations and Immigration (New York, 1980), 29–40; G. W. Egerton, “Ideology, Diplomacy, and International Organisation: Wilsonism and the League of Nations in AngloAmerican Relations, 1918–1920,” in B. J. C. McKercher, ed., Anglo-American Relations in the 1920s: The Struggle for Supremacy (London, Edmonton, 1991), 17–54; R. H. Ferrell, Woodrow Wilson and World War I, 1917–1921 (New York, 1985); G. Kahn, “Presidential Passivity on a Nonsalient Issue: President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the 1935 World Court Fight,” Diplomatic History 4 (1980): 137–59; A. S. Link, Woodrow Wilson: Revolution, War, and Peace (Arlington Heights, IL, 1979); D. F. Trask, The AEF and Coalition Warmaking, 1917–1918 (Lawrence, KS, 1993).

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4. Cf. T. A. Bailey, The Man in the Street: The Impact of American Public Opinion on Foreign Policy (1948; reprint, Gloucester, MA, 1964; W. S. Cole, Senator Gerald P. Nye and American Foreign Relations (Minneapolis, 1962); idem, Roosevelt and the Isolationists, 1932–1945 (Lincoln, 1983); T. N. Guinsburg, The Pursuit of Isolationism in the United States Senate from Versailles to Pearl Harbor (New York, 1982); R. J. Maddox, William E. Borah and American Foreign Policy (Baton Rouge, 1969); L. Rieselbach, The Roots of Isolationism: Congressional Voting and Presidential Leadership (New York, 1966); J. N. Schacht, ed., The Three Faces of Midwestern Isolationism: Gerald P. Nye, Robert E. Wood, John L. Lewis (Iowa City, 1981). 5. For example, S. F. Bemis, The Diplomacy of the American Revolution (Bloomington, IN, 1935); M. E. Curti, The American Peace Crusade, 1815–1860 (Durham, NC, 1939); J. W. Pratt, Expansionists of 1898: The Acquisition of Hawaii and the Spanish Islands (Baltimore, 1936); F. J. Rippy, America and the Strife of Europe (Chicago, 1938); M. H. Savelle, “The Appearance of an American Attitude toward External Affairs, 1750–1775,” American Historical Review 52 (1947): 656–62; E. H. Tatum Jr., The United States and Europe, 1815–1823: A Study in the Background of the Monroe Doctrine (Berkeley, 1936); W. K. Woolery, The Relation of Thomas Jefferson to American Foreign Relations, 1783–1793 (Baltimore, 1927). Cf. J. A. Combs, American Diplomatic History: Two Centuries of Changing Interpretations (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London, 1983), 117–96. 6. For example, American writings by C. A. Beard and M. R. Beard, The Rise of American Civilization, 2 vols. (New York, 1927); F. R. Dulles, America in the Pacific: A Century of Expansion (New York, Boston, 1932); S. Nearing and J. Freeman, Dollar Diplomacy: A Study in American Imperialism (New York, 1925); A. K. Weinberg, Manifest Destiny: A Study of Nationalist Expansionism in American History (Baltimore, 1935). Cf. Combs, American Diplomatic History, 117–96. And nonAmerican writings by D. Belegarde, La Re´sistance Haı¨tienne (Montre´ al, 1937); E. Chassery, Les Illusions de l’Amerique en Matie`re de Cre´dit, de 1914 a` l’Experience Roosevelt (Paris, 1937); F. H. Gribble, What America Owes Europe (London, 1932); J. N. Palomares, La Invasio´ n Yanqui en 1914 (Mexico City, 1940); J. Salin, L’E´ volution du Controˆ le des E´ tats-Unis en Ame´rique Centrale et Caraı¨be (Lyon, 1937). 7. H. J. Carman, The Cooperation of the United States with the League of Nations (New York, 1930); U. P. Hubbard, The Cooperation of the United States with the League of Nations, 1931–1936 (New York, 1937). 8. F. Costigliola, Awkward Dominion: American Political, Economic, and Cultural Relations with Europe, 1919–1933 (Ithaca, 1984); L. C. Gardner, Economic Aspects of New Deal Diplomacy (Madison, 1964); E. W. Hawley, The New Deal and the Problem of Monopoly (Princeton, 1969); idem, The Great War and the Search for a Modern Order: A History of the American People and Their Institutions, 1917–1933 (New York, 1979); M. J. Hogan, Informal Entente: The Private Structure of Cooperation in Anglo-American Economic Diplomacy, 1918–1929 (Columbia, MO, 1977); M. P. Leffler, The Elusive Quest: America’s Pursuit of European Stability and French Security, 1919–1933 (Chapel Hill, 1979); E. S. Rosenberg, Spreading the American Dream: American Economic and Cultural Expansion, 1890–1945 (New York, 1982); H.-J. Schro¨ der, Deutschland und die Vereinigten Staaten, 1933–1939: Wirtschaft und Politik in der Entwicklung des Deutsch-Amerikanischen Gegensatzes (Wiesbaden, 1970); M. Trachtenberg, Reparation in World Politics: France and European Economic Diplomacy, 1916–1923 (New York, 1980).

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9. E. W. Bennett, Germany and the Diplomacy of the Financial Crisis, 1931 (Cambridge, MA, 1962); B. V. Burke, Ambassador Frederic Sackett and the Collapse of the Weimar Republic, 1930–1933: The United States and Hitler’s Rise to Power (Cambridge, ENG., 1994); B. Kent, The Spoils of War: The Politics, Economics, and Diplomacy of Reparations, 1918–1932 (Oxford, 1989); D. B. Kunz, The Battle for Britain’s Gold Standard in 1931 (London, New York, 1987); H. G. Moulton and L. Paslovsky, War Debts and World Prosperity (Washington, DC, 1932). 10. W.-H. Bickel, Die anglo-amerikanishen Beziehungen 1927–1930 im Licht der Flottenfrage (Zurich, 1970); T. Buckley, The United States and the Washington Conference, 1921–1922 (Knoxville, 1970); C. Hall, Britain, America, and Arms Control, 1921–37 (London, 1987); B. J. C. McKercher, “Of Horns and Teeth: The Preparatory Commission and the World Disarmament Conference, 1926–1934,” in idem, ed., Arms Limitation and Disarmament, 1899–1939: Restraints on War (New York, 1992), 173–201; R. G. O’Connor, Perilous Equilibrium: The United States and the London Naval Conference of 1930 (Lawrence, KS, 1962); S. Pelz, Race to Pearl Harbor: The Failure of the Second London Naval Conference and the Onset of World War II (Cambridge, MA, 1974). 11. Cf. F. C. Adams, Economic Diplomacy: The Export-Import Bank and American Foreign Policy, 1934–1939 (Columbia, MO, 1976); P. J. Baram, “Undermining the British: Department of State Policies in Egypt and the Suez Canal Before and During World War II,” Historian 40 (1978): 631–49; J. DeNovo, American Interests and Policies in the Middle East, 1900–1939 (Minneapolis, 1963); F. R. Chalk, “The United States and the International Struggle for Rubber, 1914–41” (Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin, 1970); M. R. Megaw, “The Scramble for the Pacific: Anglo–United States Rivalry in the 1930s,” Historical Studies 17 (1977): 458–73; R. M. Moore, Commercial Conflict and Foreign Policy: A Study in Anglo-American Relations, 1932–38 (New York, 1987); F. Venn, “A Futile Paper Chase: AngloAmerican Relations and Middle East Oil, 1918–1934,” Diplomacy and Statecraft 1 (1990). 12. Stimson diary, 28 Aug. 1929, Stimson MSS [Sterling Library, Yale University, New Haven], 10. Cf. Brown memorandum, “The Young Reparations Plan. A Hasty Analysis,” 24 July 1929, HHPP [Herbert Hoover Presidential Papers, Herbert Hoover Presidential Library, West Branch, Iowa], 1015. 13. Stimson memoranda (2), both 23 Oct. 1930, both Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, 1930, vol. 3 (Washington, DC) [hereafter FRUS], 89–90. Cf. Stimson diary, 19, 23 Oct. 1930, Stimson MSS, 10. 14. See Hoover’s moratorium diary, May-June 1931, HHPP, 1015. 15. Stimson diary, 24–26 May 1932, Stimson, 22; Hoover draft telegram to Mellon [U.S. ambassador, London], 24 May 1932, with Feis [economic advisor, State Department] minute to Stimson, nd [?24 May 1932], both Stimson MSS [microfilm edition, Sterling Library, Yale University, New Haven], Reel 82. 16. This and the next three sentences are based on Moley [State Department] telegram to Woodin [treasury secretary] and Baruch [advisor], 30 June 1933, Roosevelt telegram to Hull [secretary of state], 2 July 1933, both FRUS 1933, 1: 665–66, 673–74; Roosevelt telegrams to Phillips [State Department], 30 June, 2 July 1933, Phillips telegram to Roosevelt, 1 July 1933, all in E. Nixon and D. B. Schewe, eds., Franklin D. Roosevelt and Foreign Affairs, vol. 1 (New York, Toronto, 1979) [hereafter in the style FDRFA, 1], 265–67, 268–69. Cf. C. Hull, Memoirs, vol. I

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(New York, 1948), 260–66; R. Moley, After Seven Years (New York, 1939), 260–68; and the file Monetary Stabilization, SDDF [State Department Decimal Files, National Archives, Washington, DC], 550.S1. 17. P. G. Boyle, “The Roots of Isolationism: A Case Study,” Journal of American Studies 6 (1972): 41–50; H. A. DeWitt, “Hiram Johnson and Early New Deal Diplomacy, 1933–1934,” California Historical Quarterly 53 (1974): 377–86. 18. Unsigned memorandum [in Hoover’s hand], undated [but summer 1929], HHPP, 998; Hoover to MacDonald, 14 May 1930, in Hoover to Stimson, 26 May 1930, Stimson MSS Reel 79; Stimson diary, 17 Jan. 1930, with Stimson memorandum, Conference with the Prime Minister of Great Britain, 17 Jan. 1930, both Stimson, 12. Cf. G. C. Kennedy, “The 1930 London Naval Conference and AngloAmerican Maritime Strength, 1927–1930,” in McKercher, Arms Limitation, 149–71; O’Connor, Perilous Equilibrium. 19. E. W. Bennett, German Rearmament and the West, 1932–1933 (Princeton, 1979); McKercher, “Horns and Teeth”; M. Vaı¨sse, Se´curite´ d’abord; La politique franc¸ ais en matie`re de de´sarmament, 9 de´cembre 1930–7 avril 1934 (Paris, 1981). 20. Declaration by Mr. Gibson concerning President Hoover’s Proposal (20 June 1932), LND [League of Nations Document, League of Nations Archives, Palais des Nations, Geneva] Conf.D.126. 21. For instance, Statement of Views of His Majesty’s Government in the United Kingdom regarding President Hoover’s Proposal (7 July 1932), LND Conf.D.133. 22. Roosevelt to the Heads of Nations Represented at the London and Geneva Conferences, 16 May 1933, FDRFA, 1: 126–28. 23. For Britain’s case, cf. C. Morrisey and M. A. Ramsay, “ ‘Giving a Lead in the Right Direction’: Sir Robert Vansittart and the Defence Requirements SubCommittee,” Diplomacy and Statecraft 6 (1995): 39–60; R. P. Shay Jr., British Rearmament in the Thirties: Politics and Profits (Princeton, 1977). 24. Hall, Britain, America, and Arms Control, 143–87; Pelz, Race; S. W. Roskill, Naval Policy Between the Wars, Vol. 2, The Period of Reluctant Rearmament, 1930– 1939 (London, 1976), 164–93. 25. Craigie [Foreign Office] minute, 19 March 1935, FO [Foreign Office Archives, Public Record Office, Kew] 371/18732/2878/22. 26. Pelz, Race, 132–51; Roskill, Naval Policy, 2: 295–99. Cf. Roosevelt to Davis [senior U.S. delegate], 9 Nov. 1934, Davis MSS [Library of Congress, Washington, DC], 51; Roosevelt memorandum to Swanson [secretary of the navy], 17 Dec. 1934, FDRFA, II, 322–23. 27. Cmd. 5136. 28. Cf. R. Dallek, Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, 1932–1945 (Oxford, 1979), 172–75; J. L. McVoy et al., “The Roosevelt Resurgence (1933– 1941),” in R. W. King, ed., Naval Engineering and American Seapower (Baltimore, 1989), 161–200; J. D. Millett, The Army Service Forces: The Organization and Role of the Army Service Forces (Washington, DC, 1954), 18–22; S. E. Morison, The TwoOcean War: A Short History of the United States Navy in the Second World War (Boston, 1963), 20–25. 29. J. B. Crowley, Japan’s Quest for Autonomy: National Security and Foreign Policy, 1930–1938 (Princeton, 1966), 82–183; I. H. Nish, Japan’s Struggle with Internationalism: Japan, China, and the League of Nations, 1931–3 (London, 1993); C.

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Thorne, The Limits of Foreign Policy: The West, the League and the Far Eastern Crisis of 1931–1933 (New York, 1973). 30. Stimson note, 7 Jan. 1932, FRUS Japan, 1931–1941, 1: 76. Cf. R. N. Current, Secretary Stimson: A Study in Statecraft (New Brunswick, NJ, 1954), 85–90; N. Graebner, “Hoover, Roosevelt, and the Japanese,” in D. Borg and S. Okamoto, eds., Pearl Harbor as History: Japanese-American Relations, 1931–1941 (New York, London, 1973), 25–26. 31. Cole, Roosevelt and the Isolationists; Doenecke and Wilz, From Isolationism to War. 32. F. W. Marks III, Wind Over Sand: The Diplomacy of Franklin Roosevelt (Athens, GA, 1988), 123–28; D. C. Watt, Succeeding John Bull: America in Britain’s Place, 1900–1975 (Cambridge, ENG., 1984), 80–82. 33. I. F. Gellman, Good Neighbor Diplomacy: United States Policies in Latin America, 1933–1945 (Baltimore, 1979); D. Haglund, Latin America and the Transformation of U.S. Strategic Thought, 1936–1940 (Albuquerque, 1984); H.-J. Schro¨der, “Das Dritte Reich, die USA und Latinamerika, 1933–1941,” in M. Funk, ed., Hitler, Deutschland und die Ma¨ chte: Materielien zur Aussenpolitik des Dritten Reiches (Du¨ sseldorf, 1976), 339–64. 34. G. W. Baer, The Coming of the Italian-Ethiopian War (Cambridge, MA, 1967); R. A. C. Parker, “Great Britain, France and the Ethiopian Crisis,” English Historical Review 89 (1974): 293–332; E. M. Robertson, Mussolini as Empire-Builder: Europe and Africa, 1932–36 (New York, 1977), 93–131; D. F. Schmitz, The United States and Fascist Italy, 1922–1940 (Chapel Hill, 1988), 153–71. 35. Bingham memorandum, 8 Oct. 1935, Bingham to Hull, 17 Oct. 1935, both Bingham MSS [Library of Congress, Washington, DC] 1; Feis diary, 23 Oct. 1935, Feis MSS [Library of Congress, Washington, DC], 124; Phillips diary, 9 Oct. 1935, Phillips MSS [Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA], 8; Craigie minute, 8 Oct. 1935, FO 371/18772/8480/3483; Lindsay [British ambassador, Washington] despatch (1218) to Hoare, 18 Nov. 1935, FO 371/18772/9713/3483; Hoare to Eden [League minister], 9 Oct. 1935, Hoare to Runciman, 22 Nov. 1935, both Hoare MSS FO 800 [Public Record Office, Kew], 295; Hoare telegram to Lindsay, 4 Dec. 1935, Lindsay telegram to Hoare, 6 Dec. 1935, both Foreign Office, Documents on British Foreign Policy, Series II, Vol. 15 [hereafter in the style DBFP II, 15], (London, on-going), 377–78, 383–84. Cf. Hoare memorandum, 8 Dec. 1935, Templewood MSS [University Library, Cambridge University, Cambridge], VIII/I. Cf. M. L. Roi, “ ‘A Completely Immoral and Cowardly Attitude’: the British Foreign Office, American Neutrality, and the Hoare-Laval Plan,” Canadian Journal of History (1994): 331–51. 36. R. Quartararo, “Le origini del piano Hoare-Laval,” Storia contemporanea 8 (1977): 749–90; J. C. Robertson, “The Hoare-Laval Plan,” Journal of Contemporary History 10 (1975): 433–65. 37. Roosevelt to Bingham, 11 July 1935, Roosevelt PSF [Private Secretary’s File, Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library, Hyde Park, NY] Bingham. 38. Eden telegram to Lindsay, 13 July 1937, FO 371/20950/4086/9; Lindsay telegram to Eden, 14 July 1937, FO 371/20950/4087/9; Eden telegram to Lindsay, 20 July 1937, FO 371/20950/4130/9; Lindsay to Eden, 21 July 1937, FO 371/20950/4317/9; Eden memorandum [conversation with Bingham], 28 July 1937, FO 371/20951/4620/9; Hull memorandum [conversation with Chalkley], 9

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Aug. 1937, Hull MSS [Library of Congress, Washington, DC], 58; Eden to British Embassy, Washington, 30 Aug. 1937, FO 371/20954/9; Mallet [counsellor, British Embassy, Washington] telegram to Eden, 31 Aug. 1937, FO 371/20955/6303/9; Mallet telegram to Eden, 7 Sept. 1937, FO 371/20955/6284/9. 39. M. Murfett, Fool-Proof Relations: The Search for Anglo-American Naval Collaboration During the Chamberlain Years, 1937–1940 (Singapore, 1984); J. Leutze, Bargaining for Supremacy: Anglo-American Naval Collaboration, 1937–1941 (Chapel Hill, 1977); D. Reynolds, The Creation of the Anglo-American Alliance 1937–1941: A Study in Competitive Cooperation (Chapel Hill, 1982), 63–120. 40. D. Haglund, “George C. Marshall and the Question of Military Aid to England, May-June 1940,” Journal of Contemporary History 15 (1980): 745–60; Reynolds, Creation of the Anglo-American Alliance, 108–20. 41. This rest of this paragraph is based on Appendix, “Elections to the National Assembly (1919) and the Reichstag (1920–1933): Votes for Each Party %,” in E. J. Feuchtwanger, From Weimar to Hitler: Germany, 1918–33 (London, 1993), 326; G. Craig, Germany, 1866–1945 (Oxford, 1981), 534–60; H. Holborn, A History of Modern Germany, 1840–1945 (New York, 1969), 669–70, 689–90, 698–69, 701–2. 42. R. H. Keyerslingk, “Hitler and German Nationalism Before 1933,” Canadian Review of Studies in Nationalism 5 (1978): 24–44; G. Schulz, “Reparationen und Krisenprobleme nach dem Wahlsieg de NSDAP 1930: Betractungen zur Regierung Bru¨ ning,” Vierteljahrschrift fu¨ r Sozial- und Wirtschafts-geschichte 67 (1980): 200–222; P. D. Stachura, “The Political Strategy of the Nazi Party,” German Studies Review 3 (1980): 261–88. 43. Hoover moratorium diary, 6 May 1931, Proposed Statement 5 June 1931, both HHPP, 1013; Stimson diary, 16–20 June 1931, Stimson 16. Cf. Burke, Ambassador Frederic Sackett, 123–44. 44. Holborn, History of Modern Germany, 688–89. 45. Notes of a Franco-British Conversation . . . on June 11th, 1932, Foreign Office, Documents on British Foreign Policy, Series I, Vol. 3 (London, on-going) [hereafter in the form DBFP II, 3]; Simon [foreign secretary] to MacDonald, 10 June 1932; Tyrrell [British ambassador, Paris] to Vansittart [permanent undersecretary, Foreign Office], 8 June 1932, both Simon MSS FO 800/287. 46. Cole, Senator Gerald P. Nye; J. E. Wiltz, In Search of Peace: The Senate Munitions Enquiry, 1934–1936 (Baton Rouge, 1963). Cf. C. A. Beard and G. H. E. Smith, The Idea of National Interest: An Analytical Study in American Foreign Relations (New York, 1934); W. I. Cohen, The American Revisionists: The Lessons of Intervention in World War I (Chicago, 1967); H. C. Engelbrecht and F. C. Hanighen, Merchants of Death: A Study of the International Armaments Industry (New York, 1934). 47. Stimson was an exception—he argued in January 1933 that American withdrawal from the Philippines would “disturb” the East Asian “equilibrium.” See Stimson to Hoover, 3 Jan. 1933, Stimson MSS R84. Cf. Stimson to Hurley [secretary for war], 29 Oct. 1931, Stimson to Bingham [newspaper proprietor], 15 Feb. 1932, both ibid., R82. 48. Proposal of the French Delegation (5 Feb. 1932), LND Conf.D.56; Proposal by the German Delegation concerning Qualitative Disarmament, LND Conf.D.124; Davis telegram to Stimson, 23 May 1932, HHPP, 1002; Stimson telegram to U.S. Delegation, 4 June 1932, Stimson R83. Cf. McKercher, “Horns and Teeth;” J. Minart,

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Le Drame de De´sarmament Franc¸ ais (1919–1939): ses aspects politiques et techniques (Paris, 1959), 24–26. 49. Speech by Sir J. Simon at the Bureau of the Disarmament Conference on November 17, 1932, DBFP II, 4: 287–95; and records of the meetings between 2–11 Dec. 1932, and the declaration, in ibid., 308–78. 50. Lindsay telegrams (67–68, 70, 73) to Simon, 30, 31 Jan. 1933, D. C. Watt and K. Bourne, gen. eds., British Documents on Foreign Affairs, Part II, Series C, Vol. 12 [hereafter in the style, BDFA, II, C12] (Bethesda, MD, on-going), 140–43. 51. For example, MacDonald to Roosevelt, 10 Feb. 1933, FDRFA, 1: 8–13; Lindsay telegrams (8, 140, 141, 152) to Simon, 21, 27 Feb., 7 March 1933, all DBFP II, 5: 669–71, 773–75; FO memorandum, General Outline of the Main Developments of the War Debt Negotiations since June 1931, 12 April 1933, BDFA, II, C12, 180–83; Lindsay telegrams (334, 364–65) to Simon, 22 May, 4 June 1933, both DBFP II, 5: 812, 815–17. 52. His reason for doing nothing lay in his need for the votes of isolationist senators and congressmen to support his domestic economic reform legislations; see Dallek, Franklin D. Roosevelt, 3–20. 53. Feuchtwanger, Weimar to Hitler, 326. 54. Except where noted, the next two paragraphs are based on M. W. Berg, “Protecting National Interests by Treaty: The Second London Naval Conference, 1934–1936,” in McKercher, Arms Limitation and Disarmament, 203–27; Hall, Britain, America, and Arms Control, 162–70; Pelz, Race, 132–51; Roskill, Naval Policy, 2: 295–99. 55. Cf. Roosevelt memorandum to Swanson [secretary of the navy], 17 Dec. 1934, FDRFA, 2: 322–23. 56. For Amau’s statement, see Lindsay telegram (83), 20 Apr. 1934, BDFA, II, E13, 161–62. Cf. Hornbeck to Hull, 14 April 1934, enclosing Hornbeck memorandum, Problem of Japanese-American Relations, 5 April 1934, Draft of Possible Statement in Rejoinder to Japanese Statement, 26 April 1934, Memorandum of Conversation Between Secretary Hull and the Japanese Ambassador, Mr. Hirosi Saito, 19 May 1934, all Roosevelt PSF Japan; Grew to Hornbeck, 29 June 1934, Grew 69; Grew diary, 20 April 1934, Grew 71. 57. FO-Admiralty memorandum, Notes on the minimum British Naval Strength necessary for security, 15 Jan. 1935, FO 371/18731/478/22; FOAdmiralty memorandum, Future Course of Naval Negotiations, 18 July 1935, FO 371/18737/6525/22. 58. Cmd. 5136. 59. Cf. Foreign Office, “International Treaty for the Limitation and Reduction of Naval Armament,” Documents on the London Naval Conference 1930 (London, 1930); F. E. McMurtrie, ed., “United States’ ” Jane’s Fighting Ships 1936 (London, 1936), 493–538. My reference to Jane’s covers capital ships, aircraft carriers, cruisers, destroyers, and submarines. 60. Grew to Hull, 27 Dec. 1934, Roosevelt PSF Japan 1935–1936. 61. Cf. Tsurumi on Roosevelt, 29 Jan. 1936, in Prince Kinmochi Saionji, SaionjiHarada Memoirs, 1931–1940 [microfilm edition] [hereafter SHM] (Bethesda, MD, n.d.); “29th Liaison Conference, June 11, 1941,” in N. Ike, ed., Japan’s Decision for War: Records of the 1941 Policy Conferences (Stanford, 1967), 47–51.

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62. C. Thorne, Limits, 131–201. Cf. Reading [foreign secretary] to Vansittart, 21 Oct. 1931, DBFP II, 8: 810, n3. 63. Stimson diary, 9 Oct. 1931, Stimson, 18. Cf. Hornbeck [Far Eastern Division, State Department] memorandum, Manchuria—American Interests in, 30 Sept. 1931, Hornbeck [Hoover Institution, Stanford University], 453. 64. Hoover memorandum, n.d. [but late 1931] in Hoover to Stimson, 3 June 1936, quoted in E. E. Robinson and V. D. Bornet, Herbert Hoover: President of the United States (Stanford, 1975), 199. 65. J. B. Donnelly, “Prentiss Gilbert’s Mission to the League of Nations Council, October 1931,” Diplomatic History 2 (1978): 373–87; Thorne, Limits, 159–61. 66. See Stimson diary, 23–25 Sept. 1931, Stimson, 18; Stimson diary, 17, 20, 21, 26 Nov., 9 Dec. 1931, Stimson, 19; Hornbeck to Castle, 14 Oct. 1931, Hornbeck to Stimson, 18 Nov. 1931, both Hornbeck, 453. Cf. Thorne, Limits, 192–99. 67. Cf. F. E. McMurtrie, ed., Jane’s Fighting Ships 1931 (London, 1932); and “[Takahashi, the Japanese finance minister] said: Japan couldn’t even finance a half-year’s war expenditure, should war perchance be waged”: in “Hoover’s Warning” 16 Feb. 1932, SHM. 68. Nish, Japan’s Struggle, 63–66, 74–76. 69. Inukai Appointed Premier, 24 Dec. 1931, SHM. 70. Lytton Report in Tokyo, 8 Oct. 1932, SHM. 71. R. H. Ferrell, Peace in Their Time: The Origins of the Kellogg-Briand Pact (New Haven, CT, 1952); H. Josephson, “Outlawing War: Internationalism and the Pact of Paris,” Diplomatic History 3 (1979): 377–90. 72. Bingham telegram (310) to Hull, 9 July 1935, SDDF 741.65/72; Bingham diary, 9, 29 July 25 Sept. 1935, Bingham, 1; Atherton telegram (384) to Hull, 20 Aug. 1935, SDDF 711.41/314; Hoare despatch to Lindsay, 29 July 1935, Lindsay despatch to Hoare, 12 Aug. 1935, Lindsay telegram (226) to Hoare, 14 Aug. 1935, Hoare telegram (235) to Lindsay, 17 Aug. 1935, all DBFP II, 14: 439–40, 477–78, 479, 498. 73. Hull memorandum, 5 July 1935, Hull, 58. Cf. Lindsay telegram (165) to Hoare, 5 July 1935, DBFP II, 14: 363. 74. For the standard defense of Roosevelt, see Dallek, Franklin D. Roosevelt, 101–21. 75. G. W. Baer, Test Case: Italy, Ethiopia and the League of Nations (Stanford, 1976), 99–100, 199–201; A. Mockler, Haile Selassies’s War: The Italian-Ethiopian Campaign 1935–1941 (New York, 1984), 74–95. 76. M. Knox, “Conquest, Foreign and Domestic, in Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany,” Journal of Modern History 56 (1984): 26–57; C. J. Lowe and F. Marzari, Italian Foreign Policy 1870–1940 (London, 1975), 240–50; D. D. Roberts, The Syndicalist Tradition and Italian Fascism (Chapel Hill, NC, 1979), 113–14. 77. Clerk [British ambassador, Paris] despatch to Hoare [foreign secretary], 16 Aug. 1935, both DBFP II, 14: 488, 496–97; Vansittart to Hoare, 19 Aug. 1935, Hoare MSS FO 800/295. 78. M. Funke, Sanktionen und Kanonen: Hitler Mussolini und der italienische Abessinienkonflikt, 1934–1936 (Du¨ sseldorf, 1970); idem, “Die Deutsch-italienischen Beziehungen: Antibolshewismus und aussenpolitische Interessenkonkurrenz als Strukturprinzip der Achse,” in idem, ed., Hitler, Deutschland und die Ma¨ chte: Materialen zur Aussenpolitik des Dritten Reiches (Du¨ sseldorf, 1976), 823–46; D. C. Watt,

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“The Rome-Berlin Axis, 1936–1940: Myth and Reality,” Review of Politics 22 (1960): 519–43. 79. CC 40(35), 24 July 1935, and ministerial meeting, 6 Aug. 1935, both CAB [Cabinet Archives, Public Record Office, Kew] 23/82; Vansittart to Hoare, 9, 19 Aug. 1935, Hoare to Eden 15, 17 Sept. 1935, all Hoare FO 800/295. 80. E. H. Haraszti, The Invaders: Hitler Occupies the Rhineland (Budapest, 1983); J. Peterson, “Italien in der aussenpolitischen Konzeption Hitlers,” In K. Ju¨ rgensen and R. Hansen, Historisch-Politische Steiflichter (Neumu¨ nster, Schleswig-Holstein, 1971), 200–220; E. M. Robertson, “Hitler and Sanctions: Mussolini and the Rhineland,” European Studies Review 7 (1977): 409–35. 81. R. Dallek, Democrat and Diplomat: The Life of William E. Dodd (New York, 1968); W. E. Dodd Jr. and M. Dodd, eds., Ambassador Dodd’s Diary, 1933–1938 (New York, 1941). Cf. Dodd to Hull, 19 Oct. 1933, Hull, 32; Dodd to Hull, 11 April 1935, Hull, 38; Dodd to Hull, 19 Sept. 1936, Hull, 39; Dodd memorandum, German Impressions, 11 Aug. 1937, Dodd to Roosevelt, 26 Aug. 1937, both Roosevelt PSF Germany: Dodd. 82. Cf. Bullitt [U.S. ambassador, Paris] to Roosevelt, 10 Jan. 10 May 1937, Roosevelt PSF France: Bullitt; Bowers [U.S. Ambassador, Spain] to Roosevelt, 31 March, 18 May 1937, ibid. Spain; Davies [U.S. ambassador, Russia] to Roosevelt, 10 June, 22 Aug. 1937, Roosevelt PSF Russia. 83. Chamberlain to Hilda, his sister, 17 Dec. 1937, NC [Neville Chamberlain MSS, University of Birmingham, Birmingham] 18/1/1032; emphasis in original. 84. Hull memorandum, 14 Dec. 1937, Hull, 58; CC 47(37)4 (15 Dec.), CC 48(37)5 (22 Dec.), both CAB 23/90. 85. I. Colvin, The Chamberlain Cabinet (New York, 1971), 46. 86. Welles memorandum, 6 Oct. 1937, FDRFA, 7: 29–32. 87. Lindsay telegrams (37–40) to FO, 11–12 Jan. 1937, Cadogan minute for Chamberlain, 13 Jan. 1938, all FO 371/21526/2127/64; narrative of events, 12 Jan., 7 March 1937, Eden MSS FO 954/30/US/43/2. 88. FPC Meetings 19–20, both 21 Jan. 1938, FO 27/622; Chamberlain telegram (59) to Lindsay, 21 Jan. 1938, FO 371/21526/2127/64. 89. Chamberlain to Roosevelt, 21 Jan. 1938, Hull, 42. ¨ sterreich: Der Anschluss (Wien, 1979). 90. N. Schausberger, Der Griff nach O 91. Cf. T. Gilbert, Treachery at Munich (London, 1989); D. N. Lammers, Explaining Munich: The Search for Motive in British Policy (Stanford, 1966); W. Murray, “German Air Power and the Munich Crisis,” in B. Bond and I. Roy, eds., War and Society: A Yearbook of Military History, Vol. 2 (1977); C. Thorne, The Approach of War, 1938–39 (London, 1967), 54–91; D. C. Watt, “Der Einfluss der Dominions auf die britische Aussenpolitik vor Mu¨ nchen 1938,” Vierteljahrshefte fur Zeitgeschichte 8 (1960): 64–74. 92. Roosevelt telegram to Chamberlain, 28 Sept. 1938, Roosevelt PSF Great Britain. 93. P. Dennis, Decision by Default: Peacetime Conscription and British Defence Policy 1919–1939 (London, 1972); R. Manne, “The British Decision for Alliance with Russia, May 1939,” Journal of Contemporary History 9 (1974): 3–26; A. Prazmowska, Britain, Poland, and the Eastern Front, 1939 (London, 1987); S. Newman, The British Guarantee to Poland: A Study in the Continuity of British Foreign Policy (London, 1976).

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94. Roosevelt telegram to Hitler, 14 April 1939, FDRFA, 14: 301–7. Cf. Dallek, Franklin D. Roosevelt, 185–86. 95. Cf. S. Aster, 1939: The Making of the Second World War (London, 1973); D. Dilks, “Appeasement Revisited,” University of Leeds Review 15 (1972): 28–56; P. M. Kennedy, “ ‘The Tradition of Appeasement in British Foreign Policy, 1865– 1939,’ ” British Journal of International Studies 2 (1976): 195–215; R. Lamb, The Drift to War (London, 1989); W. Murray, The Change in the European Balance of Power, 1938–1939: The Path to Ruin (Princeton, 1984); L. B. Namier, Diplomatic Prelude, 1938–1939 (London, 1948); W. R. Rock, Appeasement on Trial: British Foreign Policy and Its Critics, 1938–1939 (Hamden, CT, 1966); A. J. P. Taylor, The Origins of the Second World War (Harmondsworth, ENG., 1962); D. C. Watt, How War Came: The Immediate Origins of the Second World War, 1938–1939 (London, 1989); G. L. Weinberg, The Foreign Policy of Hitler’s Germany, Vol. 2 (Chicago, 1980). 96. M. Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill, Vol. 5, 1922–1939 (London, 1976), 124–25. 97. L. Pratt, “Anglo-American Naval Conversations on the Far East of January 1938,” International Affairs 47 (1971): 745–63. 98. D. C. Watt, “Gli accordi mediterranei anglo-italiani del 16 aprile 1938,” Rivista di Studi Politici Internazionali 26 (1959): 51–96. 99. Watt, How War Came, 255–57; Weinberg, Foreign Policy of Hitler’s Germany, 577–578. 100. R. W. Weber, Die Enstehungsgeschichte des Hitler-Stalin-Paktes 1939 (Frankfurt/M, 1980). Cf. W. Benz and H. Grami, eds., Sommer 1939: Die Grossma¨ chte und der europa¨ ische Kreig (Stuttgart, 1979). 101. M. Knox, Mussolini Unleashed, 1939–1941: Politics and Strategy in Fascist Italy’s Last War (Cambridge, ENG., 1982), 44–59; Lowe and Marzari, Italian Foreign Policy, 337–62.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Manuscript Collections: Private Robert Bingham: Library of Congress, Washington, DC Sir Neville Chamberlain: NC Series, University Library, University of Birmingham, Birmingham Norman Davis: Library of Congress, Washington, DC Sir Anthony Eden: FO 954 Series, Public Record Office, Kew Herbert Feis: Library of Congress, Washington, DC Joseph Grew: Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA Sir Samuel Hoare (Viscount Templewood): FO 800 Series, Public Record Office, Kew; Templewood MSS, University Library, Cambridge University, Cambridge Herbert Hoover: (HHPP) Presidential Papers Series, Herbert Hoover Presidential Library, West Branch, IA Stanley Hornbeck: Hoover Institute, Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA Cordell Hull: Library of Congress, Washington, DC William Phillips: Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA

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Benz, W., and H. Graml, eds. Sommer 1939: Die Grossma¨ chte und der europa¨ ische Kreig. Stuttgart, 1979. Bickel, W.-H. Die anglo-amerikanishen Beziehungen 1927–1930 im Licht der Flottenfrage. Zurich, 1970. Borg, D., and S. Okamoto, eds. Pearl Harbor as History: Japanese-American Relations, 1931–1941. New York, London, 1973. Buckley, T. The United States and the Washington Conference, 1921–1922. Knoxville, 1970. Burke, B. V. Ambassador Frederic Sackett and the Collapse of the Weimar Republic, 1930–1933: The United States and Hitler’s Rise to Power. Cambridge, ENG., 1994. Carman, H. J. The Cooperation of the United States with the League of Nations. New York, 1930. Chassery, E. Les Illusions de l’Amerique en Matie`re de Cre´dit, de 1914 a` l’Experience Roosevelt. Paris, 1937. Cohen, W. I. The American Revisionists: The Lessons of Intervention in World War I. Chicago, 1967. Cole, W. S. Senator Gerald P. Nye and American Foreign Relations. Minneapolis, 1962. ———. Roosevelt and the Isolationists, 1932–1945. Lincoln, 1983. ———. Determinism and American Foreign Relations During the Franklin D. Roosevelt Era. Lanham, MD, 1995. Colvin, I. The Chamberlain Cabinet. New York, 1971. Combs, J. A. American Diplomatic History: Two Centuries of Changing Interpretations. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London, 1983. Costigliola, F. Awkward Dominion: American Political, Economic, and Cultural Relations with Europe, 1919–1933. Ithaca, 1984. Craig, G. Germany, 1866–1945. Oxford, 1981. Crowley, J. B. Japan’s Quest for Autonomy: National Security and Foreign Policy, 1930–1938. Princeton, 1966. Current, R. N. Secretary Stimson: A Study in Statecraft. New Brunswick, NJ, 1954. Curti, M. E. The American Peace Crusade, 1815–1860. Durham, NC, 1939. Dallek, R. Democrat and Diplomat: The Life of William E. Dodd. New York, 1968. ———. Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, 1932–1945. Oxford, 1979. Dennis, P. Decision by Default: Peacetime Conscription and British Defence Policy 1919–1939. London, 1972. DeNovo, J. American Interests and Policies in the Middle East, 1900–1939. Minneapolis, 1963. Divine, R. A. The Illusion of Neutrality. Chicago, 1962. Dodd, W. E., Jr., and M. Dodd, eds. Ambassador Dodd’s Diary, 1933–1938. New York, 1941. Doenecke, J. D., and J. E. Wilz. From Isolationism to War, 1931–1941. Arlington Heights, IL, 1991. Dulles, F. R. America in the Pacific: A Century of Expansion. New York, Boston, 1932. Engelbrecht, H. C., and F. C. Hanighen. Merchants of Death: A Study of the International Armaments Industry. New York, 1934.

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Ferrell, R. H. Peace in Their Time: The Origins of the Kellogg-Briand Pact. New Haven, CT, 1952. ———. Woodrow Wilson and World War I, 1917–1921. New York, 1985. Feuchtwanger, E. J. From Weimar to Hitler: Germany, 1918–33. London, 1993. Funke, M. Sanktionen und Kanonen: Hitler Mussolini und der italienische Abessinienkonflikt, 1934–1936. Du¨ sseldorf, 1970. Funke, M., ed. Hitler, Deutschland und die Ma¨ chte: Materialen zur Aussenpolitik des Dritten Reiches. Du¨ sseldorf, 1976. Gardner, L. C. Economic Aspects of New Deal Diplomacy. Madison, 1964. Gellman, I. F. Good Neighbor Diplomacy: United States Policies in Latin America, 1933–1945. Baltimore, 1979. Gilbert, T. Treachery at Munich. London, 1989. Gilbert, M. Winston S. Churchill, Vol. 5, 1922–1939. London, 1976. Gribble, F. H. What America Owes Europe. London, 1932. Guinsburg, T. N. The Pursuit of Isolationism in the United States Senate from Versailles to Pearl Harbor. New York, 1982. Haglund, D. Latin America and the Transformation of U.S. Strategic Thought, 1936– 1940. Albuquerque, 1984. Hall, C. Britain, America, and Arms Control, 1921–37. London, 1987. Haraszti, E. H. The Invaders: Hitler Occupies the Rhineland. Budapest, 1983. Hawley, E. W. The New Deal and the Problem of Monopoly. Princeton, 1969. ———. The Great War and the Search for a Modern Order: A History of the American People and Their Institutions, 1917–1933. New York, 1979. Hogan, M. J. Informal Entente: The Private Structure of Cooperation in AngloAmerican Economic Diplomacy, 1918–1929. Columbia, MO, 1977. Holborn, H. A History of Modern Germany, 1840–1945. New York, 1969. Hubbard, U. P. The Cooperation of the United States with the League of Nations, 1931– 1936. New York, 1937. Hull, C. Memoirs. 2 vols. New York, 1948. Ike, N., ed. Japan’s Decision for War: Records of the 1941 Policy Conferences. Stanford, 1967. Jonas, M. Isolationism in America, 1935–1941. Chicago, 1990. Kent, B. The Spoils of War: The Politics, Economics, and Diplomacy of Reparations, 1918–1932. Oxford, 1989. Knox, M. Mussolini Unleashed, 1939–1941: Politics, and Strategy in Fascist Italy’s Last War. Cambridge, ENG., 1982. Kunz, D. B. The Battle for Britain’s Gold Standard in 1931. London, New York, 1987. Lamb, R. The Drift to War. London, 1989. Lammers, D. N. Explaining Munich: The Search for Motive in British Policy. Stanford, 1966. Langer W. L., and S. E. Gleason. The Challenge to Isolationism, 1937–1940. New York, 1952. Leffler, M. P. The Elusive Quest: America’s Pursuit of European Stability and French Security, 1919–1933. Chapel Hill, 1979. Leutze, J. Bargaining for Supremacy: Anglo-American Naval Collaboration, 1937–1941. Chapel Hill, 1977.

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Link, A. S. Woodrow Wilson: Revolution, War, and Peace. Arlington Heights, IL, 1979. Lowe, C. J., and F. Marzari. Italian Foreign Policy 1870–1940. London, 1975. Maddox, R. J. William E. Borah and American Foreign Policy. Baton Rouge, 1969. Marks, F. W., III. Wind Over Sand: The Diplomacy of Franklin Roosevelt. Athens, GA, 1988. McKercher, B. J. C., ed. Arms Limitation and Disarmament, 1899–1939: Restraints on War. New York, 1992. McMurtrie, F. E., ed. Jane’s Fighting Ships 1931. London, 1932. ———. Jane’s Fighting Ships 1936. London, 1936. Millett, J. D. The Army Service Forces: The Organization and Role of the Army Service Forces. (Washington, 1954. Minart, J. Le Drame de De`sarmament Franc¸ ais (1919–1939): ses aspects politiques et techniques. Paris, 1959. Mockler, A. Haile Selassie’s War: The Italian-Ethiopian Campaign 1935–1941. New York, 1984. Moley, R. After Seven Years. New York, 1939. Moore, R. M. Commercial Conflict and Foreign Policy: A Study in Anglo-American Relations, 1932–38. New York, 1987. Morison, S. E. The Two-Ocean War: A Short History of the United States Navy in the Second World War. Boston, 1963. Moulton, H. G., and L. Paslovsky. War Debts and World Prosperity. Washington, DC, 1932. Murfett, M. Fool-Proof Relations: The Search for Anglo-American Naval Collaboration During the Chamberlain Years, 1937–1940. Singapore, 1984. Murray, W. The Change in the European Balance of Power, 1938–1939: The Path to Ruin. Princeton, 1984. Namier, L. B. Diplomatic Prelude, 1938–1939. London, 1948. Nearing S., and J. Freeman. Dollar Diplomacy: A Study in American Imperialism. New York, 1925. Newman, S. The British Guarantee to Poland: A Study in the Continuity of British Foreign Policy. London, 1976. Nish, I. H. Japan’s Struggle With Internationalism: Japan, China, and the League of Nations, 1931–3. London, 1993. Nixon, E., and D. B. Schewe, eds. Franklin D. Roosevelt and Foreign Affairs, Vol. 1. New York, Toronto, 1979. O’Connor, R. G. Perilous Equilibrium: The United States and the London Naval Conference of 1930. Lawrence, KS, 1962. Palomares, J. N. La Invasio´ n Yanqui en 1914. Mexico City, 1940. Pelz, S. Race to Pearl Harbor: The Failure of the Second London Naval Conference and the Onset of World War II. Cambridge, MA, 1974. Perkins, B. The Cambridge History of American Foreign Relations, Vol. 1, The Creation of a Republican Empire, 1776–1865. Cambridge, 1993. Phillips, C. F. The American Neutrality Problem. New York, 1939. Powaski, R. Toward an Entangling Alliance: American Isolationism and Europe, 1901– 1950, new ed. New York, 1991. Pratt, J. W. Expansionists of 1898: The Acquisition of Hawaii and the Spanish Islands. Baltimore, 1936.

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Prazmowska, A. Britain, Poland, and the Eastern Front, 1939. London, 1987. Reynolds, D. The Creation of the Anglo-American Alliance 1937–1941: A Study in Competitive Cooperation. Chapel Hill, 1982. Rieselbach, L. The Roots of Isolationism: Congressional Voting and Presidential Leadership. New York, 1966. Rippy, F. J. America and the Strife of Europe. Chicago, 1938. Roberts, D. D. The Syndicalist Tradition and Italian Fascism. Chapel Hill, 1979. Robertson, E. M. Mussolini as Empire-Builder: Europe and Africa, 1932–36. New York, 1977. Robinson, E. E., and V. D. Borne. Herbert Hoover: President of the United States. Stanford, 1975. Rock, W. R. Appeasement on Trial: British Foreign Policy and Its Critics, 1938–1939. Hamden, 1966. Rosenberg, E. S. Spreading the American Dream: American Economic and Cultural Expansion, 1890–1945. New York, 1982. Roskill, S. W. Naval Policy Between the Wars, Vol. 2, The Period of Reluctant Rearmament, 1930–1939. London, 1976. Salin, J. L’E´ volution du Controˆ le de E´ tats-Unis en Ame´rique Centrale et Caraı¨be. Lyon, 1937. Schacht, J. N. ed. The Three Faces of Midwestern Isolationism: Gerald P. Nye, Robert E. Wood, John L. Lewis. Iowa City, 1981. ¨ sterreich: Der Anschluss. Wien, 1979. Schausberger, N. Der Griff nach O Schmitz, D. F. The United States and Fascist Italy, 1922–1940. Chapel Hill, 1988. Schro¨ der, H.-J. Deutschland und die Vereinigten Staaten, 1933–1939: Wirtschaft und Politik in der Entwicklung des Deutsch-Amerikanischen Gegensatzes. Wiesbaden, 1970. Shay, R. P., Jr. British Rearmament in the Thirties: Politics and Profits. Princeton, 1977. Tatum, E. H., Jr. The United States and Europe, 1815–1823: A Study in the Background of the Monroe Doctrine. Berkeley, 1936. Taylor, A. J. P. The Origins of the Second World War. Harmondsworth, ENG., 1962. Thorne, C. The Approach of War, 1938–39. London, 1967. ———. The Limits of Foreign Policy: The West, the League and the Far Eastern Crisis of 1931–1933. New York, 1973. Trachtenberg, M. Reparation in World Politics: France and European Economic Diplomacy, 1916–1923. New York, 1980. Trask, D. F. The AEF and Coalition Warmaking, 1917–1918. Lawrence, KS, 1993. Vaı¨sse, M. Se´curite´ d’abord: La politique francais en matie`re de de´sarmament, 9 de´cembre 1930–7 avril 1934. Paris, 1981. Watt, D. C. Succeeding John Bull: America in Britain’s Place, 1900–1975. Cambridge, ENG., 1984. ———. How War Came: The Immediate Origins of the Second World War, 1938–1939. London, 1989. Weber, R. W. Die Enstehungsgeschichte des Hitler-Stalin-Paktes 1939. Frankfurt/M, 1980. Weinberg, A. K. Manifest Destiny: A Study of Nationalist Expansionism in American History. Baltimore, 1935. Weinberg, G. L. The Foreign Policy of Hitler’s Germany. Vol. 2. Chicago, 1980.

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Wiltz, J. E. In Search of Peace: The Senate Munitions Enquiry, 1934–1936. Baton Rouge, 1963. Woolery, W. K. The Relation of Thomas Jefferson to American Foreign Relations, 1783– 1793. Baltimore, 1927.

Articles and Chapters in Books Accinelli, R. “The Hoover Administration and the World Court.” Peace and Change 4 (1977). ———. “The Roosevelt Administration and the World Court Defeat, 1935.” Historian 40 (1978). ———. “The Militant Internationalists: The League of Nations Association, the Peace Movement, and U.S. Foreign Policy, 1934–38. Diplomatic History 4 (1980). Ambrosius, L. E. “Ethnic Politics and German-American Relations after World War I: The Fight over the Versailles Treaty in the United States.” In H. Trefousse, ed., Germany and America: Essays on Problems of International Relations and Immigration. New York, 1980. Baram, P. J. “Undermining the British: Department of State Policies in Egypt and the Suez Canal Before and During World War II.” Historian 40 (1978). Berg, M. W. “Protecting National Interests by Treaty: The Second London Naval Conference, 1934–1936.” In B. J. C. McKercher, ed., Arms Limitation and Disarmament, 1899–1939: Restraints on War. New York, 1992. Boyle, P. G. “The Roots of Isolationism: A Case Study.” Journal of American Studies 6 (1972). DeWitt, H. A. “Hiram Johnson and Early New Deal Diplomacy, 1933–1934.” California Historical Quarterly 53 (1974): 377–86. Dilks, D. “Appeasement Revisited.” University of Leeds Review 15 (1972). Donnelly, J. B. “Prentiss Gilbert’s Mission to the League of Nations Council, October 1931.” Diplomatic History 2 (1978). Egerton, G. W. “Ideology, Diplomacy, and International Organisation: Wilsonism and the League of Nations in Anglo-American Relations, 1918–1920.” In B. J. C. McKercher, ed., Anglo-American Relations in the 1920s: The Struggle for Supremacy. London, Edmonton, 1991. Haglund, D. “George C. Marshall and the Question of Military Aid to England, May-June 1940.” Journal of Contemporary History 15 (1980). Josephson, H. “Outlawing War: Internationalism and the Pact of Paris.” Diplomatic History 3 (1979). Kahn, G. “Presidential Passivity on a Nonsalient Issue: President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the 1935 World Court Fight. Diplomatic History 4 (1980). Kennedy, G. C. “The 1930 London Naval Conference and Anglo-American Maritime Strength, 1927–1930.” In B. J. C. McKercher, ed., Arms Limitation and Disarmament, 1899–1939: Restraints on War. New York, 1992. Kennedy, P. M. “The Tradition of Appeasement in British Foreign Policy, 1865– 1939. British Journal of International Studies 2 (1976). Keyerslingk, R. H. “Hitler and German Nationalism Before 1933.” Canadian Review of Studies in Nationalism 5 (1978). Knox, M. “Conquest, Foreign and Domestic, In Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany.” Journal of Modern History 56 (1984).

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Manne, R. “The British Decision for Alliance with Russia, May 1939.” Journal of Contemporary History 9 (1974). McKercher, B. J. C. “Reaching for the Brass Ring: The Recent Historiography of Interwar American Foreign Policy.” Diplomatic History 15 (1991). ———. “Of Horns and Teeth: The Preparatory Commission and the World Disarmament Conference, 1926–1934. In B. J. C. McKercher, ed., Arms Limitation and Disarmament, 1899–1939: Restraints on War. New York, 1992. McVoy, J. L., et al. “The Roosevelt Resurgence (1933–1941).” In R. W. King, ed., Naval Engineering and American Seapower. Baltimore, 1989. Megaw, M. R. “The Scramble for the Pacific: Anglo-United States Rivalry in the 1930s.” Historical Studies 17 (1977). Morrisey C., and M. A. Ramsay. “ ‘Giving a Lead in the Right Direction’: Sir Robert Vansittart and the Defence Requirements Sub-Committee.” Diplomacy and Statecraft 6 (1995). Murray, W. “German Air Power and the Munich Crisis.” In B. Bond and I. Roy, eds., War and Society: A Yearbook of Military History, Vol. 2 (1977). Parker, R. A. C. “Great Britain, France and the Ethiopian Crisis.” English Historical Review 89 (1974). Peterson, J. “Italien in der aussenpolitischen Konzeption Hitlers.” In K. Ju¨ rgensen and R. Hansen, Historisch-Politische Steiflichter. Neumu¨ nster, SchleswigHolstein, 1971. Pratt, L. “Anglo-American Naval Conversations on the Far East of January 1938.” International Affairs 47 (1971). Quartararo, R. “Le origini del piano Hoare-Laval.” Storia contemporanea 8 (1977). Robertson, E. M. “Hitler and Sanctions: Mussolini and the Rhineland.” European Studies Review 7 (1977). Robertson, J. C. “The Hoare-Laval Plan.” Journal of Contemporary History 10 (1975). Roi, M. L. “ ‘A Completely Immoral and Cowardly Attitude’: The British Foreign Office, American Neutrality, and the Hoare-Laval Plan.” Canadian Journal of History (1994). Savelle, M. H. “The Appearance of an American Attitude toward External Affairs, 1750–1775.” American Historical Review 52 (1947). Schro¨ der, H.-J. “Das Dritte Reich, die USA und Latinamerika, 1933–1941.” In M. Funk, ed., Hitler, Deutschland und die Ma¨ chte: Materielien zur Aussenpolitik des Dritten Reiches. Du¨ sseldorf, 1976. Schulz, G. “Reparationen und Krisenprobleme nach dem Wahlsieg de NSDAP 1930: Betractungen zur Regierung Bru¨ ning.” Vierteljahrschrift fu¨ r Sozialund Wirtschafts-geschichte 67 (1980). Stachura, P. D. “The Political Strategy of the Nazi Party.” German Studies Review 3 (1980). Venn, F. “A Futile Paper Chase: Anglo-American Relations and Middle East Oil, 1918–1934.” Diplomacy and Statecraft 1 (1990). Watt, D. C. (Gli accordi mediterranei anglo-italiani del 16 aprile 1938.” Rivista di Studi Politici Internazionali 26 (1959). ———. “The Rome-Berlin Axis, 1936–1940: Myth and Reality.” Review of Politics 22 (1960). ———. “Der Einfluss der Dominions auf die britische Aussenpolitik vor Mu¨ nchen 1938.” Vierteljahrshefte fur Zeitgeschichte 8 (1960).

4 When Nationalism Confronted Hegemony: The U.S. Challenge to the Cuban Revolution, 1959–1961 Kyle Longley

In 1959, a young Cuban revolutionary, Fidel Castro, overthrew the dictator, Fulgencio Batista. Leaving his sanctuary in the Sierra Madre Mountains, Castro took control and began implementing a series of major socioeconomic reforms. His actions would initiate a confrontation with Washington. U.S. officials and businessmen tried to undermine the reforms, pressuring the Castro government to reduce their breadth and speed. Determined to exert Cuban sovereignty after sixty years of languishing in the shadow of the United States, Castro instead intensified his efforts by nationalizing foreign industries and moving closer to the Soviet Union. Finally, the United States broke relations and supported an attempt by Cuban revolutionaries to overthrow Castro. Tensions heightened, ultimately culminating in the Cuban Missile Crisis leading to a superpower confrontation that drove the world to the brink of nuclear war. By 1962, relations had deteriorated to the point that neither state could negotiate in good faith, a pattern unabated until today. While many North Americans had greeted Castro’s victory with great enthusiasm, the relationship decayed quickly. In large part, the policies of the administrations of Dwight D. Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy contributed to the process. While U.S. officials sought to prevent a radicalization of the Cuban revolution, their actions ensured the opposite effect. The policies of the Eisenhower administration, in particular the cutting of the sugar quota and pressuring of U.S. oil refineries not to process Soviet oil, alienated the Cubans who resented attempts to subvert the social and economic components of the revolution. When fol-

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lowed by the overt antagonism of the Kennedy administration, U.S. policy helped drive the revolution further leftward and into the sphere of the Soviet Union. The purpose of this chapter is to examine alternative paths that the United States had in dealing with Castro’s nationalism during the period 1959 to 1961. It will ask several questions including: Was it inevitable that Castro would make his declaration that he was a Marxist-Leninist in 1961? Could the United States have worked with moderate elements to undermine the more radical groups of the revolution? What policies were available that would have respected Cuban sovereignty and maintained a healthy relationship between the two countries? The answers will emphasize important junctures where the United States had opportunities to prevent the creation of an antagonistic relationship with its neighbor that has lasted nearly four decades. HISTORICAL BACKGROUND The confrontation between the United States and Cuba under Fidel Castro did not exist in a historical vacuum. In the case of Cuba, the foundations for conflict evolved during the first half of the nineteenth century. While Cuba remained a member of the Spanish Empire much longer than its Latin American counterparts, its proximity to the United States and the decline of Spanish power ensured North American interest in the colony. U.S. traders and entrepreneurs, in the earliest stages involved in the slave trade, worked in Havana and other major Cuban ports. As the trade and U.S. travel to the island increased, so did U.S. interest in the strategic island. The heavy-handed periodic interference and high taxes of the Madrid government drove some North Americans, principally those with southern sympathies, to try to secure Cuba for the United States. U.S. filibusters plotted, often with the assistance of Cuban exiles, to seize the island. President James K. Polk sought to buy the island from Spain. In 1848, he offered Spain $100 million for Cuba while Franklin Pierce offered $130 million in 1854.1 That same year, U.S. ministers from Spain, France, and England issued the Ostend Manifesto that promoted the purchase of Cuba by the United States. They encouraged the United States to respond to any refusal “by every law, human and divine, we shall be justified in wresting it from Spain if we possess the power.”2 The devastating American Civil War and the weak executive leaders that followed, however, momentarily sidetracked U.S. aspirations of taking Cuba. The second half of the nineteenth century saw a heightened U.S. economic and cultural intrusion into Cuba. U.S. businessmen and investors poured into the colony. They cooperated with Cuban elites to circumvent Spanish laws and invested heavily in sugar and tobacco. The North

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Americans also imported large quantities of U.S. materials to Cuba including wheat and finished goods. Accompanying North American businessmen were Protestant missionaries who sought to make inroads into the solidly Catholic country. These influences brought many North American customs and traditions, and by the 1890s, the United States had become the most dominant foreign influence on the island. The increased U.S. presence played a significant role in the evolution of the Cuban Revolution that fermented among Cuban nationalists for many years. The best representative of this movement was Jose´ Martı´. He promoted not only Cuban independence, but the young intellectual wanted to create a Cuban society that included racial equality and economic justice. While admiring many North American institutions, he condemned the pervasive greed and exploitation inherent in the system. He warned against replacing Spanish domination with that of the United States. Economic matters especially concerned him. He warned, “The nation that buys, commands. The nation that sells, serves.” He added, “The excessive influence of one country in the commerce of another is converted to political influence.” To prevent this, Martı´ warned, “The first step taken by a nation to dominate another is to separate it from other nations.”3 Determined to prevent Cuba’s control by a core power, he worked with Cuban e´ migre´ groups to promote Cuban independence and sovereignty. His untimely death at the beginning of the Cuban War of Independence in 1895 deprived the country of a prominent leader. Nevertheless, his ideas would sustain Cuban revolutionaries for many years. The year 1898 proved a pivotal one in U.S.–Cuban relations, setting the pattern for the following six decades. The United States intervened in the Cuban War of Independence, in part to protect American interests although some idealism drove some North Americans. Some analysts such as Louis A. Pe´ rez Jr. have noted that the U.S. intervention, despite some noble intentions, “transformed a Cuban war of liberation into a U.S. war of conquest.”4 Most North Americans opposed direct absorption of Cuba into the United States, in large part fearing the addition of the large Afro-Cuban population into the country. As a result, U.S. leaders developed alternate methods to control the island and its new leaders. The most notorious of these was the Platt Amendment. Promulgated in 1901, the agreement between Cuba and the United States prohibited Cubans from making any treaty that could impair its sovereignty, forbade any accumulation of foreign debt, granted the U.S. military bases in Cuba, and allowed the United States to intervene militarily to protect Cuban independence. The agreement undermined Cuba’s sovereignty, and many Cubans chafed under the relationship.5 It would remain in effect for thirty-three years, and U.S. leaders and economic interests would use it to further entrench U.S. hegemony over the island.

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U.S. control of the island through the Platt Amendment from 1901– 1934 allowed more North American penetration into the local economy and culture. North Americans bought large tracts of land and cooperated with local creole elites (typically people of Spanish heritage) to secure more control of all major industries that included sugar, cattle raising, and tobacco. The economy remained reliant on agriculture for export, a process that created a disparity in exchange with the producers of finished goods. The U.S. government aided the process by negotiating treaties of reciprocity that maintained the monocrop economy and also prevented foreign competition. Unfortunately, the vast majority of the benefits of economic development reached only a small segment of the population. Much of the country, primarily the Afro-Cuban population, stagnated under the system and acquired few economic or educational opportunities. Culturally, North American educators, entertainers, and sports heroes become prominent figures in Cuba. Cuban elites had their children educated in the United States, and large immigrant populations in Florida and major cities such as New York City accelerated the process of North American influence in the arts, entertainment, and leisure. While Cubans also made noticeable contributions to U.S. culture, the Americanization of Cuban society primarily flowed from the core to the periphery. Cuban nationalists viewed this process with much suspicion, fearing a loss of national identity. While some changes occurred after 1934 when the administration of Franklin Roosevelt announced the “Good Neighbor” policy and helped abrogate the Platt Amendment, the U.S. presence remained pervasive. The rise to power of the dictator, Fulgencio Batista, and subsequent attempts at reform by moderates further polarized Cuban society. The U.S. economic power remained powerful. By 1958, U.S. direct investments in Cuba totaled in excess of $1 billion. U.S. companies controlled more than 90 percent of communication and electrical companies and over 80 percent of the railroads. The dominance extended into all areas of the economy, which in turn affected political and social relations. Cuban elite society in many ways mirrored its American U.S. counterpart. Cuban elites continued to travel and shop in the United States, a tendency reinforced by U.S. advertising. The rising expectations of the new middle class languished under the repressive regime of Batista; however, cracks began to appear despite U.S. support of the Cuban government through 1958. Early relations between Cuba and the United States set the stage for the confrontation that developed after the rise of Fidel Castro. Only Mexico and Central America chafed as much under the dominance of the United States. Oftentimes, the United States thwarted the aspirations of Cuban nationalists who sought to create not only political independence

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but to protect the island’s economic and cultural sovereignty. The U.S. presence also exacerbated existing domestic social and economic tensions. Castro would take power determined to break the U.S. stranglehold and firmly establish Cuban independence as well as build on the ideas of Martı´ and restructure the polarized Cuban socioeconomic structure. The historical animosities and misunderstandings would bubble forth, creating confrontation between the two nations. There would be several stages in the relationship between Castro and the United States. The first stage encompassed the period from the rise of Castro through his victory in January 1959. The second stage covers the period from Castro’s accession to power through the end of his first year in power. The third stage will emphasize the worsening of relations from early 1960 through the end of the Eisenhower administration. Finally, the fourth stage underscores the outright hostility between the Kennedy administration and Castro as exemplified by the Bay of Pigs invasion. In each case, U.S. leaders had alternative policies that they could have chosen. Yet, they responded in a manner that further eroded an already precarious relationship between the countries that resulted in open hostility after 1962. STAGE 1 Even before Castro’s victory in January 1959, the United States missed opportunities to create better relations with the Cuban revolutionaries. If anything, U.S. diplomats adopted policies that alienated them. These included providing economic and military support to Batista throughout most of the Eisenhower era. Although by 1958 U.S. officials questioned their support of the Cuban dictator, they never worked closely with Castro, choosing instead to favor those that they believed were representative of a more moderate stance. For some Cuban leaders these actions set the stage for suspicion and animosity toward the United States once Castro emerged victorious in early 1959. The revolutionaries’ distrust of North American intentions developed early in the decade. The initial attempt by Castro and his allies to overthrow Batista in July 1953 had come on the heels of Batista’s coup that had overthrown the government of Carlos Prı´o Socarra´ s. The United States had immediately extended diplomatic recognition to the new regime, an imperative for the survival of any Cuban administration. Soon after, Batista forces crushed Castro’s revolt, killing and imprisoning many of the revolutionaries. The United States stood behind Batista for the next five years as its diplomats argued that Batista provided stability and checked the aspirations of “radicals” and Communists in Cuba. Even when Castro secured his release from prison in 1955, after serving only two of a fifteen-year sentence, and began organizing for a return

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to Cuba, during his year-and-a-half exile in Mexico, to continue the struggle, the United States continued to support Batista. Large quantities of military aid flowed into Cuba, and U.S. officials provided economic and political assistance to the Cuban dictator. It was not until the disastrous trip of Vice President Richard Nixon to Latin America in 1958 and the resignation of Secretary of State John Foster Dulles that U.S. policy toward Latin America began to change. Prominent U.S. officials finally recognized the need to oppose the military dictatorships in the region. Nevertheless, much damage had been done. Castro and his allies remained suspicious of the United States because of its record in Latin America. Castro, who was very familiar with the history of U.S. intervention in the Caribbean Basin, in particular feared that Batista would concoct an incident to ensure that the United States would intervene to protect him and its interests (an event that occurred later in 1965 in the Dominican Republic). Despite the change in rhetoric and some concrete actions against the region’s authoritarians, the United States made only half-hearted attempts to unseat Batista. While many in the general public and U.S. Congress backed Castro’s revolt that began again in December 1956, problems continued. Many U.S. policymakers remained ambivalent, fearing instability and unknown Cuban revolutionaries. Some in Washington began a major reexamination of U.S. policy urging firm action to bring down Batista, who was in favor by moderates within Cuban society. At the other extreme, Cuban conservatives viewed the revolution as very dangerous to U.S. interests and encouraged the United States to support Batista. In particular, U.S. ambassador to Cuba, Earl E. T. Smith, opposed Castro. A businessman and political appointee, Smith believed that revolution was inherently bad for North American interests. Smith opposed meddling by the State Department (who he later accused of leftist leaning that allowed Castro’s victory), which had declared U.S. neutrality and placed an arms embargo in April 1958. Smith agreed that Batista had outlived his usefulness, but he opposed a revolutionary change. He worked with conservative Cuban businessmen and professionals to develop a peaceful transfer of power that excluded Castro and his allies. He pressured Batista to hold an election in November 1958. The Cuban consented, but overtly rigged the election in favor of his candidate. Smith urged recognition, but the State Department refused. Without U.S. support, Batista fled into exile in less than a month.6 The United States missed a series of opportunities to deal with Castro and the revolutionaries in a manner that would have produced a good foundation for a positive relationship after their victory. The United States waited much too long to end its support of Batista and the other dictators of the region. The Eisenhower administration had supported

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Batista strongly from when he took power. They funneled economic and military assistance to the island in return for a stable and favorable climate for North American businesses and Batista’s unflinching backing of U.S. initiatives in the Organization of American States. Few U.S. officials questioned this policy until late in Eisenhower’s presidency. The pattern of aid to dictators was not easily overturned, and nationalists throughout Latin America continued to condemn the U.S. record and to remain skeptical of U.S. intentions. An important part of the problem was the choice of U.S. ambassadors. As Richard Welch has characterized Smith, he was the “classic example of the wrong man in the wrong place at the wrong time.”7 He had little understanding of Cuba outside of his contacts with Cuban businessmen and elites. His actions alienated the revolutionaries who viewed him as the archetypal U.S. representative in Latin America, one concerned with protecting U.S. business interests and unaffected with the plight of the majority of Cubans. The Eisenhower administration made a serious mistake appointing and then maintaining Smith as ambassador, especially during such a volatile period in Cuban history. The possibility of at least making a symbolic gesture and having a more professional and objective representative on hand could have weakened the suspicions of the fidelistas toward U.S. designs. The ambivalent attitude did not help the United States. The U.S. government had opposed the cause of the Cuban revolutionaries. This was part of an overall pattern in the history of U.S. foreign relations: Often Washington has been unwilling to accept revolutionary change, primarily any change associated with radicalism that U.S. leaders identify as anticapitalist and anti-American. This was the case in Cuba. U.S. leaders tried to thwart the revolution. When that failed, they tried to find conservative or moderate alternatives. After uncovering none, they faced a victor with which they had provided little moral or material support. This increased tensions and laid the groundwork for misunderstanding and confrontation after January 1959. U.S. leaders had the opportunity to work with the nationalists and to back those within the movement that promoted democratic principles based on the promotion of the social welfare of the majority. Instead they reacted and typically sided with elites rather than developing an enlightened position that respected the sensibilities of the Cubans. STAGE 2 Despite the missed opportunities by the United States in the period preceding Castro’s victory, many possibilities remained for the United States to develop a good relationship with Castro in the period following the triumph of the fidelistas in January 1959. Mistakes in dealing with his

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nationalism would continue; however, U.S. policymakers missed chances to work with Castro and typically further alienated the Cuban revolutionaries. They would overreact to land reform and other nationalist programs despite efforts by more enlightened elements of the State Department to promote compromise and acceptance of Castro’s policies. In all cases, U.S. leaders would fail to understand adequately the domestic situation and the years of frustration among the majority of Cubans. By early 1960, the relationship had deteriorated to the point of open hostility between the two governments. In the initial period after the revolution, the Eisenhower administration made some changes in relation to Cuba by appointing a new ambassador, Philip Bonsal. The career diplomat was a dramatic improvement over his predecessor, but problems remained as he had little experience in Cuban affairs and his own affluent and somewhat stuffy background would limit his ability to deal with the more emotional and melodramatic Castro. Nevertheless, he encouraged restraint and compromise in dealing with the revolutionaries. He studied Cuban history and avoided oversimplifying Cuban nationalism and equating it with communism. The ambassador supported land reform and other changes although he differed over methods. He would encourage the Eisenhower administration to be active rather than reactive, and he made legitimate attempts to deal with Castro. The weakness of the United States in dealing with the Cuban revolution in the earliest stages lay with the Eisenhower administration, not the embassy in Havana. Many members of the Eisenhower administration proved incapable of understanding the situation in Cuba, often carrying very paternalistic and racist attitudes into the relationship. In January 1959, CIA director Allen Dulles reported to the National Security Council that the new Cuban leaders “had to be treated more or less like children.” He added, “They had to be led rather than rebuffed. If they were rebuffed, like children, they were capable of almost anything.”8 This condescending attitude toward the nonindustrialized world had dominated the Eisenhower period and limited U.S. understanding of very complex and long-term problems in areas such as Cuba. Despite Dulle’s warning not to rebuff Castro and his allies, the Eisenhower administration failed to heed his advice. In April 1959, the National Press Club invited Castro to speak in Washington without the support or approval of the White House. To make his displeasure known about the course of the Cuban revolution, Eisenhower left Washington to take a golf trip to Augusta, Georgia. He left informal meetings with the Cuban leader to the new secretary of state, Christian Herter, and Vice President Richard Nixon. The talks left the men believing that Castro remained a potentially dangerous radical. More important, they made no move to dispel Castro’s belief that powerful elements in the Eisen-

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hower administration and the United States opposed his regime and their actions. Equally as important, Castro surprised them by not asking for U.S. economic or humanitarian assistance, and in turn they offered none.9 While the specter of communism was not raised immediately, it would emerge as an important factor as Castro began implementing policies viewed as anticapitalist and antidemocratic by U.S. officials. His forces rooted out the remaining vestiges of Batista’s rule, executing hundreds. While overlooking the fact that John Peurifoy, the U.S. ambassador to Guatemala in 1954, had provided lists of undesirables (who subsequently disappeared) to the Guatemalan military, the United States condemned these actions. Castro further antagonized Washington by signing the Agrarian Reform Law in May 1959. It provided for land seizures and redistribution to the poor. The majority of lands expropriated were foreign, primarily North American. Promises were made for just compensation although many U.S. diplomats disagreed with the form and amount of compensation. Increasingly, conservatives in the United States attacked the Castro government for its policies, denouncing them as anticapitalist and anti-American. Other problems arose between the two countries. In October 1959, a Cuban exile member, Major Pedro Dı´az, used an airfield in Florida to conduct a “raid” on Havana. Castro accused Dı´az of dropping bombs that injured civilians. Washington responded that the Cuban had dropped anti-Castro leaflets, denying any responsibility and blaming civilian deaths on misdirected antiaircraft fire. U.S. officials complained that they could not monitor all the airfields in south Florida and protested that the United States bore no responsibility for the actions of Dı´az.10 Despite the protests that they could accomplish little in stopping these private Cuban flights, most U.S. officials, including those within the Central Intelligence Agency, had already started making contacts with antiCastro Cuban exiles in Florida. This heartened the exiles and emboldened them to take actions such as the illegal Dı´az flight. When combined with the difficulty and laxity of enforcing the law, the United States contributed to a growing suspicion by Castro of a conspiracy to displace his government. Other actions such as maintaining an arms embargo on Cuba further exacerbated tensions. Castro responded by increasing his anti-American rhetoric, and relations continued along an unstable path. During this stage, that lasted nearly a year, the United States had opportunities to create good relations between Washington and Havana— or at least to prevent a deterioration in the relationship. The divisions in the United States, primarily between moderates in the State Department and hardliners in Congress and the Eisenhower administration, undermined attempts to create a coherent and enlightened policy toward the

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Cuban revolution. The administration remained reactive rather than proactive, which created many future problems. A series of problems resulted ensued. First, the administration missed a good opportunity to deal directly with Castro when he visited in early 1959. Ambassador Bonsal correctly questioned the wisdom of the administration’s actions during Castro’s stay. He had encouraged the president to provide Castro with an official welcome and to use the trappings of the most powerful position in the free world to flatter Castro and win some confidence in U.S. intentions. Second, the administration also could have accentuated the process by providing economic and humanitarian assistance to Castro as well as publicly acknowledging the Cuban right to adopt nationalist policies that restructured the Cuban social, economic, and political system. Instead, the Eisenhower team used the trip to express its displeasure with Castro’s actions. This further heightened the Cubans’ suspicions and confirmed that the U.S. policy of interventionism and the protection of U.S. economic interests would continue. They understood that the administration had helped overthrow Guatemala’s leftist president Jacobo. Arbenz for reasons of economic nationalism while at the same time awarding major commendations to the region’s most despicable dictators. While a newer orientation had evolved, the administration failed to communicate its message to the most famous leader in Latin America. The United States also made the mistake of not enforcing neutrality acts. U.S. officials had the opportunity to clamp down on the activities of Cuban exiles who had started using U.S. soil to hatch plots and to provoke the Cubans. They did little to assuage Castro’s fears that Florida would serve as a jumping off point for his enemies. When combined with the actions of the CIA in starting to create ties with Cuban exiles and the continued arms embargo, the Cubans would remain justifiably suspicious of U.S. intentions. Castro and one of his chief advisors, Ernesto “Che” Guevara, especially remembered 1954 in Guatemala and feared a repeat of the CIA operations to overthrow a sovereign government. Of all the stages, this one was the one that had the greatest potential for the United States to make changes and prevent a deterioration of U.S.–Cuban relations. The largest and most powerful nation in the world was in a position to make concessions and compromises. Unfortunately, the Cold War fever and the traditional ethnocentrism associated with U.S. policy in Latin America undermined attempts to develop a coherent policy that allowed for the nationalism of Castro as well as maintaining comparatively good relations between the two nations.

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STAGE 3 The year 1960 marked a move from some talk of cooperation and patience with the fledgling revolution to open hostility. It was a watershed whereby the United States tried to force compliance with its wishes, justifying the coercive acts in terms of protecting U.S. national security. The Eisenhower administration sought to weaken the radicals and strengthen opposition to Castro. Instead, U.S. policymakers achieved the opposite effect. They magnified the resolve of the radicals, driving the Cubans further into the sphere of the Soviet Union and allowing the radicals to equate socialist policies with the defense of Cuba and the revolution. The U.S. hardline stance also ended any chance for compromise and negotiation. While options would exist afterward, the Kennedy administration that took power in 1961 would have fewer alternatives. The most important issue within the United States regarding Cuba was whether Castro had moved too close to the Communists. By mid-1959, some members of the Eisenhower administration and Congress had started raising the specter of communism. CIA and FBI reports began focusing on the issue, and an influential clique developed within the White House and State Department that pushed for opposition to Castro and stiff actions to isolate and depose him. Led primarily by Richard Nixon, U.S. ambassador to Mexico Robert C. Hill, Earl Smith, and J. Edgar Hoover with the strong support of Senator Styles Bridges and Kenneth Wherry, the group pressed Eisenhower to take a hard line. By early 1969, the group had succeeded. March 1960 was a pivotal period. The administration sought and received congressional approval to revise the Sugar Quota Act of 1960. It wanted to use threats of cutbacks to force compromise and compliance with U.S. desires. In particular, they wanted to reduce Castro’s increasing condemnations of the United States in international forums. Angered by Castro’s nationalization of key industries and his discussions with the Soviet Union about possible assistance, the Eisenhower administration believed they had a potent weapon. This action provoked the Cubans who proved intransigent. Dismayed by the lack of cooperation, Eisenhower invoked his powers on July 6. He ordered a 700,000-ton cut, which effectively prevented Cubans from exporting any more sugar to the United States for the remainder of the year. The administration had worked on the belief that Castro could not find alternative markets. It was wrong. Castro negotiated a deal with the Soviet Union to fill the void. Equally as important, he retaliated by seizing the remaining U.S. investments in manufacturing, commerce, finance, and transportation. The other major confrontation occurred at approximately the same time. In February, the Cubans announced that they would purchase Russian oil in an effort to reduce their dependence on U.S. oil and that of

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its allies. In May, the Cubans demanded that U.S. refineries in Cuba process Russian oil. The largest companies (Texaco, Esso) asked the State Department for instructions. Washington encouraged them to refuse. The State Department worked on the assumption that Castro was bluffing and would not nationalize the oil industry. It also believed it could stop independent producers from trading and that Russian and independent tankers lacked the capacity to meet the demands. Richard Welch emphasized that the State Department continued to fail to distinguish “Castro from Cuban leaders of the past and give sufficient recognition to his messianic temperament and ferverent nationalism.”11 With the encouragement of the State Department, the companies responded to the Cubans that they could not process such low-grade crude. In response, Castro expropriated the oil refineries and placed them under the control of the Cuban Petroleum Institute in early July. The relations between the two countries eroded quickly from this point forward. In March 1960, the Eisenhower administration approved a plan to begin recruiting and training Cuban exiles to overthrow Castro. Following the model employed in Guatemala in 1954, the CIA took to this task with great zeal. This further fueled suspicions as Castro’s intelligence operatives infiltrated the Cuban exiles, providing Castro with the knowledge of their activities and plans. Castro also knew that despite U.S. pronouncements of neutrality that the United States would use whatever means necessary to destroy his revolution. He responded by increasing his defense forces and negotiating for foreign assistance, primarily with the Soviet Union. Relations deteriorated even more in October 1960 when the administration, working under the guidelines of the Export Control Act, prohibited all exports to Cuba except medical supplies and nonsubsidized foodstuffs although it later added them to the list. To add insult to injury, in December the administration set aside $1 million for refugee relief, publicly drawing comparisons between the anti-Castro immigrants and those of its North American ancestors who had fled persecution and tyranny. Soon after, the U.S. Navy placed ships off the coasts of Nicaragua and Guatemala to deter Castro from plotting the overthrow of the authoritarian regimes in those countries. The final break came in early January 1961. The administration terminated diplomatic and consular relations with Cuba. Eisenhower stated that: “Our friendship for the Cuban people is not affected. It is my hope and my conviction that in the not too distant future it will be possible for the historic friendship between us once again to find its reflection in normal relations of every sort.” “Meanwhile,” he added, “our sympathy goes out to the people of Cuba now suffering under the yoke of the dictator.”12 Without diplomatic relations, the potential for negotiation and compromise was limited severely.

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Clearly, U.S. actions in 1960 marched the United States down a path of hostility. Hardliners justified using U.S. economic and diplomatic power to coerce Castro into following a more pro–U.S. line. The United States moved from trying to accept the revolution and moderate it to trying to bully the Cubans into changing. Given the history of U.S. relations with Cuba and the precarious nature of any regime that had taken power, U.S. policymakers clearly chose the wrong methods. Bonsal would later complain that the U.S. response “went far beyond the retaliation warranted by the injuries American interests had up to that time suffered at Castro’s hands. . . . [A] measured U.S. response might have appeared well deserved to an increasing number of Cubans, thus strengthening Cuban opposition to the regime instead, as was the case, greatly stimulating revolutionary fervor.”13 Bonsal’s statement underscores the fact that other alternatives existed. If anything, the United States went the wrong way on the issues of the sugar quota and the processing of Soviet oil. To have provided economic assistance including large quantities of humanitarian aid would have put Castro’s regime in a much more difficult position to continue to demonize the United States. Instead, the U.S. economic boycotts and embargos strengthened the nationalism of the majority of the Cuban people and hurt the U.S. image not only in Cuba but in the remainder of Latin America. Finally, it provided the Soviets with an opening to fill the void that U.S. interests had held previously. In large part, the intransigence of the Eisenhower administration drove Castro into the sphere of the other major superpower, one that could counteract U.S. hegemony. Another opportunity that the United States missed was the failure to accept some trade and cooperation between Cuba and the Soviet Union. The United States could have shown that it had learned from its experiences with nationalists such as Tito in Yugoslavia and Gamal Nasser in Egypt. The nonaligned movement led by these men had proven in many cases that in accepting some Soviet influence that it did not mean that the countries had fallen into the Soviet sphere. Instead, they learned an ever increasing lesson of playing the superpowers off of each other. Yet, the Eisenhower administration lacked such sophistication in dealing with Cuba and fell into the trap such as the one in South Vietnam of the concept of the monolithic Communist movement, which caused an overreaction to the Cuban revolution. In particular this ensured the damaging decision to work with Cuban exiles to overthrow the Castro regime. By the end of 1960, the Eisenhower administration had adopted a hard-line stance against the Castro regime. Breaking relations would further undermine hope for a negotiated settlement. Once the bridges had been burned, the difficulties of settling the differences amicably became very difficult. Castro, knowing of U.S. plans to topple his government, became more vitriolic and determined not to allow the United States to

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side track the revolution. It was into this setting that the new president, John F. Kennedy, walked in 1961. STAGE 4 In January 1961, Kennedy and his advisors inherited a very difficult situation in world affairs. Challenges in Southeast Asia, Europe, and Africa developed immediately for the unseasoned president. The question of Cuba proved especially thorny. Determined to prove his mettle as a cold warrior, Kennedy made Cuba an important issue. During the campaign, Kennedy had berated the Eisenhower administration for several policy failures. First, the administration had failed to withdraw support from Batista fast enough. Second, it failed to meet with Castro and establish good relations. Third, he attacked the administration for ignoring the warnings of Communist infiltration in the revolution and for not defending the Monroe Doctrine. Yet, when the Kennedy administration took power, they made a bad predicament worse. By adopting a hard line and supporting an overt attempt to overthrow Castro, the administration guaranteed a hostile relationship. Kennedy took power and immediately announced his plans for testing the New Frontier. In Latin America, he sought a massive economic assistance program in the form of the Alliance for Progress to establish a new era in U.S.–Latin American relations. The impetus for the changes was in large part Castro and a fear of similar revolutions. Despite pronouncements of wanting good relations with the nations of the hemisphere, the policies did not apply to Cuba. The administration tightened economic sanctions by excluding Cuban sugar from quota allotments although it promised an unspecified allocation if a more friendly government took power. In addition, Secretary of State Dean Rusk encouraged the implementation of a total embargo within the guidelines of the Trading with the Enemy Act. It also prohibited U.S. citizens from traveling to Cuba without special passports. Finally, the administration publicized the cause of Cuban exiles and promised increased government assistance to various groups. Kennedy wanted to demonstrate that the policy of containment had a vigorous proponent. As a result, he chose to follow the extreme path chosen by the Eisenhower administration and secretly plotted the overthrow of the government of Cuba. The CIA had moved forward with its plans against Castro. Ignoring experts who promoted a guerrilla war as the most successful choice of operations, the CIA chose to outfit a large force that included former members of the Batista government for an amphibious landing in Cuba. Following the model of Guatemala in 1954, the CIA handlers planned to land a force that would establish a beach-

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head and then rely on a general uprising of the Cuban people to remove Castro and his allies. Believing that time was on Castro’s side, they pushed the new president to provide immediately the green light to the operation. Fear of partisan cries of a softness toward communism and overly optimistic CIA reports drove the administration forward. While some dissent developed late within the administration, it was relatively muted when compared with the enthusiasm of its proponents. Only in the latter stages did Senator J. William Fulbright question the morality of the plan, especially one that contradicted many of the treaties signed by the United States condemning the external meddling in the affairs of sovereign American states. Nevertheless, his arguments found no audience, and the plans proceeded with haste. The administration took painstaking steps to cover any tracks linking U.S. collaboration to this plot and to develop elaborate rationalizations for the U.S. opposition to Castro. On April 3, 1961, the White House released a “White Paper” on Cuba. Authored principally by Arthur Schlesinger Jr., the document sought to justify a Cuban revolutionary junta and to sway members of the Latin American democratic left into supporting the U.S. position regarding Castro. It stressed that Castro had betrayed the revolution by turning to the Cuban Communists and “powers alien to the hemisphere.” The paper also emphasized that despite Castro’s rhetoric, the United States supported social and economic change although it disagreed with the radical methods of Castro. Finally, it characterized Cuba as “a modern totalitarian state.”14 The release of the “White Paper” set the stage for the ill-fated Bay of Pigs invasion, codenamed “Operation Zapata.” Poor planning and coordination and the false belief that a mass uprising in favor of the exiles would occur, weakened the operation from the beginning. Possessing advance knowledge of the exiles’ plans, Castro forcefully met the invasion at the beach and within the swamps surrounding the staging area. Additional problems developed when planned air support never materialized. Castro’s military had killed or captured most of the rebels within a few days of the exiles landing in Cuba. Unable to mask the role of the United States in the invasion, Kennedy publicly acknowledged U.S. complicity in the operation. The various agencies rushed to lay blame for the mess–typically at the doorsteps of each other. Conservatives bashed Kennedy for not approving air cover and not using U.S. troops to defeat Castro when the opportunity presented itself. At the other extreme, critics, which included many Latin Americans, denounced the U.S. action for violating existing treaties and the spirit of self-determination. The criticisms and internal dissension affected the administration. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara stated: “We were hysterical about Castro at the time of the Bay of Pigs

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and thereafter.”15 Cuba would remain a source of embarrassment as the Kennedy administration bought the freedom of the Cuban exiles with agricultural equipment. The Bay of Pigs fiasco marked the final break in U.S.–Cuban relations, a rejection of diplomacy in favor of heavy-handed military intervention. Angered by their failure and Castro’s continued intransigence, members of the administration made the affair very personal. Soon after, Kennedy approved “Operation Mongoose,” a series of covert operations designed to depose Castro. These included attempts to sabotage the Cuban economy and plans to assassinate Castro. The confrontation digressed to the point that a nuclear war nearly occurred in October 1962 during the Cuban Missile Crisis. In any case, the Cuban issue would remain a dominant problem through the president’s death in November 1963. The actions of the administration with the Bay of Pigs clearly ended any hope for a peaceful solution to the problems between the two countries, and it set the pattern for the next three decades. Welch has correctly underscored that “it is certain that the response of the Kennedy administration to the Cuban Revolution was a response that compounded danger without compensatory benefit.”16 The new administration had an opportunity to change course in U.S. policy. It had strongly criticized the Eisenhower administration for its policy, declaring a new movement in Latin America to help sustain economic growth and foster democracy through the Alliance for Progress. Yet, in relation to Cuba the administration instead followed the same policy of narrowly defined protection of U.S. economic and strategic interests, digressing to the use of the military. There were several areas where the administration missed opportunities to reevaluate U.S. policy along lines more consistent with U.S. ideals and principles. They failed, which contributed largely to new levels of antagonism. A fundamental mistake of the Kennedy administration was the failure to question the basic assumptions that had guided Eisenhower’s policy. The Cold War dictated U.S. policy, leading Washington to identify Castro’s nationalism with the Communist movement directed by Moscow. While some of Kennedy’s advisors had noted the domestic origins of the discontent in Latin America, they failed to reach similar conclusions regarding Cuba. Had they had the courage to challenge conservative critics and move beyond the narrow confines of the international Cold War context, they could have made better decisions that involved some promises of economic assistance, respect for Cuban nationalism, and political neutrality. While the actions of their predecessors made this difficult, the potential for the implementation of new ideals with which to deal with Cuba remained in 1961. A major opportunity missed by the Kennedy administration was a common problem among U.S. policymakers. It never fully considered

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the morality or the ramifications of its actions, principally the Bay of Pigs invasion. The United States had signed the Rio Pact and worked several times to stop intervention by nations in the internal affairs of Latin American countries. Yet, the Kennedy administration put itself above international law and its treaty commitments and rejected basic democratic principles relating to self-determination and national sovereignty to sponsor covert operations in Cuba. In the process, the United States surrendered the moral high ground and severely damaged hemispheric relations, in large part helping undermine the legitimacy of the Alliance for Progress and igniting a new wave of anti-Americanism in Latin America. While Fulbright had raised these issues, the administration had ignored them and missed an opportunity to reevaluate the policy begun by the Eisenhower administration, one doomed to failure. The members of the Kennedy administration also missed a chance to reject the use of military action and covert activities when they took office. Pushed by overzealous military and CIA operatives, the administration chose the most brutish form of diplomacy as its initial policy. The military option was a return to the days of the “Big Stick” when the United States bullied nations in Latin America, always under the guise of protecting U.S. national security. Such a policy, even if successful would have delegitimized the new Cuban government and once again started the cycle of dependency and resentment. In addition, had the worst case scenario occurred—and U.S. troops become involved—then the administration would have committed itself to many years of direct U.S. military occupation and a very bloody guerrilla war. The administration considered few of these ideas when it plunged head long into the CIA operations in Cuba. Instead of trying diplomatic solutions, it chose a quick and perceived easy fix. Much like the path chosen in South Vietnam, the administration condemned future presidents to having few options in dealing with Cuba. From this point forward, Castro would remain especially suspicious of U.S. intentions. He would mobilize the people in support of the revolution, having a good villain that had played right into the hands of the radicals. In response, the Castro government promoted alliance with foreign powers to offset the military superiority of the United States, moving Castro further into the Soviet sphere. Kennedy’s choice of a military option and rejection of diplomacy removed flexibility and created many more problems than it solved for the United States. Ultimately, the actions of the United States regarding the Bay of Pigs and afterward served as the final break in U.S.–Cuban relations.

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CONCLUSION In the final analysis, the actions of the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations achieved the exact opposite result of the one that had been sought by the United States. Instead of guiding and managing a moderate revolution, their actions helped increase the radicalism of the Cuban revolution and the Cuban move into the Soviet sphere. The United States refused to recognize the domestic origins of the revolution and the need for drastic socioeconomic change. By attacking the revolution, the United States provided Castro with an enemy that helped solidify his goals by allowing him to identify the revolution with nationalism rather than ideology. These administrations succeeded in costing the United States more than a $1 billion in lost economic opportunities and property. More important, their actions ensured that a country ninety miles off the U.S. southern coast became a base that threatened U.S. interests. Their policies also created an influx of immigrants that over time has taxed the social and economic system in Florida and other states. Finally, they helped create a hero for the leaders of nonindustrialized revolutions. Castro stood firm in the face of extreme odds and provided a model for others (including the Sandinistas) who would follow the same basic pattern of relations with the United States in 1979. No other evaluation of U.S. policy can be made other than these two administrations failed miserably in dealing with the Cuban revolution and failed to develop flexible and enlightened responses that could have prevented the development of hostile relations between these two countries. NOTES 1. Louis A. Pe´ rez Jr., Cuba and the United States: Ties of Singular Intimacy (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1990), 43–44. 2. Ibid., 44. 3. As cited in Pe´ rez, Cuba and the United States, 79. 4. Ibid., 97. 5. Ibid., 109–10. 6. Richard E. Welch Jr., Response to Revolution: The United States and the Cuban Revolution, 1959–1961 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1985), 29–31. 7. Ibid., 30. 8. As cited in Thomas G. Paterson, Contesting Castro: The United States and the Triumph of the Cuban Revolution (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 241. 9. Welch, Response to Revolution, 34–35. 10. Ibid., 39–40. 11. Ibid., 52. 12. Ibid., 59.

U.S. Challenge to the Cuban Revolution, 1959–1961 13. 14. 15. 16.

Ibid., Ibid., Ibid., Ibid.,

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53. 74. 98. 100.

BIBLIOGRAPHIC ESSAY General Works The bibliography on U.S.–Cuban relations has expanded, especially since 1959 when Cuba became the focus of much attention in the United States and Latin America. Several useful surveys include Michael J. Mazarr, Semper Fidel: America and Cuba, 1776–1988 (1988); Jules Benjamin, The United States and Cuba (1977); Louis A. Pe´ rez Jr., Cuba and the United States: Ties of Singular Intimacy (1990); and Gaddis Smith, The Last Years of the Monroe Doctrine, 1945–1993 (1994).

U.S.–Cuban Relations through the Eisenhower Presidency There are a number of good works on the period from 1898–1959. The separate sections include the Spanish-American War. Several good works include Philip S. Foner, The Spanish-Cuban-American War and the Birth of American Imperialism (1978); Louis A. Pe´ rez Jr., Cuba Between Empires, 1878–1902 (1983) and “The Meaning of the Maine: Causation and Historiography of the Spanish-American War,” Pacific Historical Review (1989); David Healy, The United States in Cuba, 1898–1902 (1963); David F. Trask, The War with Spain in 1898; and John L. Offner, An Unwanted War: The Diplomacy of the United States and Spain Over Cuba (1992). For Cuban perspectives of the war and its aftermath, books include Emilio Roig de Leuchsentring, Cuba no debe su independencia a los Estados Unidos (1960). An overview of the early Cuban historiography exists in Duvon C. Corbitt, “Cuban Revisionist Interpretations of Cuba’s Struggle for Independence,” Hispanic Historical Review (1963). For the period of the Platt Amendment, books include Louis A. Pe´ rez Jr., Cuba Under the Platt Amendment, 1902–1934 (1986); Jules R. Benjamin, The United States and Cuba: Hegemony and Dependent Development, 1880–1934 (1977); Allan R. Millett, The Politics of Intervention: The Military Occupation of Cuba, 1906–1909 (1968); James H. Hitchman, Leonard Wood and Cuban Independence, 1898–1902 (1971); and Luis E. Aguilar, Cuba 1933 (1972). For Cuban perspectives, Teresita Yglesia Martinez, Cuba: Primera repu´ blica, segunda ocupacio´ n (1977) and Francisco Lo´pez Segrera, Cuba: Capitalismo dependiente y subdesarrollo (1972) provide good overviews. For the period after the end of the Platt Amendment through the early 1950s the best works include: Irwin F. Gellman, Roosevelt and Batista: Good Neighbor Diplomacy in Cuba, 1933–1945 (1973); Robert F. Smith, The United States and Cuba: Business and Diplomacy, 1917–1960 (1960); Alejandro Garcı´a and Oscar Zanetti, United Fruit Company: Un caso del dominio imperialista en Cuba (1976); and Erasmo Dumpierre, La ESSO en Cuba: Monopolio y repu´ blica burgesa (1984).

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The Period of the Revolution The events leading to the Cuban revolution and the initial reaction to the Castro regime by the United States has been covered well in the following works: Richard E. Welch Jr., Response to Revolution: The United States and the Cuban Revolution, 1959–1961 (1985); Thomas G. Paterson, Contesting Castro: The United States and the Triumph of the Cuban Revolution (1994); Stephen G. Rabe, Eisenhower and Latin America: The Foreign Policy of Anticommunism (1988); William Appleman Williams, The United States, Cuba, and Castro: An Essay on the Dynamics of Revolution and the Dissolution of Empire (1962); Marifeli Pe´ rez Stable, The Cuban Revolution: Origins, Course, and Legacy (1993); Morris Morley, Imperial State and Revolution: The United States and Cuba, 1952–1986 (1987); and Jorge I. Domı´nguez, Cuba: Order and Revolution (1978). Several first-hand accounts from U.S. officials include: Earl E. T. Smith, The Fourth Floor: An Account of the Castro Communist Revolution (1962); Paul Bethel, The Losers (1969); and Philip W. Bonsal, Cuba, Castro, and the United States (1971).

Kennedy, the Bay of Pigs and the Cuban Missile Crisis This period of the Kennedy administration has received much attention, primarily in response to the Bay of Pigs and Cuban Missile Crisis. Regarding the Bay of Pigs, many books and articles have appeared including Trumball Higgins, The Perfect Failure (1987); Haynes B. Johnson et al., The Bay of Pigs (1964); Tad Szule and K. E. Meyer, The Cuban Invasion (1962); Peter Wyden, Bay of Pigs: The Untold Story (1979); the Paramilitary Study Group, Operation Zapata: The “Ultrasensitive” Report and Testimony of the Board of Inquiry on the Bay of Pigs (1973); Thomas G. Smith, “Negotiating with Fidel Castro: The Bay of Pigs Prisoners and a Lost Opportunity,” Diplomatic History (1995); and Piero Gleijeses, “Ships in the Night: The CIA, the White House and the Bay of Pigs,” Journal of Latin American Studies (1995). Insiders from the CIA and Kennedy administration have written about their experiences. They include Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., A Thousand Days (1965) and E. Howard Hunt, Give Us This Day (1973). For Cuban accounts reference Lisandro Otero, Playa Giro´ n, derrota del imperialismo (1962) and Quintı´n Pino, La batalla de Giro´ n: Razones de una victoria (1983). The Cuban Missile Crisis has attracted much attention because of its ramifications on not only Cuban policy but also superpower mediation. Goods works include: Graham Allison, Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis (1971); Robert Smith Thompson, The Missiles of October: The Declassified Story of John F. Kennedy and the Cuban Missile Crisis (1992); Herbert Dinerstein, The Making of a Missile Crisis: October 1962 (1976); Raymond L. Garthoff, Reflections on the Cuban Missile Crisis (1989); James A. Nathan, ed., The Cuban Missile Crisis Revisited (1992); and Dino Brugioni, Eyeball to Eyeball (1991).

1963–Present For more information on U.S.–Cuban relations since the period discussed by chapter references, see Carla Anne Robbins, The Cuban Threat (1983); Wayne S.

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Smith, The Closest of Enemies: A Personal and Diplomatic Account of U.S.–Cuban Relations since 1957 (1987); idem, “Critical Junctures in U.S.–Cuban Relations: The Diplomatic Record,” Diplomatic History 12, no. 4 (fall 1988): 463–81: John Plank, ed., Cuba and the United States: Long Range Perspectives (1967); Bradley Earl Ayers The War That Never Was: An Insider’s Account of CIA Covert Operations against Cuba (1976); Wiliam W. Turner, The Fish Is Red: The Story of the Secret War against Castro (1981); Roger W. Fontaine, On Negotiating with Cuba (1975); and Lynn Darrell Bender, The Politics of Hostility: Castro’s Revolution and U.S. Policy (1975).

5 Eisenhower, Dulles, and U.S. Policy Toward Israel and the Middle East Crisis at Suez, 1956 Antonio Donno and Daniele De Luca

Proclamation of the State of Israel on May 14, 1948, was a turning point in U.S. policy toward the Middle East. During the two previous years American intervention in the Iran crisis (1946) and in the Greek-Turkish crisis (1946–1947)—the latter culminating in the promulgation of the Truman Doctrine—marked the initial decision by the United States to confront Soviet expansion beyond the “northern tier.” However, President Harry S. Truman was more concerned about forestalling Stalinist aggression in Europe–a geopolitical imperative, it was thought—at the onset of the Cold War. Because Washington was wary of becoming involved in too many international entanglements, foreign policy experts endeavored to differentiate between vital and peripheral interests. For this reason the Truman administration continued to recognize Great Britain’s preeminence in the Middle East, even though what remained of British prestige in the region contrasted sharply with the lack of economic and military resources that it could commit. While both the Iran and the Greek crises had demonstrated that Her Majesty’s government could no longer exert substantive political influence in the Middle East, the Truman administration seemed content to accept British pretenses and historical claims, especially during the Labour government of Ernest Bevin.1 It was the question of Palestine, however, that most dramatically revealed Britain’s inability to protect Western interests in the Middle East and marked an important juncture in American foreign policy in this part of the world. U.S. involvement in the question of Palestine began with Zionest plan-

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ning for a Jewish state in Palestine during World War II. Therefore, American policy was not simply a consequence of the Cold War, but reflected official American sympathy for Jewish nationalist aspirations. Zionism had first attracted U.S. interest during President Woodrow Wilson’s administration at the end of World War I. However, President Harding and Republican isolationists gradually withdrew support during the 1920s, by signaling to Great Britain American acquiesence in a de facto British mandate in the Middle East. With internationalist sympathies on the wane, no Republican administration showed any interest in becoming involved in this difficult area. During Franklin Roosevelt’s presidency, the United States, with the cooperation of the British Foreign Office, made useless and contradictory promises to both Jews and Arabs. However, by the end of World War II, the United States became more deeply involved in the Palestine issue because, following Roosevelt’s death, the Truman administration favored the Zionist cause. All subsequent events were consequences of these circumstances.2 Truman’s sympathies, however, were not shared by his State Department, which had inherited Roosevelt’s policy of expediency. Above all, it was not yet certain the new president could either provide the necessary foreign policy leadership on the issue or could rally public opinion in support of an expanded American role. At the end of World War II the State Department believed it imperative to pursue America’s traditional policy of appeasement toward the Arabs, regardless that during the war it had been necessary to placate various Arab factions to forestall Arab support for Axis war aims. At the end of the war the Axis threat had been replaced by the Soviet threat, and the State Department preferred not to antagonize the Arabs with aggressive support for Zionism. The exigencies of the Cold War demanded that the Soviets be kept out of the Middle East. Moreover, it was necessary, in the State Department’s view, to do nothing that would encourage the Arabs to ally their interests with the Soviet Union. There is no doubt that this was a realistic analysis of the situation, even though this meant that the United States adpoted a defensive policy, and, above all, that Washington was vulnerable to Arab manipulation. Nonetheless, the State Department’s Division of Near Eastern Affairs, led by Loy Henderson, together with the Policy Planning Staff, directed by George Kennan, did not believe any other approach to the complexities of the Middle East was possible. Their recommendations embraced the following principles: (1) preserving the strong alliance with Great Britain, whose knowledge of the Arab world was thought vital for the West’s continued control of the region and its oil resources; (2) cultivating friendship and collaboration with the Arab world, whose massive oil reserves were considered absolutely necessary for the development and security of the West, and whose friendship was considered a strategic necessity for .

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blocking the threat of the Soviet military-political intrusion in the Middle East; (3) and deferring the question of Palestine and Zionist aspirations by reaffirming American support for an international fiduciary mandate on Palestine. This was little more than Roosevelt’s policy adapted to the new circumstances of the Cold War.3 However, President Truman, together with Clark Clifford, his special White House counselor, did not agree with this policy. The American president sympathized with Zionist aspirations; the terrible fate of the millions of Jews who had been exterminated in the Nazi gas chambers had shocked him deeply. For Truman, political expediency did not take precedence over humanitarian concerns which, in his view, presented a more immediate moral necessity. Public opinion seemed favorable and the American liberal press led a campaign in favor of the establishment of an independent Jewish state in Palestine, as the Zionists envisioned. Given Truman’s liberalism, his personal sympathies, and his political position, the president acted decisively. The Democratic Party drew considerable support in the Jewish community in the United States, and it was also for this reason that Truman thought that he must appear responsive toward public opinion that supported him.4 Besides these considerations, there were, of course, vital reasons of international politics. Both Truman and Clifford thought it was unavoidable and absolutely necessary to support the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine. Truman did not trust the Arab world. He considered the Arab states unstable and antidemocratic and, therefore, concluded that they could never be trustworthy allies of the West in a likely regional confrontation with the Soviets. By contrast, the establishment of a democratic Jewish state in Palestine would represent a solid base for the West and American interests in the Middle East.5 Given these conflicting positions within the administration, the clash of policy views between the White House and the State Department became extremely animated throughout 1946. Then in November 1947, the UN General Assembly voted in favor of a partition of Palestine between a Jewish and an Arab state, and in May 1948, a Declaration of Independence for the new State of Israel was proclaimed by David Ben-Gurion, head of the Jewish provisional government. What happened following the establishment of the State of Israel transformed international politics and fundamentally challenged assumptions for American foreign policy in the Middle East. Resolute Soviet pressure for exploiting their foothold in the Middle East further convinced the State Department and the British Foreign Office that the establishment of the State of Israel had been a political mistake. As a consequence, there were efforts undertaken to weaken relations between the United States and Israel. The West did not provide Israel with any weaponry to withstand the Arab League assault in 1948– 1949 when the invasion of the combined forces of the Arab states threat-

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ened to destroy the Jewish state. Between 1948 and 1952, during Truman’s second administration, the State Department did not seek to facilitate good relations between the White House and Tel Aviv and instead established a policy of allagiance with the Middle East Arab states, hoping to draw them toward the West.6 All of this signaled, of course, an official distancing of the United States toward Israel. While Washington hoped to convince the Arabs that rather than a “special relationship” between the United State and Israel, the American administration was committed to a policy of impartiality, the cooling of American-Israeli relations convinced the Arabs that their efforts to destroy Israel might not provoke American opposition. The succession of the Republican Eisenhower administration at the beginning of 1953 and the appointment of John Foster Dulles as secretary of state dramatically accelerated this change in direction of American foreign policy.7 The policy differences between the White House and the State Department on the issue of Palestine brings into question basic assumptions regarding the strategy and implementation of containment that the United States hoped to apply in the Middle East. Indeed, it is questionable whether the Truman administration, in seeking to contain communism, had planned to extend it to the Middle East situation. For example, American intervention in the Iran crisis of 1946, and in the Greek-Turkish crisis of 1946–1947, while thought a necessary response to Soviet actions, was not the result of a well-planned policy based on a careful analysis of the Middle East situation or of the future role of the United States in the area. It was only with the Eisenhower administration that the American government began to fashion a well-defined strategy for the Middle East.8 Between 1946 and 1952 the United States supported the British point of view, which proved increasingly inadequate. The American government hoped to give Great Britain control of the Middle East in order to concentrate United States political and economic recovery in Europe. Britain’s weakness was dangerous because it could allow the Soviet Union a chance to penetrate the area. More precisely, the way the British carried out the mandate to govern Palestine was so inadequate that the State Department felt compelled to call for a new fiduciary mandate to be entrusted to the United Nations. The questions that remained were: (1) whether the UN would be able to handle such a difficult and explosive situation, resolving the problem of achieving peace between the Jews and the Arabs and (2) to what extent would the UN be able to facilitate political stability in Palestine. There was considerable uncertainty on both issues.9 The State Department’s decision to renew the international fiduciary mandate on Palestine was generated by practical reasons as well as expediency. It was not the result of a general plan for American interven-

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tion in the Middle East founded on a precise analysis of the alternatives. UN intervention was thought necessary to fill the political vacuum created by the British withdrawal, to impede feared Soviet intrusion, and also to please the Arabs. The objective was to balance the partition of Palestine and, consequently, the establishment of a Jewish state in that area. President Truman’s key policy advisors—George C. Marshall, secretary of state from 1947 to 1949; George Kennan, head of Policy Planning Staff for those same years; James V. Forrestal, secretary of defense; Loy Henderson, head of the Division of Near Eastern Affairs in the State Department; and Robert Lovett, undersecretary of state—incessantly tried to convince him that this view of the Middle East situation was correct and that this approach would yield positive results for the United States if events developed as they predicted. However, Truman and Clifford did not agree. The American president not only based his opinions on humanitarian grounds and on domestic political concerns, but he also thought of the political ramifications of American intervention in the Middle East. Would American intervention guarantee a new fiduciary mandate necessary to maintain Western positions in Palestine? Would the Arabs accept this alternate solution of Western diplomacy, or would they be satisfied with the pretense that the United States had given up a Zionist plan? The State Department favored backing away from Israel, but Truman rejected this advice. The president, influenced by Clifford, judged the State Department’s plan not only as a violation of a solemn international commitment that the United States had accepted, but also as a grave political mistake. The White House planned to build a solid base for the West in the Middle East, even though the hostility that followed was foreseeable: In Truman’s estimation, a Jewish democratic state could represent a solid base for the United States. Clifford was not convinced that all the Arab states would choose to ally themselves with the Soviet side, especially since American dollars were a more convenient means of payment for Arab oil than Soviet rubles. Subsequent events confirmed Clifford’s analysis. Specifically, regarding the question of Palestine, there were two contraposed ideas of what the U.S. role in the Middle East should be. Internal policy battles surfaced in the dispute between the White House and the State Department because no definite political strategy had been defined in advance to manage the Middle East question. It is instructive also to remember that initial American interventions in the Middle East (Iran and Greece-Turkey) had seen a full unity of action by the U.S. government. Why, then, did the State Department oppose the president’s policy in this instance? First, anti-Communist containment strategy, as conceived by George Kennan and elaborated with Truman’s consent, was embraced by a for-

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eign policy elite who believed their intellectual policy judgments were infallible. Thus, they bridled at the interference of an inexperienced, new president because they believed Truman’s personal evaluations of the situation were ill-conceived, misinformed, and, therefore, dangerous for U.S. interests in the Middle East. Furthermore, the president’s special counselor Clark Clifford, notwithstanding his influence as a powerful Washington “insider” and his position in favor of a Jewish state in Palestine, was criticized by the State Department and excluded from decisions on U.S. Middle East policy.10 Second, the “special relationship” enjoyed by the United States and Britain was not immune from difficulties during Truman’s second administration and Dean Acheson’s tenure as secretary of state. Between 1948 and 1952 Washington acquiesced a leadership role in the region to Britain and the Labour government of Clement Atlee, even favoring London’s reestablishing its prewar dominion. In two spearate initiatives, the Middle East Command Project of 1951–1952, and the so-called Alpha Plan of 1953–1954, the State Department deferred to the Foreign Office. The Middle East Command Project hoped to coordinate Anglo-American with Arab forces, especially Egyptian forces (but excluding Israeli participation), to confront potential Soviet intrusion. The Alpha Plan sought to reapportion territory claimed by the new Israeli government of David Ben-Gurion among its Arab neighbors, principally Egypt (the government of Mohammed Naguib) and Jordan (the government of King Talal and his successor in May 1952, King Hussein I). In fact, the Arabs understood clearly that spasmodic British initiatives and American indecisions were clear symptoms of weaknesses that they could exploit for their own benefit. However, the alleged special relationship became an obstacle for U.S. policy in the Middle East between 1946 and 1952: Neither the State Department nor the Policy Planning Staff were able to define an independent American policy for the Middle East. When Truman revealed his intention to support the establishment of a Jewish state, allied to the West, in Palestine, the State Department opposed and, with the help of the British Foreign Office, did not accept the idea of diminishing British influence in the Arab Middle East because of the creation of a Jewish state.11 Finally, there was the problem of oil and who was to control this strategic resource. The Jews in Palestine represented a small community, poor and helpless, and, in the opinion of the State Department, Israel was but a symbolic presence with no power in the region. However, the Arab world owned the oil fields, which were vital for the West. It was especially on this aspect of the problem that Forrestal was inflexible. It was in America’s strategic national interest to favor an alliance with the Arabs and to neglect the problem of the Jewish community in Palestine together with the Zionist cause. In Forrestal’s view Israel would only

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cause difficulties for the United States in its relations with the Arab world in the Middle East. These concerns justified a pro-Arab policy even though Clifford maintained that, in any case, the Arabs would always prefer American dollars to Soviet rubles. At the end of Truman’s second administration in 1952, the question of Israel remained unresolved. It was true that the United States had recognized first de facto, and then de jure, the Jewish state. However, in the complex Middle East situation Israel was isolated and attached by the Arab League and fought a year-long war between May 1948 and June 1949 for its survival. On the other hand, the State Department, together with Great Britain, did its best to convince the Arab states that the State of Israel had been proclaimed only because Truman wanted it and that U.S. long-term strategic-political interests were completely different. The fact that the State Department continued to oppose the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine, even after the proclamation of the State of Israel, is essential for appreciating what kind of international political climate would likely have emerged if Israel had not been established and if the State Department’s pro-Arab policies had prevailed. Of primary concern was the situation of the Jews in Europe and the reactions of the Zionist movement. If the establishment of a Jewish state (supported by the West and above all by the United States) had been delayed or forestalled at the end of a war that had seen the extermination of 6 million Jews, it would have caused a significant international outcry, and it would have exasperated the much more powerful, mature international Zionist movement. International public opinion and, above all, American liberal public opinion could not have condoned such a cynical attitude toward a people who had suffered so horrifically. Any U.S. president would have had to face American Jewish political reaction and domestic opposition if he had not endorsed humanitarian and political support for Jewish self determination.12 The American position in the Middle East did not produce the favorable results the State Department had anticipated. Great Britain tried to convince the U.S. government to give up the idea of supporting the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine. This, of course, was convenient only for London, which hoped to use the United States to support Britain’s precarious position in the Middle East. The Foreign Office correctly anticipated an outburst of Arab nationalism should Palestine be partitioned. In fact, the Arab world hated the West because of past Western colonial exploitation and imperialism (as the case of Iran in 1951–1954 graphically demonstrated). The proclamation of the State of Israel was only another reason for the Arabs to hate the West. Arab cultural hostility had deeper roots that were not perceived clearly by Britain or the United States. Finally, the Arabs did not accept the generosity of the West, offered in the fight against the danger of Soviet expansionism.

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They were either indifferent or demonstrably hostile toward both Western democracy and Soviet communism. What the Arab peoples wanted was to be free to consolidate their independent nationalism and to liberate themselves from foreign dominion, while opportunistically exploiting foreign protection for their own self-interest (asasser did as a necessary evil). The Arabs could never have become true allies of the West. They were as a shell floating between the opposite shores of the White House and the Kremlin; they were fully aware that each side would exploit the Arab world for its own advantage. At the same time, the great instability of the Middle East situation would have put the small Jewish community, unsupported by the West, in a very dangerous position; it would have fallen prey to Arab aggression, which would have destroyed it. Still, Israel could never have been supplanted by a Palestinian Arab State. Indeed, Palestinian nationalism was a consequence of Jewish nationalist aspirations. Without a Jewish state the region would have been divided between Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and Egypt, while its inhabitants would have continued to consider themselves to be Middle East Arabs, as they had historically.13 Thus, the Middle East without Israel would never have constituted a solid base for the West or at least no more so than it does today so many years after Israel’s creation. During the postwar years Israel represented a solid bulwark for the West on the southern borders of the Soviet Union because of its position, which blocked Russian expansion toward the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf, as well as on the coast of the Eastern Mediterranean. This was a very important strategic position for the West, and Israel was the key. Truman and Clifford saw more clearly the realities of Middle Eastern politics, and they were correct in opposing the State Department’s pro-Arab bias.14 When Dwight D. Eisenhower became president in 1952, it was clear that American foreign policy was going to be changed. If the Truman administration used containment to stop the advance of the Soviet Union into areas considered unacceptable by the United States, the new president and his advisors announced a new policy of liberation. The Republican administration believed containment to be immoral, vain, and negative and wished to replace it with a proactive, moral policy that would rollback and liberate captive peoples, particularly in Eastern Europe. For such a strident anti-Communist policy it was necessary to have a strong secretary of state, and Eisenhower decided to appoint a man with unambigous anti-Communist credentials, a man whose life seemed to prepare him for the office Eisenhower had chosen: John Foster Dulles.15 Some historians have suggested that few presidents and their secretaries of state in U.S. history have worked as closely as Eisenhower and Dulles. What is indisputable is that Eisenhower was so confident in

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Dulles and in his experience in foreign policy, that the president was ready to leave America’s relations with other nations in Dulles’s hands and consider him as the leading U.S. spokesman for foreign policy.16 The new administration believed in 1953 that, at that moment, it was not yet possible to implement liberation in Europe. As a result, the two superpowers, with their allies, grudgingly accepted a military standoff there. Thus, new areas became focal points for more dangerous SovietAmerican confrontation in their struggle for predominance in the world. The Middle East became such a battlefield.17 Eisenhower believed the Arab world was the key for containing the Soviet Union on Europe’s southern flank,18 and according to Dulles, it was the right time for the U.S. government to confront aggressively Soviet ambitions concerning the Near East and southern Asia. The two most important issues to solve in the area were the declining position of Great Britain and the Arab-Israeli conflict. Dulles was aware that it was time for the United States to assume a major role in the region. The secretary of state did not accept previous American policy confirmed in the “Pentagon talks” of 1947 according to which the United States acceded principal strategic interest in the region to Great Britain.19 Dulles’s intention, supported by the president, was for the United States to assume paramount responsibility in the Middle East, no longer considering France and Great Britain to be elements of stability in the Near East as had the Truman administration. According to the secretary of state, the principal reason for the unsuccessful development of a security system in the region (for example, the Middle East Defense Organization [MEDO]), could be traced to American disengagement. In fact, the British had considered this organization as the best way to preserve its strategic and political position in the Middle East and, during the Labour government of Clement Attlee, Great Britain attempted to fashion this military system without considering American interests or the negative attitudes of the Arab governments.20 On the other hand, Dulles very much wanted to involve the Arabs and particularly the new regime in Egypt. In that country, a coup d’Etat had overthrown the monarchy, and a military junta, led by General Mohammed Neguib and Colonel Gamal Abdel Nasser, took power in July 1952. The State Department considered Egypt as the keystone of a possible alliance with the West Eisenhower and Dulles, fearful of a Communist presence in the area, both believed it necessary to create some bilateral pacts with the countries in the Middle East based on the NATO model.21 Therefore Israel was not considered the only regional ally in this antiSoviet strategy. The president and Dulles thought that the Jewish state had already received excessive support from the Truman administration, and it was now time to balance forces, including even the possible arming of the Arabs. Moreover, Eisenhower’s election brought with it the

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heightened influence of the State Department where anti-Israeli feeling was strong.22 Israeli prime minister David Ben-Gurion saw Dulles’s attempts to court the Arab states and join them in an alliance with the West as a real danger. Israel’s leaders were convinced the Arabs would use their increasing military power against Israel and not for self-defense or to prevent Soviet aggression.23 Given these concerns, Dulles decided to go to the Middle East from May 9–29, 1953, to examine the key issues affecting the American position in area, including: (1) Arab-Israeli relations; (2) the Palestine refugee problem; (3) the Anglo-Egyptian dispute over the British base on the Suez Canal; (4) Middle East defense; and (5) U.S. strategic interest in the area’s oil.24 Using the principles of Eisenhower’s soon to be articulated “New Look” theory, Dulles’s idea was to create a cordon sanitaire around the Middle East to stop the Soviet Union.25 The goal of the mission was to understand which country among the Arab states was best suited to cornerstone such a defensive alliance. The principal candidates were Egypt under Neguib and Nasser and Iraq led by Nuri Said. First, it was necessary to ascertain whether the MEDO proposal was still viable or, given Egypt’s subsequent opposition, whether the concept of joining the northern tier countries (Iran, Turkey, Pakistan, and Iraq) with the Arab world, could be a basis for advancing American interests.26 Dulles reached two conclusions in his conversations with Egyptian leaders: (1) the Egyptians did not want a British military base on their soil (especially close to the Suez Canal) and this problem had to be solved before facing the other issues of the area, and (2) MEDO, a defensive organization, had been conceived, and was opposed by Egypt. It had been hoped that MEDO would solve the problem of the British base on the canal, replacing the British command with an international one, but this solution failed to satisfy Egypt. Another solution had to be found.27 In Israel, Ben-Gurion asserted that “recent revolutions, changes of leadership, and promised reforms . . . had left the area’s historical problems of poverty, ignorance . . . etc., untouched. . . . To destroy the present vacuum in Middle East improvement in conditions of mass population were needed. Jet planes and arms,” he stated, “would not do it.” What Arab countries need, he urged, was economic development, education, and health. He expressed the hope that the United States would play an historical role by embarking on a long-range program to raise living standards of Arabs and by encouranging liberal elements in Arab countries who “understand that the problems are poverty and ignorance.”28 Dulles however was not concerned about these problems; what he wanted was the creation of a military alliance against the Soviets led by the West, and he found support in the region.29 Iraqi leaders, for example, liked this idea, because Iraq feared Soviet pressure on its northern

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border. Nuri Said, the strong man of the Iraqi government, informed the secretary of state that he was well aware of the dangers of Communist doctrine, the real purpose of which was destruction and terrorism. Iraq supported the United States, as Nuri Said affirmed, “If you are against communism, we are also against it.” The Iraqis endorsed a plan for a common defense of Turkey, Iran, and Iraq, and talks had been held with the foreign ministers of Iran and Turkey. Nuri Said stressed the danger from Russia and declared that Iraq’s sole objective was its own defense.30 Upon his return from the Middle East Dulles informed the American people by a broadcast speech about the results of his mission.31 The president had been fully briefed during a meeting of the National Security Council.32 Dulles announced that American policy in the region must change. It was time to reinforce the states considered friendly to the United States and create a new defensive organization comprising the northern tier countries. The new American policy, as indicated in a National Security Council statement, urged the United States to increase its responsibilities. The United States had to: (1) win the Arab states to a belief that the American administration sympathized with their legitimate aspirations; (2) make clear that Israel was not, merely because of its Jewish population, entitled to receive preferential treatment over any Arab state; (3) use American influence to secure Arab-Israel; boundary settlements, with some concessions by Israel; and (4) discourage further large-scale Jewish immigration to Israel. Regarding Egypt, this country was no longer seen as the keystone of a defensive organization. Those countries that most feared Communist pressure must have priority.33 The idea was, as suggested by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to make “an association of indigenous forces under an indigenous command.”34 According to Eisenhower and Dulles, Western countries such as the United States Great Britain, and France had to support the organization but were not obliged to join officially. American diplomatic efforts led Turkey and Pakistan, on April 2, 1954, to sign an Agreement for Friendly Cooperation, providing for consultation on international matters of mutual interest and cooperation on certain defense matters.35 Almost a year later Turkey and Iraq signed an important treaty for mutual military and economic assistance. This treaty, known as Baghdad Pact, had to be “open for accession to any member state of the Arab League or any other state actively concerned with the security and peace in this region.”36 Difficulties arose when Great Britain persisted in maintaining its position in the region. According to Dulles, the British decision to adhere to the Baghdad Pact harmed the alliance and the West’s position. Arab nationalists would think that it was merely a new attempt to colonize the Near East. The most important opponent to the pact was Nasser. He thought that the new alliance structure, with Iraq as the keystone, en-

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dangered Egypt’s leadership among the Arab countries, just when his country and Great Britain had signed a treaty about the withdrawal of British troops from the Suez Canal.37 State Department advisors believed that the moment had arrived to look for a settlement of the Arab-Israeli dispute. According to them, Egypt was now ready to talk about the problem without further pressure. Thus, Sir Evelyn Shuckburgh, for the British Foreign Office, and Francis H. Russell, for the State Department, collaborated on a project known as Alpha Plan, to resolve the issue. The purpose was to persuade Israel to give up a part of its land to the Arabs as an essential concession to an agreement that might then lead to a formal treaty guaranteeing security and the settlement of refugees.38 This price was too high for Israel to pay, however, and the Egyptians steadily sought to increase their power. Nasser’s aim was to strengthen his army through large weapons purchases and to soothe the United States by promising a possible agreement with Israel. Plainly the Jewish state did not trust Nasser. The new prime minister, Moshe Sharett, had not doubt that the weapons Egypt was looking for were not for selfdefense–as Nasser claimed—but for the destruction of Israel. The Egyptian government’s search for a supplier became more intense after February 28, 1955, when Israel Defense Forces (IDF) attacked terrorist villages in the Gaza Strip as retaliation for massive and frequent raids against Israeli settlements.39 The Arab fedayeen were trained by Egyptian instructors, and the IDF’s successful attack and defeat of Nasser’s soldiers brought not only a strong sense of insecurity, but also infused the Egyptian president’s search for arms with a new sense of urgency. The Soviet Union was the only country that accepted Nasser’s request for weapons without restrictions and, through Czechoslovakia, began to supply the Egyptian army, which had soon received 200 MIG, 100 tanks, 6 transport planes, 6 torpedo-boat destroyers, and 2 submarines. The Soviet-Egyptian agreement surprised and angered the United States. For several months the State Department had considered Nasser an independent ally.40 It had attempted to finalize an arms supply arrangement, while at the same time trying to convince Nasser to adhere to a Western alliance and agree to CIA training of the new Egyptian intelligence force.41 Notwithstanding Nasser’s assurances, the agreement on Czech arms was seen in Washington as a real danger to the security of the Suez Canal. Confronted with this threat, the United States and Great Britain had to revise their policy toward Egypt.42 The State Department was studying new strategies for limiting Egypt’s leadership in the area.43 On March 28, President Eisenhower approved a project called “Omega,”44 the goal of which was to compel Nasser to realize that he could not “cooperate as he [was] doing with the Soviet Union and at the same time enjoy most-favored-nation treatment from

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the United States.”45 Meanwhile, Great Britain and the United States increased pressure on Egypt by withholding financing for the Aswan Dam.46 As historian H. W. Brands Jr. has shown, in the Eisenhower administration the Aswan Dam had initially seemed a good bet. It would show American support for Nasser and for Egypt in a manner that even the most suspicious supporters of Israel would have trouble objecting to—a dam was hardly an offensive weapon. It would demonstrate American interest in humanitarian projects, thereby deflecting criticism that the United States was interested only in military alliances. And it would mix American money with money from other countries, chiefly Britain, in such a way that opponents of foreign aid couldn’t say that the rest of the Free World was letting Uncle Sam carry the burden alone again.47

However, from its beginning the Aswan project became entangled in a complex web of regional issues. 1. The “Alpha” Plan failed, because Nasser refused to assume leadership in resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict. According to Eisenhower, Nasser wanted “to be the most popular man in the Arab world” and driving his thirst for popularity were Nasser’s “extremist” views regarding Israel.48 2. In May 1956, Nasser announced that Egypt would extend diplomatic recognition to the People’s Republic of China, which the United States was trying to isolate. 3. In June, Nasser celebrated the final evacuation of British troops from Egypt with a visit from the Soviet Foreign Minister. 4. Final negotiation of the Czech-Egyptian arms deal took place.

By the summer of 1956, “Nasser had become a target for all manner of critics: Israel’s partisan . . . ; anti-Soviet conservatives, for his cozying up to the Kremlin; American budget balancers, for his wanting to spend lots of American money; and, not insignificantly, American cotton growers, for the possibility that the Aswan Dam would help Egypt’s farmers undercut American producers.”49 It was time to decide: On July 19, “Dulles decided to put an end to the charade. The Egyptian leader’s recognition of Communist China had been the final straw that convinced Dulles to teach him a lesson.”50 Dulles summoned the Egyptian ambassador, Ahmed Hussein, and informed him that the U.S. government had decided to withdraw its offer of financial assistance for the Aswan Dam. According to the secretary of state, the United States and Egypt “seemed to be ‘out of step’ in many respects,” and, therefore, “successful implementation of an undertaking such as the Dam would be impossible without the existence of the right kind of relationship. . . . The Secretary

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reiterated the desire of the United States to assist Egypt but thought that for the time being the Dam project should be ‘put on the shelf’ while we tried to develop a better atmosphere and better relations.”51 The American decision struck Egypt hard. “This is not a withdrawal; it is an attack on the regime,” Nasser declared. He added, “we will not allow the domination of force and the dollar.”52 The French ambassador to Washington, Maurice Couve de Murville (who would later become de Gaulle’s foreign minister), accurately predicted Egypt’s response: “They will do something about Suez. That’s the only way they can touch the Western countries.”53 And so it was. Before a vast crowd in Alexandria on July 26, 1956, Nasser gave his answer to Dulles announcing the nationalization of the Suez Canal Company.54 “This move killed two birds at once: it enhanced Egyptian self-esteem (and Nasser’s own political position), since Egypt would now control the operation of this vital waterway; and it would provide the easily accessible funding for the Aswan Dam, since the canal annually brought in around $100 million in tolls.”55 While Nasser’s bold move upset the Eisenhower administration, it infuriated the British. Prime Minister Anthony Eden immediately began speaking of the necessity for strong measures. He ordered a freeze on Egyptian assets in British banks and considerably increased British military presence in the eastern Mediterranean. Eden then wrote a letter to Eisenhower, informing the president that London was contemplating still stronger measures. “My colleagues and I are convinced that we must be ready, in the last resort, to use force to bring Nasser to his senses,” Eden wrote. “For our part, we are prepared to do so: I have this morning instructed our Chiefs of Staff to prepare a military plan accordingly.”56 France was no less firm. On July 29, the French ambassador to London informed the British foreign secretary that his country was prepared to put its forces under British command and to pull troops out of Algeria for joint action against Egypt.57 Some American officials thought Eden had the right idea, but Eisenhower did not at this stage rule out the use of force. After receiving Eden’s bellicose note, the president sent Robert Murphy, deputy under secretary of state, to London to calm down the British. When Murphy discovered the extent of British military preparations and the depth of Eden’s animosity toward Nasser, he called for reinforcements. John Foster Dulles caught the next plane across the Atlantic, and together the two diplomats managed to persuade the British and the French to count at least to ten before striking. The administration was determined to exhaust all diplomatic channels before possibly escalating the crisis to military confrontation. Dulles helped organize an international conference of canal users that met in London from August 16 through August 23.58 Egypt boycotted the conference, which meant that “the delegates were mostly wasting their breath. . . .”59 After the conference put together a

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proposal for international operation of the canal, the attending countries appointed a commission to try to sell the proposal to Nasser. The Egyptian president refused to buy.60 A new conference took place in London from September 19 through September 21.61 When this conference also failed the crisis remained as far from resolution as ever. Nasser’s attitude convinced the British that they had given diplomacy more time than it deserved; it was now time to cut the Gordian knot with a sword. The French supported Britain. Israeli prime minister BenGurion, concerned about Egypt’s access to Eastern bloc arms, was determined to exploit this moment of European annoyance and sieze the opportunity to smite Nasser before he got too strong.62 On October 23 and 24, officials of the three governments met secretly at Se`vres (France) where they decided the details of the so-called “collusion” to attack Egypt.63 On October 29, Israeli forces invaded the Egyptian Sinai peninsula and headed for the Suez Canal. The following day, as decided at Se`vres, London and Paris delivered a joint ultimatum, demanding that shooting stop and the combatants get clear of the canal. The Israelis, after having reached the canal, pulled back ten miles. The Egyptians did not. On October 31, British and French warplanes began to bomb Egyptian targets; a few days later, British and French ground forces landed in Egypt. The Anglo-French-Israeli assault infuriated Eisenhower. Their resort to force came just at the moment when the Kremlin was sending tanks and troops into Hungary, and here the two closest allies of the United States were doing the same thing in the Middle East. Without hesitation or consultation, the Eisenhower administration took diplomatic and economic measures to halt the fighting. It clamped down on Britain’s supplies of those two mainstays of modern warfare–money and oil. In particular, when London sought to shore up the British currency by a loan from the International Monetary Fund, Eisenhower directed his treasury secretary to block it. He also blocked oil supplies. The combined effect of these actions compelled Eden to back down. On November 6, London suspended the anti-Nasser operation, as did the French and the Israelis. Untangling the combatants required more time. The British and French withdrew from Egypt at the beginning of December 1956, but the Israelis stayed in Sinai until March of the following year. They retreated only in the face of escalating U.S. diplomatic pressure and did so with great irritation toward the American government.64 The immediate crisis was now over, but the diplomatic repercussions resonated deeply throughout the region for the next forty years. The Suez crisis was the turning point in American policy toward the Middle East. The war discredited Britain and exploded most of what had remained of British prestige and power in the region. Until 1956, the United States had relied on Britain to help keep the Soviet Union out of

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the area. With Britain now removed from the scene, the American government would have to shoulder the bulk of the burden itself. London and Paris could not understand the fact that, after the American withdrawal of its Aswan aid offer, Eisenhower and Dulles did not want to run the risk of war to defend Western rights on the canal. The first American mistake was its support for the Tripartite Declaration of 1950 when it had already been eclipsed by the Czech-Egyptian arms deal.65 Thus Eisenhower and Dulles continued to believe that they could stop the arms race in the region while the Soviet Union was already deeply involved in the Middle East. Dulles was convinced that he could entice Egypt into an alliance on the NATO model, failing to perceive that Nasser saw no future in being identified with the West. American intrusion in the Middle East was premised on its policy of containment, a policy that required opposition to Soviet expansion everywhere it threatened and was enforced by the doctrine of collective security. Accordingly, this necessity required the creation of a NATOlike organization to resist actual or potential military threats from the USSR. For the most part, however, the nations of the Near East did not share America’s point of view. They thought of Moscow primarily as a useful lever to extract concessions from the West rather than as a threat to their independence. The United States did not grasp what Nasser represented. It proceeded from the premise that Nasser’s resistance to its policies was due to some set of grievances that could be redressed through economic coercion and ideological arguments. The Soviet Union was able to exploit American misperceptions to outflank “capitalist encirclement” and to acquire new allies by supplying them with arms, without having to assume responsibility for their domestic governance. Nasser used the conjunction of all of these impulses to play off the various contenders, one against the other. The infusion of Soviet arms into the unstable Middle East only accelerated this process. America’s best response to Egyptian policy would have been to isolate Nasser until it became obvious that Soviet arms had gained him nothing, and then, when Nasser abandoned his Soviet ties, to follow up with a generous diplomatic initiative. This was precisely the American approach toward Anwar Sadat twenty years later, which produced such dramatically different results. However, in 1956, Eisenhower and Dulles chose the opposite policy: They tried hard to conciliate Nasser by meeting many of his demands and abandoning Israel to its own destiny.66 America’s desire was to separate itself from the colonialism of its closest allies, particularly the British. In doing so the administration tried to implement a schizophrenic policy of dissociating from Great Britain on Middle Eastern issues while at the same time it tried to enlist Nasser into a partnership with the British in a global anti-Soviet strategy. Nasser, however, had no conceivable incentive to abandon his Soviet ties. In

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fact, the more Washington tried to placate Nasser, the more the Egyptians gravitated toward the Soviets. The United States tried to convince Egypt of the advantages of this situation by pursuing two related policies: (1) promoting peace between Egypt and Israel, and (2) helping Nasser to construct the Aswan Dam. The peace initiative was based on the belief that the establishment of the Jewish state by force in 1948 was the principal sources of Arab radicalism. An honorable peace, it was thought, would remove that humiliation. However, the failure of the Alpha Plan demonstrated that Arab radicals and nationalists were not seeking peace with Israel, honorable or otherwise. Regarding the financing of the Aswan Dam project, Great Britain and the United States believed Egypt to be financially dependent on them, insofar as the building of the Suez Canal had given the West financial control over Egypt in the nineteenth century. Far from moderating Nasser, the Aswan Dam project aroused in him a sense of his importance. He moved rapidly to undertake a series of compensatory moves. He rejected American entreaties to help facilitate Arab-Israeli negotiations. When Great Britain tried to persuade Jordan to join the Baghdad Pact, pro-Egyptian riots broke out, which obliged King Hussein to dismiss Sir John Bagot Glubb, the British commander of the Arab Legion, in March 1956.67 Finally Nasser’s recognition of the Communist People’s Republic of China infuriated Dulles, who was deeply committed to the Nationalist Chinese regime on Taiwan. Subsequent American withdrawal of financial aid for the Aswan Dam was complicated by the Eisenhower administration’s realization that such allies as Turkey and Pakistan did not understand how Egypt, whose allegedly neutral government and press pushed for a anti-Western policy, should be given massive financial aid when no Asian ally had been supported by such assistance.68 During the entire crisis, the United States had in fact undermined its own position. While Dulles, after the nationalization of the Suez Canal, insisted that “a way had to be found to make Nasser disgorge what he was attempting to swallow.”69 On the other hand, it was difficult to understand what the administration really wanted to do to resolve regional issues. Eisenhower and Dulles failed to appreciate that the two London conferences had been meaningless without an Egyptian presence. For his part, Eden could not believe that Eisenhower would transform his misgivings about unilateral British and French actions into open opposition. However, it was now clear how far apart European and American positions had become. What infuriated Great Britain and France in 1956 was not so much America’s legalistic pronouncement as it was Dulles’s strong implication that, in the Middle East, the United States defined its vital interests very differently from the way its European allies did. Dulles himself was caught between an adamant president and an out-

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raged group of European allies. Eden and his French counterpart Guy Mollet were beyond the point of retreat and were infuriated by the incongruity between the toughness of Dulles’s stated objectives and his repeated disavowal of the practical means for achieving them. They never understood how strongly Eisenhower was opposed to the use of force. For Dulles, the gap between his supporters and Nasser was less of a problem than the one between his president and the president’s personal friends in Europe. He gambled on closing that gap with his dexterity, hoping that time might alter their position or Eisenhower’s stance or lead Nasser into making some mistake that would solve everyone’s dilemma. Instead, Dulles caused France and Great Britain to risk everything in a desperate throw of the dice at Suez.70 Renouncing in advance the use of force, the United States effectively abandoned the initiative in the region to the Soviet Union, which replaced Western aid to the Aswan Dam with its own and stepped up arms shipments to the Middle East. Even when Israel, Great Britain, and France acted against Egypt, Eisenhower balked. In a television address he said: “As it is the manifest right of any of these nations to take such decisions and actions, it is likewise our right—if our judgment so dictates—to dissent. We believe these actions to have been taken in error. For we do not accept the use of force as a wise and proper instrument for the settlement of international disputes.”71 Such an absolute renunciation of force was not a principle the Eisenhower administration had ever applied to itself; for example, when it arranged the overthrow of the Guatemalan government two years earlier, or when it was followed, two years later, by American military intervention in Lebanon. Ironically, in the case of the Suez crisis, the United States and its European allies were on opposite sides. When Great Britain and France attacked Egypt, the United States joined with the Soviet Union to support a UN resolution against its closest allies, for the first and only time in history. Admittedly the United States was under no obligation to push UN deliberations at the extraordinarily rapid pace that it did or to support resolutions that ignored the sources of provocation. The Eisenhower administration could have called attention to all the various international schemes to insulate the operation of the canal, to the illegal Arab blockade of the Gulf of Aqaba, as well as to Nasser’s encouragement of terrorist raids against Israel. By acting as if the Suez issue were entirely moral and legal, and as if it had no geopolitical basis, the United States evaded the reality that an unconditional victory for Nasser—an outcome in which Egypt gave no guarantees with respect to the operation of the Canal—was also a victory for a radical policy encouraged by Soviet arms and sustained by Soviet threats. The heart of the problem was conceptual. America’s leaders put forward three principles during the Suez crisis, each of which reflected long-standing verities: that America’s obligations toward

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its allies were circumscribed by precise legal documents; that recourse to force by any nation was inadmissible except when narrowly defined as self-defense; and, most important, that the Suez crisis had provided America with an opportunity to pursue its true vocation, which was leadership of the developing world.72

This third aspect of American policy was the most difficult to achieve even given the Eisenhower administration’s pledge to dissociate itself from the colonialism of its European allies. Notwithstanding Vice President Richard Nixon’s observation that, “For the first time in history we have shown independence of Anglo-French policy toward Asia and Africa which seemed to us to reflect the colonial tradition. That declaration of independence has had an electrifying effect throughout the world.” This view was myopic.73 Notwithstanding its opposition to the Anglo-French policy during the crisis, the United States did not improve its position among the nonaligned countries. Within a few months of the Suez crisis, America was no better off among the nonaligned than Great Britain. What these countries remembered most about the Suez crisis was not U.S. support of Nasser but that the Egyptian president had achieved major successes by his dexterity at playing the superpowers against each other. As Henry Kissinger later observed: “In the decades following the Suez crisis, . . . castigation of American policies turned into the ritual of Nonaligned conferences. Condemnation of Soviet actions in declarations published at the end of periodic Nonaligned meetings was extremely rare and circumspect. Since it was statistically unlikely that the United States was always wrong, the Nonaligned’s tilt had to reflect a calculation of interest, not a moral judgement.”74 The European powers realized that the Suez crisis had shown the differences of interests between the Europeans, on one side, and the Americans, on the other. For the first time Great Britain and France began to doubt the American argument that Europe did not need nuclear weapons because it could always count on American support. Such guarantees now ran up against the memory of Suez. The new Anglo-French position was well summarized by Anwar Sadat, then chief propagandist for Egypt, who wrote in those days: “There are only two Great Powers in the world today, the United States and the Soviet Union. . . . The ultimatum put Britain and France in their right place, as Powers neither big nor strong.”75 Israel’s position was the most difficult in the area. The Jewish state had been excluded from every security proposal advanced by the West. Neither the United States nor the Soviet Union considered Israel as the most important country in the Middle East. The superpowers’ efforts were directed toward the Arab states and particularly to Egypt. Even if

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President Truman had been essential in establishing Israel and seeing in its creation a bulwark for American interests in the Middle East, President Eisenhower and Secretary Dulles saw Israel’s role quite differently. Regardless of the Jewish lobby’s important influence in presidential elections, Republicans believed that the personality of Dwight D. Eisenhower, soldier and hero of the World War II, transcended traditional politics and rendered the support of any single ethnic group less important. Israel desperately sought a guaranteed source of arms because of its insecure position in the region, but the United States during the 1950s was not interested in providing such military support. Only when it was clear that Egypt was in Soviet hands, did Secretary Dulles fully appreciate Israel’s importance in an anti-Communist alliance. However, throughout the entire Suez crisis Eisenhower and Dulles failed to fully understand long-term consequences of Israel’s acceleration of the arms race in the Middle East from which it had been excluded. Moreover, the illegal Egyptian blockade of the Gulf of Aqaba was destroying the Israeli economy and threatened to interrupt the vital flow of oil supplies. Finally, Israeli settlers were constantly under the fire of Arab terrorists whose bases were in Sinai and the Gaza strip. For all these reasons Israel believed it had its back to the wall, and thus it was eager to follow Britain and France in their attempt to punish Nasser. The United States did not understand that the Jewish state wanted to be reassured, and the war could have been avoided by strong American diplomatic action confirming Israel’s importance commensurate with Egypt’s stature. Soviet policy was more realistic. Khrushchev and his advisors understood that Arab friendship was contingent on making few demands. The only policy the Soviets could pursue was backing Arab nationalism without seeking ideological or political allegiance. Thus, there was no attempt to change Arab governments or replace them with a Communist regime. Distancing them from the West was enough to advance Soviet interests. During the Suez crisis the Soviet position was clear: support Egypt. When the war began, the Kremlin sent sharp notes to Great Britain and France threatening the use of nuclear weapons. At that time the United States did not realize that the Soviet Union did not have the capacity for strategic delivery, as it demonstrated just six years later during the Cuban missile crisis when it was obliged to backdown. Thus, if the United States had confronted the Soviet Union with a strong warning that, in a showdown, the United States would stand with its allies, the superpower rivalry in the Middle East would have been very different. The Soviets might well have pressured its Egyptian ally to restrain its violent and expansionist policy in the Middle East and seek accommodation with Israel twenty years before the Camp David Accords. “But the United

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States was determined to maintain the friendship of its allies and to keep open its option toward the nonaligned group. America’s attempt to straddle incompatible policies made war inevitable.”76 Ironically Eisenhower’s and Dulles’ greatest nightmare had become a reality: Because of American mistakes the Soviet Union was now in the Middle East in a prominent position to threaten American interests. The administration had no one to blame but itself. Still “for all the pain it caused, the Suez crisis had marked America’s ascension into world leadership.”77 The United States cut its ties with its Europeans allies in the region and tried to fill the vacuum in the Near East. By distancing itself from Great Britain and France the United States assumed unilateraly the burden of protecting every free (i.e., nonCommunist) country in every threatened area of the world. The consequences of this decision became all apparent within a decade as another administration committed the United States to defeating communism in Southeast Asia. NOTES 1. Memorandum by the Chairman of the Special Committee to Study Assistance to Greece and Turkey (Henderson) to the Under Secretary of State (Acheson), n.d., Foreign Relations of the United States, 1947. V, 47–55 (thereafter FRUS). See also Bruce R. Kuniholm, “U.S. Policy in the Near East: The Triumphs and Tribulations of the Truman Administration,” in Michael J. Lacey, ed., The Truman Presidency (Cambridge, 1991), 299–317. 2. On the U.S. policy toward Zionism before Truman see Frank W. Brecher, Reluctant Ally: United States Foreign Policy toward the Jews from Wilson to Roosevelt (Westport, Conn., 1991). 3. Memorandum by Henderson to Marshall (“Various Plans Suggested for the Future Government of Palestine”), July 7, 1947, Department of State Central Files, Record Group 59, 367N.01/7–747, National Archives, Washington, D.C. (thereafter RG 59); for Kennan see Position of the United States with Respect to Palestine, PPS 19, January 19, 1948, in The State Department Policy Planning Staff Papers, I, edited by A. K. Nelson (New York, 1983), 31–44; Wilson D. Miscamble, George F. Kennan and the Making of American Foreign Policy (Princeton, N.J., 1992), 93–102. 4. Memorandum by Clark Clifford to President Truman (“The Politics of 1948”), November 19, 1947, Clark Clifford Papers, H. S. Truman Library, Independence, Mo. See also Bruce J. Evensen, Truman, Palestine and the Press: Shaping Conventional Wisdom at the Beginning of the Cold War (Westport, Conn., 1992). 5. Memorandum by the President’s Special Counsel (Clifford), March 8, 1948, FRUS, 1948, V, part II, 690–96. See also David McCullough, Truman (New York, 1992), 595–620; Clark Clifford (with Richard Holbrooke), Counsel to the President: A Memoir (New York, 1991), passim. 6. Memorandum by Kennan to Lovett and Marshall, May 21, 1948, RG 59,

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711.67N/5–2148. See also Michael J. Cohen, Truman and Israel (Berkeley, 1990), 223–81; Wm. Roger Louis, The British Empire in the Middle East, 1945–1951: Arab Nationalism, the United States, and Postwar Imperialism (Oxford, 1988), 514–71. 7. Statement of Policy by the National Security Council, NSC 155/1, (“U.S. Objectives and Policies with Respect to the Near East”), July 14, 1953, FRUS, 1952–1954, IX, part I, 393–405. See also Henry W. Brands Jr., The Spectar of Neutralism: The United States and the Emergence of the Third World, 1947–1950 (New York, 1989), 223–62. 8. Department of State Position Paper (“Israel”), May 5, 1953, FRUS, 1952– 1954, IX, part I, 1188–99; National Intelligence Estimate (“Israel”), August 18, 1953, FRUS, 1952–1954, IX, part I, 1275–90. See also Isaac Alteras, Eisenhower and Israel: U.S.–Israeli Relations, 1953–1960 (Gainsville, Fla., 1993), 23–156; Abba Eban, An Autobiography (New York, 1977), 154–205. 9. On the Anglo-American collaboration in the Middle East see Report of the Near East Regional Conference in Cairo, March 16, 1950, FRUS, 1950, V, 2–8. 10. See Michael J. Cohen, Palestine to Israel: From Mandate to Independence (London, 1988), 198–219. 11. On the two projects see, respectively, Peter L. Hahn, The United States, Great Britain, and Egypt, 1945–1956: Strategy and Diplomacy in the Early Cold War (Chapel Hill and London, 1991), 109–30 and Shimon Shamir, “The Collapse of Project Alpha,” in Wm. Roger Louis and Robert Owen, eds., Suez 1956: The Crisis and Its Consequences (Oxford, 1989), 73–100. 12. An example of the Zionist reactions to the policy of the State Department are some documents drawn up between December 1947 and February 1948: Memorandum by the Jewish Agency for Palestine on the Situation in Palestine, December 26, 1947, RG 59, 867N.01/12–3147; Memorandum Submitted by the Jewish Agency for Palestine to the U.N. Palestine Commission, February 2, 1948, RG 59, 867N.01/2–448; Resolutions Adopted by the American Zionist Emergency Council, February 15, 1948, RG 59, 863N.01/2–1748; Memorandum Submitted by the Jewish Agency for Palestine to the U.N. Palestine Commission, February 21, 1948, RG 59, 867N.01/2–2748. On Zionism in the United States see Allon Gal, David Ben-Gurion and the American Alignment For a Jewish State (Bloomington, Ind., and Jerusalem, 1991), particularly 99–136. 13. On this argument see Dore Gold, Israel as an American non-NATO Ally: Parameters of Defense-Industrial Cooperation (Tel Aviv, 1991); Moshe Efrat and Jacob Bercovitch, eds., Superpowers and Client States in the Middle East: The Imbalance of Influence (London and New York, 1991), 55–138. 14. On the new deal of the U.S. policy in the Middle East it is enough to consider the following passages: The United States should: a) Assume an increased share of responsibility toward the area, acting in concert with the United Kingdom to the greatest extent practicable, but reserving the right to act with others or alone . . . c) Win the Arab States to a belief that we sympathize with their legitimate aspirations and respect their interests . . . e) Seek to guide the revolutionary and nationalistic pressures throughout the area into orderly channels not antagonistic to the West rather than attempt merely to preserve the status quo.

Statement of Policy by the National Security Council (“U.S. Objectives and Policies with Respect to the Near East”), NSC 5428, July 23, 1954, FRUS, 1952–1954,

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IX, part I, 525–36:529. See also Steven Z. Freiberger, Dawn over Suez: The Rise of American Power in the Middle East, 1953–1957 (Chicago, 1992, 35–54; David W. Lesch, Syria and the United States: Eisenhower’s Cold War in the Middle East (Boulder, Colo., 1992), 4–16, 29–35; Fawaz A. Gerges, The Superpowers and the Middle East: Regional and International Politics, 1955–1967 (Boulder, Colo., 1994), passim. 15. T. Hoopes, The Devil and John Foster Dulles: The Diplomacy of the Eisenhower Era (Boston, 1973), 130. 16. P. J. Boyle, American-Soviet Relations: From the Russian Revolution to the Fall of Communism (London and New York, 1993), 118. 17. A. H. Berding, Dulles on Diplomacy (Princeton, N.J., 1965), 14–15. 18. S. L. Spiegel, The Other Arab-Israeli Conflict: Making America’s Middle East Policy, from Truman to Reagan (Chicago and London, 1985), 50. 19. J. Nadich, Eisenhower and the Jews (New York, 1953), 18; Department of State Bulletin (hereafter DSB), June 15, 1953, 831. 20. On “Pentagon Talks” of 1947, FRUS, 1947, V, 488–620. 21. M. B. Oren, Origins of the Second Arab-Israel War: Egypt, Israel and the Great Powers, 1952–1956 (London, 1992). About the MEDO see The Secretary of State to the Department of State, June 27, 1952, FRUS, 1952–1954, IX, part I, 252–54. 22. Spiegel, The Other Arab-Israeli Conflict, 57. 23. U. Bialer, Between East and West: Israel’s Foreign Policy Orientation, 1949– 1956 (Cambridge, 1990), 260, and N. Safran, Israel: The Embattled Ally (Cambridge, Mass., 1982), p. 348. 24. Editorial Note, FRUS, 1952–1954, IX, part I, 1. 25. On “New Look” see Report NSC 162/2, October 30, 1953, FRUS, 1952– 1954, II, 577–97; DSB, March 29, 1954, 459–64; C. C. Alexander, Holding the Line: The Eisenhower Era, 1952–1961 (Bloomington, Ind., 1975), 63ff.; R. A. Aliano, American Defense Policy from Eisenhower to Kennedy: The Politics of Changing Military Requirements, 1957–1961 (Athens, Ohio, 1975), 26–47; J. L. Gaddis, Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of Postwar American National Security Policy (New York and Oxford, 1982), 127–40, 145–53; S. Adams, Firsthand Report: The Story of the Eisenhower Administration (New York, 1961), 398–99, 408. 26. Oren, Origins of the Second Arab-Israel War, 66. 27. The Ambassador in Egypt (Caffery) to the Department of State, May 13, 1953, FRUS, 1952–1954, IX, part I, 26–28. 28. Memorandum of Conversation, Prepared in the Embassy in Israel, May 14, 1953, FRUS, 1952–1954, IX, part I, 37. 29. M. Avidan, Principal Aspects of Israel–USA Relations in the 1950’s (Jerusalem, 1982), 25. 30. Memorandum of Conversation, Prepared in the Embassy in Iraq, May 18, 1953, FRUS, 1952–1954, IX, part I, 91–92. 31. DSB, June 15, 1953, 831–35. 32. Memorandum of Discussion at the 147th Meeting of the National Security Council, Monday, June 1, 1953, FRUS, 1952–1954, IX, part I, 379–86. 33. Statement of Policy by the National Security Council, NSC 155/1, July 14, 1953, FRUS, 1952–1954, IX, part I, 399–406. 34. Memorandum by the Joint Chiefs of Staff to the Secretary of Defense (Wilson), November 14, 1953, FRUS, 1952–1954, IX, part I, 431. 35. Editorial Note, FRUS, 1952–1954, IX, part I, 491.

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36. Pact of Mutual Co-operation between Iraq and Turkey Signed at Baghdad, February 24, 1955, in J. N. Moore, ed., The Arab-Israeli Conflict, Vol. III, Documents (Princeton, N.J., 1974), 589. This pact entered into force on April 15, 1955. Acceded to by the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland on April 5, 1955, Pakistan on September 23, 1955, and Iran on November 3, 1955. Redesignated the Central Treaty Organization (CENTO) on August 21, 1959, following the withdrawal of Iraq on March 24, 1959. On Baghdad Pact see also: FRUS, 1955–1957, XII, p 5ff.; Th. A. Bryson, American Diplomatic Relations with the Middle East, 1784–1975: A Survey (Metuchen, N.J., 1977), pp 181–87; J. C. Campbell, Defense of the Middle East: Problems of American Policy (New York, 1960), 49–62. 37. An Anglo-Egyptian agreement was achieved on July 27, 1954, then a formal treaty was signed on October 19, 1954. On Anglo-Egyptian treaty see E. Shuckburgh, Descent to Suez: Foreign Office Diaries, 1951–1956 (New York and London, 1987), 215–41. 38. On “Alpha” plan see: FRUS, 1955–1957, XIV, 10 ff.; Shuckburgh, Descent to Suez, 242–356; H. Trevelyan, The Middle East in Revolution (Boston, 1970), 40– 47; W. C. Eveland, Ropes of Sand: America’s Failure in the Middle East (London, 1980), 153–58; S. Z. Freiberger, “The Dulles Mission to the Eisenhower Doctrine Anglo-American Policy Toward the Middle East, 1953–56” (Ph.D. diss., Rutgers University, 1990), 230–91; S. Shamir, The Collapse of Project Alpha, in Wm. R. Louis and R. Owen, eds., Suez 1956: The Crisis and Its Consequences (Oxford, 1989), 73– 100; S. Touval, The Peace Brokers: Mediators in the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1948–1979 (Princeton, N.J., 1982), 110–20. 39. On Israeli Gaza raid, see United Nations Documents S/3365, S/3367, S/3368, S/PV 695, S/3378, quoted in FRUS, 1955–1957, XIV, 76–78; B. Morris, Israel’s Border Wars, 1949–1956: Arab Infiltration, Israeli Retaliation, and the Countdown to the Suez War (Oxford, 1993), 324–54; D. Neff, Warriors at Suez: Eisenhower Takes America into the Middle East (New York, 1981), 29–47; M. B. Oren, “Escalation to Suez: The Egypt-Israel Border War, 1949–56,” Journal of Contemporary History 24 (1989): 357–64. 40. Telegram from the Embassy in Egypt to the Department of State, September 21, 1955; Memorandum from the Secretary of State’s Special Assistant for Intelligence (Armstrong) to the Secretary of State, September 23, 1955, FRUS, 1955–1957, XIV, 492, 507. 41. M. Copeland, The Game of Nations: The Amorality of Power Politics (London, 1970), 61–75. 42. K. J. Beattie, Egypt during the Nasser Years: Ideology, Politics, and Civil Society (Boulder, Colo., 1994), 114. 43. Telegram from the Embassy in the United Kingdom to the Department of State, September 22, 1955, FRUS, 1955–1957, XIV, 504–5. 44. Footnote 2, Telegram from the Secretary of State to the Department of State, March 8, 1956, FRUS, 1955–1957, XV, 326. 45. Memorandum from the Secretary of State to the President, March 28, 1956; Memorandum of a Conversation, White House, March 28, 1956; Memorandum of a Conference with the President, White House, March 28, 1956; Diary Entry the President, March 28, 1956, FRUS, 1955–1957, XV, 419–25. 46. Memorandum from the Secretary of State to the President, March 28, 1956, FRUS, 1955–1957, XV, 419.

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47. H. W. Brands Jr., Into the Labyrinth: The United States and the Middle East, 1945–1993 (New York, 1994), 61. 48. For further information on “Omega” plan, see W. S. Lucas, Divided We Stand: Britain, the US and the Suez Crisis (London, 1991), 116–34. 49. Entry for March 13, 1956, R. H. Ferrell, ed., The Eisenhower Diaries (New York, 1981), 319. 50. Brands, Into the Labyrinth, 62. 51. H. A. Kissinger, Diplomacy (New York and London, 1994), 529. 52. Memorandum of Conversation, Department of State, July 19, 1956, FRUS, 1955–1957, XV, 869–71. 53. Quoted in Brands, The Specter of Neutralism, 273. 54. See Nasser Speech, Alexandria, July 26, 1956, in N. Frankland, ed., Documents on International Affairs, 1956 (London and New York, 1959), 80; see also Telegram from the Embassy in Egypt to the Department of State, July 26, 1956, FRUS, 1955–1957, XV, 906–8. 55. Quoted in K. Kyle, Suez (New York, 1991), 130. 56. A. Eden, Full Circle: The Memoirs of Anthony Eden (Boston, 1960), 476–77; see also Message from Prime Minister Eden to President Eisenhower, July 27, 1956, FRUS, 1955–1957, XVI, 9–11. 57. Brands, Into the Labyrinth, 62. 58. Kyle, Suez, 145. 59. Telegram from the Delegation at the Suez Canal Conference to the Department of State, August 18, 1956; Editorial Note, FRUS, 1955–1957, XVI, 228– 29, 284–85. 60. Brands, Into the Labyrinth, 64. 61. Report Prepared in the Executive Secretariat of the Department of State, September 5, 1956, FRUS, 1955–1957, XVI, 375–78. 62. Editorial Note, FRUS, 1955–1957, 516–17. 63. On Se`vres “collusion” see M. Bar-On, “David Ben-Gurion and the Se`vres Collusion,” in Wm. R. Louis and R. Owen, eds., Suez 1956, pp. 145–160; T. Robertson, Crisis: The Inside Story of the Suez Conspiracy (London, 1965), 131–74; H. M. Sachar, A History of Israel: From the Rise of Zionism to Our Time 8th ed. (New York, 1993) 489–93. 64. Brands, Into the Labyrinth, 67. 65. The Acting Secretary of State to Certain Diplomatic and Consular Offices, May 20, 1950, FRUS, 1950, V, 167–68. 66. Kissinger, Diplomacy, 525–26. 67. On Jordanian clashes see FRUS, 1955–1957, XIII, 20–33. 68. J. E. Dougherty, “The Aswan Dam in Perspective,” Political Science Quarterly 74 (1979): 28. 69. Eden, Full Circle, 437. 70. Kissinger, Diplomacy, 537. 71. Radio and Television Report to the American People on the Developments in Eastern Europe and the Middle East, Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States, Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1956, 1064. 72. Kissinger, Diplomacy, 544. 73. Quoted in H. Finer, Dulles over Suez: The Theory and Practice of His Diplomacy (Chicago, 1964), 397. According to Henry Kissinger, “It is hard to believe that he

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[Nixon] was doing anything other than following instructions” (Kissinger, Diplomacy, 546). 74. Kissinger, Diplomacy, 546–47. 75. Quoted in Kyle, Suez, 477. 76. Kissinger, Diplomacy, 540. 77. Ibid., 548.

FOR FURTHER STUDIES To analyze the relations between the United States and Israel in the crucial years 1948–1956 a main role is developed by the documents contained in the Truman Library at Independence. Missouri, and in the Eisenhower Library at Abilene, Kansas. Moreover, fundamental are the documents of the Department of State (mainly the Record Group 59), which are classified in the National Archives, at Washington, D.C. But we cannot undervalue the precious contribution that the documents published in The Foreign Relations of the United States (in our case, for the years 1948–1956) have provided to scholars. To these documents we must add those published in the three volumes, edited by Anna K. Nelson, The State Department Policy Planning Staff Papers, 1947–1949 (New York, 1983), which allow, above all, to understand George Kennan’s position on the Palestine problem. The most recent secondary sources offer to scholars a lot of excellent books and articles. Many books analyze, from several points of view, the Cold War in the Middle East; among these, the most original works are: Henry W. Brands Jr., Into the Labyrinth: The United States and the Middle East, 1945–1993 (New York, 1994); Moshe Efrat and Jacob Bercovitch, eds., Superpowers and Client States in the Middle East: The Imbalance of Influence (London and New York, 1991); Fawaz A. Gerges, The Superpowers and the Middle East: Regional and International Politics, 1955–1967 (Boulder, Colo., 1994); Bruce J. Evensen, “Truman, Palestine and the Cold War,” Middle Eastern Studies 28 (1992): 120–56. Some books deal with the Truman Doctrine and its influence on U.S. policy in the Middle East: Howard Jones, “A New Kind of War”: America’s Global Strategy and the Truman Doctrine in Greece (New York, 1989); Bruce R. Kuniholm, “U.S. Policy in the Near East: The Triumphs and Tribulations of the Truman Administration,” in Michael J. Lacey, ed., The Truman Presidency (Cambridge, 1991); George McGhee, The U.S.–Turkish– NATO Middle East Connection: How the Truman Doctrine and Turkey’s NATO Entry Contained the Soviet (New York, 1990). The U.S.–British relations are studied in the very important books by Wm. Roger Louis, The British Empire in the Middle East, 1945–1951: Arab Nationalism, the United States, and Postwar Imperialism (Oxford, 1988) and by Peter L. Hahn, The United States, Great Britain, and Egypt, 1945– 1956: Strategy and Diplomacy in the Early Cold War (Chapel Hill and London, 1991). Kennan’s position is analyzed by Wilson D. Miscamble in George F. Kennan and the Making of American Foreign Policy (Princeton, N.J., 1992). Finally, the contrasts between Truman and the State Department are pointed out in the essays by Shlomo Slonim, “President Truman, the State Department and the Palestine Question,” The Wiener Library Bulletin 34 (1981): 15–29 and by Bruce J. Evensen, “The Limits of Presidential Leadership: Truman at War with Zionists, the Press,

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Public Opinion and His Own State Department over Palestine,” Presidential Studies Quarterly 23 (1993): 269–87. U.S.–Israeli relations during Truman’s second administration (1948–1952) are the subject of a large number of works. The most recent are, of course, still the most documented: Michael J. Cohen, Truman and Israel (Berkeley, 1990); Bruce J. Evensen, Truman, Palestine and the Press: Shaping Conventional Wisdom at the Beginning of the Cold War (Westport, Conn., 1992); David McCullough, Truman (New York, 1992). Fundamental are the pages devoted to this problem in Clark Clifford (with Richard Holbrooke), Counsel to the President: A Memoir (New York, 1991). The relations between the State of Israel and the United States during the Eisenhower and Dulles years are studied in the context of the widest relations between the United States and the Middle East countries, because of the peculiar policy carried out by the Republican administration: Isaac Alteras. Eisenhower and Israel: U.S.–Israeli Relations, 1953–1960 (Gainsville, Fla., 1993); David Schoenebaum, The United States and the State of Israel (New York, 1993); Benny Morris, Israel’s Border Wars, 1949–1956: Arab Infiltration, Israeli Retaliation, and the Countdown to the Suez War (Oxford, 1993). The years leading to the Suez Crisis are also analyzed in the book by Steven Z. Freiberger, Dawn over Suez: The Rise of American Power in the Middle East, 1953–1957 (Chicago, 1992) and in the essay by Michael B. Oren, “Escalation to Suez: The Egypt-Israel Border Wars, 1949–56,” Journal of Contemporary History 24 (1989): 347–72. Michael B. Oren has enlarged this study in a recent book: The Origins of the Second Arab-Israeli War: Egypt, Israel and the Great Powers, 1952–1956 (London, 1992). On the relations between the United States and the Third World countries is still essential the book by Henry W. Brands Jr., The Specter of Neutralism: The United States and the Emergence of the Third World, 1947–1960 (New York, 1989). Finally, the relations between the United States and the Zionist movement in our century (until the late 1950s) are studied in the books by Frank W. Brecher, Reluctant Ally: United States Foreign Policy toward the Jews from Wilson to Roosevelt (Westport, Conn., 1991) and Allon Gal, David Ben-Gurion and the American Alignment for a Jewish State (Bloomington, Ind., and Jerusalem, 1991) and in the two splendid autobiographical works by Abba Eban: An Autobiography (New York, 1977) and Personal Witness: Israel through My Eyes (London, 1993). For a comprehensive analysis of the Suez crisis it is necessary to examine the documents of the Eisenhower administration. Among them of particular importance are: The Diaries of Dwight D. Eisenhower, The Papers of Dwight D. Eisenhower as President of the United States, 1953–1961, Ann Whitman File, Dwight D. Eisenhower Library, Abilene, Kansas (hereafter DDEL); The Papers of John Foster Dulles and Christian A. Herter, 1953–1961, Chronological Correspondence Series, DDEL; Minutes and Documents of the Cabinet Meetings of the President Eisenhower (1953–1961), DDEL; U.S. Department of State, Record Group 59, Records of the Department of State, Central Files: Palestine/Israel, Foreign Affairs 1955– 1959, National Archives, Washington, D.C.; U.S. Department of State, Department of State Bulletin, 1955, 1956; U.S. Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1955–1957, voll. XIII, XIV, XV, XVI, XVII, Washington, D.C., 1988, 1989, 1989, 1990, 1990; Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1955, 1956, Washington, D.C., 1958.

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Also memoirs and diaries have considerable historical importance because sometimes they revealed feelings not shown by the documents. Some books, such as Anthony Eden, Full Circle: The Memoirs of Anthony Eden (Boston, 1960) are not far from impartial, in fact, they try to explain and justify the attitudes and decisions of the moment: Moshe Dayan, Story of My Life: An Autobiography (New York, 1976) Moshe Dayan, Diary of the Suez Campaign, 1956 (New York, 1966); Dwight D. Eisenhower, The White House Years: Mandate for Change, 1953–1956 (New York, 1963); Dwight D. Eisenhower, The White House Years: Waging Peace, 1956–1961 (New York, 1965); Robert H. Ferrell, ed., The Eisenhower Diaries (New York, 1981); Selwyn Lloyd, Suez 1956: A Personal Account (London, 1978); Anthony Nutting, No End of a Lesson (New York, 1967); Evelyn Shuckburgh, Descent to Suez: Foreign Office Diaries, 1951–1956 (New York and London, 1987). Relations between the United States and Israel were at their lowest point in the history of the two countries during the Eisenhower administration, driven by Secretary Dulles’s preoccupation with Cold War strategy and President Eisenhower’s need to achieve results against the Soviet Union. On Israel’s role in the Middle East during the 1950s and its policy toward the United States: Yaacov Bar-Siman-Tov, Israel, the Superpowers, and the War in the Middle East (New York, 1987); Abraham, Ben-Zvi, The United States and Israel: The Limits of the Special Relationship (New York, 1993); Uri Bialer, Between East and West: Israel’s Foreign Policy Orientation, 1946–1956 (Cambridge, 1990); Peter Grose, Israel in the Mind of America (New York, 1983); Yossi Melman, and Dan Raviv, Friends in Deed: Inside the U.S.–Israel Alliance (New York, 1994); Howard M. Sachar, A History of Israel: From the Rise of Zionism to Our Time, (New York, 1993); Nadav Safran, Israel, the Embattled Ally (Cambridge, Mass., 1981); Israel Yungher, “United States–Israeli Relations, 1953–1956” (Ph.D. diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1985). The Suez crisis was one of the most controversial moments of Middle Eastern history, and many scholars have tried to analyze this special event from every perspective. Because the archives have been open only a few years ago, some books, written particularly during the 1960s, 1970s, and in the early 1980s, had little documentary basis so it is difficult to understand what is the real policy or the author’s interpretation of the historical facts. Finally, given the available documents, a lot of historians, above all young scholars, are giving a real sense to the decision-making process during the crisis. Among the earlier studies: Herman Finer, Dulles over Suez: The Theory and Practice of His Diplomacy, (Chicago, 1964); Kenneth Love, Suez: Twice Fought War (New York, 1969); Thomas Hugh, Suez (New York, 1966); Terence Robertson, Crisis: The Inside Story of the Suez Conspiracy (London, 1965); Howard J. Dooley, “The Suez Crisis, 1956: A Case Study in Contemporary History” (Ph.D. diss., University of Notre Dame, 1976) (Dooley makes a historiographical appraisal of the historians and the literature of the Suez crisis). Among the recent and documented studies: Diane B. Kunz, The Economic Diplomacy of the Suez Crisis (Chapel Hill and London, 1991); Keith Kyle, Suez (New York, 1991) (perhaps one of the most valuable account of the Suez problem); Peter L. Hahn, The United States, Great Britain, and Egypt, 1945–1956: Strategy and Diplomacy in the Early Cold War (Chapel Hill, 1991); W. R. Louis and Robert Owen, eds., Suez 1956: The Crisis and Its Consequences (Oxford, 1989) (through various essays of important authors, the book examines the different aspects of the crisis considering every country involved); W. Scott Lucas, Divided We Stand:

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Britain, the US and the Suez Crisis (London, 1991) (the author traces the most serious crisis between the two closest Western allies); Donald Neff, Warriors at Suez: Eisenhower Takes America in the Middle East (New York, 1981); Selwyn I. Troen and Moshe Shemesh, eds., The Suez-Sinai Crisis 1956: Retrospective and Reappraisal (London, 1990) (the editors have collected many articles that examine, particularly, the Israeli side of the issue); Mordechai Bar-On, The Gates of Gaza: Israel’s Road to Suez and Back, 1955–1957 (London, 1994) (the author, former advisor of Prime Minister Ben-Gurion, has written about the concerns and the decisions that led to the Israeli intervention). Among the articles: Winthrop W. Aldrich, “The Suez Crisis: A Footnote to History,” Foreign Affairs 47 (1967): 541–52 (the article is an account by the former U.S. ambassador at London during the crisis. Author’s goal is to outline the difficult relations between the United States and Britain on the policy to follow against Egypt); James E. Dougherty, “The Aswan Decision in Perspective,” Political Science Quarterly 74 (1979): 21–45; Matthew A. Fitzsimons, “The Suez: Crisis and the Containment Policy,” The Review of Politics 19 (1957): 419–45; Benjamin Nimer, “Dulles, Suez, and the Democratic Diplomacy,” The Western Political Quarterly 12 (1959): 784–98; Oles M. Smolansky, “Moscow and the Suez Crisis, 1956: A Reappraisal,” Political Science Quarterly 80 (1965): 581–605; Stuart A. Cohen, “A Still Stranger Aspect of Suez: British Operational Plans to Attack Israel, 1955– 1956,” The International History Review 10 (1988): 261–81 (the article traces the strange British plans to have Iraqi troops in Jordan (the same moment when Israel and Great Britain were allies against Egypt); Howard J. Dooley, “Great Britain’s ‘Last Battle’ in the Middle East: Notes on Cabinet Planning during the Suez Crisis of 1956,” The International History Review 11 (1989): 486–517 (Dooley’s article is useful to understand the already lost position in the area by the British passing the Western leadership to the United States); William R. Louis, “Dulles, Suez and the British, in Richard H. Immerman, ed., John Foster Dulles and the Diplomacy of the Cold War (Princeton, N.J., 1990), 133–58; Geoffrey Warner, “The United States and the Suez Crisis,” International Affairs 67 (1991): 303–17; Michael G. Fry, “Decline Sanctions, and the Suez Crisis, 1956–1957,” Diplomatic History 17 (1993): 323–29; Michael G. Fry and Miles Hochstein, “The Forgotten Middle Eastern Crisis of 1957: Gaza and Sharm-el-Sheick,” The International History Review 15 (1993): 46–83; Zeid Raad, “A Nightmare Avoided: Jordan and Suez 1956,” Israel Affairs 1 (1994): 288–308. The so-called “collusion” among Israel, France, and Britain, hidden to American leaders, is the argument of two essays: Geoffrey Warner, “ ‘Collusion’ and the Suez Crisis of 1956,” International Affairs 55 (1979): 226–39 and W. Scott Lucas, “Redefining the Suez ‘Collusion,’ ” Middle Eastern Studies 26 (1990): 88–112 (Warner’s article is a historiographical one but, on the other hand, the well-documented article of W. Scott Lucas allows examination of the “collusion” by the British documents of the Foreign Office). For an excellent regional review, see Peter L. Hahn, “Glasnost in America: Foreign Relations of the United States and the Middle East, 1955–1960,” Diplomatic History 16, no. 4 (Fall 1992): 631–42.

6 A Liberal Iran: Casualty of the Cold War James F. Goode

The manner in which this period came to an end, that is through the foreign-sponsored coup of August 1953, left many Iranians gripped by a tragic sense of their history, and they have not ceased to contrast what happened with what could have and should have happened.1 Nations, like individuals, learn to recognize important turning points in their histories. For Iran such a point came on August 19, 1953. For decades informed Iranians had sought a liberal, constitutional regime, free of foreign influence, and under the leadership of the liberal nationalist, Muhammad Musaddiq (1951–1953), they seemed on the brink of achieving their goals. The prime minister had limited the shah’s power and had nationalized the British-owned Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC). Then, suddenly thoughts of a brighter future vanished as agents of the American CIA and members of the local opposition staged a coup d’etat that swept Musaddiq from power. Their action began a quarter century of dictatorial rule during which Shah Muhammad Reza Pahlavi (1941–1979) maintained the closest of ties with the United States. Throughout those years, however, Iranians did not forget American intervention. The United States, which so clearly became a conspirator in this unfortunate affair, had newly arrived in the region. Indeed, this plot was one of Washington’s first serious ventures there. Today, as we read of regular exchanges among American leaders and those of the Middle East, we tend to forget just how recently our nation became involved in that distant part of the world. Prior to World War II, only private Amer-

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icans, mainly archeologists and missionaries, had extensive contacts there. Continuing U.S. interest dates only from the early postwar era with the development of the Cold War. Two principles guided policy throughout that forty-year period: to contain the Soviet Union, whose southern border adjoined the region, and to guarantee Western access to the vast supply of cheap Middle Eastern oil. Unlike the United States, Britain and France had long histories in the region, and even after the devastating impact of World War II, the French interest in Lebanon and North Africa remained paramount, while Britain continued to exert influence in a swath of territory stretching from Egypt through the Fertile Crescent, into the Persian Gulf and beyond. As the Cold War unfolded, American policymakers at first depended on Britain to maintain the Western position in the so-called northern tier states, Greece, Turkey, and Iran, all bordering on the Communist domain. But facing severe economic crisis at home, London no longer had the energy and resources for the task. In March 1947, President Truman announced the beginning of U.S. assistance to friendly governments in Athens and Ankara. Iran was a different matter. There, Britain had its largest overseas investment, which it intended to safeguard. AIOC monopolized the vast petroleum reserves in southwestern Iran, and the British government had become the company’s major shareholder. As long as the government received its handsome profits from company operations, officials asked few questions, preferring to let the oilmen run the business. Even Clement Attlee’s Labour government, which nationalized so many industries at home, stayed clear of AIOC affairs. This casual relationship worked reasonably well until the strident demands of Iranian nationalism after 1945 contributed to an international crisis. Since early this century, Iranian nationalists had voiced suspicions of British policies—and not without cause. They believed that British officials had manipulated venal officeholders to do their bidding; and they blamed especially the AIOC. Iran would not become fully independent as long as its vast resources remained under foreign control, and the company continued to do business there. In the decade from 1944 to 1953, Muhammad Musaddiq became the unrivaled spokesman for this perspective. He possessed strong credentials to lead a crusade against the company. Until the mid-1920s, he had held a series of important government posts. He served with distinction, gaining a reputation for honesty and patriotism. In 1925 he opposed establishment of the Pahlavi dynasty (1925–1979) and the increasingly dictatorial rule of its first monarch, Reza Shah (1925–1941). As punish-

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ment he spent years in prison or under house arrest until the British and Russians forced the pro-German shah to abdicate in August 1941. With a reputation for devotion to constitutional government and national independence, he easily won election to the fourteenth majlis (1944–1946). Once seated he led the successful struggle against a Soviet oil concession in the north. It became clear from his parliamentary speeches that the British concession in the southwest would come under scrutiny once the war ended.2 Company officials did not take the warning seriously. They had a poor opinion of Iranians generally and had so successfully stifled earlier protests that they paid little heed to the brewing crisis. Nor did the diplomats at the Foreign Office. Desultory negotiations led finally to a supplementary oil agreement in 1949, but this so favored the company that nationalist deputies filibustered it. Even the young shah, Muhammad Reza Pahlavi, concluded that the British still despised Iranians and thought they could treat them as they wished.3 And so events moved slowly toward crisis. Officials of the Truman administration observed developments from afar. Publicly they supported their closest ally, for they already had more than enough commitments in Western Europe and on the Korean peninsula. From time to time they encouraged the British to act responsibly, but nothing more. Privately, policymakers, including the president, Secretary of State Dean Acheson, and Assistant Secretary of State for the Near East George McGhee, an oilman himself, admitted that the AIOC had acted irresponsibly and, by implication, so too the British government. As the crisis deepened in 1951, policymakers concluded that London had bungled badly and Washington would have to intervene, for a friendly Iran was vital to the success of American policy.4 When Musaddiq became prime minister in May 1951, his ascendancy took both the British and Americans by surprise. Washington had given him little attention earlier for the embassy had hardly noticed the seventy-year-old leader, despite the fact that by 1950 knowledgeable Iranians considered him their most prominent nationalist leader. Embassy reports were generalized and inaccurate, tying Musaddiq to various factions of the right or left, dismissing him as an anachronism. Ambassador Henry F. Grady, who prided himself on careful attention to Iranian politics, did not even meet with Musaddiq until after he became prime minister. The Americans had much to learn and quickly, for parliament voted overwhelmingly for nationalization; the shah signed both bills, and Musaddiq was determined to take over all AIOC facilities in Iran.5 U.S. officials urged the two parties to negotiate and sent the president’s trouble-shooter, Averell Harriman, to Tehran to facilitate the process. Later, Musaddiq traveled to Washington, where he and McGhee came

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close to an agreement, but each time the arrangement collapsed either because Musaddiq raised new concerns or because the British refused to accept Washington’s recommendations. London worked to convince the Americans that Iran was to blame for the impasse. American preconceptions must have aided their campaign. For years embassy reports had commented on the absence of honest, able men in Iranian public life and these views, constantly repeated, had made an impression.6 Still, the process took time. Acheson exchanged frank words—in private—with his British colleagues, criticizing their handling of Iran. By summer 1952, however, the secretary of state, counselled by Grady’s successor, Loy Henderson, a staunch anti-Communist, agreed that oil negotiations with Musaddiq had become impossible. He would have to go.7 The Anglo-American allies signaled to the shah their readiness to support Ahmad Qavam, a wily old politician, as Musaddiq’s successor. The opportunity came in July when the prime minister resigned in a struggle with the shah over control of the military. Henderson and his British colleague, Charge D’Affaires George Middleton, did all they could to embolden the shah. The Americans planned to rush aid to Qavam, which they had denied to Musaddiq.8 But their support proved inadequate. Angry Iranians filled the streets of the capital, protesting the new prime minister’s appointment by a rump parliament and demanding Musaddiq’s return. Violence followed as the military confronted the mobs. Twenty-nine protestors died. Without the full backing of the frightened shah, Qavam resigned and went into hiding. Musaddiq returned in triumph.9 The crisis worsened after Musaddiq broke diplomatic relations with Britain in November. He mistakenly expected more support from the incoming Eisenhower administration, but the new secretary of state, John Foster Dulles, an ardent anti-Communist, believed that Musaddiq had become a Soviet tool. When Musaddiq moved to restrict the shah’s prerogatives, Dulles interpreted this as a move to destroy the monarchy, a step toward creating a Soviet-style republic. When Musaddiq sent a delegation to Stalin’s funeral in March 1953, the secretary and his brother, Allen, director of the CIA, feared a deeper conspiracy.10 All the while Ambassador Henderson was sending dispatches presenting Musaddiq as alternately tyrannical or naive, either of which could spell disaster for Iran. On the ambassador’s advice, Dulles omitted Tehran from his Middle Eastern circuit in May 1953, and the following month the administration committed itself to overthrowing the Iranian prime minister. The British had originally devised the plan, Operation Ajax, but after the breaking of relations, they found themselves unable to implement it, and turned to the Americans, who now agreed to force

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Musaddiq from office. Kermit Roosevelt, a top CIA agent with long experience in the Middle East, headed the conspiracy, which included the shah, General Fazlollah Zahidi, and key members of the opposition.11 Oblivious to the plotting, Musaddiq called for a referendum, allowing him to dismiss the obstructionist seventeenth majlis and hold new elections. The shah used this as an excuse to dismiss him and to appoint Zahidi in his place, but the prime minister refused to go. The initial coup d’etat on August 16 failed, and the shah fled to Italy. All seemed lost until Roosevelt paid a royalist mob led by thugs to challenge Musaddiq’s authority. The police responded lackadaisically, and following brief, heavy fighting among army units, the government fell on August 19, 1953. Musaddiq surrendered the following day. After a trial, memorable for the prime minister’s spirited challenge of the military court’s authority, he received a three-year sentence. Thereafter, he remained under house arrest until his death in March 1967 at age eighty-six.12 Dulles received the news of the West’s “miraculous second chance” with enthusiasm. Negotiators for an oil consortium reached agreement in late summer 1954. In the years that followed, the shah and the United States drew ever closer. Historians continue to debate the significance of the CIA’s role in the 1953 coup. Some have argued that its impact was insignificant, that Musaddiq would have fallen anyway because he had alienated so many Iranians; others have concluded that American intervention was decisive. A difficult question, and yet I am persuaded that CIA involvement was critical. After all, the prime minister had weathered similar crises in July 1952 and February 1953. Moreover British and American officials quickly concluded (prematurely, it turned out) that the flight of the shah signaled Musaddiq’s triumph. Although internal support for the prime minister had weakened, the evidence indicates he could have carried on indefinitely, absent foreign intervention.13 The events of August 1953 represented a turning point in American foreign policy, not only in Iran but elsewhere in the Third World as well. The Eisenhower administration became so fond of covert action that it employed similar measures the following year to overthrow the popular Arbenz regime in Guatemala and planned a similar fate for Fidel Castro; this eventually became President Kennedy’s Bay of Pigs disaster. In Iran, American officials were determined to keep other visionary rabble rousers such as Musaddiq from power. All who had associated with him or supported his goals became suspect. The shah, of course, encouraged the Americans to think the worst of the former prime minister and his National Front backers. Over the years, with extensive U.S. military assistance, he established an autocratic regime, relying on an oversized army and a secret police (SAVAK) set up by the CIA and Israel’s Mossad. Gradually, the shah alienated more and more of his

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subjects by denying them access to political power. Iranian society became polarized between the dwindling forces of the shah and a growing majority opposed to his despotic rule.14 The shadow of Musaddiq hung over U.S.–Iranian relations for decades. Americans quickly forgot what had happened; Iranians did not. Soon after the coup of August 1953, Iranians heard tales of U.S. involvement. As the shah’s regime became harsher, they held the United States responsible for their suffering. When Iran exploded in revolution at the end of 1978 and the shah fled, his successor, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, called for death to America, The Great Satan. Little has happened since then to improve U.S.–Iranian relations and prospects for reconciliation are not good. This leads us to reconsider policy toward Musaddiq, to inquire whether the United States should have pursued a different policy in Iran. Did American officials ponder alternatives? Could a satisfactory compromise have been worked out with the prime minister? Might relations have moved in a different direction? To have altered its policy significantly, U.S. officials needed a balanced assessment of Musaddiq. The information for such a reassessment lay readily in hand. Despite Henderson’s criticisms, Musaddiq was no tyrant. He refused, for example, to censor the press, even though some of his harshest critics professed journalistic objectivity, while secretly conspiring against him. He gave opposition deputies every opportunity to express themselves. They did all they could to bring parliament to a standstill. Even in the referendum to dismiss the seventeenth majlis, Musaddiq sought permission to hold new elections. He had no intention of governing without parliament. His moves to restrict royal prerogatives, such as control over the armed forces and over various charitable foundations, found support in the Iranian constitution. These steps led toward constitutional monarchy, not dictatorship.15 Contrary to Henderson’s warnings about Communist influence, Musaddiq received a cool reception from Communists at home and abroad. Stalin, no less than his Western counterparts, eyed with suspicion Third World leaders who advocated a middle path between capitalism and communism. The Soviets gave scant support to the prime minister, criticizing him repeatedly in the party press and refusing to return millions of dollars of Iranian gold held since World War II. Likewise, the papers of the Iranian Communist party (the Tudeh), frequently attacked his government as a lackey of the West. For his part Musaddiq kept his distance from the local Communists, steadfastly resisting their offers to form a popular front. He and his advisors distrusted the Tudeh, but thought it wiser to allow the party to operate openly than to drive it underground. He refused to arm civilians even when his government came under intense pressure to do so in August 1953.16

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Unfortunately, American officials often saw what they expected and their preconceptions obscured most of these facts. Ignoring information favorable to Musaddiq, they emphasized instead his apparent naivete´ , which threatened to make him a dupe of the Communists. They drew on early Cold War experiences in places such as Czechoslovakia, where the anti-Communist president, Eduard Benes, had fallen prey to his Communist coalition partners. They predicted a similar fate for the Iranian prime minister. Not everyone agreed. Ambassador Grady eventually became one of Musaddiq’s strongest defenders, likening him to India’s Mahatma Gandhi in his concern for the welfare of his people. Grady’s assistant, Leslie Rood, reported that Musaddiq and the National Front were just not interested in the Cold War struggle against communism; they wanted only to ensure Iran’s independence. Assistant Secretary McGhee appreciated Musaddiq’s strengths and the shah’s weaknesses. He thought it would be quite possible to work out a settlement, and he proposed a consortium arrangement in 1951, long before this became the preferred solution. McGhee recalled the Mexican nationalization of American oil concessions in 1938 and cited the lessons learned from that experience. Force would not work; compromise would be essential; one could not stand indefinitely on contracts made obsolete by changing conditions; negotiators should be flexible. McGhee made good sense. It was far from clear that Middle Eastern producers would follow Iran’s lead; after all Latin American producers had not rushed to emulate Mexico in 1938. Had McGhee taken charge he could have achieved results but at the cost of British goodwill.17 One of the greatest hurdles to overcome in reaching any agreement was the unhelpful attitude of British oilmen and officials who had so much at stake. Not only might they lose their monopoly of Iranian oil, their largest foreign investment, but should Musaddiq succeed, he would set a dangerous precedent, they feared, for nationalists throughout the Middle East, but especially in Egypt where British control over the Suez Canal had come under increasing attack. Consequently, the British dug in their heels and became more reluctant to negotiate with the Iranian prime minister. As long as the United States refused to distance itself from Britain over Iran, compromise seemed unlikely. Both Acheson and Dulles set great store by this special relationship and headed off all attempts to present the British with an ultimatum. According to Acheson, “we have to go just like pigeons, when one turns the others do it too. We have to fly wing to wing.” His friend, Secretary of Defense Robert A. Lovett, did not agree. He argued that the United States should not tie itself indefinitely to the British, for the Americans had too much at stake with the risk that Iran might slip behind the Iron Curtain. The fact that diplomatic

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relations had been broken proved that London had failed. The time might come when the United States would have to act unilaterally in the interests of the free world. Acheson’s new assistant secretary for the Middle East, Henry Byroade, found Lovett’s views persuasive.18 Unfortunately, with the exception of the secretary of defense, those who urged a settlement with Musaddiq had diminishing influence within the Truman administration. Grady’s replacement had already been announced, for example, when the lame duck ambassador began to offer a more sympathetic view of Musaddiq. Likewise, McGhee had angered the British and soon left for his new post as ambassador to Turkey. In the Eisenhower administration there were even fewer supporters of an American demarche. Perhaps the most influential individual was a private citizen, a close friend of the president. W. Alton Jones, the head of Cities Service, one of the so-called independent oil companies, had visited Iran in September 1952 at the invitation of Musaddiq to survey the oil facilities and make recommendations. The British had bitterly opposed the trip and tried to get the president to prevent it, but Truman argued that some good might come of it. London feared that smaller oil companies, such as Cities Service, might break the British embargo on Iranian oil. Already a few Italian and Japanese firms had contracted for limited amounts of Iranian oil at bargain prices, and Britain had its hands full challenging the legality of these purchases in court. Jones had promised to supply several technicians to help operate a lubricating oil plant supplying Iran’s domestic needs, but the British prevailed upon Dulles to block this. Although relatively minor, this private sector initiative might have been an important first step in reestablishing trust between Washington and Tehran. Something more substantial might have developed out of this goodwill gesture. (One is reminded here of progress made in U.S.–Chinese relations following the ping-pong diplomacy of 1971.) The United States, however, remained wedded to its British ally.19 U.S. policy in Iran often seemed to work counter to American principles. This became apparent to a U.S. Army officer serving in the military mission in Tehran. After the failed attempt to replace Musaddiq in July 1952, he suggested to Henderson that it would be wise to back the prime minister, who was not only an anti-Communist but also enjoyed widespread popular support as well. This, he recognized, was a rare combination in the Third World. But the ambassador did not agree. American officials had too many suspicions. Despite the prime minister’s lifelong commitment to democratic principles, they preferred to look to the shah for a way out of the impasse. The shah had given every indication during the period 1947 to 1951 that he intended to augment his power, to rule as well as to reign. And yet the questionable legality of his methods

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seemed not to disturb the diplomats. He stage-managed elections to a constitutional convention in 1949 to gain the right to dismiss parliament. He regularly manipulated promotions in the officer corps to reward loyalty over efficiency. All this was reported, yet officials favored him over Musaddiq.20 Perhaps their attitude was rooted in the fact that few of them understood Iranian politics well. Much of it seemed unprincipled, chaotic, likely to open the door to Communist successes. Everyone could understand a monarch’s grasp for power; the king of Greece had recently tried to do the same thing. The shah seemed so much more predictable than the prime minister, and so much more pro-Western, too. Iran had a long history of monarchy, which had provided stability if not necessarily good government. Americans had little understanding of recent Iranian history; for them victory in the Cold War was paramount, and Muhammad Reza Shah seemed a better prospect than the elderly, eccentric prime minister. The shah presented Musaddiq to the Americans as a figure of ridicule whenever the opportunity arose. Mussadiq’s habits contributed to this view. The prime minister, who was chronically ill, often met foreign diplomats at his home lying in bed in his striped pajamas. When making impassioned speeches in parliament he would weep and occasionally faint from exertion and intense emotion. These mannerisms added to his reputation in the press as something of a buffoon (an unfortunate view still favored by some writers). Diplomats doubted that the defense of this critical sector of the northern barrier could be left in such feeble hands.21 Alas, so much of American policy toward Musaddiq was rooted in misunderstanding. Few officials knew him well or made an effort to understand him. They adopted a dismissive attitude. Had they listened to him more attentively they might have learned a great deal. When they pressed him to compromise with the British, for example, he reminded them of their own revolution. How, he asked, would American patriots of 1773 have responded to Persian requests to be reasonable in dealing with the tea ships in Boston Harbor. An interesting observation showing some familiarity with U.S. history, it passed unnoticed in Washington.22 Diplomats and oilmen liked to argue that the Iranians could not run the oil industry themselves, that they had to have Western experts, hence their reluctance to accept local ownership. Yet visitors remarked on the good maintenance of the oil facilities throughout the crisis. When a delegation from the oil companies finally visited the giant refinery at Abadan after Musaddiq’s overthrow, they discovered everything in perfect working order. They reported that the millions of dollars set aside for rehabilitation would not be needed. Despite this obvious contradiction

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of prevailing wisdom, no one made more than passing reference to the report, which proved that Iran could manage its petroleum industry with minimal assistance from abroad.23 What a transformation would have occurred if the United States had pushed Britain harder (as it would do over Suez in 1956), if it had given more support to Musaddiq. Under the guidance of Musaddiq Iran certainly would have moved in the direction of constitutional monarchy. There would have been no need to develop an oversized military, which became more a defense of the Pahlavi dynasty than a deterrent to Soviet expansion. Musaddiq actually cut the size of the Iranian army and retired many incompetent officers. Nor would the hated secret police have been required. Musaddiq made no move to institute such an organization, which ran counter to his principles. One must be careful not to conjure up an idealized picture of what might have been. Under Musaddiq there were competing factions, and no one could guarantee that at his advanced age the prime minister could have maintained his political strength. But he had a number of ministers and advisors who were developing important governing skills for a post-Musaddiq Iran. Indeed, two junior members of his government, Mehdi Bazargan and Shahpour Bakhtiar, would play crucial roles decades later during the revolution. One can only lament the regime’s failure to develop these promising skills after the 1953 coup. Putting oneself in the context of the early 1950s when Cold War tensions were extreme, it is not difficult to understand why officials overreacted to Musaddiq. So many decisions in those fiercely antiCommunist years turned on symbols and rhetorical flourishes, and Musaddiq often sent the wrong messages to foreign observers. With few exceptions, the American press fed suspicion at home, presenting a critical, largely negative view of the prime minister. Journalists parroted accepted wisdom about chaos and the Communist menace. Fashioners of public opinion interpreted the oil crisis as a critical battle of the Cold War, for it was Iran’s misfortune to possess both vast petroleum reserves and a long border with the Soviet Union. Only Albion Ross of the New York Times genuinely understood and largely sympathized with Musaddiq’s objectives, proving at least that an enlightened approach was possible.24 For his part, Musaddiq never abandoned his view of the crisis as an issue of colonialism. (Many Americans had initially agreed.) He continually referred to his nation as a British colony. In January 1954 he spoke from prison through a friend to suggest that the U.S. cultural affairs officer broadcast to Iranians the history of the American war for independence, telling them how to escape from colonization and encouraging them that “the Washingtons and Franklins of Iran must do the same to keep their freedom.”25

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The tragedy of U.S.–Iranian relations was that in helping silence the shah’s moderate opposition, the United States smoothed the way for revolutionaries such as Ayatollah Khomeini. Unlike Musaddiq, he possessed a vision for Iran that bore no resemblance to anything in American history. NOTES 1. Fakhreddin Azimi, Iran: The Crisis of Democracy, 1951–1953 (New York, 1989), 338–39. 2. For details of Musaddiq’s early years, see Farhad Diba, Mossadegh: A Political Biography (London, 1986); Homa Katouzian, Musaddiq and the Struggle for Power in Iran (London, 1990); and Muhammad Musaddiq, Musaddiq’s Memoirs, ed. Homa Katouzian (London, 1988). 3. 14 August 1951, Subject file, Iran-Harriman, President’s Secretary’s file, Harry S. Truman Library (HSTL), Independence, Mo. 4. James F. Goode, The United States and Iran, 1947–1951: The Diplomacy of Neglect (London, 1989), 101, 23 May 1951, Foreign Office (FO) 371, 91537/ EP1531/426, Public Record Office (PRO), Kew, 26 June 1951, Research and Analysis Report 5563, Record Group (RG) 59, National Archives (NA). 5. Goode, United States and Iran, 138, n. 17. 6. Ibid., 54–55. 7. Dean Acheson, Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department (New York, 1969), 600, 7 January 1952, Memoranda of Conversations, Acheson Papers, HSTL. 12 July 1952, 788.13, RG 59. 24 May 1952, 350: Iran, Tehran Post Files (TPF), RG 84, NA, House Committee on Foreign Affairs, Selected Executive Sessions Hearings, 16: 119, 28 June 1952, FO 371, 98690/EP15314, PRO. 8. 21 July 1952, FO 371, 98601/EP1015/179, PRO. 9. Ervand Abrahamian, Iran Between Two Revolutions (Princeton, 1982), 271. 10. 2 July 1953, A8, Box 238, RG 59, NA. 11. Loy Henderson, Columbia Oral History Project, 9, 11, 12. 23 May 1953, Dulles-Herter series, Box 1, Ann Whitman file, Dwight D. Eisenhower Library (DDEL), Abilene, Kans. Kim Roosevelt, Countercoup: The Struggle for Control of Iran (New York, 1979), 7–8, 26 June 1953, FO 371, 104616/EP1531/276. Brian Lapping, End of Empire (New York, 1985), 218. 12. Husain Bihniya, Pardih-hay-i siyasat: Naft, nihzat, Musaddiq, Zahidi [Behind the scenes: Oil, resurgence, Musaddiq, Zahidi] (Tehran, n.d.), 90. 13. 18 August 1953, 788.00, RG 59, 17 August 1953, FO 371, 104659/EP1943/4. 14. The National Front was a broad coalition of middle-class–based political groups with differing philosophies; they supported Musaddiq and oil nationalization. 15. Mihdi Mir-Ashrafi, Oiam dar rah-i sultanat [Uprising for the monarchy] (Tehran, 1954), 118, 124–25. Richard Cottam, Nationalism in Iran (Pittsburgh, 1964), 276. 15 August 1953 Shahid [Tehran], 18 August 1953 Dad [Tehran]. Abrahamian, Iran Between Two Revolutions, 324–25. 16. Abrahamiam, 322, 338, 377, 382; James A. Bill, The Eagle and the Lion: The Tragedy of American-Iranian Relations (New Haven, 1988), 91; Katouzian, Musaddiq

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and the Struggle for Power in Iran, 167; Ruhollah Ramazani, Iran’s Foreign Policy, 1941–1973: A Study of Foreign Policy in Modernizing Nations (Charlottesville, 1975), 234, 236, 240. 17. Goode, United States and Iran, 86, 98, 106. 18. 18 February 1955, Post-Presidential File: Memoir’s File, Acheson papers, HSTL. 5 November 1951, 1 January 1952, 888.2553, RG 59, 16, 21 August, 24 October, 12 November 1952, CD 092 (Iran), RG 330, 13 August, 15 October 1952 (4–23–48) 092 Iran, section 6, 7, JCS 1951–1953, RG 218. 19. 6, 26 January 1953, FO 371, 104610/EP1531/107, 108. On Jones’s activities, see also, Sattareh Farman-Farmaian, Daughter of Persia (New York, 1992), 182–95. 20. 13 August 1952, Ambassador Henderson’s File, RG 123, NA. Goode, United States and Iran, 23, 30. 21. 29 July 1952, Daily Briefs, Naval Aide Files, HST papers, HSTL. 22. James A. Bill, “America, Iran, and the Politics of Intervention, 1951–1953,” Musaddiq, Iranian Nationalism/and Oil, ed. James A. Bill and William Roger Louis (Austin, 1988), 271. 23. 23 February 1954, FO 371, 110051/EP1532/9. Charles W. Hamilton, Americans and Oil in the Middle East (Houston, 1962), 60. 28 May 1954, Minutes of 199th Meeting, Box 5, NSC series, AWF, DDEL. 24. 7 January 1952, Time. 14 October, 7 December 1951, 25 July 1952, New York Times. 25. Iraj Afshar, ed., Taqrirat-i Musaddiq dar zindan [Musaddiq’s conversations from prison] (Tehran, 1980), 165–66.

BIBLIOGRAPHIC ESSAY For years scholars paid little attention to the events detailed in this chapter. Much of the information about the conspiracy remained locked away in government archives. Those few authors who mentioned Musaddiq did so only in passing; he became something of a caricature in their hands. There were a few exceptions, most notably two individuals who had served in Iran. Laurence Paul Elwell-Sutton’s Persian Oil: A Study in Power Politics (London, 1955) presented a very readable account of British intransigence and the coming of oil nationalization. Having worked for the AIOC and the British government, he knew his subject well. Richard Cottam’s Nationalism in Iran (Pittsburgh, 1964) looked favorably on Musaddiq and the National Front. Cottam had served in the U.S. embassy in Tehran during the early 1950s. For many years he was almost alone among American scholars in speaking out against the excesses of the shah’s regime. With the coming of the revolution in 1978, the Musaddiq years took on new interest for scholars trying to understand the roots of the shah’s—and America’s—undoing. As new sources revealed the extent of the conspiracy against Musaddiq, the former prime minister came to be viewed more sympathetically. Barry Rubin’s Paved with Good Intentions: The American Experience in Iran (New York, 1980) appeared early in the revolutionary period and provided a useful survey of U.S.–Iranian relations in the twentieth century. More unrelenting in criticism of the Pahlavi regime and its American supporters is James A. Bill’s

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excellent study, The Eagle and the Lion: The Tragedy of American-Iranian Relations (New Haven, 1988). Bill and Middle East scholar William Roger Louis edited a volume of essays, Musaddiq, Iranian Nationalism, and Oil (Austin, 1988), which is one of the most useful products of postrevolutionary scholarship. It contains well-researched essays both praising and criticizing the Iranian prime minister. Three monographs, Mark Lytle’s The Origins of the Iranian-American Alliance, 1941–1953 (New York, 1987), and my own two, The United States and Iran, 1946– 1951: The Diplomacy of Neglect (London, 1989) and The United States and Iran: In the Shadow of Musaddiq (London, 1997), provide the most detailed study of U.S.– Iranian relations during the critical years from Reza Shah’s abdication to Musaddiq’s prime ministership. See also Mark J. Gasiorowski, U.S. Foreign Policy and the Shah: Building a Client State in Iran (Ithaca, N.Y., 1991) and Mark Lytle, “Tragedy or Farce: America’s Troubled Relations with Iran,” Diplomatic History 14, no. 3 (summer 1990): 461-69. Mark Gasiorowski’s important article, “The 1953 Coup d’etat in Iran” (International Journal of Middle East Studies, 1987) presented new evidence confirming the extent of British and American involvement in that critical event. Many contributions to the recent historiography have come from scholars of Iranian descent, who draw on Persian sources that have become available since the revolution. Homa Katouzian has written several books on modern Iran but two are especially relevant. His translation of Musaddiq’s Memoirs (London, 1988) with an extensive introduction makes available a vital source for interested students, and his Musaddiq and the Struggle for Power in Iran (London, 1990) is a wonderfully detailed and insightful assessment of Musaddiq’s long career. Ervand Abrahamian’s Iran Between Two Revolutions (Princeton, 1982) provides a brilliant analysis of Iranian political groupings, with profiles of nationalist leaders not readily available in English. Mostofa Elm’s Oil, Power, and Principle: Iran’s Oil Nationalization and Its Aftermath (Syracuse, 1992) is the most recent book-length study of Musaddiq. For those interested in broader coverage, I recommend Nikki Keddie’s valuable survey, Roots of Revolution: An Interpretive History of Modern Iran (New Haven, 1981). Finally, three books stand out on aspects of the revolution. Gary Sick’s All Fall Down: America’s Tragic Encounter with Iran (New York, 1985) is the best account written by a Carter administration insider on the Iran hostage crisis. Shaul Bakhash’s The Reign of the Ayatollahs (New York, 1986) brings clarity out of the complexity of revolutionary Iran up to 1985. Roy Mottahedeh’s The Mantle of the Prophet: Religion and Politics in Iran (New York, 1985) explores the world of traditional religious thought as background to revolution.

7 Lyndon Johnson and America’s Military Intervention in Southeast Asia Mitchell Lerner

On November 19, 1964, President Lyndon Johnson met with his top foreign policy advisors to discuss the deteriorating situation in Vietnam. In his twelve months as President, Johnson had watched as South Vietnam, which the United States had been supporting for almost twenty years, moved closer and closer to disintegration. French control of South Vietnam ended with their withdrawal in 1954, leaving a vacuum of power that was filled by U.S.–supported leaders, chosen more for their virulent anticommunism than for their skill or popularity. The bulk of the Vietnamese people, fearful of being absorbed into an American empire similar to the one they had just escaped, responded to the presence of another foreign-backed government with growing suspicion and hostility. Religious turmoil also beset the country as Buddhists, Catholics, and other smaller factions fought bitterly for control of Vietnam’s religious spirit; similarly, conflicting visions about the nation’s political future imperiled domestic stability especially as growing pro-Communist sentiment in the rural areas conflicted with the pro-American feelings of the military. Recognizing the Southern instability. North Vietnamese forces had recently increased their aid to the National Liberation Front (NLF) forces operating below the Seventeenth Parallel, while the Southern military had demonstrated little ability to repel them, let alone launch their own offensives. Faced with these unpleasant realities. Johnson’s advisors came to a logical conclusion; without a significant change in America’s policy of economic aid and limited military support, they concluded the fall of South Vietnam was merely a matter of time. Now, as Johnson

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gathered with his advisors, all members of the newly created National Security Council Working Group on South Vietnam, he faced the war’s most crucial decision; how, if at all, could the United States swing the tide of battle and preserve the independence of a non-Communist government in South Vietnam? William Bundy, assistant secretary for Far Eastern Affairs and the leader of the Working Group, outlined the different strategies available to the United States. The first possibility, which Bundy designated “Option A,” was to continue the present policy of economic and material aid, combined with limited and covert military assistance. “Option B” offered a more drastic solution, calling for the immediate and dramatic expansion of the American military role in the conflict. The Working Group recommended neither of these choices, dismissing Option A as insufficient to prevent a Northern victory, and Option B as likely to draw the United States into a long and costly war that might have involved China. Since Option A was “too soft” and Option B was “too hard,” Bundy implied, the administration needed a course somewhere inbetween, one that would bring stability to the South without risking an extended war. “Option C,” the third possibility presented by the Working Group, promised just such a path. Option C called for the slow, controlled expansion of American military involvement, growing only as necessary in gradual increments. It would begin in 1965 with retaliatory air strikes against the North and would introduce American ground forces only when absolutely necessary. “Maximum results for minimal risks,” Bundy had called for in August, and Option C, the overwhelming choice of LBJ’s advisors, seemed to promise just that.1 Little attention was paid to a fourth option, that of negotiation and withdrawal, which had been endorsed by only one member of the Working Group. Undersecretary of State George Ball. In the end, the decision was not surprising; Johnson sided with Option C, thus committing the United States to the defense of South Vietnam at whatever cost proved necessary. Once this decision was made, the American role quickly snowballed out of control. Retaliatory air strikes against the North and armed reconnaissance strikes against infiltration routes in Laos began in February 1965, following an attack on American military barracks at Pleiku. Later that month, Vietcong attacks at Qui Nohn transformed the retaliatory strikes into a graduated bombing campaign north of the Seventeenth Parallel, Operation Rolling Thunder. The first American combat troops, 3,500 U.S. Marines, arrived in Da Nang in March, ostensibly to protect American air bases from Vietcong retaliation, but also as a possible first step toward a program of full-scale American ground intervention.2 In April, National Security Action Memorandum 328 not only committed another 18,000 to 20,000 soldiers to Vietnam, but explicitly approved

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them for “more active use.”3 By the end of June, Johnson had raised the ceiling on American troops to 95,000, beginning a gradual buildup of American forces that would exceed 500,000 by 1967. By selecting Option C, LBJ had transformed a limited promise of aid into a virtually openended commitment to preserve South Vietnam. In the end, this choice proved disastrous, costing the United States $200 billion and the lives of over 57,000 soldiers, while spurring the most intense period of domestic turmoil since the Civil War—all in a failed attempt to prevent the collapse of South Vietnam. In light of these tragic consequences, one must consider whether more judicious scrutiny of his options in November 1964 might not have drastically altered the course of American history and somehow have enabled Johnson to avoid this calamitous path without damaging American prestige and influence. At first glance, Option A, the continuation and improvement of the aid policies of the past decade, seemed the most attractive of the choices. In this plan, American financial and material assistance would revive economic order in South Vietnam, thus restoring the faith of the South Vietnamese in the non-Communist way of life. Similar strategies had proven effective in the past; economic aid through the Marshall Plan had been remarkably successful in stabilizing Western Europe and strengthening anti-Communist forces after World War II, and Eisenhower had used a similar combination of economic aid and covert operations on behalf of pro-American governments in Iran in 1953 and Guatemala in 1954. The prospect of stabilizing the South without risking American lives held great appeal for the administration: “The only thing I know to do,” Johnson remarked in March 1964, “is to do more of the same and do it more efficiently and effectively.”4 Yet, as the administration soon recognized, the option that seemed too good to be true was just that. Aid programs might have worked in other circumstances, but the specific nature of the Vietnam situation doomed any such attempt to failure. The most serious obstacle to the successful implementation of an aid program was the lack of indigenous Vietnamese political institutions that could have inspired the stability necessary for such a program to work. American aid had helped restore governments in Western Europe that had centuries of legitimacy behind them and thus could easily regain the loyalty (or at least, the acceptance) of their citizens; years of foreign occupation had prevented the evolution of similar institutions in South Vietnam. Since the 1860s, South Vietnam had been run by a Frencheducated Vietnamese elite who restricted the development of Vietnamese political parties, assemblies, or any other outlet for political expression. Since there was neither a history of participatory government nor a traditional order to restore, stability required the creation of an entirely new government, one that could inspire trust and confidence in its citizens. Such a government, however, often takes decades to develop, and re-

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quires first the willingness of the people to unite in some form of political union. Economic aid, a proven means of restoring faith in an existing government, was insufficient to create an entirely new government by itself. Even if the United States had attempted to unite the society by creating an indigenous leadership structure, they would likely have been undercut by the legacy of French repression. Under France’s colonial regime, political dissent had been forced underground; when these restrictive policies were finally removed following the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu, Vietnam exploded in factional disorder. Students, soldiers, gangs, peasants, and religious sects fought to direct the nation’s future. Lacking a tradition of political compromise and driven by a century of foreign domination, these groups displayed little willingness to cooperate, often seeming just as determined to prevent their opponents from seizing power as they were determined to claim it for themselves. This extreme factionalism bred hatred and distrust that often exploded in violence, making it unlikely that any government might win over a majority of the people. Only when these disparate groups were willing to cooperate and build a united future could the necessary leadership be constructed; meanwhile, Johnson and his staff could merely watch as the country dissolved in partisan disorder. Attempting to stabilize such chaos through money and goods was an almost hopeless task; the needs of South Vietnam clearly went deeper than Option A could solve. The difficulties in South Vietnam were not limited to the absence of stable, representative government. The South also lacked any individuals who might have united the country through personal appeal (much as Ho Chi Minh had done in the North). With American approval, the Southern leader, Ngo Dinh Diem, had eliminated all potential opponents to his rule in the late 1950s and early 1960s, creating a leadership vacuum that would later haunt the United States. Without a secure government, South Vietnam might have been stabilized by a strong personality, a Vietnamese George Washington, Winston Churchill, or Charles de Gaulle; instead, Diem and the United States eliminated these figures in a tragic error of judgment. Not only might such an individual have united the people, but he could also have given the United States a central figure around whom their aid programs could have been organized, as had been done with Syngman Rhee in Korea, Ramon Magsaysay in the Philippines, or Colonel Castillo-Armas in Guatemala. Instead, economic and material aid had to be funneled through unstable and inefficient bureaucracies, competing factional leaders, and corrupt Vietnamese agents. Aid programs, in the face of this dearth of nationalist leadership, were unlikely to bring order to the South, as they could not reinforce authority that did not exist. In 1964, South Vietnam could have received virtually unlimited American aid and advice, but without some

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form of top-down organization, the Johnson administration was essentially applying a band-aid to a society in need of a heart transplant. The other obstacle to stabilizing the South through economic aid and military advice was the poor implementation of similar programs by Johnson’s predecessors, especially during the Eisenhower, but also the Kennedy administrations. Convinced that the primary obstacle to South Vietnamese independence was not Southern domestic turbulence but the military threat of the North, Eisenhower devoted American aid predominantly to military and security measures rather than to the social, political, and economic reforms that were really the South’s most crucial need. Between 1956 and 1960, for example, 78 percent of all American aid to South Vietnam was spent on military programs.5 Much of the remaining 22 percent still found its way to the military under the heading of “public administration,” an allocation supposedly established to train Vietnamese politicians and bureaucrats, but which actually funded the South Vietnamese police and security forces. In reality, these years saw approximately 1.5 percent of all American aid spent on health and sanitation programs, 1.5 percent on education, 1.3 percent on industrial development, and .6 percent on housing and community development.6 Little wonder, then, that Johnson’s promises to better the lives of the South Vietnamese through economic assistance failed to restore confidence to the region. Even when aid programs addressed nonmilitary problems, these attempts were usually doomed by American indifference to Vietnamese culture. Prior to 1962, most Americans in Vietnam lived on military bases complete with American-style movie theaters, bowling alleys, swimming pools, slot machines and other comforts denied to the South Vietnamese. This separation, the Saigon newspaper Nguoi Viet Tu Do reported in 1958, created “a gap and does not help consolidate the American-Vietnamese relationship. The majority still remain aloof and do not try to understand the psychology and aspirations of the local people.”7 Without close interaction with the Vietnamese, most American policymakers failed to consider the principles that underlay Vietnamese society, instead assuming that American values were both superior and universal. Without considering these principles, even the best-intended plans often violated basic precepts of Vietnamese life, thus demonstrating to the Vietnamese that Americans were insensitive to their wishes and values, a threat to the guiding principles in their lives, and even a possible replacement to the French as their next colonial master. The worst ramification of this cultural myopia was the failure of American policymakers to perceive Vietnamese ties to their agrarian heritage. From their world of industry and modernization, most Americans saw the land only as a means to advance the interests of the owner; for the Vietnamese, however, land was the center of their universe. Vietnamese

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rural society was organized into small villages (Xas), where most Vietnamese remained for their entire life, working the small plots of land that had been handed down to them by their ancestors and which they would leave to their children. The earth was considered the basis for life’s social contract; it symbolized man’s ties to his past, his future, and his present. Nothing could be as sacred as the preservation of their agrarian lifestyle; when, for example, American and South Vietnamese soldiers attempted to evacuate the village of Quang Nam in 1968, one old man refused to leave. “I have to stay behind and look after this piece of garden,” he explained. “Of all the property handed down to me by my ancestors, only this garden now remains. I have to guard it for my grandson.”8 This willingness to die in order to preserve the nation’s rural heritage ran headlong into an American plan to remake Vietnam in a U.S. image based on industrial growth and personal accumulation, and it created a hostility in the Vietnamese that would have been a formidable obstacle to stabilizing South Vietnam through Option A.9 This problem can best be illustrated by the 1955 Commercial Import Program (CIP), a failed attempt to modernize and industrialize the South. Based on the Marshall Plan, the CIP utilized American funds to purchase goods for South Vietnamese importers, who paid for the goods into a counterpart fund held by the National Bank of Vietnam. These funds were then made available to Diem for expenses and development, thereby bringing modern goods and technology to Vietnam while keeping inflation under control. The program was ill-conceived from the start. Free to choose their own purchases, South Vietnamese importers bought primarily luxury goods that could be sold to the wealthy residents of the cities, alienating the largely poor and rural population. Consumer goods flooded the cities, creating an artificially high standard of living, expanding the trade deficit by 150 percent to 200 percent annually (exceeding $1 billion for the period between 1955 and 1961), and forcing much of the native Vietnamese industry out of business.10 Even had the program been better conceived and devoted to solving the true problems of the Vietnamese economy (no industrial production, no free enterprise or investment), it would have done little to win over a largely agrarian population that had little use for televisions and water skis. The Vietnamese peasants wanted only the ability to farm their land in peace; the massive influx of modern goods not only held little meaning for them, but seemed a threat to their traditional lifestyle. In the end, attempts such as this to “modernize” Vietnam’s economy only reinforced the image of America as a threat to the fundamental values and desires of the Vietnamese people, a perception that likely would have hindered any attempt by Johnson to create a stable government through increased American aid. Further undermining any hope of Option A had been Eisenhower’s

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affiliation with Ngo Dinh Diem, the dictatorial ruler propped-up by the American military, whose repressive policies dominated Vietnamese life. Suspected Communists were placed in concentration camps, nonCatholics were persecuted, and gambling, dancing, and contraceptives were banned. Attempted land reform in 1957 not only failed to match the more successful reforms undertaken by the Vietcong, but in many cases actually helped the landlords rather than the peasants whose loyalty was at stake. By the early 1960s, almost all South Vietnamese villages were run by a village chief, approved by the American military, who reported to province and district chiefs, most of whom were military officers. These chiefs reported to the province commanders, who were again military officers, and who reported directly to Diem or his advisors. No civilian interference was tolerated, no genuine representation was considered, and the wishes of the South Vietnamese peasants were virtually ignored. American control of the society through Diem reminded many of the way the French had run the South through their puppet, Emperor Bao Dai. Accordingly, many Vietnamese saw American goods and advisors as part of a plot to subjugate Vietnam, thereby increasing Vietnamese suspicions of American benevolence and further lessening the likelihood of stabilizing the nation without drastic measures. In rare instances, specific American programs realized limited success and American advisors, by working closely with their Vietnamese counterparts, produced far more positive results than was ever achieved by dictating policy. In Bien Hoa, for example, the province chief and the local American military worked together to complete a population census, establish village councils, and create youth and interfamily groups.11 The population was mobilized on a voluntary basis to assist the U.S. Army in repairing roads, building bridges, and opening schools and sports facilities, and the army returned the support by distributing medicine. This example of military-native cooperation was much more successful than the forced resettlement and dictatorial procedures of many military commands. Had similar cooperation been undertaken at higher levels, the country LBJ inherited in 1963 might have been more stable, more prosperous, and less anti-American. Unfortunately, such cooperation was rare, and instead Johnson was handed a nation that viewed American aid programs with suspicion and hostility. The positive results in Bien Hoa imply that success through Option A might have been possible, but not by the time Johnson took office. Had more effort been made by both the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations to address fundamental deficiencies in South Vietnam in a way that reflected the South Vietnamese values and desires, the United States might have established a more stable and effective government. Instead, the administration opted for the quick-fix, throwing money and goods

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at a system too unstable to benefit from them. By the time LBJ inherited the presidency, the fundamental problems of the South were firmly entrenched, and Johnson and his advisors understood that these problems ran too deep to be solved by a blank check. Option A might have brought some modern goods to the minority who would accept them, but for most Vietnamese, it would only have destroyed native industry, expanded the trade deficit, spurred inflation, threatened the most fundamental values of the nation, and demonstrated America’s unwillingness to let Vietnam be run by Vietnamese. Furthermore, it seems unlikely that Congress would have continued this open-ended commitment indefinitely; as LBJ continued to expand domestic expenditures for his Great Society programs, it seems inevitable that Congress would have eventually insisted that cuts be made in foreign aid. In the end, we can conclude that Option A would only have delayed the inevitable; its implementation would not have stabilized the South, and the United States would eventually have been forced into the same decision of withdrawal or escalation that it faced in November 1964. In the end, the option that seemed too good to be true was just that, as American money might have bought Johnson a little time, but would have been unable to solve the more fundamental problems in Vietnam. Although Option A had few advocates within LBJ’s immediate circle of advisors, Option B, the more drastic and immediate expansion of the American military role in the conflict, had more numerous and enthusiastic supporters. Although recognizing the problems of the South, proponents of this strategy believed that Southern stability could only be achieved when Northern interference was eradicated; just as, they believed, stability in Greece had only been achieved after Greek rebels had been isolated from their Yugoslavian supporters. Accordingly, they suggested a variety of military actions designed to pressure the North and ease the burden on the shaky Southern government. Of the various forms this increased military role could take, three were most commonly proposed: the introduction of large-scale American ground forces, the application of immediate and massive air assaults, and at the extreme, the use of atomic weapons. Only through such drastic actions, proponents of this path argued, could the Johnson administration hope to preserve the independence of South Vietnam. Unsurprisingly, the loudest calls for wider military action came from the military itself. “It is fashionable in some quarters,” warned General Earle Wheeler, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, “to say that the problems in Southeast Asia are primarily political and economic, rather than military. I do not agree. The essence of the problem in Vietnam is military.”12 “You must take the fight to the enemy,” he later told Johnson, “No one ever won a battle sitting on his ass.”13 Some of Johnson’s civilian advisors echoed these sentiments, especially Walt Rostow, who had been

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calling for an increased American military presence since 1961.14 The possibility of defeat was never seriously considered, as it was assumed that the mighty U.S. military would scatter easily the farmers-posing-as soldiers in the underequipped and poorly trained Northern armies. Even Johnson himself envisioned an easy victory, predicting a struggle that would be, “Like a filibuster; enormous resistance at first, then a steady whittling away, then Ho hurrying to get it over with.”15 The problem with this option was that it reflected the blind devotion of American policymakers to static Cold War views. Conditioned by years of unremitting hostility and paranoia toward the Soviet Union, American policymakers saw the Vietcong as part of a Soviet-directed plan for world Communist domination. Accordingly, they anticipated a conventional military conflict similar to the one in Korea, in which the guerrilla attacks of the South Korean Labor Party were merely a prelude to a larger, more conventional assault. In this scenario, American power would easily overwhelm uninspired and poorly organized Soviet proxies. This assessment could hardly have been more inaccurate. Rather than engaging an enemy bent on foreign conquest, American forces encountered an indigenous and powerful movement for national independence, one willing to pay virtually any price to expel foreign powers from Vietnam. Although later generations have often attributed American defeat not to the enemy but to poor application of American military power, and/or limits placed on the military by domestic pressures and civilian leadership, a closer look at the conflict demonstrates the inaccuracy of this contention. By failing to understand the true nature of the conflict, America blundered into a war against a virtually unbeatable foe, and in conditions that made victory impossible, regardless of the size and timing of the American military commitment. Of the various forms the increased American role could have taken, the one most often called for was the use of massive bombing campaigns against the North before they had a chance to organize their defenses. Bombing, argued National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy, was “the one possible means of turning around a desperate situation which has been heading towards a disastrous U.S. defeat.”16 According to this plan, bombing would cripple supply lines, damage industry and infrastructure, and demoralize military forces, thereby crippling the North’s ability and desire to continue its assault against the South, all at a minor cost in American lives. These hopes, however, reflect an overestimation of the potential impact of air power, both in general and with regard to this specific conflict. Although useful in many situations, air power is often limited by factors beyond the control of the country dropping the bombs. Massive Allied bombing campaigns during World War II, for example, had not only failed to demoralize the German people, but also actually intensified

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their will to resist; similarly, massive Nazi air assaults had failed to break Britain’s spirit during the 1940 Battle of Britain.17 Bombing was also unsuccessful in the destruction of German industry, which had not only survived the assaults, but in some sectors, even increased production. Even under ideal circumstances, such as in the recent Gulf War, bombing proved only moderately successful. In Iraq, the United States faced an enemy with a large and stable army, modern lines of communication, transportation, and supply, and a large number of industrial and military targets. Although American air power successfully decimated many targets and disrupted troop concentrations, a ground invasion was still necessary to defeat the enemy, especially Iraq’s experienced Republican Guard. In spite of the success of the air assaults, the bulk of the damage was still done by ground forces; recent estimates attribute the destruction of 2,162 tanks out of a total Iraqi loss of 3,847 to the ground troops, and one regimental commander admitted to his American captors that, after losing only 7 of 39 tanks during a month of bombing, he surrendered after losing the other 32 after thirty minutes of ground combat.18 As this suggests, the ability of air assaults to win a war by itself is highly doubtful. The unique tactical strategic circumstances of the air campaign in Kosovo and the complexities of NATO operational politics notwithstanding, even under the best of situations, the well-planned commitment of ground combat elements is essential for achieving a decisive military decision. Since air power is of only limited use under even the most ideal circumstances, the specific conditions of Vietnam would likely have rendered it almost useless as a means of ending the war without a ground invasion. Hardened by centuries of foreign occupation and determined to win their independence at any price, the North Vietnamese would likely have continued to resist, regardless of the extent of the bombing; “It is,” explained one young Vietcong soldier, “the duty of my generation to die for our country.”19 Between 1964 and 1966, the tonnage of bombs dropped on the North more than doubled, from 63,000 tons in 1964 to 136,000 in 1966, and not only did North Vietnam refuse to capitulate, but also it emerged in 1967 as a stronger military power than before the bombing.20 In fact, even though American bombing increased every year between 1964 and 1968, Vietcong manpower increased each year as well. More important, air power has proven most effective when used to destroy cities, industrial centers, and infrastructure, thereby crippling a society’s ability to wage an extended war. The agrarian North, however, lacked such obvious targets. Few major cities or military facilities existed, and there was virtually no modern industry anywhere. The North was so barren of traditional bombing sites that the Joint Chiefs of Staff, when first planning the air strikes, could locate only eight specific locations to single out for attacks in the entire region.21 The JASON study, a 1966

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civilian study of bombing in Vietnam, summed up the nature of the problem; the North, it stated, was “basically a subsistence agricultural economy,” and therefore, “an unrewarding target.” “Bombing,” it concluded, “has had no measurable direct effect on Hanoi’s ability to support military operations in the South at the current level. . . . Furthermore, we have not discovered any basis for concluding that the indirect punitive effects of bombing will prove decisive.”22 Even when good targets could be located, problems still emerged. Soviet intelligence trawlers in the South China Sea could track American B-52s on their radar and estimate their target based on heading and air speed, subsequently alerting the Vietcong of the attacks in advance.23 Even when bombing worked, the Vietcong were often able to improvise to meet their needs; by 1967, for example, American attacks on North Vietnamese power plants had reduced their capacity to generate electricity by 85 percent, but they were able to meet their war needs by substituting 2,000 diesel driven generators. Through sheer random destruction, bombing might have resulted in the deaths of many Vietcong, but the North had such formidable manpower that they could likely have withstood any American air assault and still have waged an indefinite guerrilla war.24 Using air power to intercept Northern troops and supplies as they came into the South through the demilitarized zone (DMZ) or Laos also seems unlikely, especially in view of the advanced infiltration techniques of the North, the region’s dense jungles and poor terrain, and the ease through which supplies and men could be transported along Vietnam’s many small trails and waterways. Furthermore, even the most devastating attacks on the North would fail to eliminate the insurgency in the southern countryside, where Diem and his successors had little popular support. In the end, massive American bombing would likely have produced tremendous destruction, but served only a very limited strategic value, and would not have induced the North to surrender. Proponents of increased bombing also failed to consider the nonmilitary effects of such actions. The massive destruction of rural areas would have been a staggering blow to the many Vietnamese who viewed the land as a special part of their culture. Such callous disregard for the sanctity of Vietnamese traditions would have reinforced the image of Americans as indifferent to Vietnamese values, thus alienating Vietnamese on both sides of the Seventeenth Parallel. Bombing the few major population centers in the North would also have had severe repercussions outside Vietnam, as the destruction of schools, nurseries, and hospitals would have spurred protests at home, as well as leaving the United States susceptible to Communist propaganda attacks throughout the world. Finally, one must consider the plan’s long-term ramifications. Had bombing been used to such an extent that the North was no longer

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able to function as a society, the Vietcong would likely have relocated to neighboring areas; China, where they would have been safe from American attacks; Cambodia and Laos, where they could have continued to strike at the South; and even to South Vietnam itself, where there were many sympathizers willing to hide them. The prospect of thousands of North Vietnamese streaming across the Seventeenth Parallel in 1965 was not something the South Vietnamese government was prepared to handle without massive American help, necessitating a very long and expensive commitment. Clearly, then, bombing was not the way to stabilize the situation. In the end, it would likely have cost more money than Option A, aroused anti-American sentiment throughout the world, and done little to advance American interests. The use of the atomic bomb presented similar difficulties. Like strategic bombing, the atomic bomb is most effective when used on major cities, industries, or military targets. Although its use on the rural north would certainly have been destructive, it would not have drastically impacted the North’s ability to fight, since it would not have severely affected their supplies, manpower, or infrastructure. Instead, by killing thousands of defenseless people, it would likely have raised American and world protests to unprecedented levels. Even had the bomb been somewhat successful, there is no reason to believe that, for all its destructiveness, it would have forced the North to capitulate. The psychological effects of the bombing of Japan in World War II were certainly more dramatic, since such a weapon had never before been demonstrated, yet many in Japan’s cabinet still opposed surrender, and only a last-minute plea from the emperor and the failure of a final military coup permitted the war to end. In North Vietnam, where the opponent was less industrial and urban, had more grass-roots support, and was fighting for freedom rather than for foreign conquest, it seems unlikely that even this massive demonstration of power would have brought the North to the bargaining table. More likely, it would have exacerbated the situation by driving any noncommitted Vietnamese into the camp of the North and reinforcing the solidarity of the survivors. Finally, there is the issue of forcing the Northerners out of their homes, where, just as in massive bombing, they would likely have swarmed over the Seventeenth Parallel and into other safe havens. Another consideration with the atomic bomb was the presence of China, which certainly would not have accepted passively the use of such weapons so close to her border. The unexpected Chinese entry into the Korean War convinced Johnson that China’s presence must be weighed in all decisions, especially after their successful test of a nuclear weapon in October 1964. As the fighting in Vietnam increased, the Chinese government warned that it would intervene if American troops approached too close to its borders; based on this warning, we can assume

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that they would also have reacted against the more destructive power of nuclear weapons.25 Whatever retaliation they chose, it would certainly have widened the conflict and weakened the American position. Accordingly, we can again conclude that this form of increased military pressure would not only have failed to advance American interests, but also would likely have worsened the situation. The final option for expanding the American role in the conflict involved the introduction of massive numbers of American ground forces, approved for offensive measures. Only by such firm action, argued Walt Rostow, could the United States demonstrate that it was, “prepared to face down any form of escalation.”26 Policymakers were willing to consider such an option only because victory was regarded as an absolute certainty; defeat at the hands of the “backwards” and “primitive” North Vietnamese seemed a possibility not even worth considering. This anticipation of an easy victory not only demonstrates the inability of American policymakers to understand the nature of the conflict and their opponent, but also reflected a racist, Eurocentric world-view that would not permit them to believe that an “inferior” people could resist the will of the United States.27 Had Johnson and his staff looked a little deeper, they would have seen that such an assumption was totally unjustified. In spite of its success on the conventional battlefields of Inchon and Normandy, the American military now faced a different and much more dangerous foe and under circumstances that made military victory most unlikely. The biggest obstacle to military success through this strategy stemmed from the underestimation of the Vietnamese forces. Far from being the disorganized band of farmers that the American military expected, the Vietcong were disciplined, organized, and hardened by years of resistance to foreign rule. Their numbers and dedication were astounding; even between 1967–1969, when their casualties were at their highest, they easily replaced their losses with quality soldiers and still maintained a high morale.28 Unlike their opposition, the Vietcong were fighting for the freedom of their homeland, and thus were more inspired and determined than their enemy. Supplies were readily available, as the Northern leadership skillfully played upon the growing China-USSR split to win accommodations from both. Between 1965 and 1968 alone, total aid from the two Communist giants exceeded $2 billion, and what could not be obtained from allies, the Vietcong often took from dead American and South Vietnamese soldiers.29 The French failure to subdue the same opponent was arrogantly dismissed as the result of poor tactics; Dien Bien Phu, Wheeler explained, happened only because the French, “smacked themselves down with mountains around them. They had created an enclave, and the consequences were predictable.”30 The United States, it was felt, would not prove so easy a victim; “no human power,” Johnson

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warned, “is capable of forcing us from Vietnam.”31 Such an assumption, in light of the strength and experience of the Vietcong, was clearly unwarranted, and demonstrates the failure of American policymakers to comprehend the magnitude of the task that lay before them. Not only did American policymakers understimate their opposition, but they also overestimated the ability of their own forces. Having been trained since World War II for a land–air battle with the Soviets in Europe, America’s professional soldiers were largely unprepared for the guerrilla tactics of the North. This problem was exacerbated by the brief training programs given to draftees, which prepared them more for conventional warfare than for the guerrilla combat they would soon face.32 Rather than training whole units together, draftees were assigned to random units as replacements, thus hindering the development of cohesion and trust within the units. “The old cliche´ s about camaraderie under fire did not seem to apply,” wrote one soldier, “Instead, I found that even my fellow soldiers had no real interest in my welfare.”33 As the war dragged on morale also became a major problem. Understandably, many soldiers (especially draftees) were concerned more with their own survival than with advancing the political agenda of the Southern government. To many soldiers, whose biggest problem until recently had been getting a date for the high school dance, the constant danger of booby traps, the steady heat and humidity, the insects and leeches, the frustration of trying to fight an enemy who could seemingly vanish at will, all contributed to a growing desire to survive and return home at any cost. The average American soldier in Vietnam was merely nineteen years old, seven years younger than his counterpart in World War II, making him especially vulnerable to the psychological impact of the war. Many soldiers also came to see the war as one being waged by predominately poor and minority draftees on behalf of white, upper-class America whose sons stayed home and protested. Drug use was common, although not yet the problem it would be toward the end of the war when it was estimated that half of the American troops in Vietnam were smoking marijuana and 10 percent were using heroin.34 Incidents of “fragging,” the killing of disliked officers by their own men, were also not uncommon, especially in the later years of the war. This is not to dismiss the effectiveness of all of America’s troops; many of them, especially in the early years, performed very well under difficult conditions. Yet, their overconfidence, their lack of emotional commitment, and their inappropriate training proved too much to overcome as they faced an enemy that was, on the whole, more cohesive, more experienced, and more dedicated. Even had the American military been better prepared and more inspired, the task they faced was still extremely difficult. American forces were expected to protect the entire country from infiltration, a virtually

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impossible assignment in a nation with over 1,400 miles of coastline and 900 miles of land border. Military effectiveness was also hindered by South Vietnam’s heavy concentration of jungles, swamps, and mountains, which not only concealed the Vietcong and provided excellent hiding spots for mines and booby-traps, but also slowed the advance of the heavy armor and mechanized divisions that were commonly used by the army. Transportation was also a problem, as Vietnam had few major highways and only one major railroad, both of which were common targets of Vietcong attacks. Little help could be obtained from the forces of the South, since most were poorly trained, and few had any loyalty to either their government or to that of the United States. Most of their commanders had no combat experience and were in their positions only because of their personal ties to the government. Morale was poor, double agents were common, and desertion was rampant; some South Vietnamese (ARVN) units even cooperated with the Vietcong, sharing supplies and sticking to prearranged areas so as to avoid conflict.35 With all of these obstacles, it seems unlikely that any military force, regardless of size or technology, could have prevailed in Vietnam. The very nature of the war also presented a formidable obstacle. The Vietcong leadership controlled the pace of battle to ensure that it would be fought on their terms. They rarely met the Americans in the open field where U.S. technology would have given the Americans an edge. Instead, the Vietcong utilized guerrilla techniques: striking quickly and then retreating into remote jungle and mountain areas, conducting raids from sanctuaries in Cambodia and Laos, utilizing their better geographical knowledge to create booby traps and ambushes, and developing the ability to blend in with local villagers so quickly as to almost disappear. These tactics, used especially in the early part of the war, combined with their numerical superiority and their ability to recruit extensively from the Southern population, were virtually insurmountable; even when cornered, the Vietcong willingly suffered huge losses in order to inflict small losses on the United States and then replaced their casualties with an ease that the United States and ARVN could not match. “You will kill ten of our men,” predicted Ho in 1946 to a French general, “but we will kill one of yours, and in the end it is you who will tire.”36 American forces could have been doubled, tripled, even quadrupled in 1965, and it would have made little difference. The NLF would have continued to fight a war that utilized their numerical and geographical advantages, and eventually American public opinion would have turned against the war. The enemy was simply too well organized, too well prepared, and far too numerous for the United States, and enlarging the American forces in 1965 would likely have led only to an increased number of deaths on both sides, a deficiency that could have been better handled by the Vietcong than by the United States.

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Even had the United States somehow achieved military victory (as unlikely as this was), they then would have faced the equally daunting task of trying to preserve it. Any American triumph would certainly have inflicted massive destruction on Vietnam, creating a population even more destitute, nationalistic, and anti-American than before. In the unlikely event of a Vietcong surrender, the government of the South was in no condition to administrate and control the entire country, especially with a hostile China on its border. Instead, the United States would likely have been forced into the expensive and lengthy prospect of occupying the North against what certainly would have been many years of guerrilla attacks launched from Cambodia, Laos, and even China. Further complicating the occupation would be the inevitable hostility of many of Vietnam’s neighbors, who would likely have viewed America’s presence as a possible first step toward American domination of Asia. Eventually, the patience of the American people would have evaporated and troops would have been withdrawn, leaving the North again open to Communist influence. In the long run, therefore, even achieving “victory” in the narrowest military sense would not have been in America’s best interests. Having concluded that neither Option A nor Option B would have proven more successful in advancing American interests in Vietnam than did Option C, we must turn to a fourth option, one that the administration gave little serious consideration. This plan, which we will call Option D, involved the creation of a negotiated settlement under almost any terms and a withdrawal of American forces. Under this option, the United States, perhaps through the auspices of some multinational organization (the UN or SEATO), would have agreed to withdraw its support from the South in return for some face-saving concessions from the North, most likely the formation of a coalition government that included representatives from the American-backed South. In all likelihood, such a course would have meant the fall of South Vietnam to the North, a result the administration was loathe to accept. However, as we have seen, none of the three options considered in November 1964 would have prevented this fall, and all of them had dramatic repercussions for the United States. By accepting the inevitability of the fall of Vietnam in 1964, Johnson might have avoided the conflict that destroyed his presidency; instead, he refused to consider any possibility that included an American withdrawal and thus led the United States down a disastrous path that should have been avoided. The problem with such an option, according to the administration, was that South Vietnam had a significance that stretched beyond its borders. Its loss, they believed, would have had severe and worldwide ramifications for the nation and for the administration, ramifications too severe to be accepted. This belief stemmed from three major principles; first,

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that the loss of South Vietnam would violate the “containment” doctrine, which had guided American-Soviet relations since the 1940s; second, that the fall of South Vietnam would lead to the spread of communism throughout Asia as predicted in the domino theory; and third, that the failure to stand up to communism would discredit the Johnson administration at home, much as the alleged “loss” of China had done to Truman’s administration. In the face of these anticipated consequences, neutralization became synonymous with defeat; “We must stop this neutralist talk,” Johnson demanded, “wherever we can by whatever means we can.”37 Yet, as we shall see, all of these fears were unwarranted. Each stemmed from a failure to scrutinize past principles in light of the current situation; instead, the administration accepted long-held guideposts as universally applicable and directed their policy accordingly. Had they been more careful in accepting the dogma of earlier administrations, they might have seen that their fears in South Vietnam were unwarranted and thus might have pursued a settlement that would have spared America its worst nightmare in a hundred years. Instead, they blindly followed these static Cold War principles and overlooked the path that would have best served American interests. The most basic tenet of post–World War II American foreign policy that argued against withdrawal was the doctrine of containment, first enunciated by George Kennan in the late 1940s. This principle envisioned a Soviet attempt at global hegemony not through a direct attack on the United States, but through the steady spread of their influence around the world, in a long-term plan to isolate America and its allies. Soviet power, in this view, would spread gradually, like a river flowing into unimpeded areas until it was in a position to dominate the world; it moves, Kennan wrote, “inexorably along a prescribed path, like a persistent toy automobile wound up and headed in a given direction, stopping only when it meets some unanswerable force.”38 Accordingly, he argued, the United States must adopt a “policy of firm containment, designed to confront the Russians with unalterable counterforce.” Only through the application of American power to those areas that presented an opportunity for the Soviets to spread their influence, Kennan concluded, could the United States deter this threat to their security, and eventually foster more peaceful relations with the Soviet Union. This belief in the necessity of “containing” the Soviet threat was a major guidepost to post–Truman administrations, and the Johnson administration was no different. This struggle was not just for Vietnam or for Asia, but for the future of the free world, as Dean Rusk explained: These statements [Johnson’s] are a reflection of the immense interest that the free world has in seeing to it that the government of Vietnam and the people of South Vietnam are not engulfed by the subversive guerrilla aggression which is being

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ruthlessly and systematically mounted against them. . . . It is a type of challenge which the free world must learn to cope with and against which it must prevail if its strength and promise are to have meaning. . . . Therefore the significance of the struggle in Vietnam cannot be stated too strongly. As the free world member carrying great responsibility in this situation, the U.S. has committed itself unequivocally to success in that struggle.39

Rusk’s statement reveals the extent to which Vietnam acquired a global imperative in the minds of the architects of American intervention. No longer was the struggle in Vietnam between the North and the South, but it was now seen as a battle between the “free world” and the “unfree world.” Withdrawal under such circumstances was unthinkable; it not only undermined two decades of successful foreign policy, but it also allowed the Soviets to spread their influence into a new region. Unfortunately, the administration’s enthusiasm for containment exceeded its understanding of it. In their rush to defeat the perceived Communist menace, they misinterpreted or overlooked many of Kennan’s crucial points, and in the end applied containment in inappropriate ways to a conflict that did not call for containment at all. The first problem with applying this doctrine to Vietnam was that Kennan called for American involvement abroad only to resist the spread of Soviet-directed communism. In Vietnam, the forces aligned against the United States were fighting not for world conquest but for freedom from colonial rule. Vietnam had been declared a free state by Ho Chi Minh in September 1945; the war that ensued between the French and the Vietminh was not about ideology but about the independence of Vietnam. When the United States accepted the mantle of the French and entered the war against the North, they were fighting not against Soviet hegemony, but against the same nationalistic forces that had been fighting since the end of World War II. Yet, blinded by its obsessive fear of communism, the Johnson administration saw the NLF as part of an international Communist conspiracy instead of an indigenous, Communist-led nationalist movement, and thus blundered into the type of internal dispute against which Kennan had specifically warned.40 “Great democracies,” Kennan commented twenty years earlier, in his now famous Foreign Affairs article, “are apparently incapable of dealing with the subtleties and contradictions of power relationships.”41 As the Johnson administration demonstrated, this lament was still true in the 1960s as the United States went to war in order to “contain” a Communist threat that did not exist. Even had this situation been Soviet-directed, Vietnam still did not offer the circumstances that would have merited intervention according to containment, which recognized the need to limit American involvement to areas of crucial interest to the United States.42 Kennan defined only five such areas; the Soviet Union, Japan, the United Kingdom, Western

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and Central Europe, and the United States.43 To Johnson, however, containment represented an all-encompassing strategy that required America to meet every challenge everywhere, even in a tiny nation so many miles away. Strategic necessity had been overwhelmed by symbolic value, as the thought of losing to communism anywhere had become so traumatic that it could not be allowed. Accordingly, the administration disregarded one of the crucial tenets of containment and in its name intervened in a region that held little significance to the United States. Even had this region held some strategic value, Johnson’s military solution again violated the principles of containment, which saw American deterrence as primarily economic. Military power, Kennan felt, might win a temporary victory, but, “the demands and aspirations of the people, the compulsions that worked on them before they were defeated, begin to operate after the defeat. . . . For that reason,” he concluded, “I am suspicious of military force as a means of countering the political offensive which we face with the Russians today.”44 Kennan, unlike Johnson and his staff, recognized that the Cold War was not a military conflict but an ideological one; whichever side could win the loyalty of neutral nations would eventually persevere. Military force might subdue a people, but it could not win their hearts and minds, which were far more valuable in this conflict. What was needed to win the ideological battle was economic stability, not military intervention, a fact overlooked by LBJ and his aides, whose misapplication of containment directed them toward massive military intervention. Had the administration examined containment and the nature of the conflict more closely, it would have seen that its fears and reaction were hardly justified. The loss of Vietnam would not have undercut the containment theory nor would it have cost much in the zero-sum battle between the United States and the Soviet Union; but blinded by its obsessive fear of communism, the administration overreacted and refused to consider any course that violated its unwarranted belief in the need to contain the Soviets. The second obstacle to withdrawal was the domino theory, which demanded the preservation of an independent South Vietnam because of the ramifications of its loss to the rest of Asia. “If you have a row of dominoes set up,” Eisenhower explained in 1954, “you knock over the first one . . . what will happen to the last one is that it will go over quickly.”45 Thus, the domino theory held, the fall of South Vietnam would likely precipitate the fall of the rest of Asia. Unlike containment, which was a more long-term and general strategy, the domino theory was limited and specific, confined to particular nations and regions. The loss of just one area, according to the Pentagon, would have staggering ramifications across Asia: Almost all of Southeast Asia will probably fall under Communist dominance (all of Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia), accommodate to Communism so as to remove

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effective U.S. and anti-Communist influence (Burma), or fall under the domination of forces not now explicitly Communist but likely to become so (Indonesia taking over Malaysia). Thailand might hold for a period without help, but would be under grave pressure. Even the Philippines would become shaky, and the threat to India on the West, Australia and New Zealand to the South, and Taiwan, Korea, and Japan to the North and East would be greatly increased.46

Not only was the domino theory more focused than containment, but it also was more concerned with the symbolic ramifications of the loss of Southeast Asia. While containment called for American power to be used only in those regions of strategic importance, the domino theory saw the loss of even a small and unstrategic nation like Vietnam as threatening to the United States because of the message it would send to the rest of the world. “To leave Vietnam to its fate,” Johnson declared, “would shake the confidence of all these people in the value of an American commitment and in the value of America’s word. The result would be increased unrest and instability, and even wider war.”47 Accordingly, Option D, which presupposed the fall of Vietnam, could never be seriously considered by the administration. However, the assumptions that formed the basis for the domino theory, much like those that underlay the administration’s conception of containment, were flawed, and steered the Johnson administration away from the path that was in America’s best interests. The most fundamental problem with the domino theory was its assumption that foreign policy operates in a vacuum, as if local factors had no ability to impact each situation. Such a naive and simplistic belief ignored the complexity and diversity of the Asian peoples and again demonstrates the racist perceptions held by American policymakers concerning this region—who subconsciously believed—according to one official, that “since all Asians look alike, all Asian nations will act alike.”48 Assuming, for example, that the loss of Vietnam would have pushed Thailand and Malaysia into the hands of the Communists assumes that the people of these nations would have had no say in such a transition. Further, it ignores the specific cultural and historical forces of Thailand and Malaysia that would have affected this process. However, the administration was so blinded by its belief in the superiority of American power and principles that it was unwilling to trust these nations to resist communism on their own. Ironically, subsequent events demonstrated that these nations were far more successful in resisting communism when left to their own devices than when they had American help. Despite the warnings of the Pentagon in 1964, the fall of South Vietnam did not cause the fall of India, Malaysia, Australia, Japan, New Zealand, Korea, the Philippines, or Taiwan. In fact, at the same time that South Vietnam was crumbling, the Indonesian army crushed the Indonesian

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Communist Party (PKI), and installed a right-wing government under the leadership of General T. N. J. Suharto. Malaysia demonstrated its strong commitment to independence during its 1964–1965 confrontation with Indonesia, which not only proved their ability to repel foreign attacks, but also discredited the leftist movement within the country. Thailand also exhibited an ability to resist Communist forces and guide its own development. Rather than simply folding, as predicted by the domino theory. Thailand successfully fought a number of border conflicts with Vietnam in the early 1980s. Yet, the Johnson administration had no faith in the people of Asia and refused to consider withdrawal in fear of losing a region that was in little danger of being lost. Again, we see how the unquestioned acceptance of a flawed principle led to a disastrous decision for the United States. The other aspect of the domino theory, the assumption that the United States would suffer from a loss of international prestige if it withdrew from South Vietnam, was also erroneous. America’s major allies, notably France and Great Britain, had both called for a neutralized solution in Vietnam, with General De Gaulle accurately predicting that the United States would be dragged into the same unwinnable situation that had enveloped France in the 1950s.49 Many other nations would also have preferred an American withdrawal, as the massive amount of money being spent on Vietnam could instead have been made available to them as foreign aid; the Joao Goulart government in Brazil, for example, desperately needed American aid in the mid-1960s but found its funds cut in spite of Brazil’s past ties with the United States. Furthermore, those who saw the difficulties ahead for the United States were understandably alarmed at the long-term ramifications of the war; if America lost, they wondered, would they be willing to fight for them under similar circumstances. There is also the likelihood that, had the United States withdrawn, it might even have increased its standing with some members of the international community, particularly those Third World nations who recognized this as a war for independence, and doubtless would have admired America’s willingness to reject traditional great power colonialism. In spite of LBJ’s fears, therefore, we can conclude that Option D would have had few negative results internationally, except in the instances where it actually improved America’s standing. The final obstacle to negotiation and withdrawal involved not foreign policy theories, but domestic political realities. Johnson, misconstruing the lessons of Truman and the “loss” of China, saw the loss of Vietnam as a threat to his legislative agenda, if not his political career: I knew that if we let communist aggression succeed in taking over South Vietnam, there would follow in this country an endless national debate—a mean and destructive debate—that would shatter my presidency, kill my administration

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and damage our democracy. I knew that Harry Truman and Dean Acheson had lost their effectiveness from the day that the Communists took over in China. I believed that the loss of China had played a large role in the rise of Joe McCarthy. And I knew that these problems, taken together, were chickenshit compared with what might happen if we lost Vietnam.50

Accordingly, Johnson believed that he had to stay the course in Vietnam, if only to retain his political clout and maintain his Great Society legislation. Yet, closer analysis of Johnson’s popularity demonstrates that his fears were unwarranted; LBJ could likely have withdrawn from Vietnam in 1965 and not have suffered dramatic political consequences. The results of the 1964 election demonstrated Johnson’s likely ability to withstand the repercussions of withdrawal. His margin of victory was almost unprecedented, including a greater total vote (43,129,566), a greater percentage of the vote (61 percent), and a greater margin of victory than any previous American president. His public opinion polls in 1964 and 1965 were extremely high, even exceeding 70 percent in mid1965.51 With this kind of popularity, it seems unlikely that a single foreign policy issue, originating in a tiny, non-European country, could have turned public sentiment against him, especially considering the little awareness most Americans had of the conflict; in the summer of 1964, for example, a Gallup poll reported that 63 percent of the American public was giving little or no attention to Vietnam.52 Considering the domestic turbulence emerging from the growing civil rights movement, it seems understandable that most Americans were unconcerned with Vietnam; what is perhaps more surprising is that a skilled politician like LBJ would have been so concerned about something that was only a minor issue to the American public. Johnson’s ability to withdraw without a loss of domestic influence would also have been aided by the Republicans. LBJ’s opponent in the 1964 election, Senator Barry Goldwater, had genuinely frightened the American people with his bellicose and warlike rhetoric, thus enabling Johnson to run as the peace candidate. An October 1964 poll, for example, found that 44 percent of the American public believed the chance of nuclear war would increase under Goldwater; only 8 percent believed the same under Johnson.53 Accordingly, the Republicans in 1965 were in no position to criticize a withdrawal, as it would have further reinforced their reputation as too willing to send American boys into war. Johnson, with the unlimited access to the media granted a sitting president, could easily have deflected any charges by insisting that he, unlike the Republicans, was unwilling to sacrifice American lives in a tiny nation thousands of miles away. Withdrawal, therefore, would not only have not hurt his popularity, but it might even have given him another weapon to use against his opposition.

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Fears about not passing his domestic legislation through Congress can also be dismissed easily. With a majority in both houses and his own legislative skill, Johnson’s Great Society was safe as long as he commanded party loyalty. Withdrawal from Vietnam would likely have made headlines for a few weeks, even months, but it would eventually have dissipated, leaving LBJ free to push his legislative agenda. In fact, Johnson’s acceptance of a military solution was the worst choice for his domestic program; only through such a dramatic event could loyal Democrats be forced eventually to turn against him. Although 1965 saw the passage of such significant legislation as the Voting Rights Act and the Medicare Bill, the ever-growing economic strains of the war significantly curtailed subsequent domestic legislation. Johnson perceived his gunsor-butter dilemma, lamenting: If I left the woman I really loved—the Great Society—in order to get involved with that bitch of a war on the other side of the world, then I would lose everything at home. All my programs. All my hopes to feed the hungry and shelter the homeless. All my dreams to provide education and medical care to the browns and the blacks and the lame and the poor.54

Johnson’s fears proved accurate. As his money and energy were being drawn to Vietnam, his ability to influence domestic politics quickly evaporated. Between 1964 and 1967 only $6.2 billion (less than 1 percent of the Gross National Product) was devoted to his war on poverty, yet expenditures for Vietnam amounted to over $21 billion for fiscal year 1967 alone.55 To obtain the tax increase from Congress necessary to finance the war, Johnson was forced to cut $6 billion in domestic spending from the 1967 budget, even as he was spending over $2 billion each month on a million tons of supplies for Vietnam.56 Had he instead withdrawn in 1965, it is safe to conclude that the slight damage to his popularity and influence would have been much less than the damage done by his decision to escalate the war. Thus, we can conclude, a withdrawal in 1965 would not have damaged America’s international standing, would not have led to the fall of Asia nor have violated the containment doctrine, and would not have cost Johnson his presidency. It would have spared millions of lives, saved billions of dollars, and perhaps have boosted America’s international image. Instead, Johnson turned to a military solution, one that was doomed from the start, and watched helplessly as his administration disintegrated almost as quickly as America’s position in South Vietnam. By choosing Option C in November 1964, Lyndon Johnson launched the United States on a fateful course, one that eventually destroyed his presidency. Certainly, he alone does not deserve the blame for this decision; opportunities to end the conflict had been missed by his prede-

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cessors, and the guiding foreign policy assumptions that he inherited were clearly flawed. Yet, LBJ made the fateful decision to intervene militarily, and thus he bears the burden of responsibility. His decision to involve the United States in Vietnam essentially committed America to a war it could not win, against a foe that would not lose, in support of a government that could not govern. Johnson’s failure to foresee the consequences of this decision stemmed from his inability to adapt rigid Cold War doctrines to the unique challenge of Southeast Asia. What was needed in 1964 was not a blind devotion to resist the spread of communism everywhere, but a realization of the complexity and diversity of the international scene and a critical analysis of the guideposts of recent foreign policy. It was here that the Johnson administration was found wanting. By seeing the world of 1964 through lenses of 1948, the administration arrived at conclusions that were clearly unwarranted for the situation. Had they been more willing to question fundamental tenets of Cold War foreign policy, Johnson and his advisors might have seen the wisdom of negotiations and withdrawal. Instead, they clung to their outdated but reassuring guidelines, to flawed foreign policy assumptions, and to illusions of military victory, as they steered the United States into a foreign policy debacle unparalleled in American history.

NOTES 1. Quoted in Stanley Karnow, Vietnam: A History (Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1983), p. 397. 2. The Pentagon Papers, Senator Gravel Edition, 4 vols. (Boston: Beacon Press, 1971), 3: 429. 3. National Security Action Memorandum 328, April 6, 1965. 4. Quoted in Doris Kearns, Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream (New York: Harper & Row, 1976), p. 196. 5. David Anderson, Trapped by Success: The Eisenhower Administration and Vietnam, 1953–61 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991), p. 133. 6. Robert Scigliano, South Vietnam: Nation Under Stress (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1964), p. 113. 7. Edward Doyle and Stephen Weiss, eds., A Collision of Cultures (Boston: Boston Publishing Co., 1984), p. 22. 8. Francis Fitzgerald, Fire in the Lake (New York: Random House, 1972), chap. 1. 9. For a good discussion of the attitudes of Vietnamese peasants toward American challenges to their way of life, see Gabriel Kolko, Anatomy of War: Vietnam, the United States, and the Modern Historical Experience (New York: New Press, 1994), chap. 10. 10. Anderson, Trapped by Success, p. 157. 11. Carlyle Thayer, War by Other Means: National Liberation and Revolution in Vietnam, 1954–60 (Sydney: Allen & Unwin Limited, 1989), p. 113.

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12. Quoted in Henry Brandon, Anatomy of Error (Boston: Gambit Publishing, 1969), p. 23. 13. Quoted in Henry Graf, The Tuesday Cabinet (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1970), p. 128. 14. See, for example, the Rostow/Taylor Report of 1961, which called for, among other things, an 8,000 man “logistical task force,” composed of engineers, medical staff, and the troops to support them (Johnson Library, Austin, Texas). 15. Quoted in Eric Goldman, The Tragedy of Lyndon Johnson (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1969), p. 404. 16. Bundy to Johnson. February 16, 1965, Johnson Papers, National Security Council History, National Security Folder, Box 40, Volume I. 17. See, for a complete evaluation of the effects of bombing in World War II, David MacIssac, ed., United States Strategic Bombing Surveys (New York: Garland Publishing, 1976). 18. Conrad Crane, Bombs, Cities, and Civilians (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1993), p. 155. 19. Quoted in David Halberstam, The Best and the Brightest (New York: Viking Penguin Books, 1972), p. 206. 20. Institute for Defense Analysis, JASON Division. The Bombing of North Vietnam, Vol. I (Washington D.C.: U.S. GPO, 1967), p. 125. 21. U.S. Senate, Committee on Foreign Relations. Bombing as a Policy Tool in Vietnam: Effectiveness (Washington D.C.: U.S. GPO, 1972). 22. Institute for Defense Analysis, JASON Division, The Effects of US Bombing on North Vietnam’s Ability to Support Military Operations in South Vietnam and Laos (Washington, D.C.: U.S. GPO, 1966), p. 152. 23. Truong Nhu Tang, A Vietcong Memoir (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1985), p. 168. 24. U.S. Senate, Bombing as a Policy Tool in Vietnam. 25. New York Times, May 15, 1967, p. l. 26. Quoted in Karnow, Vietnam: A History, p. 405. 27. See, for a complete discussion of America’s Eurocentric and racist attitudes in twentieth-century foreign policy, Michael Hunt, Ideology and U.S. Foreign Policy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987). 28. Bruce Palmer, The 25-Year War: America’s Military Role in Vietnam (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1984), p. 43. 29. George Herring, America’s Longest War: The United States and Vietnam, 1950– 1975, 2nd ed. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1986), p. 149. 30. Quoted in Graf, Tuesday Cabinet, p. 128. 31. Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States, Lyndon Johnson: 1965, Volume 1 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. GPO, 1966), p. 429. 32. For a good discussion of the inappropriate strategy and training of the U.S. Army in Vietnam, see Larry Cable, Conflict of Myths (New York: New York University Press, 1986). 33. Quoted in Karnow, Vietnam: A History, p. 466. 34. Fitzgerald, Fire in the Lake, pp. 563–64. 35. Palmer, 25-Year War, p. 57. 36. Quoted in George Herring, “Why the United States Failed in Vietnam,” in

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Thomas Patterson, ed., Major Problems in American Foreign Policy, Volume II: Since 1914 (Lexington, Mass.: D. C. Heath and Co., 1989), p. 615. 37. Quoted in Michael Maclear, The Ten Thousand Day War: Vietnam: 1945–1975 (New York: Avon Books, 1981), p. 92. 38. [Kennan], “The Sources of Soviet Conduct,” Foreign Affairs 25 (July 1947): 566. 39. Rusk to Lodge, May 18, 1964, Johnson Papers, National Security Folder, Country File: Vietnam, Box 4 Memos, Volume XVII. 40. For a good discussion of Kennan’s qualifications, see John Gaddis, Strategies of Containment (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982), chap. 2. 41. Quoted in Hunt, Ideology of American Foreign Policy, p. 214. 42. It should be noted that Kennan was vague on this qualification, at times insisting on a limited American involvement, but at other times stressing a more universal strategy. See, for example, his article in Foreign Affairs (see above note 38), which called for confronting the Soviets “at every point where they show signs of encroaching upon the interests of a peaceful and stable world.” 43. George Kennan, Memoirs; 1925–50 (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1967), p. 359. 44. Quoted in Gaddis, Strategies of Containment, p. 40. 45. Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States, Dwight Eisenhower: 1954 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. GPO, 1955), p. 383. 46. National Security Action Memorandum 288. “US Objectives in South Vietnam.” March 17, 1964. 47. Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States, Lyndon Johnson: 1965, Volume 1 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. GPO, 1966), p. 395. 48. James Thompson Jr., “How Could Vietnam Happen?” in Robert Manning and Michael Janeway, eds., Who We Are: An Atlantic Chronicle of the United States and Vietnam (Boston: Little Brown, 1969), p. 198. 49. Karnow, Vietnam: A History, chap. 11. 50. Quoted in Kearns, Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream, 252–53. 51. George Gallup, The Gallup Poll, Public Opinion, 1935–1971 (New York: Random House, 1972). 52. John Mueller, War, Presidents, and Public Opinion (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1973), p. 35. 53. David Myers, Foreign Affairs and the 1964 Presidential Election in the United States (Meerut, India: Nishkam Press, 1972), p. 24. 54. Quoted in Kearns, Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream, p. 251. 55. Karnow, Vietnam: A History, p. 487. See also Robert Divine, Since 1945: Politics and Diplomacy in Recent American History (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1985), p. 155. 56. Divine, Since 1945, p. 157.

BIBLIOGRAPHIC ESSAY Bibliographies and Documentary Collections There are numerous bibliographic guides to the literature on Vietnam, but by far the best is Richard Dean Burns and Milton Leitenberg, The Wars in Vietnam,

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Cambodia, and Laos, 1945–1982: A Bibliographic Guide (1984). Other useful collections include Louis Peake, The United States in the Vietnam War, 1954–75 (1986), and John Hickey et al., Vietnam War Bibliography (1983). General information on the vast literature of the war can be found in two excellent bibliographic essays: Gary R. Hess, “The Unending Debate: Historians and the Vietnam War,” Diplomatic History 18, no. 2 (Spring 1994): 239–64, and Robert A. Divine, “Vietnam Reconsidered,” Diplomatic History 12, no. 1 (Winter 1988): 79–93. For collections of documents, the most widely known source is the Pentagon Papers, the Defense Department Study leaked to the press in 1971. Of the numerous versions of this study, the best is the four-volume Senator Gravel edition (1971). These papers, however, must be used with caution. They focus too much on the Department of Defense at the expense of the State Department and White House, emphasize the military aspects of the conflict over less dramatic facets, and make no effort to distinguish between the documents that reflect true policy and those that were merely the whimsy of lower-level advisors. Better collections include Gareth Porter, ed., Vietnam: The Definitive Documentation of Human Decisions, 2 vols. (1979), and Jeffrey Kimball, To Reason Why: The Debate about the Causes of U.S. Involvement in the Vietnam War (1990). George Herring, The Secret Diplomacy of the Vietnam War (1983), which released previously unpublished sections of the Pentagon Papers, is useful on peace initiatives. Probably the best of the documentary collections is William Appleman Williams et al., America in Vietnam: A Documentary History (1985), which is concise, well edited, and contains only important documents; of the four sections, Thomas McCormick’s chapter on the Truman years is especially helpful.

Memoirs and Bibliographies A useful tool for understanding the war, especially the American side of it, can be found in the memoirs and bibliographies of some of the major participants. However, such sources must be used warily. Many reflect either a too critical or a too admiring view, and many memoirs ignore much that is unflattering to the author. Still, they can prove valuable as long as their limitations are recognized. There is not a lot of work from the Truman era that includes extensive discussions of Vietnam. Some of the most useful include: William Pemberton, Harry S. Truman: Fair Dealer and Cold Warrior (1989), Dean Acheson, Present at the Creation (1969), David McLellan, Dean Acheson: The State Department Years (1976), Douglas Brinkley, Dean Acheson: The Cold War Years (1992), Stephen Jurika, ed., From Pearl Harbor to Vietnam; The Memoirs of Admiral Arthur W. Radford (1980), Rudy Abramson, Spanning the Century: The Life of W. Averell Harriman (1992), Kai Bird, The Chairman (1992), and Walter Isaacson and Evan Thomas, The Wise Men (1986), which covers Acheson, Bohlen, Harriman, Kennan, Lovett, and McCloy. Good works on Eisenhower and his advisors include Stephen Ambrose, Eisenhower: Soldier and President (1990), Herbert Parmet, Eisenhower and the American Crusades (1972). Dwight Eisenhower, Mandate for Change (1963) and Waging Peace (1965), Sherman Adams, Firsthand Report (1961), Townsend Hoopes, The Devil and John Foster Dulles (1973), Mark Toulouse, The Transformation of John Foster

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Dulles (1985), Frederick Marks. Power and Peace: The Diplomacy of John Foster Dulles (1993), Edward Lansdale, In the Midst of Wars (1972), and Cecil Currey, Edward Lansdale: The Unquiet American (1988), David L. Anderson, Trapped by Success: The Eisenhower Administration and Vietnam, 1953–61 (1991), and idem. “J. Lawton Collins, John Foster Dulles, and the Eisenhower Administration’s ‘Point of No Return’ in Vietnam,” Diplomatic History 12, no. 2 (spring 1988): 111–47. On Kennedy, see Herbert Parmet, JFK: The Presidency of John F. Kennedy (1983), Richard Reeves, President Kennedy (1993), and Thomas Brown, JFK, History of an Image (1988). Theodore Sorenson, Kennedy (1965), and Arthur Schlesinger Jr., A Thousand Days (1965) are both useful, but too pro-Kennedy to be used by themselves. Other good sources include Roger Hilsman, To Move a Nation (1967), Dean Rusk and Richard Rusk, As I Saw It (1990), Warren Cohen, Dean Rusk (1980), Maxwell Taylor, Swords and Ploughshares (1972), Douglas Kinnard, The Certain Trumpet (1991), Henry Cabot Lodge, The Storm Has Many Eyes (1973), and Deborah Shapley, Promise and Power: The Life and Times of Robert McNamara (1992), Frederick Nolting, From Trust to Tragedy: The Political Memoirs of Frederick Nolting, Kennedy’s Ambassador to Diem’s Vietnam (1988), and Noam Chomsky, Rethinking Camelot; JFK, the Vietnam War, and U.S. Political Culture (1993). For Lyndon Johnson, see his own The Vantage Point (1971), Doris Kearns. Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream (1976), Eric Goldman, The Tragedy of Lyndon Johnson (1969), Jack Valenti, A Very Human President (1975), George Reedy, Lyndon Johnson, A Memoir (1982), Walt Rostow, The Diffusion of Power (1972), Henry Graf, The Tuesday Cabinet (1970), George Ball, The Past Has Another Pattern (1982), David Dileo, George Ball, Vietnam, and the Rethinking of Containment and Larry Berman, “Coming to Grips with Lyndon Johnson’s War,” Diplomatic History 17, no. 4 (fall 1993): 519–38. Robert McNamara, In Retrospect (1995), and William Westmoreland, A Soldier Reports (1976), both offer some useful information, but are marred by a tendency to be self-serving and less than completely honest. On Richard Nixon, see his memoirs, RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon (1978), and his In the Arena (1990), Gerald and Deborah Strober, Nixon, An Oral History of His Presidency (1994), Gary Wills, Nixon Agonistes (1970), Herbert Parmet, Richard Nixon and His America (1990), and Stephen Ambrose, Nixon: The Triumph of a Politician (1989). Much literature exists on Henry Kissinger, including his own two-volume memoirs, White House Years (1979) and Years of Upheaval (1982). A pro-Kissinger view is provided in Marvin Gelb and Bernard Gelb, Kissinger (1974), while an extremely critical view is expressed by Seymour Hersh, The Price of Power (1983). More balanced accounts include John Stoessinger, Kissinger: The Anguish of Power (1976), Walter Isaacson, Kissinger (1992), and Robert Schulzinger, Henry Kissinger: The Doctor of Diplomacy (1989). Other useful sources on the Nixon administration include William Safire, Before the Fall (1975), and U. Alexis Johnson, The Right Hand of Power (1984), which is also good on LBJ. Not a lot of biographies or memoirs offer insights into the Vietnamese perspective, but some of the more useful ones include Peter MacDonald, Giap (1993), Truong Nhu Tang, A Vietcong Memoir (1985), David Halberstam, Ho (1971), Jean Lacouture, Ho Chi Minh: A Political Biography (1968), Van Don Tran, Our Endless War: Inside South Vietnam (1978), and Van Tien Dung, Our Great Spring Victory (1977).

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General Works One-volume works that examine all or most of the war are in abundance, and many of them are exceptional. At the top of the list is George Herring’s America’s Longest War (1979), a concise and definitive account of the conflict from 1950– 1975, and two longer works, Stanley Karnow, Vietnam: A History (1983), and Francis Fitzgerald, Fire in the Lake: The Vietnamese and the Americans in Vietnam (1972). Fitzgerald is particularly good at examining the Vietnamese perspective and provides an unsurpassed study of the cultural problems between the United States and Vietnam. Other good accounts include Michael Maclear, The Ten Thousand Day War (1981), Neil Sheehan, A Bright Shining Lie (1988), Chester Cooper, The Lost Crusade (1970), and Marilyn Young, The Vietnam Wars (1991), all of which are at least somewhat critical of American involvement. Young’s book is especially strong on integrating Hanoi’s perspective into the narrative. Guenter Lewy defends American involvement although not its specific form in America in Vietnam (1978). Gabriel Kolko, Anatomy of War (1994) offers some good insights into the Vietnamese perspective, as does William Duiker, The Communist Road to Power in Vietnam (1981). See also John Prados, The Hidden History of the Vietnam War (1995), Loren Baritz, Backfire: A History of How American Culture Led Us into Vietnam and Made Us Fight the Way We Did (New York, 1985), and D. Michael Shafed, ed., The Legacy: The Vietnam War in the American Imagination (Boston, 1990).

Aid and Advice: The Early Years The early history of Vietnam is well chronicled in Joseph Buttinger, A Political History of Vietnam (1958), which ends in 1900, and Vietnam: A Dragon Embattled, 2 vols. (1967), which cover 1900 to 1963. Chester Bain also provides a balanced account through the 1940s in Vietnam: The Roots of Conflict (1967). The rise of the movement for independence is best told in Stein Tonnesson, The Vietnamese Revolution of 1945 (1993), as well as in William Duiker, The Rise of Nationalism in Vietnam (1976), and David Marr, Vietnamese Tradition on Trial, 1920–1945 (1981), which looks especially at the role of the intellectuals. The war with the French is chronicled by Ellen Hammer, The Struggle for Indochina, 1940–55 (1966), Bernard Fall, Street Without Joy (1972), and Edgar O’Ballance, The Indochina War, 1945–54 (1964), which provides an excellent look at the military aspects of the struggle. Ronald Irving, The First Indochina War (1975) provides a detailed account of the French perspective. The Geneva Conference of 1954 is analyzed in Robert Randle, Geneva 1954: The Settlement of the IndoChinese War (1969), and James Cable, The Geneva Conference of 1954 on Indochina (1986). American policies during this period are well presented in Lloyd Gardner, Approaching Vietnam: From WWII through Dien Bien Phu (1988), which is especially good at placing the war in a global context, and Anthony Short, The Origins of the Vietnam War (1989). George Kahin is also helpful in Intervention: How America became Involved in Vietnam (1986), as is Ronald Spector, Advice and Support: The Early Years of the US Army in Vietnam, 1941–60 (1983), which focuses on the policies of the American military. Andrew Rotter, The Path to Vietnam (1987) provides a useful, if a bit narrow, account of the role of economic forces in

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America’s policies, and Carlyle Thayer, War by Other Means (1989), is strong on the later years of the Eisenhower period. A few articles can be helpful in understanding American policies of the 1940s, especially Walter LaFeber. “Roosevelt, Churchill, and Indochina, 1942–45,” American Historical Review (December 1975), Gary Hess, “Franklin Roosevelt and Indochina,” Journal of American History (September 1972), and George Herring, “The Truman Administration and the Restoration of French Sovereignty in Indochina,” Diplomatic History (spring 1977). See also David L. Anderson, “Why Vietnam? Postrevisionist Answers and a Neorealist Suggestion,” Diplomatic History 13, no. 3 (summer 1989): 419–29, and Arthur Comb, “The Path Not Taken: British Alternative to U.S. Vietnam Policy, 1954–1956,” Diplomatic History 19, no. 1 (winter 1995): 33–57. Eisenhower’s strategies are examined favorably in Melanie Billings-Yun, Decision against War (1988), and unfavorably in James Arnold, The First Domino (1991), David Anderson, Trapped by Success (1991), and Arthur Combs. “The Path Not Taken,” Diplomatic History (winter 1995). Robert Divine provides a more balanced appraisal in Eisenhower and the Cold War (1981), as does Burton Kaufman, Trade and Aid: Eisenhower’s Foreign Economic Policy (1982). George Herring and Richard Immerman are good on Dien Bien Phu in “Eisenhower, Dulles and Dienbienphu,” Journal of American History (September 1985). Good works on Kennedy’s Vietnam policies include R. B. Smith, An International History of the Vietnam War: The Kennedy Strategy (1988), David Halberstam, The Making of a Quagmire (1965) and The Best and the Brightest (1968), William Rust et al., Kennedy in Vietnam (1985), John Newman, JFK and Vietnam (1992), and Lawrence Basset and Stephen Pelz, “The Failed Search for Victory,” in Kennedy’s Quest for Victory, ed. Thomas Patterson (1989). Other more general works include Richard Walton, Cold War and Counterrevolution (1972), and Michael Beschloss, The Crisis Years (1991). Ellen Hammer’s excellent study A Death in November (1987) examines the fall of Ngo Dinh Diem, as does Patrick Hammer, The Suicide of an Elite: American Internationalists and Vietnam (1990). Other useful surveys of the time include Robert Scigliano, South Vietnam (1964), and Jean Lacouture, Vietnam: Between Two Truces (1966). King Chen, “Hanoi’s Three Decisions and the Escalation of the Vietnam War,” Political Science Quarterly (summer 1975), provides an excellent account of the Northern policies between 1959 and 1961.

Escalation and Defeat: The Johnson and Nixon Years Most of the works on the Johnson and Nixon years are highly critical of the administrations. Some of the more useful ones include Larry Berman, Planning a Tragedy (1982), and Lyndon Johnson’s War (1989), both of which portray LBJ as trying to be all things to all people. Brian VandeMark, Into the Quagmire (1991) provides a more sympathetic, but still balanced account of the decision to escalate the war. Johnson’s decision-making process is criticized in Jim Burke and Fred Greenstein, How Presidents Test Reality (1991), and defended in David Barrett, Uncertain Warriors (1993). Other useful sources include Herbert Schandler, The Unmaking of the President: Lyndon Johnson and Vietnam (1977), R. B. Smith, The Making of a Limited War (1991), Townsend Hoopes, The Limits of Intervention (1969), Philip Geylin, Lyndon B. Johnson and the World (1966), Gregory Palmer,

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The McNamara Strategy and the Vietnam War (1978), and the three-volume Exploring the Johnson Years, ed., Robert Divine (1981, 1987, 1994). The literature on Nixon and Vietnam is less complete, primarily due to the limited access to materials at the Nixon Library. The best is Arnold Isaacs, Without Honor (1983), while other useful works include Henry Brandon. The Retreat of American Power (1974). Tad Szule, The Illusion of Peace (1978), Frank Snepp, Decent Interval (1977), Jonathan Schell, The Time of Illusion (1975), Timothy Lomperis, The War Everyone Lost—and Won (1984), John Greene, The Limits of Power (1992), and Robert Litwak, De´tente and the Nixon Doctrine: American Foreign Policy and the Pursuit of Stability, 1969-1976 (New York, 1984), and William Shawcross, Sideshow: Kissinger, Nixon, and the Destruction of Cambodia (New York, 1979). These, along with the various memoirs and biographies provide most of the standard accounts of the period. There is a vast literature on specific events from these years. Among the best are Joseph Goulden, Truth is the First Casualty (1969), and John Galloway, The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution (1970), both on the Gulf of Tonkin affair. Seymour Hersh is good on My Lai in My Lai 4 (1970), as is Joseph Goldstein et al., The My Lai Massacre and its Cover-up (1976). Other notable works include Donald Oberdorfer, Tet (1971), Ronald Spector, After Tet: The Bloodiest Year in Vietnam (1993), Ronald Pisor, The End of the Line: The Siege of Khe Sahn (1982), John Prados, Valley of Decision: The Siege of Khe Sahn (1991), Harold Moore and Joseph Galloway, We Were Soldiers Once . . . and Young (1992), and William Shawcross, Sideshow (1979). The end of the war is explained in William Burchett, Grasshoppers and Elephants (1977), Alan Dawson, 55 Days (1977), Clark Dougan, The Fall of the South (1985), and Vo Nguyen Giap, How We Won the War (1976). Peace negotiations are examined in Allan Goodman, The Lost Peace (1978), and Gareth Porter, A Peace Denied (1975). See also Stephen Pelz, “Vietnam: Another Stroll Down Alibi Alley,” Diplomatic History 14, no. 1 (winter: 1990): 123–30. No area has generated as many disparate works as has the debate over military performance and strategy. U.S. Grant Sharp defends the military in Strategy for Defeat (1978), arguing that the war was winnable but the limitations placed on the military by civilians made it unattainable. David Palmer, Summons of the Trumpet (1978), is slightly more balanced, but still cites civilian interference as the primary obstacle to victory. Others have shifted the blame to the military for their poor tactics. Harry Summers, On Strategy: A Critical Assessment of the Vietnam War (1982), and Bruce Palmer, The 25-Year War (1984), criticize both civilian and military leaders for their emphasis on guerrilla warfare at the expense of conventional tactics. Guenter Lewy, America in Vietnam (1978), faults the military for being too passive and failing to adopt counterinsurgency tactics swiftly enough. The failure of the military to adapt to guerrilla warfare is cited in Larry Cable, Unholy Grail (1991), Larry Krepinevich, The Army and Vietnam (1986), and David Hackworth and Julie Sherman, About Face (1989). Cable’s Conflict of Myths (1986) is an excellent study of how American counterinsurgency techniques were shaped by previous experiences in Korea, Greece, Latin America, and the Philippines. Jeffrey Clarke finds the failure in the military’s poor use of the ARVN in United States Army in Vietnam: Advice and Support: The Final Years, 1965–1973 (1988). A good study that emphasizes the weakness of the South and the numerical strength of the North is Eric Bergerud, The Dynamics of Defeat (1991). The

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Northern forces are best examined in Kolko, Anatomy of a War (1994), David Chanoff and Doan Van Toai, Portrait of the Enemy (1986), Douglas Pike, PAVN: People’s Army of Vietnam (1986), Michael Lee Lanning and Dan Cragg, Inside the VC (1992), William Duiker, The Communist Road to Power in Vietnam (1981), and Greg Lockhart, Nation in Arms (1991). John Mueller provides a good analysis of the North’s ability to absorb enormous losses in “The Search for the Breaking Point in Vietnam,” Strategic Studies (December 1980), and John Gates provides an excellent analysis of Northern strategy in “People’s War in Vietnam,” Journal of Military History (July 1990). George Herring argues convincingly that the war was unwinnable, in “The Vietnam Syndrome and American Foreign Policy,” Virginia Quarterly Review (fall 1981). See also Robert Buzzanco, Masters of War: Military Dissent and Politics in the Vietnam Era (1996). The performance of the military is evaluated in many of the above works, as well as some more narrowly focused ones. Christian Appy finds class to be at the center of many of the military’s problems in Working Class War: American Combat Soldiers in Vietnam (1993). Peter Bourne, Men, Stress and Vietnam (1970), examines the morale problems of the troops, and Alfred McCoy, The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia (1972) is good on drug use. Race relations are well presented in Jonathan Borus et al., “Black-White and American-Vietnamese Relations Among Soldiers in Vietnam,” Journal of Social Issues (1975). For the draft, see William Strauss, Second Chance: The Draft, the War and the Vietnam Generations (New York, 1978), and for the experience of black troops see, Wallace Terry, ed., Bloods: An Oral History of the Vietnam War by Black Veterans (New York, 1984). Useful on the environmental aspects of the war are J. B. Neilands et al., Harvest of Death: Chemical Warfare in Vietnam and Cambodia (1972), Richard Stevens, The Trail: A History of the Ho Chi Minh Trail and the Role of Nature in the War in Vietnam (1993), and Arthur Westing and E. W. Pfeiffer, “The Cratering of Indochina,” Scientific American (May 1972). American propaganda campaigns are examined in Robert Chandler, War of Ideas (1981). Mark Clodfelter, The Limits of Air Power: The American Bombing of North Vietnam (1989), and Raphael Littauer and Norman Uphoff, The Air War in Indochina (1972) are useful on the history of the air war, as is Zalin Grant, Facing the Phoenix (1991) on pacification programs. The role of the CIA is examined in John Ranelaugh, The Agency (1986). The antiwar movement has been chronicled in many excellent works. Some of the best include Milton Viorst, Fire in the Streets (1979), Nancy Zaroulis and Gerald Sullivan, Who Spoke Up (1984), Thomas Powers, Vietnam: The War at Home (1984), Fred Halstead, Out Now! (1978), Tom Wells, The War Within (1994), Charles DeBenedetti and Charles Chatfield, An American Ordeal (1990), and Todd Gitlin, The Sixties (1989). Seymour Martin Lipset and Gerald Schaflander chronicle the antiwar movement on college campuses in Passion and Politics: Rebellion at the University (1971), as does Kenneth Heineman in Campus Wars (1993). David Levy examines the Vietnam controversy in many aspects of American life in The Debate Over Vietnam (1991). Melvin Small studies the effects of the movement on policymakers and concludes that they had some effect, although less on Nixon than on Johnson, in Johnson, Nixon, and the Doves (1988), and see Robert L. Beisner, “1898 and 1948: The Anti-Imperialists and the Doves,” Political Science Quarterly (June 1970). The best studies of the decision-making process itself can be found in Larry Berman’s two volumes Planning a Tragedy (1982) and Lyndon

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Johnson’s War (1989), and Leslie Gelb and Richard Betts, The Irony of Vietnam: The System Worked (1979). The media is examined in Daniel Hallin, The “Uncensored War” (1986), and William Hammond, Public Affairs: The Military and the Media (1988), which both conclude that, contrary to policymakers’ claims, the media was not against the war until 1968. Clarence Wyatt not only agrees, but sees the media as unusually cooperative during the early years of the war, in Paper Soldiers (1993). Kathleen Turner studies the relationship between LBJ, the media, and the public in Lyndon Johnson’s Dual War (1985). Other good studies include Todd Gitlin, The Whole World is Watching (1980), and a few essays in Michael Klein, ed., The Vietnam Era: Media and Popular Culture (1990). Public opinion is treated in the relevant Gallup and Harris Polls, as well as in John Mueller, War, Presidents, and Public Opinion (1973), and Milton Rosenberg et al., Vietnam and the Silent Majority (1970). Domestic politics are studied in Terry Dietz, Republicans in Vietnam (1986), Edward Harley, Congress and the Fall of South Vietnam and Cambodia (1982), and Walter Zelman, Senate Dissent and the Vietnam War (1971). The effect of the war on the economy is examined in J. F. Walter and H. G. Valter, “The Princess and the Pea,” Journal of Economic Issues (June 1982).

Index

Abyssinia, 75, 84–86, 89, 91. See also East Africa Acheson, Dean G., 33, 136, 163–64, 196 Adams, Abigail, 16, 20 Adams, John, 7, 13–27 Africa, 122, 149 Afro-Cubans, 111–12 Agrarian Reform Law, 17 Agreement on Friendly Cooperation, 141 Air power, 185 Algeria, 144 Alien and Sedition Acts, 16 Alliance for Progress, 124 “Alpha Plan,” 136, 142, 143, 147 American Expeditionary Force (AEF), 49 American foreign relations and diplomacy, 4–7; post–World War II, 191 American interventionism, 135 American mobilization, 44 American Revolution, 169 American-Soviet Relations, 191. See also Cuba; Iran; Middle East; Vietnam War

Anglo-American bias, 36 Anglo-American conferences on Suez, 145 Anglo-American cooperation, 87, 89 Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC), 161–63 Ankara, 162 Appeasement, 87–88, 132 Appleby, Lynn Hunt, 1 Aqaba, Gulf of, 148 Arabic (ship), 41 Arab League, 133–34, 137, 141 Arab Legion, 147 Arab nationalism, 9; factions in the Middle East, 132; and foreign domination, 138; radicalism of, 147; reaction to Israel, 136 Arbenz, Jacobo, 118, 165 Arms limitations, 69, 79 Asia, 149, 195 Aswan Dam project, 143–44, 146–47 Athens, 162 Atlee, Clement, 136, 139, 162 Australia, 194 Austria, 86, 88, 91 Axis, 132

210 Baghdad Pact, 141, 147 Baker, Newton D., 34–35 Bakhtiar, Shahpour, 170 Ball, George, 176 Barlow, Joel, 20 Boo Dai, Emperor, 11 Batista, Fulgencio, 112, 114–15, 122 Battle of Britain, 14 Bay of Pigs, 123–25, 165 Bazargan, Mehdi, 170 Belgium, 50 Belmont, August, 37–38 Benes, Eduard, 167 Ben-Gurion, David, 133, 140 Berlin, 17 Bernstorff, Count Johann M. von, 40– 41 Bethmann-Hollweg, Theobold von, 40, 47, 50 Bevin, Ernest, 131 Bien Hoa, 181 Bingham, Robert, 75, 85 Bolshevism, 50 Bonaparte, Joseph, 22 Bonaparte, Napoleon, 22 Bonsal, Philip, 46, 121 Borah, William, 69 Bordon, Morton, 31 Bosnia, 6 Boston Harbor, 169 Brands, H. W., Jr., 143 Brazil, 195 Brest-Litovsk, Treaty of, 47 Bridges, Styles, 119 British Foreign Office, 132, 136, 163 British Labour Government, 131, 136, 162 Britten, Fred, 49 Bryan, William Jennings, 38, 40–41, 43, 49, 51 Buddhism, 175 Bundy, McGeorge, 183 Bundy, William, 176 Burma, 194 Burr, Aaron, 23, 25 Byroade, Henry, 168

Index Cambodia, 11, 186, 190 Camp David Accords, 9, 50 Capelle, Admiral Eduard von, 42 Caribbean Basin, 114 Carter, Jimmy, 53 Castillo-Armas, Colonel, 178 Castro, Fidel, 2, 8–9, 109; American attempts to assassinate, 124; nationalization of American assets, 119–20; response to U.S. policy and hostility, 121–22, 125; U.S. conservatives attack, 117 Catholicism, 175 Central America, 112 Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), 10, 118, 120, 122–23, 125, 142, 164–65 Central Powers, 42–43, 49 Chamberlain, Sir Neville, 77, 87–89 China, 71, 74, 76, 80, 82, 89, 186–87, 190 China-USSR split, 187 Churchill, Winston, 89, 178 Cities Service, 168 Civil War, American, 68, 177 Clifford, Clark, 133, 135; excluded from Middle East policy, 136–37 Clinton, William Jefferson, 53 Cold War, 11, 52, 131, 169–70, 198 Commercial Import Program (CIP), 180 Communism, 151, 175, 177, 180–81, 183, 186–87, 190 Communist China, 143, 147 Containment strategy, 134, 135–36, 191. See also Kennan, George; Truman Doctrine Convention of Peace, Commerce and Navigation, 22, 24. See also Treaty of Mortefontaine Coolidge, Calvin, 72 Counterfactual history, 2–3 Cuba, 8–9, 36, 109, 116; Americanization of, 112; CIA assessment of, 122– 23; communism in, 118; impact of Cold War on, 118; moderates in, 114; nationalists in, 112; Protestant missionaries in, 112; Soviet interest in, 119; U.S. bases in, 111; U.S. finan-

Index cial interests in, 111–12; U.S. intent to purchase, 110; U.S. mistakes in, 112; U.S. policy failure in, 124–26; white paper on, 123 Cuban exiles, 117–18, 120 Cuban Missile Crisis, 109 Cuban Petroleum Institute, 120 Cuban revolution, 109–11. See also Cuban War of Independence Cuban War of Independence, 111 Czechoslovakia: arms deal with Egypt, 143–46, 167; Sudeten crisis in, 86, 88, 91, 142 Da Nang, 176 Davie, William R., 21, 24–25 Davis, Kenneth, 31 Debt moritorium, 70, 77 Decision and consequence in history, 1, 11 DeConde, Alexander, 7 De Gaulle, Charles, 144, 178, 195 De Luca, Daniele, 9 Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), 185. See also Seventeenth Parallel Dewey, John, 52 Diaz, Major Pedro, 117 Diem, Ngo Dinh, 178, 181, 185 Dien Bien Phu, battle of, 187 Dodd, William, 86 Dominican Republic, 114 Domino theory, 193–95. See also Eisenhower, Dwight David Donno, Antonio, 9 Dulles, Allen, 116, 164 Dulles, John Foster, 9–10, 114, 138–41, 143–51, 164–65 Dumba, Constantine, 40 Eastern Mediterranean, strategic importance of, 138 Economic diplomacy, 68–69 Eden, Anthony, 75, 144, 148 Egypt, 138, 140, 142, 151, 167 Eiji, Amau, 80 Eisenhower, Dwight David, 9–10, 109, 114; bilateral pacts, 139–40; covert actions by, 165–68; domino theory,

211 193; Iranian oil policy, 179–81; lacks sophistication in dealing with Castro, 121; liberation policy of, 138; Middle Eastern policy of, 134; “New Look” theory of, 140; opposition to Castro, 118; schizophrenic policy in the Middle East, 144–51; severs relations with Cuba, 120; snubs Castro, 116; Sugar Quota Act, 119; supports Castro, 115; timidity toward Castro, 116 Ellsworth, Oliver, 21, 24, 26 Entente, 36–39, 43, 50 European militarism, 36 European neutrality in World War I, 45 European security, 85 Export Control Act, 120 Fascism: German, 73, 82; Italian, 74, 82, 90. See also Nazi Germany Fedayeen, 142 Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), 119 Federalists, 13–16. See also High Federalists Fidelistas, 45 Finland, 71 Florida, 112, 118, 126 Foreign affairs, 192 Foreign aid program, 177 Foreign Policy Committee, 87 Forrestal, Admiral James V., 135–36 France, 14–26, 42, 76, 78–79, 85–89, 144–45, 147–48, 151, 187, 192, 195. See also Entente Franklin, Benjamin, 170 French agents, W, X, Y, Z, 16, 18 French colonialism in Vietnam, 176– 78 French Directory, 14–15 Fries, John, 20 Frost, Robert, 1, 3 Fulbright, J. William, 123, 125 Gallop Poll, 196 Gaza Strip, 142, 150 Geneva, 72, 83, 86–87

212 Gerard, James W. “Fritz,” 40, 46 Germany, 34, 36, 48, 50, 69, 75, 78–79. See also World War I Gerry, Elbridge, 14–15, 19 Glubb, Sir John Bagot, 147 Goldwater, Barry, 196 Goode, James F., 10 “Good Neighbor Policy,” 112 Gore, Thomas P., 39 Grady, Henry F., 163, 167 Graham, Otis L., Jr., 31 Great Britain, 9, 13, 46, 70–71, 73–74, 76, 81–82, 84, 86, 88–89; and Aswan Dam, 143; creation of the MEDO, 139; foreign affairs of, in the Middle East, 137; interests in Iran, 162– 70; mandate in the Middle East, 132; opposes U.S. policy in the Middle East, 137; strained relations with the United States, 145–46, 151; use of force to recover Suez Canal, 144– 46; and Vietnam, 192, 195; withdrawal from Suez, 142 Great Depression, 69, 73, 76 Great Society, 196–97 Greece, 131, 162, 169 Greek-Turkish crisis, 131, 134–35 Grew, Joseph, 81 Grey, Edward, 40 Guatemala, 117–18, 120, 122, 165, 177 Guerilla warfare, 188 Guevara, “Che,” 118 Gulf War, 6, 184 Hague Conferences, 40, 70, 76 Haiti, 6 Hamilton, Alexander, 16, 18–19, 23, 25–26 Hamiltonians, 20–21 Hanoi, 185 Hapsburg Empire, 86 Harding, Warren G., 132 Harriman, Averell, 163–164 Havana, 110, 116 Henderson, Loy, 135, 164, 166 Herter, Christian, 116 High Federalists, 6, 15, 18–20, 22–23, 25

Index Hill, Robert C., 119 Hindenburg, Paul von, 77 Hirohito, Emperor, 83 Hitler, Adolf, 76, 78–80, 83, 85–87, 89– 90 Hoare, Sir Samuel, 75 Hoare-Levalle Agreement, 75, 85 Ho Chi Minh, 178, 183, 192 Hofstadter, Richard, 53 Hook, Sidney, 7 Hoover, Herbert, 8, 68–70, 72, 76, 84, 90–91. See also Debt moritorium Hoover, J. Edgar, 119 House, Colonel Edward M., 38–40, 50 “House-Grey Memorandum,” 41 Hughes, Charles Evans, 42 Hull, Cordell, 76, 85 Hungarian revolution, 145 Hussein, Ahmed, 143 Hussein, King, of Jordan, 147 Ideals and self-interest in foreign affairs, 55 Imperial General Staff, 50 Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN), 73, 80, 83 India, 194 Indonesian Communist Party (PKI), 194–95 Internationalism, 33 International Monetary Fund (IMF), 145 International peace and security, 69 Iran, 10, 161–71; colonial exploitation of, 137; common defense of, 141; crisis in, 131, 135; as part of “northern tier,” 140; Soviet oil concession, 162 Iranian Communist Party, 166 Iranian revolution, 161–71 Iraq, 140–41 Isolationism, 67–91 Israel, State of, 9, 13, 132, 137; attack on Suez Canal, 145–51, 159; secret policy of, 165; self-determination of, 137. See also Jewish State Israel Defense Forces (IDF), 142 Italy, 75, 82, 84–85, 89, 168

Index

213

Jacob, Margaret, 1 Japan, 71–72, 74; Iranian oil to, 168; militarism of, 83; naval expansion of, 81; World War II and, 186 JASON Study, 184–85 Jay Treaty, 14 Jefferson, Thomas, 13–26, 45 Jeffersonian principles, 44 Jeffersonian Republicans, 14–17, 20 Jewish state, 133–36. See also Israel, State of Johnson, Hiram, 69, 71 Johnson, Lyndon Baines, 10, 53; election of 1964, 196; guns-or-butter dilemma, 197; and Vietnam War, 175–98 Jones, W. Alton, 168 Jordan, 138 Jusserand, Jules, 40

Lerner, Mitchell, 10–11 “Liberal Grand Strategy,” 56 Liberal progressivism, 45, 51 Liberty and Victory Bonds, 43 Lindsay, Sir Ronald, 79, 87 Link, Arthur S., 34 Lippmann, Walter, 37 Lloyd George, David, 40 Locarno Agreement, 89 Lodge, Henry Cabot, 37–38 Logan, George, 17 London, 164. See also Great Britain London Declaration, 40 London Naval Conference (1930), 72, 75, 80, 90; 1935, 73, 80–81, 84, 90 Longley, Kyle, 8–9 Louisiana, 19, 25 Lovett, Robert, 135, 167 Lusitania crisis, 37, 41, 49

Kellogg-Briand Pact, 84–85 Kennan, George, 55, 132, 135, 191–93 Kennedy, John F., 8, 109–10, 119, 122, 124–25, 179–81 Khomeini, Ayatollah Ruhollah, 10, 166 Khrushchev, Nikita, 150 Kimmochi, Prince Saionji, 84 Kissinger, Henry, 149 Kitchen, Claude, 49 Korea, 178 Korean Peninsula, 162 Korean War, 52, 183 Kosovo, 6, 184 Kremlin, 150 Kwantung Army, 74, 82–84

Madison, James, 20, 145 Madrid, 110 Magsaysay, Ramon, 178 Maitland, Frederick, 53 Malaysia, 194 Manchuria, 74, 80, 82, 91 Manifest Destiny, 54 March of Folly, 3–4 Marshall, George C., 135 Marshall, John, 14–15, 17, 23 Marshall Plan, 177, 180 Martı´, Jose´ , 111 McCarthy, Joseph R., 196 McCoy, General Frank, 74, 83 McCombs, William, 42 McGhee, George, 163, 167–68 McHenry, James, 23 McKercher, B. J. C., 8 McLemore, Jeff, 39 McNamara, Robert, 10, 123 Medicare Bill, 197 Merchants of Death, 78 Mexico, 112–13, 118, 167 Middle East, 88, 131–51; fear of Soviet intrusion in, 131–32; U.S. isolation from, 161–62 Middle East Command Project, 136

La Follette, Robert M., 49 Lansing, Robert M., 38–39, 47, 51 Laos, 174, 185–86, 190 Latin America, 110, 115, 118, 121, 123, 125, 167. See also Central America Lausanne Conference, 71, 77–78 Laval, Pierre, 75 League of Armed Neutrality, 25 League of Nations, 8, 50, 67–69, 72, 74– 75, 82–83 Lebanon, 138

214 Middle East Defense Organization (MEDO), 139–40 Middleton, George, 164 “Missionary diplomacy,” 35. See also Wilson, Thomas Woodrow Mohammed, General Neguib, 139–40 Mollet, Guy, 148 Monroe Doctrine, 122 Moscow, 124 Mossad (Israeli secret police), 165 Muhammad Reza Pahlavi, Shah, 161– 62 Munich conference, 88 Munitions industry, 51 Murray, William Vans, 19–20, 24–25 Murville, Maurice Couve de, 144 Musaddiq, Muhammad, 10, 161–71 Mussolini, Benito, 75, 85–86, 90 Napoleonic Wars, 47 Nasser, Abdul Gamal, 9, 121, 139, 141– 51 National Bank of Vietnam, 180 National Front, 165, 167 National Liberation Front (NLF), 175, 189, 192 National Security Council (NSC), 116, 176 National Security Council Action Memorandum 328, 176 National Socialist German Workers Party, 76, 80 Naval power, 72–73 Nazi Germany, 73, 76–77, 80, 82, 90, 184. See also National Socialist German Workers Party Neutrality, 37–47. See also Strict accountability New Deal, 85 “New Patriotism,” 54 New York City, 112 New York Evening Post, 44 New York Times, 170 New Zealand, 194 Nguoi-Viet-Tu-Do, 179 Nicaragua, 120 Nielson, Jonathan M., 7–8

Index Nixon, Richard M., 53, 114, 116, 119, 149 Nonaligned powers, 149–51 North Africa, 162 North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), 10, 139, 146 Northcliffe, Lord, 48 “Northern tier,” 131 North Vietnam, 175–76, 184–86 North Vietnamese Army (NVA), 183 Nuri Said, 140–41 Nye Committee, 51, 78. See also Munitions industry Oil, role of in Middle East foreign policy, 136–37 Operation Ajax, 164 Operation Mongoose, 124 Operation Rolling Thunder, 176 Operation Zapata, 123 Option A, 176, 180–82, 186, 190 Option B, 176, 182, 190 Option C, 176, 190, 197 Option D, 190, 194–95 Organization of American States (OAS), 115 Osgood, Robert E., 5–6. See also Ideals and self-interest in foreign affairs Ostend Manifesto, 110 Pacific balance of power, 81 Pacific naval bases, 71 Page, Walter Hines, 36, 38, 40, 46 Pahlavi dynasty, 162–63 Paine, Tom, 68 Pakistan, 140 Palestine, 131–35, 137–38 Pearl Harbor, 81 Pentagon talks of 1947, 139 People’s Republic of China (PRC), 143, 147. See also Communist China Perez, Louis A., Jr., 111 Pershing, General John J., 48. See also American Expeditionary Force (AET) Persian Gulf, 138 Petroleum, U.S. leverage of, 84–86 Peurifoy, John, 117

Index Philippines, 178, 194 Pickering, Thomas, 15, 21, 23 Pierce, Franklin, 110 Pinckney, Charles C., 14–15, 17, 23 Platt Amendment, 111 Pleiku, 176 Poland, 88–89 Polk, James K., 110 Postwar disillusionment, 32 Preparatory Commission, 71–72 Presidential campaign (1912), 44 Presidential leadership, 31–32, 54 Progressive Republicans, 51 Project “Omega,” 142 Qavam, Ahmad, 164 Quang Nam, 180 Quasi-War, 19, 21, 24, 26 Quincy, John, 17 Qui Nohn, 176 Rankin, Jeanette, 49 Reagan, Ronald, 54. See also “New Patriotism” Reparations, 69–70, 77, 79 Republican isolationists, 132 Republican Party: animus toward containment policy, 138; Eisenhower and, 150; Johnson’s Vietnam policy and, 196 Reza Shah, 162–63 Rhee, Syngman, 178 Rhineland, 89 Rood, Leslie, 167 Roosevelt, Franklin Delano, 8, 68–69; “Good Neighbor” policy of, 112; interwar foreign policy of, 75, 78, 80, 82, 86–87, 89–91; the middle East and, 132; 1932 election, 70–71 Roosevelt, Kermit, 165 Roosevelt, Theodore, 33, 44, 52, 81, 125 Rossetti, Dante Gabriel, 55 Rostow, Walt, 182 Royal Navy, 73, 80 Rusk, Dean, 122, 191–92 Russell, Francis H., 142 Russia, Czarist, 47

215 Sadat, Anwar, 149 Saint Dominigue, 19 Saint James’s Palace, 42 Sandinistas, 126 SAVAK (Iranian secret policy), 165 Schlesinger, Arthur, Jr., 123 Selassie, Haile, 85 Selective Service, 44 Seventeenth Parallel, 175, 185–86 Sevres, 145 Seymour, Charles, 37 Sharett, Moshe, 142 Sharp, William G., 40 Shuckburgh, Sir Evelyn, 142 Sierra Madre Mountains, 109 Sinai Peninsula, 145, 150 Singapore, 71 Smith, Earl, 114, 119 Social Democrats, 47 Socialists, 51 Somalia, 6 Southeast Asia, 10, 52, 151, 198. See also South Vietnam; Vietnam War Southeast Asian Treaty Organization (SEATO), 190 South Korean Labor Party, 183 South Vietnam, 125, 175, 198 South Vietnamese Army (ARVAN), 187, 189 Soviet Union, 9–10, 109–10, 119, 121, 126, 137, 139, 161; Iraqi fear of, 141; Middle East policy of, 146–51; Vietnam War and, 183, 192. See also Moscow Spanish American War, 36, 68 Spanish Civil War, 87 Spanish colonies, 118 Spanish Empire, 110 Spring-Rice, Cecil, 40, 42, 50 Stalin, Joseph, 164 Stalinist aggression, 131 Stimson, Henry, 70; doctrine, 74, 82 Stock Market Crash (1929), 67 Stodert, Benjamin, 21 Strict accountability, 39–41 Submarine warfare, 37–47. See also Uboats

216 Suez Canal, 10, 140–43; crisis, 149–50, 167; nationalization of, 144 Suez Canal Company, 144 Sugar Quota Act (1960), 199, 121 Suharto, General T. N. J., 195 Sussex Crisis (1916), 41–42 Syria, 138 Taiwan, 147, 194 Talleyrand-Pe´ rigord, Charles Maurice de, 15, 18, 22 Tehran, 164, 168 Tel Aviv, 134 Texaco/Esso, 120 Thailand, 195 Third Reich, 88 Third World, 165, 195 Tirpitz, Admiral Alfred von, 42 Tito, Joseph Broz, 121 Trading with the Enemy Act, 122 Treaty of Mortefontaine, 22, 24–25 Tripartite pact talks (1934), 80 Truman, Harry S.: deference to Britain in the Middle East, 131–32; “loss” of China, 191, 195; policy toward Iran, 136; second administration of, 137; support of Jewish state, 133 Truman Doctrine, 131, 135. See also Containment strategy Tuchman, Barbara, 3. See also March of Folly Tudeh Party, 166. See also Iranian Communist Party Turkey, 88, 131, 140, 162 Tyrrell, Sir William, 40 U-boats, 37–47, 51. See also Strict accountability “Uncle Sam,” 143 United Nations General Assembly, 133 United States: as anti-Communist nation, 169–70; as antirevolutionary nation, 115; and Cuban policy, 109– 31; domestic politics and foreign affairs in 1930s, 74, 78; enters World

Index War I, 31–56; foreign policy consequences of Suez, 151; interventionism of, 132; interwar diplomacy of, 67–91; Middle Eastern policy of, 131–59; opposition to Castro regime, 121; relations with Iran, 161– 71; Vietnam War and, 175–98 U.S. Congress: foreign policy role of, 67–68; opposition to State Department’s Cuban policy, 117; support for Castro, 114 U.S. filibusters, 110 U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, 141, 182, 184 U.S. Navy, 73, 83, 120 U.S. State Department: and “Alpha Plan,” 142; Division of Near Eastern Affairs, 132; neutrality toward Cuba, 114; opposes Israel, 137; Policy Planning Staff of, 134–35; policy toward Israel, 132; pro-Arab policy of, 134–36; Suez policy of, 145–46; United Nations fiduciary mandate, 134–35 Versailles, Treaty of, 8, 50, 70, 77 Vietcong (VC), 176, 183–89 Vietminh, 192 Vietnam War, 10, 175–98. See also Southeast Asia Villard, Oswald Garrison, 44 Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions, 20 Voting Rights Act, 197 War debt moritorium, 70 War hawks, 17, 20 War Industries Board, 43 War of 1812, 45, 47 Washington, D.C., 131–32, 163 Washington, George, 13–14, 18–19, 33, 90, 170, 178 Washington Naval Conference, 71–72 Wilhelmstrasse, 48 Wilson, Thomas Woodrow, 6, 7–8; alternatives open to, 50–51; Bryan and, 38, 40–41, 47; challenges facing, 36–37; Colonel House and, 39;

Index consequences of war and, 44–45; critics of, 39–40; Democratic Party and, 49; Gerard and, 46; historical judgments regarding, 52–55; intervention and, 37–38, 41, 45, 46; Lansing and, 39; liberal internationalism and, 33–34; Lippmann and, 37; loyalty issues and, 48; Lusitania crisis and, 38, 41; militarism and, 34; missionary diplomacy and, 35, 52– 53; neutrality and, 41, 45; Page corresponds with, 36, 38, 46; presidential election of 1916, 42; revisionism and, 32; Roosevelt and, 52; Sussex crisis and, 42; Villard and, 44; War Message of, 48 Wiseman, Sir William, 40 World Court, 67

217 World Disarmament Conference, 69– 70, 72, 75, 78, 84, 91 World Economic Conference, 70–71, 75–76, 87 World War I: economic consequences of, 42–44; U.S. intervention in, 31– 56; war debts of, 70, 75; war loans during, 69 World War II, 32, 82, 90, 161, 186, 188 Xas (small villages in Vietnam), 180 Young Plan, 70 Zahidi, General Fazlollah, 165 Zero-sum battle, 193 Zimmermann Telegram, 48 Zionism, 9, 131–32, 136–37

About the Editor and Contributors

ALEXANDER DECONDE is Professor Emeritus, University of California, Santa Barbara. First president of the Society of Historians of American Foreign Relations, he has authored numerous scholarly monographs and a highly regarded two-volume standard text on the history of American foreign relations. Notable are three volumes on the early national period that deal with the administrations of George Washington, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson. His several dozen articles and reviews explore all facets of America’s foreign affairs. His most recent book, Ethnicity, Race, and American Foreign Policy (1992), contains a chapter on the formative period of the nation’s foreign relations. DANIELE DE LUCA is professor of American History at the University of Lecce, Italy. His articles on Middle Eastern foreign affairs have appeared in Quotindiano and Corriere Canadese. His dissertation on the Suez crisis was published in Antonio Donno, ed., The United States Shoa, and the First Years of Israel, 1938–1957 (1995); and his article “The Polarization Process and Middle Eastern Defense Policy by the United States: The Baghdad Pact,” appeared in the Italian historical review Clio in 1995. ANTONIO DONNO is professor of American History and International Relations at the University of Leece, Italy, where he specializes in American Middle East foreign policy during the Truman and Eisenhower administrations. He is the author of several books on the Middle East, Israel, and U.S. involvement in the region: The United States, Zionism, and Israel, 1938–1956 (1992) and the United States and the Middle East, 1945–

220

About the Editor and Contributors

1960 (1992). Additionally Professor Donno has authored nearly fifty articles, scholarly monographs, and reviews. JAMES F. GOODE is professor of American History at Grand Valley State University, where he specializes in Middle Eastern history and the history of Iran. He has served on the editorial board for Diplomatic History, and as Director of the Michigan Committee on U.S.–Arab Relations. He has authored several articles on American-Iranian relations, including, “Reforming Iran During the Kennedy Years,” Diplomatic History (1991). His book United States and Iran: In the Shadow of Musaddiq is forthcoming. WALTER LAFEBER is the Noll Professor of History at Cornell University. He is the author of America, Russia, and the Cold War, 1945–1996; The American Century, U.S. Foreign Relations at Home and Abroad since 1750; Michael Jordan and the New Global Capitalism; and The Clash: U.S.–Japan Relations Throughout History, which won the Bancroft and Hawley prizes. MITCHELL LERNER is professor of History at Central Texas College, where he specializes in American History and Foreign Relations. Among his publications is, “Vietnam and the 1964 Election: A Defense of Lyndon Johnson,” Presidential Studies Quarterly (1994). In two papers, “LBJ, Vietnam, and Public Opinion: A Reassessment (1994) and “LBJ and the Decision to Intervene: A Reassessment,” Conference of Western Social Scientists (1994), Professor Lerner first explored themes he develops more rigorously in Paths Not Taken. KYLE LONGLEY is professor of History at Arizona State University, where he specializes in modern Latin America and inter-American relations. Among his numerous articles are, “Resistance and Accommodation: The United States and the Nationalism of Jose Figueres, 1953– 1957,” Diplomatic History (1994) and “Peaceful Costa Rica, the First Latin American Battleground of the Cold War. . . . ,” The Americas (1993). He has also published The Sparrow and the Hawk: Costa Rica and the United States During the Rise of Jose Figures, 1942–1957 (1994). B. J. C. MCKERCHER is professor of History at the Royal Military College of Canada, where he specializes in interwar Anglo-American relations. He has authored numerous articles and essays exploring this period, notably, “Reaching for the Brass Ring: The Recent Historiography of Interwar Foreign Relations,” Diplomatic History (1991). His books include Esme Howard: A Diplomatic Biography (1989); Anglo-American Relations in the 1920s: The Struggle for Supremacy (1991), an edited collection, and Transition: Britain’s Loss of Global Preeminence to the United States, 1930–1945 (forthcoming). He is the general editor of the Praeger Studies in Diplomacy and Strategic Thought.

About the Editor and Contributors

221

JONATHAN M. NIELSON is professor of History at Columbia College, where he specializes in twentieth-century American Foreign Relations. Among his many scholarly and popular articles are, “American Diplomacy in the Twentieth Century,” Diplomatic History (December 1987); “William Fulbright and the Vietnam War,” The Historian (fall 1988); “NATO and the United States,” International History Review (summer 1989); “The Scholar as Diplomat,” International History Review (winter 1991). In addition to a dozen essays in the Encyclopedia of World War One (1992), Nielson’s four books include Armed Forces on a Northern Frontier (Greenwood, 1988) and American Historians at Versailles, 1919: The Scholar as Patriot and Diplomat (1994).