Coming
in September
From AK Press
Featuring Essays by:
Edward Said, Robert Fisk, Michael Neumann, Shahid Alam, Alexander
Cockburn, Uri Avnery, Bill and Kathy Christison and More
Recent
Stories
August
6, 2003
David
Krieger
Remembering Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Stan
Goff
Military Equipment and Pneumonia
August
5, 2003
Uri
Avnery
The Prisoner of Ramallah: Arafat at
74
Forrest
Hylton
Terrorism and Political Trials: the
View from Bolivia
Ray
McGovern
"We Cook Estimates to Go"
David
Morse
Poindexter's Gambit
Edward
Said
Orientallism: 25 Years Later
George
W. Bush
My Resumé So Far
Hammond
Guthrie
It's Incremental, Watson!
Website
of the Day
National Prayer Day
August 4, 2003
Bruce
K. Gagnon
Another Peace Activist Detained by
Airport Cops: My Story
David
Lindorff
Fear-Mongering About Social Security
Mark
Zepezauer
George F. Will: Descent into Self-Parody
James
Plummer
Tracking You Through the Mail
Mickey
Z.
Marriage Insecurity from Sharon to Bush
Bruce
Jackson
News that Isn't News: How the NYT's
Pimps for the White House
August
2 / 3, 2003
Tamara
R. Piety
Nike's Full Court Press Breaks Down
Francis
Boyle
My Alma Mater, the University of Chicago, is a Moral Cesspool
David
Vest
Sons of Paleface: Pictures from Death's Other Side
Neve Gordon
Nightlife in Jerusalem
Uri
Avnery
Their Master's Voice:
Bush, Blair and Intelligence Snafus
Robert
Fisk
Paternalistic Democracy for Iraq
Jerry
Kroth
Israel, Yellowcake and the Media
Noah Leavitt
What's Driving the Liberian Bloodbath: Is the US Obligated to
Intervene?
Saul
Landau
The Film Industry: Business and Ideology
Ron Jacobs
One Big Prison Yard: the Meaning of George Jackson
Thomas
Croft
In the Deep, Deep Rough: Reflections on Augusta
Amadi Ajamu
Def Sham: Russell Simmons New Black Leader?
Poets'
Basement
Vega, Witherup, Albert and Fleming
August
1, 2003
Joanne
Mariner
Stopping Prison Rape
Alex Coolman
Who Moved My Soap: Trivializing
Prison Rape
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Stan Goff
Injury and Decorum: The Missing Wounded in Iraq
Wayne
Madsen
Europe Unplugs from the Matrix
Robert
Fisk
Wolfowitz the Censor
Elaine
Cassel
Ashcroft Loses Big in Puerto Rico
Website
of the Day
Stop Prisoner Rape
July
31, 2003
Ray
McGovern
The Prostitution of Intelligence
Brian
Cloughley
Wolfowitz's Operative Statement
Sheldon
Hull
The RIAA's Jihad:
The Devil's Music (Industry)
Elaine
Cassel
The Next Time You Crack a Lawyer Joke, Think of These Attorneys
Sheldon
Rampton
and John Stauber
True Lies: Propaganda and Bush's
Wars
Hammond
Guthrie
Speculation Blues
Website
of the Day
Army of One?
July
30, 2003
David
Lindorff
Poindexter the Terror Bookie
Marjorie
Cohn
Why Iraq and Afghanistan? It's About
the Oil
Elaine
Cassel
How Ashcroft Coerces Guilty Pleas
in Terror Cases
Zvi
Bar'el
The Hidden Costs of the Iraq War
Lisa Walsh
Thomas
Killing Mustafa Hussein: Death of a Child, Birth of a Legend?
Sean
Carter
Pat Robertson's Prayer Jihad: God, Sodomy and the Supremes
ND Jayaprakash
India and Ariel Sharon
Steve
Perry
Bush's Top 40 Lies
Standard
Schaefer
Correction about Bloomberg and Outscourcing
Website
of the Day
Bring Them Home Now!
Congratulations
to CounterPuncher Gilad Atzmon! BBC Names EXILE Top Jazz CD
July
29, 2003
Jeffrey
St. Clair
"Journalist Spotted! Journalist
Dead!" Guatemala Bleeds; US Press Yawns
Thomas
J. Nagy
The Belligerent Dr. Pipes
Kurt Nimmo
Tom Delay Goes to Jerusalem
Chris
Floyd
Dead Reckoning: Bush Warriors Sign Off on War Crimes
Robert
Fisk
Another Botched Raid; Another Massacre
Jason Leopold
Did Chalabi Help Write Bush's State of the Union Address?
Conn Hallinan
Food Bully: Bush's Biotech Shock and Awe Campaign
Dan
Bacher
Sacramento's War on Free Speech
Ray
McGovern
Cheney Chicanery
Website
of the Day
Julie Hilden Caught on Tape
Hot Stories
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Elaine
Cassel
Civil Liberties
Watch
Michel
Guerrin
Embedded Photographer Says: "I
Saw Marines Kill Civilians"
Uzma
Aslam Khan
The Unbearably Grim Aftermath of War:
What America Says Does Not Go
Paul de Rooij
Arrogant
Propaganda
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click Here
for More Stories.
|
August
9, 2003
The
Relevance of William Appleman Williams
History
and the Tragedy of American Diplomacy
By
MICHAEL EGAN
How quickly we forget history's lessons. For a
country that puts so much stock in its history and heritage,
it seems ironic that Americans so rarely tend to heed history
what history might tell them. Put aside for a moment the illegality
of the ongoing conflict in Iraq, the deceit of the current administration,
and its current backtracking and finger pointing, and consider
the immediate tragedy that is Iraq and the ongoing failure of
American policy in the Middle East, which can only escalate with
distrust growing in Iran.
Once again, an American administration
is hurt and confused by the lack of gratitude expressed by peoples
it has "liberated." To hear Defense Secretary Donald
Rumsfeld or his deputy Paul Wolfowitz tell it, the Iraqi people
are callously ungrateful and wholly undeserving of the great
gift of American democracy. Rather than listening to the whining
arrogance of the hawks, whose victory in Iraq has not been as
glorious or as shiny as anticipated, Americans might turn to
the history books and learn that this is a common refrain that
stretches back at least as far as the end of the nineteenth century.
In his classic 1959 study, The
Tragedy of American Diplomacy, the eminent historian
William Appleman Williams suggested that in spite of its best
intentions American foreign policy was based largely on a one-dimensional
American belief that Americans and American democracy had all
the answers. The sad truth is that that belief might not be far
wrong, but the inflexibility of the administrators in charge
of its application has contributed to a century of failure in
foreign relations.
According to Williams, American diplomacy
was based on three premises, which, for all intents and purposes,
have not changed and maintain a contemporary validity and relevance.
The first is the humanitarian impulse to help other people solve
their problems. The second principle encourages self-determination,
which insists that every society have the right to establish
its own goals or objectives, and to realize them internally through
the means it decides are appropriate. Third-and here's the kicker-American
diplomacy has typically insisted that other people cannot really
solve their problems and improve their lives unless they follow
the American formula. The contradiction evident in this third
premise effectively nullifies the genuine best interests of the
first two, but it also speaks volumes about the global perception
of American arrogance.
To understand American diplomacy, we
need to make sense of this arrogance. In a recent column in the
Manchester Guardian, George Monbiot referred to Clifford Longley's
important study, Chosen People, which argued that America's founding
fathers believed that they were guided by divine purpose. As
Longley put it, the formation of a righteous Americanism evolved
as part of a Western evolution of who God's chosen people were.
The Roman Catholic church claimed that mantle from the Jews,
Longley contends, after the Jews were repudiated by God. After
centuries of corruption, the Catholics surrendered the mantle
to the English Protestants, who in turn lost it to the American
Revolutionaries, who believed that the British had broken their
covenant. For more than two centuries, American citizens have
been the chosen ones, and their dominance in global political
and economic affairs would seem to suggest they might even have
a case. Highlighting its contemporary relevance, Monbiot noted
that President Bush recently referred to Woodrow Wilson's statement
that "America has a spiritual energy in her which no other
nation can contribute to the liberation of mankind." But
taking such Christian fervor and self-righteousness back to the
Middle East to subdue the "infidels" seems to be a
recipe for disaster.
And while media analysts have already
started to compare the quagmire in Iraq-and please let us not
forget Afghanistan-to Vietnam or the Philippines or Haiti or
Nicaragua or the Dominican Republic, perhaps a more fitting comparison
might be made closer to home. The sixty year relationship with
Cuba between the Spanish-American War (1898) and the Cuban Revolution
(1959) illuminates so many of the shortcomings in American diplomacy
that its history should become required summer reading for the
Bush administration. After a lengthy build-up, the United States
declared war on Spain on 21 April 1898 after the U.S.S. Maine
exploded and the Spanish were blamed (think of it as the nineteenth
century version of flawed evidence to galvanize popular support
for a war). The objectives of the war from the American standpoint
were to free Cuba from Spanish tyranny, to establish and underwrite
the independence of the island, and to support Cuba's development
toward political democracy and economic independence.
As Williams observed in the 1972 edition
of The Tragedy of American Diplomacy, the United States exercised
considerable and uninterrupted influence in and over all aspects
of Cuban affairs for the following six decades, during which
time Americans were quick to point out that Cuba enjoyed some
modest progress. The advantages Cuba enjoyed as an American protectorate
rather than a Spanish colony were notable. So, too, was the modernization
of and increase in sugar production. So, too, relatively speaking,
was the very modest move toward representative government. But
therein rested a disparity between the progressive rhetoric and
the actuality of events. Americans dominated the economic life
of the island by controlling the sugar industry and by preventing
any dynamic modification of Cuba's one-crop economy, ultimately
compelling the Cuban people to revolution.
Williams drew four conclusions from the
Cuban experience, which might appear eerie if put in a contemporary
context. The United States possessed an overweening power in
relation to Cuba, which it exercised vigorously and persistently.
Use of that power prevented the implementation of the ideals
avowed as the objectives of power, namely encouraging self-determination
on the part of the Cubans, while failing to modernize the Cuban
economy. By maintaining their dominant relationship over Cuba,
Americans galvanized Cubans into forming a coalition of groups
committed to realizing important societal changes. And lastly,
American rejection of the Cuban coalition's interests resulted
in strengthening the resolve of and popular support for radicalism
on the island. Again: American antagonism resulted in a militant
reaction against the American presence. After sixty years of
American oppression, the Cubans rose up in a militant social
revolution that sought to establish the kind of Cuban society
and development that American diplomacy had promised since 1898.
So, too, in Iraq. Even with expenditures
of $4 billion a month, American occupation in Iraq can't even
ensure electricity and running water. Iraqis are no closer to
realizing the fruits of democracy and currently appear years
away from any kind of self-determination, and American interests
are clawing their way into Iraqi oil. Their reaction to following
the American model speaks for itself.
I cringe when people suggest that history
repeats itself. The notion is utter nonsense, but that does not
mean that we can't learn important lessons from the past. A more
compassionate and less righteous approach to its humanitarian
principles would help to make the United States of America the
benevolent world neighbor that we want it to be and know it should
be.
Michael Egan
teaches in the Department of History at Washington State University.
He can be reached at: michaele@wsu.edu
Weekend Edition Features for August 2/3, 2003
Tamara
R. Piety
Nike's Full Court Press Breaks Down
Francis
Boyle
My Alma Mater, the University of Chicago, is a Moral Cesspool
David
Vest
Sons of Paleface: Pictures from Death's Other Side
Neve Gordon
Nightlife in Jerusalem
Uri
Avnery
Their Master's Voice:
Bush, Blair and Intelligence Snafus
Robert
Fisk
Paternalistic Democracy for Iraq
Jerry
Kroth
Israel, Yellowcake and the Media
Noah Leavitt
What's Driving the Liberian Bloodbath: Is the US Obligated to
Intervene?
Saul
Landau
The Film Industry: Business and Ideology
Ron Jacobs
One Big Prison Yard: the Meaning of George Jackson
Thomas
Croft
In the Deep, Deep Rough: Reflections on Augusta
Amadi Ajamu
Def Sham: Russell Simmons New Black Leader?
Poets'
Basement
Vega, Witherup, Albert and Fleming
Keep CounterPunch
Alive:
Make
a Tax-Deductible Donation Today Online!
home / subscribe
/ about us / books
/ archives / search
/ links /
|