Excerpt from: William Appleman Williams, The Tragedy of American Diplomacy (New York: W.W. Norton, 1988) pp. 9-11, 49-50, 53-58, 61-62, 82.In the realm of ideas and ideals, American policy is guided by three conceptions. One is the warm, generous, humanitarian impulse to help other people solve their problems. A second is the principle of self-determination applied at the international level, which asserts the right of every society to establish its own goals or objectives, and to realize them internally through the means it decided are appropriate. These two ideas can be reconciled; indeed, they complement each other to an extensive degree. But the third idea entertained by many Americans is one which insists that other people cannot really solve their problems and improve their lives unless they go about it in the same way as the United States.This feeling is not peculiar to Americans, for all other peoples reveal some degree of the same attitude toward the rest of the world. But the full scope and intensity of the American version is clearly revealed in the blunt remark of former Secretary of State Dean G. Acheson. He phrased it this way in explaining and defending the American program of foreign aid as it was being evolved shortly after the en d of World War II: ―We are willing to help people who believe the way we do, to conti8nue to live the way we want to live.‖This insistence that other people ought to copy America contradicts the humanitarian urge to help them and the idea that they have the right to make such key decisions for themselves. In some cases, the American way of doing things simply does not work for the other people. In another instance it may be satisfactory, but the other society may prefer even better ones. But even if the American way were the only effective approach, the act of forcing it upon the other society—and economic and political pressure are forms of force—violates the idea of self-determination. It also angers the other society and makes it even less apt to accept the American suggestion on its own merits. Hence it is neither very effective nor very idealistic to try to help other people by insisting from the outset that they follow closely the lead and the example of the United States on all central and vital matters.The same kind of difficulty arises in connection with the economic side of American foreign policy. The United States needs raw materials and other goods and services from foreign countries,, just as it need to sell some of its own goods and services to them. It might be able literally to isolate itself and survive, but that is not the issue. Not even the isolationists of the late 1920’s and early 1930’s advocated that kind of foreign policy. The vital question concerns instead the way in which America gets what it needs and exports what it wants to sell.Most Americans consider that trade supplies the answer to this problem. But trade is defined as the exchange of goods and services between producers dealing with each other in as open a market as it is possible to create, and doing this without one of them being so beholden to the other that he cannot bargain in a meaningful and effective way. Trade is not defined by the transfer of goods and services under conditions established and controlled largely by one of the parties.Here is a primary source of America’s troubles in its economic relations with the rest of the world. For in expanding its own economic system throughout much of the world, America has made it very difficult for other nations to retain any economic independence. This is particularly true in connection with raw materials. Saudi Arabia, for example, is not an independent oil producer. Its oil fields are an integrated and controlled part of the American oil industry. But a very similar, if often less dramatic, kind of relationship also develops in manufacturing industries. This is the case in countries where established economic systems are outmoded or lethargic, as well as in the new, poor nations that are just beginning to industrialize, American corporations exercise very extensive authority, and even commanding power, in the political economy of nations.Unfortunately, there is an even more troublesome factor in the economic aspect of American foreign policy. This is the firm conviction, even dogmatic belief, that America’s domestic well-being depends upon such sustained, ever-increasing overseas economic expansion. Here is a convergence of economic practice with intellectual analysis and emotional involvement that creates a very powerful and dangerous propensity to define the essentials of American welfare in terms of activities outside the United States.It is dangerous for two reasons. First, it leads to an indifference toward, or a neglect of, internal development which are nevertheless of primary importance. And second, this strong tendency to externalize the sources or causes of good things leads naturally enough to an even greater inclination to expand the lack of the good life by blaming it on foreign individuals, groups, and nations. This kind of externalizing evil serves not only to antagonize the outsiders, but further intensifies the American determination to make them over in the proper manner or simply push them out of the way.The over-all result of t hese considerations is that America’s humanitarian urge to assist other people is undercut—even subverted—by the way it goes about helping them. Other societies come to feel that American policy causes them to lose their economic, political, and evenpsyc hological independence….In summation, the true nature and full significance of the Open Door Policy can only be grasped when its four essential features are fully understood.First: it was neither a military strategy nor a traditional balance-of-power policy. It was conceived and designed to win the victories without the wars. In a truly perceptive and even noble sense, the makers of the Open Door Policy understood that war represented the failure of policy. Hence it is irrelevant to criticize the Open Door Policy for not emphasizing, or not producing, extensive military readiness.Second: it was derived from the proposition that America’s overwhelming economic power would cast the economy and the politics of the poorer, weaker, underdeveloped countries in a pro-American mold….Third (and clearly related to the second point): the policy was neither legalistic nor moralistic in the sense that those criticisms are usually offered. It was extremely hard-headed and practical.In some respects, at any rate, it was the most impressive intellectual achievement in the area of public policy since the generation of the Founding Fathers.Fourth: unless and until it, and its underlying Weltanschanuung, were modified to deal with its own consequences, the policy was certain to produce foreign policy crisis that would be come increasingly severe.Once these factors are understood, it becomes useful to explore the way that ideological and moralistic elements became integrated with the fundamentally secular and economic nature of Open Door Policy. The addition of those ingredients served to create a kind of expansionism that aimed at the marketplace of the mind and the polls as well as the pocketbook.Taken up by President Theodore Roosevelt and his successors, the philosophy and practice of secular empire that was embodied in the Open Door Notes [of 1899-1990] became the central feature of American foreign policy in the twentieth century. American economic power gushed into some underdeveloped areas within a decade and into many others within a generation. It also seeped, then trickled, and finally flooded into the more developed nations and their colonies until, by 1939, America’s economic position was not extensively developed were precisely the areas in which the United States manifested a determination to retain and expand its exploratory operations—or to enter in force for the first time.Throughout these same years, the rise of a new crusading spirit in American diplomacy contributed an outward thrust of its own and reinforced the secular expansion. This righteous enthusiasm was both secular, emphasizing political and social ideology, and religious, stressing the virtues (and necessities) of Protestant Christianity. In essence. This twentieth-century Manifest Destiny was identical with the earlier phenomenon of the same name.Americans assumed a posture of moral and ideological superiority at an early date. Despite the persistence of the Puritan tradition, however, this assertiveness took predominantly secular forms. Supernatural authority was invoked to explain and account for the steady enlargement of the United States, but the justifications for expansion were generally based on standards derived from this world. The phrase ―Manifest Destiny,‖ for exa mple, symbolized the assertion that God was on America’s side rather than the more modest claim that the country had joined the legions of the Lord. As that logic implied, the argument was that America was the ―most progressive‖ society whose citizens made ―proper use of the soil.‖ For these and similar reasons, it was added, the laws of ―political gravitation‖ would bring many minor people into the American system.Though it had appeared as early as the eve of the American Revolution, the assertion that the expansion of the United States ―extended the area of freedom‖ gained general currency after the War of 1821. President Andrew Jackson seems to have coined the phrase, with his wildcatting intellectual supporters making many variations. One of the more persuasive and popular, which won many converts during and after the war with Mexico, stressed America’s responsibility to extend its authority over ―semi-barbarous people.‖ By thus taking up the duty of ―regeneration and civilization,‖ America could perform the noble work of teaching inferiors to appreciate theblessings they already enjoyed but were inclined to overlook. In turn, this would prepare them for the better days to follow under America’s benevolent leadership.Near the end of the century, American missionaries and domestic religious leaders began to impact a more theological tone to this crusading fervor. This resulted in part from the effort by the clergy to marry traditional Christianity with the new doctrine of evolution and in that way adjust their theology to the latest revelations, and also sustain their influence in the age of science. Josiah Strong was an innovator of that kind. As a Congregationalists minister in whom the frontier experience and outlook exercised an important influence, Strong concluded that the theory of evolution only substantiated the doctrine of predestination. America had been hand-picked by the Lord to lead the Anglo-Saxons in transforming the world. ―It would seem,‖ he explained with reference to the Ame rican Indians and other benighted peoples, ―as if these inferior tribes were only precursors of a superior race, voices in the wilderness crying: Prepare ye the way of the Lord.‖Ever since New England ministers had accepted the challenge of saving the heathens of Hawaii, a crusade that began in the eighteenth century, American missionaries had been noticeably concerned about Asia—and in particular China. As the reverend Hudson Taylor explained in 1894, there was ―a great Niagara of souls passing into the dark of China.‖ Though they never lost faith, a growing number of missionaries did get discouraged enough to question whether hell-fire sermons on the dangers of damnation were an approach sufficient unto the need. Some thought fondly of the a sword of righteousness , and toyed with the idea of a ―Society for the Diffusion of Cannon Balls.‖ That kind of crusade was never organized, but the missionaries did begin in the 1890’s to demand formal support and protection from the American Government. This request, while never acted upon with the same vigor as those from business groups, did receive sympathetic and favorable consideration. For one thing, the religious stake in China was significant: America had over 500 missionaries in that country, and their schools claimed a total student body of nearly 17,000 Chinese. Many churches had also supported intervention in Cuba. But the most important factor was the way that the missionary movement began to evolve an approach that offered direct support to secular expansion.Missionaries had always tended to operate on an assumption quite similar to the frontier thesis. ―Missionaries are an absolute necessity,‖ expanded the Reverend Henry Van Dyke of Prince in 1896, ―not only for the conversion of the heathen, but also, and much more, for the preservation of the Church,. Christianity is a religion that will not keep.‖ Religious leaders began to link the missionary movement with the economic expansion in which Reverend Francis E. Clark of the Christian Endeavor organization called ―the widening of our empire.‖ The Board of Foreign Missions also welcomed such expansion as ―an ally.‖Then, beginning in the mid-1890’s, the missionaries began to change their basic strategy in a way that greatly encouraged such liaison with secular expansionists. Shifting from an emphasis on the horrors of hell to a concern with practical reform as the lever of convention, they increasingly stressed the need to remake the underdeveloped societies. Naturally enough, they were to be reformed in the image of the United States. Such changes would lead to regeneration identified with Christianity and witnesses for the Lord would accordingly increase.Not only did this program mesh with the idea of American secular influence (how else were the reforms to be initiated?), but it was very similar to the argument that American expansion was justified because it created more progressive societies. Missionaries came to sound more and more like political leaders who were themselves submerging their domestic ideological differences art the water’s edge in a general agreement on expansion as a reform movement. The domestic reformer [Robert] La Follette offers an excellent example of this convergence of economic and ideological expansion that took place across political lines. He approved taking the Philippines because it would enable America ―to conquer [its] rightful share of that great market now opening [in China] for the world’s commerce.‖ Expansion was also justified because the United St ates had a ―bounden duty to establish and maintain stable government‖ in the islands. Pointing out that from the beginning ―the policy of this government has been to expand,‖ La Follette justified it on the grounds that ―it has made men free.‖ Thus, he concluded, ―we can legally and morally reserve unto ourselves perpetual commercial advantages of priceless value to our foreign trade for all time to come‖ by taking the Philippines. Theodore Roosevelt’s outlook reveals an even more significant aspect of this progressive integration of secular and ideological expansionism. His concern for economic expansion was complemented by an urge to extend Anglo-Saxon ideas, practices, and virtues throughout the world. Just as his Square Deal program centered on the idea of responsible leaders using national government to regulate and moderate industrial society at home, so did his international outlook revolve around the idea of American supremacy being used to define and promote the interests of ―collective civilization.‖Thus it was necessary, he warned in his Presidential Message of December 1901, to exercise restraint in dealing with the large corporations. ―Business concerns which have the largest means at their disposal…take to lead in the strife for commerci al supremacy among the nations of the world. America has only just begun to assume the commanding position in the international business world which we believe will more and more be hers. It is of the utmost importance that this position be not jeopardized, especially at a time when the overflowing abundance of our own natural resources and the skill, business energy, and mechanical aptitude of our people make foreign markets essential.‖Roosevelt integrated that kind of expansion with ideological considerations and imperatives to create an all-inclusive logic and set of responsibilities which made peace itself the consequence of empire. In his mind, at any rate, it was America’s ―duty toward the people living in barbarism to see that they are freed from their chains, and we can free them only by destroying barbarism itself.‖ Thus, he concluded, ―peace cannot be had until the civilized nations have expanded in some shape over the barbarous nations.‖The inherent requirements of economic expansion coincided with such religious, racist, and reformist drives to remake the world. The reason for this is not difficult to perceive. As they existed, the underdeveloped countries were poor, particularistic, and bound by traditions which handicapped business enterprise. They were not organized to link up with the modern industrial system in a practical and efficient manner. It was economically necessary to change them incertain ways and to a limited degree if the fruits of expansion were to be harvested. As with the missionaries, therefore, the economic and political leaders of the country decided that what was good for Americans was also good for foreigners. Humanitarian concern was thus reinforced by hard-headed economic requirements.The administrations of Theodore Roosevelt understood this relationship between economic expansion and overseas reform, and explicitly integrated it into the strategy of the Open Door Policy. It was often commented upon in dispatches and policy statements concerning China and Latin America. In his famous Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, for example Roosevelt (who thought of the Open Door Policy as the Monroe Doctrine for Asia) stressed the need for reforms and asserted the right and obligation of the United States to see that they were made—and honored….The integration of these elements was carried forward, and given classic expression in rhetoric, style, and substance, in the diplomacy of President Woodrow Wilson and Secretary of State [William Jennings] Bryan. Both men were leaders of the secular American reform movement, and both brought to their conduct of foreign affairs a religious intensity and righteousness that was not apparent in earlier administrations and that has not been matched since their time. As Protestants imbued with a strong sense of Anglo-Saxon self-consciousness, they personified the assertive idealism that complemented and reinforced the economic drive for markets….By the time of World War I, therefore, the basic dilemma of American foreign policy was clearly defined. Its generous humanitarianism prompted it to improve the lot of less fortunate peoples, but that side of its diplomacy was undercut by two other aspects of its policy. On the one hand, it defined helping people in terms of making them more like Americans. This subverted its ideal of self-determination. On the other hand, it asserted and acted upon the necessity of overseas expansion for its own material prosperity. But by defining such expansion in terms of markets for American exports, and control of raw materials for American industry, the ability of other peoples to develop and act upon their own patterns of development was further undercut. William Appleman Williams (1921–1990) was one of the 20th century's most prominent historians of American diplomacy. He achieved the height of his influence while on the faculty of the Department of History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.。
