On From Colony to Superpower

Jesus Christ, I’ve never come across a synthetic text so jam-packed with information, although I have read longer books. George Herring’s book, the final in the Oxford History of the United States series, finishes the series thinking about the United States’ engagement with the world. If there is an overarching argument, it is that—in spite of rhetoric—the US has almost never been isolationist. If there was an “isolationist era” in American foreign policy, it was from the short period between 1929 and 1941. While “isolationism” did have somewhat of a role in the 1920s, Herring rightfully finds it much better to describe that era as one of “engagement without commitment,” which he’s right to include.

This book is so sweeping in scope that I had trouble thinking of episodes in US foreign policy that Herring fails to cover. I could only think of two: the first, the case of the American Colonization Society in Liberia in the mid-nineteenth century, is hardly mentioned; the second, the US war in Granada during the 1980s, is described more for shifting attention from the Middle East as Reagan withdrew American soldiers from Lebanon. Everything else is covered here, and is covered in depth. Some of the enduring relationships the United States maintained include near constant engagement (or imperialism) in Central America and the Caribbean, as well as support for the Nationalists in China during the first two-thirds of the twentieth century. Herring is not afraid to criticize the American foreign policy establishment for cozying up to right-wing dictators in the cause of anti-Communism. There is also good discussion of American expansion here, both on the North American continent and its acquisition of colonies following the Spanish-American War.

As I was thinking about this book after I finished it, I thought about Hillary Clinton’s speech in 2010 where she argued that the three elements of American foreign affairs are diplomacy, defense, and development. Both diplomacy and defense get plenty of attention here, but Herring does not really think to include “development” as a function of American foreign policy, which is a shame, as the book would have been strengthened if he had done so. It’s also worth mentioning that immigration is an important part of American foreign policy, and there is little discussion of immigration’s position here, exception in Herring’s discussions of the Chinese Exclusion Act and the 1924 Reed-Johnson Immigration Act. These are conspicuous absences, and they tell us that Herring thinks about “foreign policy” in much more limited terms than could be useful. I can’t fault Herring for excluding Clinton’s Three D’s of Foreign Policy, as the book was written in 2007, but it might have been useful to think about foreign affairs in larger terms.