The Wisconsin School of American diplomatic history is a school of thought that emerged from the history department of the University of Wisconsin in the 1950s and 1960s. The school, exemplified by the work of William Appleman Williams and also including as core members Walter LaFeber, Thomas J. McCormick, and Lloyd Gardner, generally holds that economic reasons, and the desire for increased markets abroad, were the driver behind much of American foreign policy and the creation of an American empire during the 19th century.[1] These beliefs – which consigned to subordinate status other possible explanations such as morality, security, and balance-of-power calculations – have been referred to as the "Open Door Interpretation", in reference to the Open Door Notes of 1899 and 1900.[1][2]
Two ongoing world events highlighted the influence and debate over Wisconsin School thought. One was the historiography of the Cold War, where "revisionist" theories held by the school stated that the United States bore a large share of the responsibility for the breakdown in post–World War II relations with the Soviet Union.[1] The other was criticism of the Vietnam War. The Tragedy of American Diplomacy, the 1959 work that Williams became best known for, became heavily referenced by many of those participating in opposition to United States involvement in the Vietnam War,[1] and dissatisfaction with the war boosted the popularity of the Open Door interpretation.[3] But works of the Wisconsin School focused not just on causes of the Cold War or Vietnam, but the entire course of American expansion from the time of the nation's creation.[4] The tenets of the Wisconsin School have been incorporated to some degree by other lines of scholarly thought in the decades since and still remain influential.
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Transcription
Hi I’m John Green; this is Crash Course U.S. history and today we’re gonna talk about the Cold War. The Cold War is called “Cold” because it supposedly never heated up into actual armed conflict, which means, you know, that it wasn’t a war. Mr. Green, Mr. Green, but if the War on Christmas is a war and the War on Drugs is a war… You’re not going to hear me say this often in your life, Me from the Past, but that was a good point. At least the Cold War was not an attempt to make war on a noun, which almost never works, because nouns are so resilient. And to be fair, the Cold War did involve quite a lot of actual war, from Korea to Afghanistan, as the world’s two superpowers, the United States and the U.S.S.R., sought ideological and strategic influence throughout the world. So perhaps it’s best to think of the Cold War as an era, lasting roughly from 1945 to 1990. Discussions of the Cold War tend to center on international and political history and those are very important, which is why we’ve talked about them in the past. This, however, is United States history, so let us heroically gaze--as Americans so often do--at our own navel. (Libertage.) Stan, why did you turn the globe to the Green Parts of Not-America? I mean, I guess to be fair, we were a little bit obsessed with this guy. So, the Cold War gave us great spy novels, independence movements, an arms race, cool movies like Dr. Strangelove and War Games, one of the most evil mustaches in history. But it also gave us a growing awareness that the greatest existential threat to human beings is ourselves. It changed the way we imagine the world and humanity’s role in it. In his Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech, William Faulkner famously said, “Our tragedy today is a general and universal physical fear so long sustained by now that we can even bear it. There are no longer problems of the spirit. There is only the question: When will I be blown up?” So, today we’re gonna look at how that came to be the dominant question of human existence, and whether we can ever get past it. intro So after WWII the U.S. and the USSR were the only two nations with any power left. The United States was a lot stronger – we had atomic weapons, for starters, and also the Soviets had lost 20 million people in the war and they were led by a sociopathic mustachioed Joseph Stalin. But the U.S. still had worries: we needed a strong, free-market-oriented Europe (and to a lesser extent Asia) so that all the goods we were making could find happy homes. The Soviets, meanwhile, were concerned with something more immediate, a powerful Germany invading them. Again. Germany--and please do not take this personally, Germans--was very, very slow to learn the central lesson of world history: Do not invade Russia. Unless you’re the Mongols. (Mongoltage.) So at the end of World War II, the USSR “encouraged” the creation of pro-communist governments in Bulgaria, Romania, and Poland--which was a relatively easy thing to encourage, because those nations were occupied by Soviet troops. The idea for the Soviets was to create a communist buffer between them and Germany, but to the U.S. it looked like communism might just keep expanding, and that would be really bad for us, because who would buy all of our sweet, sweet industrial goods? So America responded with the policy of containment, as introduced in diplomat George F. Kennan’s famous Long Telegram. Communism could stay where it was, but it would not be allowed to spread. And ultimately this is why we fought very real wars in both Korea and Vietnam. As a government report from 1950 put it the goals of containment were: 1. Block further expansion of Soviet power 2. Expose the falsities of soviet pretensions 3. Induce a retraction of the Kremlin’s control and influence, and 4. In general, foster the seeds of destruction within the Soviet system. Harry Truman, who as you’ll recall, became President in 1945 after Franklin Delano Prez 4 Life Roosevelt died, was a big fan of containment, and the first real test of it came in Greece and Turkey in 1947. This was a very strategically valuable region because it was near the Middle East, and I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, but the United States has been just, like, a smidge interested in the Middle East the last several decades because of oil glorious oil. Right, so Truman announced the so-called Truman Doctrine, because you know why not name a doctrine after yourself, in which he pledged to support “freedom-loving peoples” against communist threats, which is all fine and good. But who will protect us against “peoples,” the pluralization of an already plural noun? Anyway, we eventually sent $400 million in aid to Greece and Turkey, and we were off to the Cold War races. The Truman Doctrine created the language through which Americans would view the world with America as free and communists as tyrannical. According to our old friend Eric Foner, “The speech set a precedent for American assistance to anticommunist regimes throughout the world, no matter how undemocratic, and for the creation of a set of global military alliances directed against the Soviet Union.”[1] It also led to the creation of a new security apparatus – the National Security Council, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Atomic Energy Commission, all of which were somewhat immune from government oversight and definitely not democratically elected. And the containment policy and the Truman Doctrine also laid the foundations for a military build-up – an arms race – which would become a key feature of the Cold War. But it wasn’t all about the military, at least at first. Like, the Marshall Plan was first introduced at Harvard’s Commencement address in June 1947 by, get this, George Marshall, in what turned out to be, like, the second most important commencement address in all of American history. Yes, yes, Stan, okay. It was a great speech, thank you for noticing. Alright, let’s go to the Thought Bubble. The Marshall Plan was a response to economic chaos in Europe brought on by a particularly harsh winter that strengthened support for communism in France and Italy. The plan sought to use US Aid to combat the economic instability that provided fertile fields for communism. As Marshall said “ our policy is not directed against any country or doctrine, but against hunger, poverty, desperation and chaos.” [2] Basically it was a New Deal for Europe, and it worked; Western Europe was rebuilt so that by 1950 production levels in industry had eclipsed pre-war levels and Europe was on its way to becoming a U.S. style-capitalist-mass-consumer society. Which it still is, kind of. Japan, although not technically part of the Marshall Plan, was also rebuilt. General Douglas MacArthur was basically the dictator there, forcing Japan to adopt a new constitution, giving women the vote, and pledging that Japan would foreswear war, in exchange for which the United States effectively became Japan’s defense force. This allowed Japan to spend its money on other things, like industry, which worked out really well for them. Meanwhile Germany was experiencing the first Berlin crisis. At the end of the war, Germany was divided into East and West, and even though the capital, Berlin, was entirely in the east, it was also divided into east and west. This meant that West Berlin was dependent on shipments of goods from West Germany through East Germany. And then, in 1948, Stalin cut off the roads to West Berlin. So, the Americans responded with an 11-month-long airlift of supplies that eventually led to Stalin lifting the blockade in 1948 and building the Berlin Wall, which stood until 1991, when Kool Aid Guy--no, wait, wait, wait, wait, that wasn’t when the Berlin Wall was built. That was in 1961. I just wanted to give Thought Bubble the opportunity to make that joke. Thanks, Thought Bubble. So right, the Wall wasn’t built until 1961, but 1949 did see Germany officially split into two nations, and also the Soviets detonated their first atomic bomb, and NATO was established, AND the Chinese Revolution ended in communist victory. So, by the end of 1950, the contours of the Cold War had been established, West versus East, Capitalist Freedom versus Communist totalitarianism. At least from where I’m sitting. Although now apparently I’m going to change where I’m sitting because it’s time for the Mystery Document. The rules here are simple. I guess the author of the Mystery Document and about 55% of the time I get shocked by the shock pen. “We must organize and enlist the energies and resources of the free world in a positive program for peace which will frustrate the Kremlin design for world domination by creating a situation in the free world to which the Kremlin will be compelled to adjust. Without such a cooperative effort, led by the United States, we will have to make gradual withdrawals under pressure until we discover one day that we have sacrificed positions of vital interest. It is imperative that this trend be reversed by a much more rapid and concerted build-up of the actual strength of both the United States and the other nations of the free world.” I mean all I can say about it is that it sounds American and, like, it was written in, like, 1951 and it seems kind of like a policy paper or something really boring so I...I mean... Yeah, I’m just going to have to take the shock. AH! National Security Council report NSC-68? Are you kidding me, Stan? Not-not 64? Or 81? 68? This is ridiculous! I call injustice. Anyway, as the apparently wildly famous NSC-68 shows, the U.S. government cast the Cold War as a rather epic struggle between freedom and tyranny, and that led to remarkable political consensus--both democrats and republicans supported most aspects of cold war policy, especially the military build-up part. Now, of course, there were some critics, like Walter Lippmann who worried that casting foreign policy in such stark ideological terms would result in the U.S. getting on the wrong side of many conflicts, especially as former colonies sought to remove the bonds of empire and become independent nations. But yeah, no, nothing like that ever happened. Yeah, I mean, it’s not like that happened in Iran or Nicaragua or Argentina or Brazil or Guatemala or Stan are you really going to make me list all of them? Fine. Or Haiti or Paraguay or the Philippines or Chile or Iraq or Indonesia or Zaire or, I’m sorry, THERE WERE A LOT OF THEM, OKAY? But these interventions were viewed as necessary to prevent the spread of communism, which was genuinely terrifying to people and it’s important to understand that. Like, national security agencies pushed Hollywood to produce anticommunist movies like “The Red Menace,” which scared people. And the CIA funded magazines, news broadcasts, concerts, art exhibitions, that gave examples of American freedom. It even supported painters like Jackson Pollack and the Museum of Modern Art in New York because American expressionism was the vanguard of artistic freedom and the exact opposite of Soviet socialist realism. I mean, have you seen Soviet paintings? Look at the hearty ankles on these socialist comrade peasants. Also because the Soviets were atheists, at least in theory, Congress in 1954 added the words “under God” to the pledge of allegiance as a sign of America’s resistance to communism. The Cold War also shaped domestic policy--anti-communist sentiment, for instance, prevented Truman from extending the social policies of the New Deal. The program that he dubbed the Fair Deal would have increased the minimum wage, extended national health insurance and increased public housing, Social Security and aid to education. But the American Medical Association lobbied against Truman’s plan for national health insurance by calling it “socialized” medicine, and Congress was in no mood to pay money for socialized anything. That problem goes away. But the government did make some domestic investments as a result of the Cold War--in the name of national security the government spent money on education, research in science, technology like computers, and transportation infrastructure. In fact we largely have the Cold War to thank for our marvelous interstate highway system, although part of the reason Congress approved it was to set up speedy evacuation routes in the event of nuclear war. And, speaking of nuclear war, it’s worth noting that a big part of the reason the Soviets were able to develop nuclear weapons so quickly was thanks to espionage, like for instance by physicist and spy Klaus Fuchs. I think I’m pronouncing that right. Fuchs worked on the Manhattan Project and leaked information to the Soviets and then later helped the Chinese to build their first bomb. Julius Rosenberg also gave atomic secrets to the Soviets, and was eventually executed--as was his less-clearly-guilty wife, Ethel. And it’s important to remember all that when thinking about the United States’s obsessive fear that there were communists in our midst. This began in 1947 with Truman’s Loyalty Review System, which required government employees to prove their patriotism when accused of disloyalty. How do you prove your loyalty? Rat out your co-workers as communists. No seriously though, that program never found any communists. This all culminated of course with the Red Scare and the rise of Wisconsin senator Joseph McCarthy, an inveterate liar who became enormously powerful after announcing in February 1950 that he had a list of 205 communists who worked in the state department In fact, he had no such thing, and McCarthy never identified a single disloyal American, but the fear of communism continued. In 1951’s Dennis v. United States, the Supreme Court upheld the notion that being a communist leader itself was a crime. In this climate of fear, any criticism of the government and its policies or the U.S. in general was seen as disloyalty. There was only one question--when will I be blown up--and it encouraged loyalty, because only the government could prevent the spread of communism and keep us from being blown up. We’ve talked a lot about different ways that Americans have imagined freedom this year, but this was a new definition of freedom--the government exists in part to keep us free from massive destruction. So, the Cold War changed America profoundly: The U.S. has remained a leader on the world stage and continued to build a large, powerful, and expensive national state. But it also changed the way we imagine what it means to be free, and what it means to be safe. Thanks for watching. I’ll see you next week. Crash Course is created by all of these nice people and it is possible because of you and your support through Subbable.com. Subbable is a crowdfunding website that allows you to support the stuff you love on a monthly basis. Our Subbable subscribers make this show possible. Thanks to them. If you value Crash Course, please check out our Subbable. There are great perks there. And thanks to all of you for watching. As we say in my hometown, don’t forget to be awesome...Wait, wait, wait Stan, is that music copyrighted? Alright. It’s not. Whew. That saved us a thousand dollars. ________________ [1] Foner. Give me Liberty ebook version p. 954 [2] ibid
Background and members
Forebears to the Wisconsin School include Charles A. Beard and his economically determined theories of American history that became widely read in the early 20th century before later becoming unpopular.[5] A more direct antecedent was the influence and intellectual mentoring of Wisconsin professor Fred Harvey Harrington, under whom Williams studied.[1][2]
In part the ideas of the Wisconsin School were due to the nature of the department itself. As American historian Emily S. Rosenberg has written, "While many other history departments across the country celebrated cold-war orthodoxies, exiling economic interpretations from respectability and removing Beard from reading lists, Wisconsin maintained an attachment to economic interpretation and to independent, unorthodox thinking."[1]
The immediate founder, and the most well-known exponent, of the Wisconsin School was William Appleman Williams and especially his 1959 book The Tragedy of American Diplomacy.[1][6] As British historian John A. Thompson has written, "this work may well have had a greater influence of the historiography of US foreign policy than any other."[6]
Williams was followed in visibility by several of his students, most notably Walter LaFeber,[3] but also Thomas J. McCormick and Lloyd Gardner.[7] Their work helped gain the "Wisconsin School of diplomatic history" a national reputation.[8] (After Williams left Wisconsin for Oregon State University in the late 1960s, McCormick replaced him on the faculty there.) Another scholar sometimes associated with the Wisconsin School is Carl Parrini.[9]
Of other people at Wisconsin, some have considered David F. Healey and Robert Freeman Smith to be at least partly a member of the school,[9] but they are distinct in not holding commercial factors to be the primary factors above all in explaining American policy.[2][10]
Students of Williams who carried forward his themes have included Edward P. Crapol, Howard Schonberger, Tom E. Terrill, and others.[10]
Characteristics
As always, any such school of thought ends up containing some different viewpoints, and it should not be assumed that everyone coming out of seminars led by Harrington or others at the department adopted the same approach. LaFeber himself made this point by referring to "a supposed 'Wisconsin School of Diplomatic History'" in a 1993 essay about Harrington and pointing to the variety of scholarly perspectives emerging from Wisconsin at the time.[11]
And before that, Williams had said in a 1978 essay that the Wisconsin seminars were not as tightly directed as some apparently thought, that no collection of thought came out of the department that was as clearly defined as, say, the Frankfurt School of social history, and that mention of the "Wisconsin School" brought about more "professional discussion (and gossip)" than warranted.[2] In particular, he pointed out that he, LaFeber, McCormick, and Gardner differed to the degree in which they saw a coherent "Open Doors worldview" being acted upon by American policymakers.[2] Furthermore, it is generally thought that LaFeber and McCormick were more subtle in their approach than Williams.[12]
The Wisconsin School has often been conflated with the New Left.[13] While members of each found themselves allied at times, the two were distinct: New Left critiques tended to be a good deal more radical both in analysis and in proposed solutions.[14] Wisconsin School members thought that it was possible for American decisionmakers to correct their overemphasis on markets and that doing so would make for a more effective American diplomacy.[3][15] In contrast, historians associated with the New Left, such as Gabriel Kolko, more often subscribed to Marxist interpretations and believed that there were fundamental structural causes, due to the needs of American capitalism, behind American foreign policy and that little could reverse that short of an outright remaking of the economic system.[14][15]
Moreover, Williams left the University of Wisconsin in the late 1960s in part because he disliked the militant direction that student protests were taking there.[1] Furthermore, Robert Freeman Smith – who has also sometimes been grouped in with the Wisconsin School[9] – has remarked that "if there is such a thing as the Wisconsin School of Diplomatic History it has to be an ecumenical school. There is not one party line because Fred [Harvey Harrington] had a number of different students, both liberal and conservative."[16] Harrington later voiced similar thoughts, saying that "the Wisconsin School of diplomatic history ought not to be just associated with the New Left."[17]
Following the end of the Vietnam War in the 1970s, and then again following the conclusion of the Cold War in the early 1990s, the Wisconsin School's work became less controversial.[18] Other historians adopted much of its scholarship and some of its conclusions, albeit in a more partial form.[18] As a biography of Williams has stated, "the Wisconsin School as a body of thought ... was renewed in virtually ceaseless diaspora of individuals and generations."[19]
References
- ^ a b c d e f g h Rosenberg, Emily S. (1994). "Economic interest and United States foreign policy". In Martel, Gordon (ed.). American Foreign Relations Reconsidered: 1890–1993. London: Routledge. pp. 43–45.
- ^ a b c d e Williams, William Appleman (1978). "Open Door Interpretation". In DeConde, Alexander (ed.). Encyclopedia of American Foreign Policy: Studies of the Principal Movements and Ideas. Vol. 2. Scribner. pp. 703ff. Also available as an online article at Encyclopedia of the New American Nation.
- ^ a b c Ninkovich, Frank (2006). "The United States and Imperialism". In Schulzinger, Robert (ed.). A Companion to American Foreign Relations. Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishing. pp. 79–102. At pp. 80–81.
- ^ Crapol, Edward (February 1987). "Some Reflections on the Historiography of the Cold War". The History Teacher. 20 (2): 251–262. doi:10.2307/493031. JSTOR 493031. At p. 261.
- ^ Morgan, James G. (2014). Into New Territory: American Historians and the Concept of American Imperialism. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. pp. 57–59.
- ^ a b Thompson, John A. (March 9, 1990). "Changing the outline of American historiography". The Guardian. London. p. 39 – via Newspapers.com.
- ^ Morgan, Into New Territory, p. 28.
- ^ Buhle, Paul; Rice-Maximin, Edward Francis (1995). William Appleman Williams: The Tragedy of Empire. New York: Routledge. pp. 116–117.
- ^ a b c Burr, William; Schneirov, Richard (April 2017). "Carl Parrini (1933–2016)". Perspectives on History. American Historical Association.
- ^ a b Perkins, Bradford (March 1984). "The Tragedy of American Diplomacy: Twenty-Five Years After". Reviews in American History. 12 (1): 1–18. doi:10.2307/2702548. JSTOR 2702548. At pp. 3–4.
- ^ LaFeber, Walter (1993). "Fred Harvey Harrington, Teacher and Friend: An Appreciation". In McCormick, Thomas J.; LaFeber, Walter (eds.). Behind the Throne: Servants of Power to Imperial Presidents, 1898–1968. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. pp. 3–20. At pp. 6–7.
- ^ Morgan, Into New Territory, p. 6.
- ^ For example, see Ambrose, Stephen E. (May–June 1994). "Capsule Review: Behind the Throne: Servants of Power to Imperial Presidents, 1898–1968". Foreign Affairs.
- ^ a b Morgan, Into New Territory, pp. 172–176.
- ^ a b Brands, H. W. (2006). "Ideas and Foreign Affairs". In Schulzinger, Robert (ed.). A Companion to American Foreign Relations. Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishing. pp. 1–14. At p. 7.
- ^ Brown, David S. (2009). Beyond the Frontier: The Midwestern Voice in American Historical Writing. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. p. 381n.
- ^ Brown, Beyond the Frontier, p. 234.
- ^ a b Rosenberg, "Economic interest and United States foreign policy", pp. 45–46.
- ^ Buhle and Rice-Maximin, William Appleman Williams, p. 197.
This page was last edited on 25 February 2023, at 23:18