THE TRAGEDY OF AMERICAN DIPLOMACY: WILLIAM APPLEMAN WILLIAMS

By far the most influential American revisionist interpreter of the origins of the Cold War has been William Appleman Williams. As early as 1952, a time when the political and intellectual climate was most uncongenial to such interpretations, Williams's American-Russian Relations, 1781-1947 anticipated many of the themes later revisionists would amplify. Then, in 1959, his more sophisticated The Tragedy of American Diplomacy appeared, a book which a sympathetic scholar has called "perhaps the finest interpretive essay on American foreign policy ever written," and which even an unfriendly reviewer conceded was "brilliant." In addition to his own writing, Williams inspired a number of younger scholars — some his own students — who themselves went on to publish variations on his themes. It is scarcely an exaggeration to say that much of the existing revisionist, or "New Left," literature on the subject amounts to little more than extended footnotes on interpretations Williams first put forward.

In his earlier work, American-Russian Relations, Williams candidly admitted that the dearth of available documents limited him to presenting "no more than a review of the central features of recent relations between the United States and the Soviet Union." Yet the basic framework upon which he would later elaborate was made clear. Contradicting the prevailing notion that the Cold War had come about through the actions of an aggressive and expansionist Soviet Union, Williams argued that the United States itself bore the primary responsibility. Even before Pearl Harbor, he wrote, American policymakers had committed themselves to achieving a postwar world dominated by an alliance between Great Britain and the United States. By attempting to force upon Russia this Anglo-American world order without regard to her minimum security needs, American leaders forced an essentially conservative Soviet Union into acting unilaterally in her own defense. Williams's analyses of the means through which the United States supposedly tried to coerce Russia — manipulation of Lend Lease and loans, brandishing atomic weapons, etc. — would later become staple items in revisionist fare.

It was in The Tragedy of American Diplomacy, particularly the revised edition of 1962 (by which time important sources such as the Potsdam Papers had become available), that Williams spelled out his more mature views. The "tragedy" of American foreign policy, he contended, was the evolution of the Open Door Policy "from a Utopian idea into an ideology, from an intellectual outlook for changing the world into one concerned with preserving it in the traditional mold." Devised in the context of depression and the closing of the frontier in the 1890's, the Open Door Policy represented an effort to resolve the internal contradictions of capitalism — chronic overproduction, recurrent depression — without inducing fundamental change in the system itself. Applied originally as a means of securing equal access in China for American goods and investments but quickly extended to encompass the entire world, this policy came to be based upon "the firm conviction, even dogmatic belief, that America's domestic well-being depends upon such sustained, ever-increasing overseas economic expansion." The result, as Williams succinctly put it, was that "the history of the Open Door Notes became the history of American foreign relations from 1900 to 1958."

Having enlarged the Open Door concept into a global policy, he continued, American policymakers defined any effort by other powers to obstruct this goal as threatening to the existence of the American system, predicated as it was on the need for unhindered expansion. Of all the twentieth-century American presidents, only Franklin D. Roosevelt recognized the dangers inherent in such an approach. At times F.D.R. appeared to be moving tentatively toward restructuring the American society as a way out of the dilemma, but during his last months "he was turning back toward the inadequate domestic programs of the New Deal era, and was in foreign affairs reasserting the traditional strategy of the Open Door Policy." His successor, Harry S Truman, who failed even to apprehend the problem, seemed "to react, think, and act as an almost classic personification of the entire Open Door Policy." He and his advisors pursued ends that made the Cold War inevitable.

In contrast with the United States' global pretensions, according to Williams, Russian objectives were far more limited. Stalin resolved the contradiction between "the expansive prophecy of Marx about world revolution" and "a realistic, Marxian analysis of world conditions" in a most conservative manner. He was adamant on only three points: Russia must obtain friendly governments on her western periphery, the wherewithal to rebuild her war-torn economy, and guarantees that Germany would not again become a threat to her safety. Everything else was negotiable. Had the United States helped — or merely permitted — Russia to gain these modest ends, there would have been no Cold War. But in their quest for an Open Door in Eastern Europe (which to Williams meant the existence of pro-Western governments there), American leaders contested the first of Russia's minimum conditions and subsequently pursued strategies which jeopardized the other two.

The mortal weakness of Williams's interpretation lay in his inability to produce even the scantiest evidence that American policymakers actually regarded an Open Door in Eastern Europe as the critical factor, rather than as one of many subsidiary goals, in relations with Russia. In lieu of such evidence he quoted a number of government officials and businessmen on the overall importance of trade and investment in the postwar world. None of the statements cited were made with any particular reference to Eastern Europe, however, nor did Williams even try (except through his own repeated assertions) to demonstrate that the authors of those comments considered Eastern Europe as a very important factor in their assessments. Using the same procedures he could have as convincingly shown that American leaders were desperately concerned with achieving an Open Door in even the most insignificant areas.

In the single passage where he did put forward material having to do specifically with Eastern Europe, Williams wrote as follows:

By the end of the month, in preparation for the Potsdam Conference, the American position concerning the countries of eastern Europe had become clear and firm. The United States planned "to insist on the reorganization of the present governments or the holding of free general elections." The broad objective was phrased in the classic terms of the Open Door Policy: "To permit American nationals to enter, move about freely and carry on commercial and...