My Amazon Review of Robert Kagan's "The Ghost at the Feast: America and the Collapse................."

 America Comes of Age in Fits and Starts

 

Robert Kagan, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, has written a sequel to his “Dangerous Nation” Japan to cover American foreign policy from 1900-1941. In 1900 fresh after defeating Spain in 1898 the U.S. had the largest economy in the world and was viewed as a non-entity as far as the great powers of Europe were concerned. Domestically there was a strong anti-imperialist lobby against the American occupation of the Philippines, but Kagan reminds us that the freeing Cuba from Spanish colonialism was highly popular across the political spectrum. Using terms of today, it was viewed as a “humanitarian intervention.” Further the takeover of the Philippines was accidental in that Admiral George Dewey was following a decade old plan to steam to Manila to engage the Spanish fleet where he won a resounding victory. Kagan argues that absent the U.S. intervention, sooner or later the Philippines would have been taken over by either Germany or Japan.

 

Kagan covers the Platt Amendment to the Monroe Doctrine which unilaterally granted the U.S. the right to intervene in Latin America which it does many times. Initially to keep the Europeans out and to maintain the peace, but later with less than benign motives. He spends less than time than he should have around the politics of building the Panama Canal and President Roosevelt’s arbitration of the Russo-Japanese War. By 1914 the U.S. has no army to speak of and has modern, but small Navy.

 

When the war in Europe broke out the U.S. position was to stay out of it, despite strong support from banking interests to weigh in on the side of the allies. There was great support for the Central Powers coming from Irish, German and Jewish Americans for their own unique reasons. Despite the sinking of the Lusitania, President Woodrow Wilson, though indirectly supporting the allies, struggles to keep the U.S. out of the war. The pressure for U.S. entry  is led by former president Theodore Roosevelt. Ultimately as Germany resorts to unrestricted submarine warfare the U.S. enters the war as an associated power with an inflated sense of morality coming from “peace without victory” and his Fourteen Points.

 

Wilson enters the Versailles negotiations as a giant. American power is supreme, yet he gets sucked into the vortex of European power politics doing whatever he can to bring forth the League of Nations. However, while in Paris, the once internationalist Republican Party, does a 180-degree shift. The party once lead by Elihu Root, Henry Stimson and Charles Evans Hughes is now lead by the anti-league Theodore Roosevelt and Senate foreign relations chair Henry Cabot Lodge. They are backed up by “the irreconcilables” led by Senator’s William Borah and Hiram Johnson. When Wilson fails to seek a compromise, the League fails and the U.S. returns to its pre-war isolation. In a footnote three young idealist, William Bullitt, John Maynard Keynes, and Walter Lippmann become disillusioned on the shoals of European reality.

 

It is here where Kagan argues that the U.S. should have stayed in the game. Without U.S. backing both France and Britain became paranoid about future German power and therefore were less willing to compromise on reparations, something that would plague the continent for a decade. In the terms of the British diplomat Harold Nicholson, the U.S. became “the ghost at the feast.” To be sure the U.S. was present financially with both the Dawes and Young Plans, it was not really in the game.

 

With the onset of the Great Depression the world order begins to collapse, first economically and the politically. Japan invades Manchuria making a mockery of the League. Further, its naval build-up threatens the American presence in the Pacific and we have the rise of Hitler.

 

What is the newly elected President Roosevelt’s response to the deteriorating international situation? More isolation. Kagan, in my opinion underplays Roosevelt’s blowing up the July 1933 World Economic Conference where it is understood in no uncertain terms the U.S. will focus on domestic recovery. This did not go unnoticed by Mussolini and Hitler. To me one failing of the book is that is lacks an economic context, particularly on the role of the gold standard and the collapse in world trade.

 

Later in the decade Roosevelt has to fight off the isolationists to deal with the growing challenges coming from Japan and Germany. He highlights the trigger for the change as the September 1938 Munich Conference and the November 1938 Kristallnacht explosion in Germany. Kagan reasons, correctly in my opinion, that the reason France and Germany caved into Hitler is that they rightfully believed that the U.S. did not have their backs. Thus had the U.S. been more involved with Europe in the 1930’s the horrors to come might just have been avoided. And if the war in Europe did not start, Japan might not have embarked on its aggression in Southeast Asia.

 

Kagan’s conclusion is that there is a straight line from America’s holiday from international affairs in the 1920’s and 1930’s to the agony of the 1940’s. It is a lesson that should be remembered by those today who see few reasons for America’s involvement on the world stage.

For the full Amazon URL see: America Comes of Age in Fits and Starts (amazon.com)

My Amazon Review of Robert Elder's "Calhoun: American Heretic"

 

 Slavery’s Theoretician

 

John C. Calhoun was brilliant and was one of America’s most dominant politicians for nearly four decades serving as congressman, senator, vice-president under two presidents, Secretary of War, Secretary of State and sought the presidency on several occasions. Unfortunately, he used much of his brilliance in cause of slavery. Baylor University history professor Robert Elder tells the story of his life with nuance and great detail. Unfortunately for the lay reader it 656-page length is a bit much.

 

Calhoun was born in 1782 in South Carolina’s up-country and was inculcated in his slave-oriented society. Unlike most of his brethren he goes north to Yale for his education and after returning to South Carolina he becomes one of the state’s leading politicians. After his election to Congress in 1810 be joins forces with Henry Clay to become a leader in the war hawk faction that leads the U.S. into the War of 1812.

 

His alliance with Clay continues after the war and he becomes an initial supporter of Clay’s American System. He supports the establishment of a national bank, the tariff, and a program of internal improvements. However, the coming of the Missouri Compromise of 1820 he breaks with Clay as the fight over tariffs becomes a proxy war over slavery. By 1832 he triggers the Nullification Crisis where South Carolina sought to overturn the Tariff of 1828. It almost came to war, but Clay came up with a compromise.

 

Calhoun believed the United States to be a compact of sovereign states with each or with a substantial minority having the right to nullify federal legislation. He called his theory “concurrent majority”. He basically sought a minority veto over policy. To be sure part of it was based in the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions of 1798 authored by Madison and Jefferson in opposition to federal power. That theory was expounded 160 years later by civil rights activist Lani Guinier was nominated to be an assistant attorney general under Bill Clinton. She supported a minority veto over majoritarian rule. Calhoun was pro-union, but only on southern terms.

 

Calhoun viewed slavery as a positive good. To him it guaranteed equality among whites thereby dampening the class struggle between white factory workers and their employers. After all South Carolina was way ahead of the rest of the country in promoting universal suffrage for white males. In a way he was a Jacksonian ahead of his times.

 

To Calhoun America’s original sin was not slavery, but rather the “all men are created equal” line in the Declaration of Independence. This completely undercut his support of slavery and further although Elder does not mention it the preamble to the Constitution begins with “We the people...” not “We the states…”

 

As an international statesman Calhoun had a hand in drafting the Monroe Doctrine in 1820 and avoided war with Great Britain over the Oregon Territory in 1845. He actually opposed the Mexican War because he believed President Polk usurped the power of Congress in declaring a state of war existed between the U.S. and Mexico. Further his free trade ideas became conventional wisdom in the second half of the 20th century.

 

Elder goes into great deal about Calhoun’s family life. His wife Floride and her dozen pregnancies and his relationship with his daughter Anna who became his intellectual confidante. The last a rarity in that era. The reader will learn much about America and Calhoun in this book, but I caution it is long.

For the full Amazon URL see: Slavery's Theoretician (amazon.com)

 

My Amazon Review of Kori Schake's "Safe Passage: The Transition from British to American Hegemony"

Passing the Baton

Kori Schake, Deputy Director-General for Institute for Strategic Studies, London has written an important book as to how a declining power peacefully passes the baton to a rising power. The operative word here is peacefully, because in most cases the two powers fall into what Graham Allison has called the Thucydides Trap where the ancient historian noted “it was the rise in Athens and the fear this instilled in Sparta that made war inevitable.” The importance of Schake’s book is that today the world is faced not with the rise of the U.S. and the decline of Britain, but rather with the rise of China and the decline of the United States.

Her book begins with the Monroe Doctrine of 1823, where she notes that it was a British idea to begin with, to the end of World War II. In the case of the Monroe Doctrine Britain was seeking to preserve its commercial interests with the newly independent Latin American countries and the U.S was more than happy to have the British navy enforce the doctrine. In fact one of the reasons for the Monroe Doctrine was the Russian presence just north of San Francisco. Both the U.S. and Britain were fortunate to have John Quincy Adams as Secretary of State and the Britain to have George Canning as Foreign Secretary.

Schake then goes on to discuss the Oregon boundary dispute of the late 1840s, the Civil War, the Venezuelan crises of 1895-1905, the Spanish American War, World War I, the Washington Naval Conference of 1922 and World War II. She highlights how Britain feared U.S. interference in British politics during the Civil War that worked to keep Britain out as many Brits sympathized with America’s republican values and the presence of Irish and Scottish immigrants in the U.S. who still had strong ties to the home country. The Brits certainly did not want to encourage secession.

By the time the Venezuelan Crises came around Britain began to fear America’s growing power and instead of fighting the powers worked together. Simply put Britain began to treat the U.S. as an equal and further it had worries much closer to home with the rise of Germany. Indeed the British Navy actually supported Admiral Dewey in the battle of Manila Bay. Again both parties were lucky to have such statesman as Hay and Salisbury. Moreover by 1900 the two countries were becoming more alike. The U.S. was become more imperialist and Britain became more democratic. Simply put The U.S. was first willing to accept Britain’s rules based hegemony and later Britain would accept the rules laid down by America.

That became apparent at the Washington Naval Conference where the once mighty British navy accepted American parity in the Pacific. It was a diplomatic victory for President Warren Harding.

With the coming of World War II Britain was forced to accept American hegemony. They had no choice and under the new rules its empire would have to go. In return for American support again the Brits had no choice.

The question for us today that would the U.S. and China be so lucky. Schake thinks not. There is far less commonality and it isn’t clear that on the U.S. side we will we have statesman on the caliber of John Quincy Adams and John Hay. One can only hope.

The full amazon URL appears at: https://www.amazon.com/review/R1OM24BW8GQPI1/ref=pe_1098610_137716200_cm_rv_eml_rv0_rv