On the Tragedy of American Diplomacy

This is a beautifully written book was a great deal of continuing relevance—it’s a shame that it isn’t seen as one of the classics of diplomatic thought in the United States (or at least, I don’t think it is). At the core of this book is a case that Williams puts forth in his introduction: that United States policy is guided by three core, deeply-felt views on the ideological level.

1. Americans have a warm, generous humanitarian impulse to help other people solve their problems
2. Americans want to apply the principle of self determination at the international level
3. Americans believe people in other countries cannot really solve their problems unless they go about it in the same way as the United States

Williams rejects the claims by some that the United States is made up of fundamentally nefarious actors. The greed of capitalism aside, he believes that American diplomats and politicians, as of the time of publication in 1961, really do want to spread human rights throughout the world and recognize the self-determination of all nations. I agree with him on this, until recently (I apologize for showcasing my politics here). However, the third view held by Americans makes it impossible for self-determination to be taken seriously. American policymakers would rather enforce the American system than allow foreign countries to really have their right to self-determination.

In making this case, Williams argues that the dominant foreign policy held by Americans until time of publication was the Open Door Policy. While initially applied to China, Williams argues that the United States applied a policy that required all countries fall into American economic norms, giving no preference to one country over another. With its overwhelming economic might in the twentieth century, the United States ultimately came to dominate economies around the world. Should countries depart from its economic model, the United States would apply punitive measures designed to bring them back into the economic fold, jettisoning both its quest for human rights and self-determination (for a great fictional depiction of this in the context of a Colombian banana workers’ strike, check out One Hundred Years of Solitude).

Although he is not particularly sympathetic to the Soviet Union or other 20th century Communist countries, he does make the argument that the United States is ultimately at fault for the coming of the Cold War for forbidding Communist countries to share in the spoils of economic surplus, ultimately acting as an agent of the “imperialism of free trade.” To rectify this, Williams finds that the United States needs to look to its anticolonial origins (in the earliest sense) and take Wilsonian rhetoric about self-determination seriously. The only way forward, in his view, is to develop an “Open Door Policy for Revolution,” where Communist countries can have a place in the world order without undue aggression—after all, Communism was rarely something that was imposed from the outside.

I do believe that Williams understates the Soviet Union’s fault in initiating the Cold War, although he is right that the United States bears a large part of the responsibility. In my view, both countries were responsible for the deterioration of relations, and a little bit more flexibility in both countries would have permitted closer cooperation in the future.

Interestingly, I believe that we do have a case where we can see Williams’s “Open Door Policy for Revolution” at play. After the Sino-Soviet Split, the Nixon administration established relations with Maoist China and, by 1980, the United States had granted full diplomatic relations to the People’s Republic. In spite of American leaders’ belittling China for its lack of human rights initiatives, the United States has been unwilling to intervene in Chinese affairs and, after Deng Xiaoping’s economic revolution, the country has undergone an economic transformation unlike any other seen in world history. Relations have deteriorated with China during the Obama, Trump, and current Biden administration, but the problems at hand are largely political, not economic. There are questions about the emergence of a new cold war, but I wonder if such a period could be overcome by continuing Sino-American diplomacy and mutual respect. For all of the political problems between China and the United States and the US losing some stature to Chinese growth, I think Williams would regard the transformation in Sino-American relations a success due to it staying true to its diplomatic ideals.

This is one book that I think every aspiring diplomat and policymaker should read closely, there’s some really good stuff here. Some on the right may feel frustrated by Williams’s attitudes toward Communist countries, but he really is a liberal, in the original sense of the term.