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Another Grand Debate?: The Limitationist Critique of American Foreign Policy

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FulbrightJ. William, The Arrogance of Power, New York, Vintage Books, 1967, xv, 264 pp. $1.95.
McCarthyEugene J., The Limits of Power: America's Role in the World, New York, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1967, viii, 246 pp. $5.95.
SchlesingerArthur M.Jr., The Bitter Heritage: Vietnam and American Democracy 1941–1966,Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1966, 126 pp. $3.95.

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Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2011

Charles Gati
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Extract

The Vietnam teach-ins are passé, but severe questioning and criticism persist in both the popular and semipopular press and, significantly, in the imposing array of books issued by commercial publishers. Unlike the realist-idealist dichotomy of the late 1940's and early 1950's, which was confined to the academic community, the result of our present involvement in an Asian war is a debate of national proportions, not only about Vietnam but about the nature of America's role and responsibility in international life and about priorities in domestic and foreign policies. Inevitably, much of the literature is polemical, hammering on the major theme: the Johnson Administration has led American foreign policy astray; thus alternatives must be sought.

Type
Review Article
Information
World Politics , Volume 21 , Issue 1 , October 1968 , pp. 133 - 151
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1968

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References

1 See, for example, Graff, Henry F., “Isolationism Again-With a Difference,” New York Times Magazine (May 16, 1965), 26–27Google Scholar, 98–100; and Dodd, Thomas J., “The New Isolationism,” in Raskin, Marcus G. and Fall, Bernard B., eds., The Viet-Nam Reader (New York 1965), 31–37.Google Scholar

2 News release of March 2, 1965, as quoted by McClosky, Herbert, “Personality and Attitude Correlates of Foreign Policy Orientation,” in Rosenau, James N., ed., Domestic Sources of Foreign Policy (New York 1967), 53Google Scholar.

3 See Weinburg, Albert K., “The Historical Meaning of the American Doctrine of Isolationism,” American Political Science Review, xxxiv (June 1940), 539CrossRefGoogle Scholar–47. Manfred Jonas, in a major study of isolationism, identifies the “foreign-oriented,” the “belligerent," the “timid,” the “radical,” and the “conservative” isolationist of the 1930's and concludes that the “neo-isolationist” designation today is both confusing and inaccurate; see his Isolationism in America 1935-1941 (Ithaca 1966Google Scholar), esp. chaps. 2 and 9.

4 In order to keep this review within manageable size, it is obviously impossible to deal in any detail with political realism or with the realist-idealist debate. In the context of this review, realism simply denotes that school of thought whose major spokesman after World War II was Hans Morgenthau.

5 The globalist position is discussed below in Section II.

6 (Boston 1943) Cf. D. W. Brogan, “The Illusion of American Omnipotence,” Harper's, 205 (December 1952), 21–28.

7 Lippmann, 7.

8 Ibid., 58.

9 Ibid., 40–41.

10 Lippmann observed, “To encourage the nations of Central and Eastern Europe to organize themselves as a barrier against Russia would be to make a commitment that the United States could not carry out. A barrier implies that in conducting their reladons with Russia the barrier state may count upon the armed support of the Atlantic powers. Yet the region lies beyond the reach of American power, and therefore the implied commitment would be unbalanced and insolvent. We should [not] be in the position of promising these nations a protection we are unable to provide, of encouraging them to pursue policies which we are unable to underwrite, and to take risks which might have consequences which we cannot insure them against” (ibid., 149).

11 Politics Among Nations (New York 1948Google Scholar) and In Defense of the National Interest (New York 1951Google Scholar).

12 In Defense of the National Interest, 241, 242.

13 Morgenthau wrote, “The Truman Doctrine transformed a concrete interest of the United States in a geographically defined part of the world into a moral principle of American power. Upon what in its immediate import was a limited request for a limited purpose, the Truman Doctrine erected a message of salvation to all the world, unlimited in purpose, unlimited in commitments, and limited in its scope only by the needs of those who would benefit” (ibid., 116). The full text of the Truman Doctrine appears in Dennett, Raymond and Turner, Robert K., eds., Documents on American Foreign Relations, Vol. IX (Princeton and London 1949), 646Google Scholar–50.

14 Viet-Nam Reader, 17.

15 , Kennan, Memoirs 1925–1950 (Boston and Toronto 1967), 320Google Scholar.

16 Ibid., 322.

17 As quoted in Spanier, John W., American Foreign Policy Since World War 11 (New York 1968), 110.Google Scholar

18 Ibid., iii.

19 Viet-Nam Reader, 50.

20 Vietnam and the United States (Washington 1965), 84.

21 Secretary of State Dean Rusk stated in a speech on March 4, 1965, for example, that the United States seeks to create “a world of independent national states, each with its own institutions, cooperating with other nations to further their national welfare, a peaceful world, a world increasingly responsible to the rule of law, a world in which all human beings enjoy their natural rights, regardless of nationality or creed or color, and a world in which all can share in the abundance which modern science and technology make possible” {Viet-Nam Reader, 323).

22 The globalist position is illuminated in Brzezinski, Z. K., “American Globalism,” Survey (London), No. 58 (January 1966), 19–29Google Scholar; Bundy, McGeorge, “The End of Either/Or,” Foreign Affairs, XLV (January 1967), 189–201CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Brzezinski, Zbigniew, “The Implications of Change for United States Foreign Policy,” Department of State Bulletin, LVII (July 3, 1967), 19–23Google Scholar. See also Wohlstetter, Albert, “Illusions of Distance,” Foreign Affairs, XLVI (January 1968), 242CrossRefGoogle Scholar–55; and Kristol, Irving, “American Intellectuals and Foreign Policy,” Foreign Affairs, XLV (July 1967), 594–609CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a critical textual analysis of globalism, see Gary Porter, “Globalism-The Ideology of Total World Involvement,” in Viet-Nam Reader, 322–27. T h e theoretical meaning and implications of globalism are treated incisively and systematically in Liska, George, Imperial America: The International Politics of Primacy (Baltimore 1967Google Scholar), and in Spanier, chap. 9.

23 Liska, 32.

24 See in particular, ibid., 33–34.

25 P. 191.

26 Cf. Brzezinski, “American Globalism,” 22.

27 Cf. Tucker, Robert C., “Russia, the West, and World Order,” World Politics xn October 1959), 1–23CrossRefGoogle Scholar, with Tucker's keen observation: “The contrast between [the Soviet] outlook in policy-making and the characteristic Western one scarcely requires documenting. A pragmatic or instrumentalist approach to world problems typifies the general trends of events, but know-Aow in the face of concrete problem-situations is what he typically emphasizes. . . . In facing foreign-policy problems it is not the Western habit to attempt first of all to form a valid general picture of the world-setting of events in which the problems have arisen.”

28 For a variety of viewpoints, see, among others, Goldwin, Robert A., ed., Why Foreign Aid? (Chicago 1963Google Scholar); Ward, Barbara, The Rich Nations and the Poor Nations (New York 1962Google Scholar); Seers, Dudley, “International Aid: The Next Steps,” Journal of Modern African Studies, 11 (December 1964), 471CrossRefGoogle Scholar–89; Goldman, Marshall I., Soviet Foreign Aid (New York 1967Google Scholar).

29 “American Foreign Policy in the 20th Century Under An 18th-Century Constitution,” Cornell Law Quarterly, XLVII (Fall 1961), 1, italics added.Google Scholar

30 Ibid., 12.

31 “National Goals and National Consensus,” in Hanna, Paul R., ed., Education: An Instrument of National Goals (New York 1962), 182Google Scholar, 184.

32 Prospects for the West (New York 1963), 113Google Scholar.

33 Meyer, Karl E., ed., Fulbright of Arkansas: The Public Positions of a Private Thinker (Washington 1963), 268Google Scholar–69.