George W. Bush tripled U.S. aid to Africa, directing much of it to the AIDS epidemic. Otherwise, the past eight years have been a foreign policy disaster. With most of the world eagerly awaiting Barack Obama and hoping for a fresh start, it's a good time to consider America's long and complicated relationship with the rest of the planet.
George C. Herring has long pondered America's global role as a University of Kentucky history professor and editor of Diplomatic History magazine. His magnum opus, From Colony to Superpower: U.S. Foreign Relations Since 1776 (Oxford University Press), begins with the machinations of the American emissaries in Versailles who courted French aid during the Revolution and winds down in the "costly politico-military quagmire" of Iraq. Some of the choices confronting Obama have been with us since the republic began. Washington, Adams and Jefferson faced rivals who played on fears of foreign nations for political gain. Xenophobia was evident against immigrants; diplomacy was measured against force; isolation and intervention, free trade and protectionism and spreading American ideals were balanced against the necessary preservation of the status quo.
The sweep and sympathy of From Colony to Superpower is impressive, as is Herring's determination to minimize partisanship through an even-handed marshaling of an army of facts. His central theme is that the cherished notion of America standing alone through most of its history, isolated by the oceans from the temptation of empire and foreign intrigue, is wrong. Thomas Jefferson was the first president who tried regime change in the Muslim world during the Barbary Wars. The United States seized much of North America through force of money and arms and kept most of South America in line with gunboats and Marines for more than a century.
Stay on top of the news of the day
Subscribe to our free, daily e-newsletter to get Milwaukee's latest local news, restaurants, music, arts and entertainment and events delivered right to your inbox every weekday, plus a bonus Week in Review email on Saturdays.
Still, there is no such thing as neutral or objective history and Herring finds himself weighing in. He dresses down Nike for exploiting cheap labor in "developing countries." He calls out the first President Bush for his "halting response" to the New World Order he so grandly proclaimed as the Cold War unthawed, but acknowledges that he took a "courageous stand" against Israeli settlements on the West Bank. Clinton "caved in" to corporations on human rights in China and "was even less surefooted" elsewhere, despite a few acknowledged successes.
As for the second President Bush, his "lack of preparation" in foreign affairs opened the door to Dick Cheney, whom Herring describes as "gloomy in outlook and countenance, conservative in politics, secretive almost to the point of being sinister." Despite Cheney's pessimism, the United States overlooked all omens of 9/11 and overestimated the ability of air power and small contingents to subdue Iraq and Afghanistan.
Herring rightly believes that the charge into Iraq was spurred not only by oil but by the Utopian conspiracies of the neo-conservatives who insisted on imposing democracy by force. The fog of 9/11 gave them their opportunity to target Iraq as the testing ground for their theory of historical progress. The resulting conflict proved to be a burial ground for political careers, countless lost lives and, perhaps, the nation-state occupying the land where history began.
