August 2006 Newsletter

The Sixth Edition of Major Problems in American Foreign Relations:
An Appreciation, a Critique, and Some Suggestions

Robert Shaffer, Shippensburg University

The latest revision of Major Problems in American Foreign Relations, published approximately five years after the last edition, brings students important and challenging primary sources from the makers and critics of U.S. foreign policy, along with well-chosen excerpts from secondary works of diverse perspectives that are focused around key events and themes in that history. Spanning almost four hundred years in two volumes, this collection, originally edited solely by Thomas Paterson and co-edited since the 1995 fourth edition by Dennis Merrill, is indispensable in teaching survey classes in the history of U.S. foreign relations.

Paterson, who is professor emeritus at the University of Connecticut and former president of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations, is the lead author of a popular narrative textbook in U.S. foreign relations, a co-author of a major survey textbook in U.S. history, and the editor of important collections of essays in diplomatic history.[1] He is also general editor of the "Major Problems in American History" series, which Houghton Mifflin took over from D.C. Heath, and which now includes over twenty titles. Merrill, of the University of Missouri-Kansas City, is a former student of Paterson's who has written on U.S. policy toward India and who supervised a major documentary editing project on the Truman administration.[2] Paterson's first edition of the present collection, itself an update of Heath's 1964 one-volume Major Problems in American Diplomatic History, edited by Daniel Smith, appeared in 1978. Paterson may have drawn some inspiration as well from a similar collection edited by William Appleman Williams, originally published in 1956, with a second edition in 1970.[3]

Each volume of Major Problems begins with an introductory chapter presenting a range of overviews of key themes in U.S. diplomatic history. In volume one these include, for example, extracts from Williams on U.S. economic expansionism and the problems arising from American efforts to remake the world. Williams’s account is contrasted with Norman Graebner's analysis of early American diplomacy as an effort to maximize U.S. interests in the world by utilizing "balance of power" politics in and with regard to Europe. Excerpts from works by Bradford Perkins, Mary Renda, and Andrew Rotter round out this chapter. Each subsequent chapter begins with an overview of the topic by the editors, including major questions of history and historiography. A set of primary source documents follows, representing a range of political viewpoints, with one or two from abroad. Finally, each chapter includes excerpts from two or three essays representing divergent perspectives. Generally, these essays draw from one or more of the documents included, so that students can evaluate the historiographical debates and see how historians use evidence. Many of the documents and essays illustrate or challenge the overview essays in the introductory chapters, thus encouraging students to be aware of themes that resonate throughout the history of U.S. foreign policy and to develop their own worldviews about this history.

The primary source documents illustrate not only actions, decisions, and perspectives on issues facing the United States, but also attitudes and assumptions about American society and its interactions with others. For example, the vitriolic attack on Jay's Treaty by a Democratic-Republican society in South Carolina in 1795 exemplifies the partisan passions of the 1790s and the fears of many Americans that the ascendant power of the national government and the secrecy surrounding Senate negotiation of the proposed treaty compromised the republicanism of the revolutionary era (vol. 1, 64-65).[4] These defenders of republicanism were also demanding free access to West Indian and European ports for American ships, however, so in their attack on the treaty students can see a colorful piece of evidence to support Williams, while Jay's Treaty itself might be used to support Graebner.

Similarly, comparing documents from different periods allows students to identify continuing themes of American thought. For example, in his 1812 war message James Madison declared that warfare by Indian "savages . . . a warfare which is known to spare neither age nor sex and to be distinguished by features peculiarly shocking to humanity" was outside the bounds of
civilization (vol. 1, 113). Sam Houston's 1835 call for the independence of Texas combined the fear of slave revolts with antipathy to irregular warfare (see vol. 1, 195). Students may also note the dichotomy between "civilization" and "savagery" in Andrew Jackson's call for the removal of the Cherokees (vol. 1, 165-67), in Theodore Roosevelt's justification of U.S. intervention in Latin American affairs (vol. 1, 404), and in the way current U.S. leaders have framed the issues in the "war on terror." The recurrence of such rhetoric can have a powerful impact on student thinking and helps build the case for the perspectives on U.S. foreign policy outlined in the introductory essays by Andrew Rotter (“Gender, Expansionism, and Imperialism”) and Mary Renda (“Paternalism and Imperial Culture”).

The foreign documents in the collection, especially those from Latin America, will stimulate students’ critical thinking and help them understand the challenges the United States faces in the realm of global public opinion.[5] In volume one, there are contrasting responses to the Monroe Doctrine from Colombia, and Argentina. José Marti's warning in 1895 about U.S. intentions towards Cuba helps explain statements U.S. leaders will make three years later and sheds light on the continuing conflict between these nations. Students might be asked to refer to these documents when they consider one of the newest documents in this edition, the speech by George W. Bush in which he asked, "Why do they hate us?"

Some documents from antagonists of the United States serve as counterpoints to American views. Some show surprising commonalities. Soviet Ambassador Nikolai Novikov's 1946 telegram to his government about American aggression after World War II is paired with George F. Kennan's 1946 telegram about Soviet expansionism. Ronald Reagan’s thoughts on his Strategic Defense Initiative are contrasted with those of Mikhail Gorbachev. Nikita Khrushchev’s view of the arms race of the 1950s is paired with a surprisingly similar statement from Dwight Eisenhower.

The presentation of clashing historiographical perspectives will help students evaluate issues that are still subject to debate, as policymakers use the past to make sense of the present. In the chapter on World War II in volume two Warren Kimball defends Franklin Roosevelt's diplomacy as essential to the successful prosecution of the war in Europe and portrays Roosevelt as attempting despite difficult circumstances and a lack of leverage to balance a range of interests for the post-war world. Meanwhile, Joseph Harper attributes the failure of the alliance to endure into the post-war world to FDR's refusal to fully commit the United States to stay involved in European affairs and to his rejection of Winston Churchill's warnings about the Soviets.[6] Among the documents used by both historians and included in this chapter are statements by FDR and Joseph Stalin on the "second front," Churchill's account of his "percentages deal" with Stalin, and extracts from the Yalta proceedings. Other chapters that are particularly useful for students evaluating still-vital issues are the Cuban missile crisis chapter, in which Paterson squares off against Robert Dallek, and the chapter on Theodore Roosevelt's "Big Stick" policy in the Caribbean, in which Mark Gilderhus and Emily Rosenberg offer criticisms while Richard Collin provides a defense.

This edition includes a number of improvements. A different selection by Peter Onuf and Leonard Sadosky about diplomacy in the revolutionary era exemplifies the internationalization of American history by showing how developments in the United States arose in conjunction with and response to similar developments elsewhere. An excellent excerpt from Joyce Appleby's new study of Thomas Jefferson replaces essays on the Louisiana Purchase by Alexander DeConde and Drew McCoy. Appleby shows Jefferson as a shrewd diplomat and a determined empire builder "for the white families of the United States" (vol. 1, 103). Garry Wills's hard-hitting critique of Madison's policy in the War of 1812 replaces Bradford Perkins's more leisurely analysis. Walter LaFeber's narrative of "the origins of the U.S.–Japanese clash," which replaces a fine but overly long essay by Kenneth Shewmaker on Daniel Webster's Asia diplomacy, emphasizes Japanese actions as much as American actions and thus exemplifies recent trends in our field.

An essay by Kristin Hoganson on the global roots of certain American consumption patterns in the late 1800s continues a trend in Major Problems to place more emphasis on culture and the manifestations of foreign relations in daily life. The essay is accompanied by an 1892 magazine article about the international origins of American interior design trends. Excerpts from Leila Rupp's Worlds of Women: The Making of an International Women's Movement (1997) show the editors’ continuing efforts to explore transnational identities and integrate non-state actors and women into the story of American foreign relations. Rupp's essay on the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom in the United States and Europe in the 1920s is accompanied by Jane Addams’s laudatory 1922 article on the League of Nations. These essays join Jane Hunter's now-classic exploration of American female Protestant missionaries in China.

Other new essays include Arnold Offner's excellent critique of Truman's Cold War policies, which provides a counterpoint to John Lewis Gaddis's determined defense of the United States in that conflict. The three essays in the chapter on the Vietnam War replace essays by George Herring and Gabriel Kolko and represent some of the best work of a new generation of scholars on that conflict. All three are critical of U.S. goals and methods in Vietnam. Robert Buzzanco provides a more sophisticated view than did Kolko of how Vietnam's struggle for independence challenged international capitalism, and he includes the economic consequences of the war on the U.S. and global economies. Frederick Logevall, in a long essay that may be too dry for undergraduates, shows how Johnson administration officials had some freedom of action on Vietnam but nevertheless "chose war." Supporting documents include memoranda and position papers from the U.S. foreign policy bureaucracy. Robert Brigham, an associate of Robert McNamara on Argument Without End (1999), uses North Vietnamese and Chinese sources to show convincingly that alternative military strategies, such as those proposed by military strategist Harry Summers, would not have led to U.S. victory. Mao Zedong’s advice to the North Vietnamese in 1965 to keep fighting supports Brigham’s contention that if the United States had invaded the North, China might have entered the war.

There is one new chapter in each volume of this edition. The chapter on the Civil War and foreign policy is welcome: the war is of great interest to students, and it is important to show them its international context. The first document of this chapter, South Carolina Senator James Hammond's 1858 speech, "Cotton is King," is an inspired choice. Hammond's argument that the North, Britain, and "the whole civilized world" (vol. 1, 263) were dependent upon the South economically mirrors the overly optimistic assertions during the American Revolution about the colonists' superior bargaining position with European powers. Other documents focus on Lincoln's efforts to prevent British recognition of and aid to the Confederacy. James McPherson and Howard Jones agree that public opinion in Britain played a role in that government's response to the Civil War, although they evaluate British conduct differently. It might have been helpful to include a document from one of the British mass meetings championing Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation or even from one of Karl Marx's wartime dispatches in the New York Tribune.

The second new chapter, "Cold War Culture and the 'Third World,'" broadens the postwar coverage both geographically and conceptually. In previous editions, discussion of the Third World was based either on high-level diplomacy (non-recognition of China, the Cuban missile crisis) or war (Korea, Vietnam). This chapter contains three essays, each accompanied by two or three documents, on discrete case studies. Mary Ann Heiss writes on the U.S. response to the nationalization of oil in Iran in the 1950s, Elizabeth Cobbs Hoffman discusses the Peace Corps in the 1960s in Ghana, and Dennis Merrill describes the building of an infrastructure for tourism in Puerto Rico. The editors summarize the analyses of the three historians as "culture clash" (Heiss), "cultural cooperation" (Ghana), and "cultural negotiation" (Merrill), and thus present to students a range of ways in which the United States interacted with the world.[7]

The chapter is worthwhile but unwieldy. The case studies and the concept of culture differ too much. Moreover, two of the documents included to illustrate the impact of tourism are not particularly successful. A cartoon from a pro-independence Puerto Rican newspaper criticizing the insensitivity of American tourists is poorly reproduced in the original Spanish (vol. 2, 339), with a partial, paraphrased translation eleven pages away (vol. 2, 328). The photograph of the Caribe Hilton Hotel in San Juan (vol. 2, 338), which is intended to show how tourism embodied "modernity," should be coupled with photos of old San Juan.

When I used the book in the fall of 2004, I linked Heiss's discussion of Iran with a book on the 1954 coup in Guatemala[8] to show that U.S. participation in the overthrow of elected leaders constituted a pattern. I used Cobbs Hoffman's positive portrait of the Kennedy administration's actions in West Africa as a counterpoint to the more ambiguous portrait by Thomas Borstelmann of the international dimensions of that administration's racial policies.[9] And I contrasted Merrill's nuanced picture of tourism in Puerto Rico with the more negative impact of 1950s U.S. tourism on Cuba and the "dependent independence" (in Stanley Karnow's words) of the Philippines.[10]

The changes in the sixth edition are not all positive. The editors missed the opportunity to make corrections.[11] The edition is more expensive than previous editions, even though it is significantly shorter (in part because of stronger editing or the substitution of more succinct essays for longer ones). There are only a handful of new documents, apart from the ones that illustrate new chapters, some documents have been eliminated, and some chapters have been pared from three essays to two. For example, the 1783 speech by Yale president Ezra Stiles incorporating the Protestant idea that America fulfilled a providential design is gone. It was a valuable link between John Winthrop's "City on a Hill" sermon of 1630 and John O'Sullivan's invocation of "manifest destiny" in 1839. It also served as a religious variant on Tom Paine's view of American promise in Common Sense and as background for the Christian discourse of the current president, and it contained prescient references to U.S. trade with Asia. Given the editors’ efforts to show how non-diplomats participated in foreign relations, this elimination is disappointing.

Other excised documents also leave gaps. The removal of a 1790s statement by James Madison leaves the Charleston Democratic-Republicans as the sole opponents of Jay's Treaty. Rev. Josiah Strong's 1891 statement melding the Protestant "chosen people" theme with Anglo-American racism helped outline the cultural context of the U.S. rise to world power. A 1916 debate between U.S. Secretary of State Robert Lansing and German Ambassador Johann-Heinrich Bernstorff on submarine warfare worked well to help students think about past and present innovations in warfare, such as aerial bombardment and even suicide bombing. Also helpful in class was the dialogue between presidential advisor Harry Hopkins and Joseph Stalin in May 1945 about Soviet actions in Eastern Europe. Senator William Borah's 1931 plea for diplomatic recognition of the Soviet Union, already eliminated from the fifth edition, highlighted the U.S. response to revolutions, illustrated an underappreciated aspect of so-called isolationists, and demonstrated that economic motives could underpin both opposition to and accommodation with foreign radicalism. A description of a 1957 nuclear test in which GI's were exposed to atomic radiation was also dropped after the fourth edition, although it provided a tangible look at the impact on Americans of Eisenhower's focus on nuclear over conventional warfare and provided a backdrop for discussion of the more recent use of Agent Orange and depleted uranium.

Most puzzling is the elimination of two documents that constituted important evidence for the chapters they accompanied. Missing from the chapter on the Cuban missile crisis is the Cuban government's October 8, 1962 protest at the United Nations against U.S. aggression, which provided a crucial perspective on the crisis. The chapter on the Vietnam War no longer includes Eisenhower's 1954 statement about Vietnam's importance to the free world, in which he enunciated the domino theory and spoke about the region’s economic importance, with its tin, tungsten, and rubber. While this chapter now focuses on Johnson's decision-making, Eisenhower's statement provided perspective on the U.S. commitment and correlates directly with Buzzanco's argument.

Why eliminate documents? They are already typeset, and most are in the public domain, so the cost of keeping them is marginal. They do not make students’ workloads more difficult, as overly long essays might do. But the elimination of documents does add to professors’ workloads, since they must either revise lessons or provide documents on library reserve. The editors might have been justified in cutting documents to provide new sources and perspectives, but not solely to reduce total pages.

While many of the essay substitutions are helpful in including new perspectives or presenting important views more clearly, others are less successful. The elimination of Reginald Stuart's sympathetic account of Madison's policy in the War of 1812 as one of "defensive expansionism" leaves that chapter with two essays, both critical of the United States. Stuart provides a useful counterpoint to Williams and other critics of U.S. expansionism writing on other episodes in U.S. history, from the Mexican War to the annexation of the Philippines and beyond. His account also has contemporary reverberations, since Bush's argument for war in Iraq resembles "defensive expansionism." Also unfortunate is the elimination from the introductory chapter of volume one of Michael Hunt's essay on racism as a continuing theme in U.S. foreign relations in favor of an excerpt on paternalism and imperial culture from Mary Renda's book on the U.S. occupation of Haiti. The clarity, accessibility, and breadth of Hunt's explanation of racial dynamics in foreign relations make it more appropriate as an overview to which students can return as they consider other documents and essays.

The elimination after the fourth edition of C. Vann Woodward’s sympathetic overview of U.S. foreign relations also leaves a gap for teachers. Woodward identified the important theme of "free security," meaning that the United States had a relatively free hand in national development for much of its history because of its distance from Europe. That idea strongly influenced policymakers and historians, as they tended to conflate foreign relations with interaction with Europe. Also, while few historians today would present with so little critical analysis what Woodward called the "national myth that America is an innocent nation in a wicked world," many of our leaders and our students do. In order to help students analyze the platitudes they have heard from politicians or accepted without challenge in high school, we must present and discuss such views, as well as contrast them with contrary perspectives from Williams, Hunt, and others. Similarly, a judiciously edited version of Samuel Flagg Bemis's stridently ideological Kennedy-era AHA presidential address,[12] which students should take seriously and evaluate critically against the work of Williams, Hunt, and Graebner, would be a welcome addition to this collection.

Publishers would undoubtedly argue that adding new chapters requires eliminating others, but including an additional chapter in volume one (while keeping the World War I chapter in both volumes for teachers who divide their two-semester courses differently) would have been preferable. As it is, what had been two separate chapters on the turn-of-the-century wars in Cuba and the Philippines is now one, with all the essays focused on Cuba and only two documents on the Philippines. While survey textbooks and lectures could supplement the material on the Philippines, much is lost here. The three contrasting essays on the Philippines raised important themes barely addressed elsewhere. In particular, Stanley Karnow's essay on the intentions behind and consequences of U.S. intervention in the Philippines concretely illustrated William A. Williams's ideas. Robert Rydell's dissection of the cultural and racial politics of the display of Philippine ethnic groups at the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair was both a stunning example of how racism was dressed up as benevolence and a reminder of how Americans used the memory of the Louisiana Purchase in the construction of an overseas empire. In an era when Americans are debating the unorthodox treatment of wartime prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, and in Afghanistan, documents describing the torture of Filipinos one hundred years ago are essential reading for students, along with Glenn May's reexamination of the reasons for the high mortality rate of Philippine civilians during the war.[13]

To make room for the new chapter on culture and the Cold War in volume two, the editors combined the chapter on U.S. resistance to recognition of the People's Republic of China with that on the Korean War. But six of the eight documents in the new chapter, and two of the three essays, are on Korea. For a reader on diplomatic rather than military history, a focus on China would have been preferable, with added material on the impact of non-recognition on later events, including the Korean War. The communication in the late 1940s between U.S. diplomats in China, the State Department, and President Truman, along with documents from China, provided an excellent case study of foreign policy decision-making and enabled students to evaluate the evidence in the historiographic debate about the "lost chance" thesis. Also, the case study showed students how the United States responds to the emergence of revolutionary regimes abroad, a theme which is touched on in other chapters but is not the focus of any particular chapter. Moreover, the question of non-recognition of the People’s Republic of China illuminates the connection between White House policy-making, domestic political pressures, and non-governmental interest groups. The editors say they want to highlight that connection, but it is not present in the new Korean War chapter. Material on the decision not to recognize the PRC is also indispensable to an analysis of the foreign policy of Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger in the 1970s, which is, appropriately, the subject of a later chapter. One last complaint about this chapter: most of the documents do not illustrate the essays. There are no documents to accompany Bruce Cumings's important but here quite isolated analysis of "Korea's civil war and the roots of U.S. intervention," and there is no essay focused on the largest number of documents in the chapter, which illustrate U.S. military policy on the peninsula.

While many of the changes in the sixth edition have been positive, the editors missed the opportunity to broaden coverage of several issues. They added Renda's analysis of American "imperialist culture" in Haiti in the early twentieth century, but there is virtually no mention of the importance of the Haitian revolution of the 1790s or Haitian independence for U.S. foreign policy. Jefferson's horror at events in Haiti, in particular, demonstrates the complex interconnections among race, slavery, economics, foreign and domestic policy, and typifies U.S. reactions to revolution. Historian Thomas Bender addressed this subject in an essay in the New York Times in 2001, while David Brion Davis, Winthrop Jordan, Tim Matthewson, and Donald Hickey, among others, have written on the issue in scholarly books and essays.[14] Primary sources are available from Abraham Bishop and Theodore Dwight, who urged support for the Haitian rebels, and from Jefferson and South Carolina Governor Charles Pinckney, who feared that the Haitian slave revolt would lead to similar uprisings in the United States.[15] Over one hundred years ago, W.E.B. DuBois wrote that "the role which the great Negro Toussaint, called L'Ouverture, played in the history of the United States has seldom been fully appreciated."[16] It is high time diplomatic historians recognized that role. Similarly, the importance of Haiti to the abolitionist movement, which Edward Crapol has written about,[17] is worth a document in the Civil War chapter, either on unsuccessful antebellum efforts to gain diplomatic recognition or on Lincoln's granting of recognition during the war.

Other documents might also be added. The Ostend Manifesto, which showed how intertwined were sectionalism, slavery, foreign expansionism, and the coming of the Civil War, deserves space. In the chapter on open door diplomacy in China, Merrill and Paterson might borrow a page from the older reader by Williams and include material on reactions in China and Japan to the efforts to close American doors to immigration.[18] The Spanish-American-Cuban-Filipino War lends itself to illustration by political cartoons from a variety of viewpoints.[19] Finally, in addition to the material on Theodore Roosevelt and the Caribbean there should be documents on Wilson's intervention in the region. The 1920 report by African-American diplomat and writer James Weldon Johnson on the U.S. occupation of Haiti, which emphasizes the racism of American troops, would be useful.[20]

That report might also prove relevant in a reconceptualized chapter on Wilson and World War I that scrutinizes Wilsonian internationalism from a truly global perspective. Paul Gordon Lauren's devastating critique[21] of Wilson's dismissal of Japan's plea for an endorsement of the principle of racial equality would complement Tony Smith’s defense of Wilson and Jan Wilhelm Schulte-Nordholt’s critique, which are included in the chapter, as would material from Elizabeth McKillen on the reservations that many Irish-Americans had about the League of Nations.[22] Williams's 1970 reader had framed a chapter on Wilson and the League of Nations around the theme of "Making Peace in the Midst of Revolutions," thus including Russia, China, and Mexico as well.[23]

Merrill and Paterson might respond that this edition deals with race and diplomacy through Gerald Horne's essay in the first chapter of volume two, which surveys the relationship of African Americans to U.S. foreign policy in the twentieth century. But Horne's essay, while useful, will only be meaningful to students if it is reinforced with supporting documents. The two most important African-Americans whose works must be represented are DuBois, whose work is relevant to many chapters in both volumes, and Martin Luther King, Jr., whose April 1967 declaration of opposition to the war in Vietnam is among the most cogent expressions of the antiwar movement.[24]

The chapter on the origins of the Cold War could also benefit from a more global perspective. As presented, the conflict appears to derive almost entirely from disputes over Europe. Many contemporaries saw U.S.–Soviet conflict as deriving from clashes around the world, from China to Indonesia to the Middle East. While some of these areas are addressed in later chapters, the fact that they are later chapters signals students that they are somehow subsidiary to actions in Europe. Two primary sources on Indonesia would be good additions, because they appeal to a long-range historical perspective. In late 1945, the editors of the Christian Century described how British troops with American lend-lease equipment were "taking a leading part in refastening the shackles of imperialism on a major portion of the southwest Pacific." The Indonesians, seeing the United States side with European imperialism, appealed to the Soviet Union for aid. "Think that over,” the editors wrote. “It may have a lot of future history tied up in it."[25] In 1946 Raymond Kennedy, perhaps the leading American expert on Indonesia, analyzed how economic interests, racism, Navy expansionism, anti-communism, and the State Department's bureaucracy contributed to American aloofness from Indonesia's struggle for independence. He addressed precisely the strands of U.S. foreign policy Merrill and Paterson ask their readers to consider.[26]

The reworked chapter on the approach of war in the 1930s might include the Spanish Civil War, which pitted the American left against the Catholic faithful and severely tested U.S. diplomacy. Students would understand FDR's cautious internationalism better if they read an isolationist statement, perhaps by Charles Lindbergh. Bruce Russett's revisionist argument against U.S. entry into World War II is once again in the collection. Since he argued that joining the war fostered a belief among American policymakers and the public that the United States would henceforth intervene around the world at will, perhaps the classic statement of this perspective, Henry Luce's "The American Century," should be included.[27]

At least one chapter demands complete rethinking. The chapter on Reagan, Gorbachev, and the end of the Cold War appeared in the fourth edition with documents narrowly focused on negotiations over nuclear weapons and the Strategic Defense Initiative and essays reflecting a range of viewpoints about why the Cold War ended as it did. It now has fewer documents and two fewer essays on Reagan and the Soviets, but two new documents and one new essay on the appeal and pitfalls of unilateralism for the United States and U.S. power in the post-Cold War era. The editors presumably believe that the new readings relate to the chapter's theme in that they show that the end of the Cold War meant neither the end of history nor a free hand in the world for the sole remaining superpower. However, I suspect that most professors would rather use the chapter to analyze the successes and costs of Reagan's foreign policy. The two essays that formerly balanced John Lewis Gaddis's pro-Reagan triumphalism—Michael MccGwire on the sources of change within the Soviet Union and Daniel Deudney and G. John Ikenberry on how "engagement and anti-nuclearism" rather than military brinksmanship ended the Cold War—are gone. Paterson's own essay explaining the long-term decline of superpower influence on both sides is useful, though now very dated. In most of the chapters that Merrill and Paterson designed, a student could evaluate a clear historiographical disagreement by reflecting on the documents. That is not possible here.

The passage of time also forces us to reconsider the Reagan administration's policies in relation to central Asia, Central America, and the Iran-Iraq war. In light of 9/11, it is not possible to evaluate Reagan without addressing U.S. support for the Islamist "freedom-fighters"/"terrorists" in Afghanistan. Nor is it possible to evaluate the means by which the United States battled communism in Europe without also evaluating the allies Reagan embraced in Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Guatemala. Moreover, there should be some mention of the social movements of the 1980s that pushed for a nuclear freeze and an end to Reagan's constructive engagement with apartheid South Africa.[28] Finally, with so much focus on the Strategic Defense Initiative there should be a document from the present on the progress (or lack thereof) of this alleged technological breakthrough.

The final chapter on 9/11, Bush's policy toward terrorism and Iraq, and U.S. relations with the Arab/Muslim world has a clear unity and enables students to evaluate divergent scholarly perspectives. The chapter represents a major revision of the original fourth-edition essay on the United States and the Arab-Israeli conflict. It is now framed around two essays debating the causes of Muslim hostility to the United States. Bernard Lewis argues his familiar clash of civilization thesis, focusing on Islam's antipathy toward Western modernity, while Ussama Makdisi maintains that U.S. policy since the 1940s has created anti-Americanism where little had previously existed. A third essay addresses globalization from a perspective different from Lewis's. The documents, which range from correspondence between FDR and the Saudi king in 1945 to George W. Bush's war message in March 2003, are appropriate, although Jimmy Carter's 1977 paean to the Shah of Iran and material on Reagan's behind-the-scenes role in the Iran-Iraq war might also be included.

The latest essay or document included in this chapter is from September 2003, even though the copyright date for the edition is 2005. It was abundantly clear by the beginning of 2004 that the crux of Bush's argument for the invasion of Iraq—that there was "no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised" (vol. 2, 555)—was incorrect. Surely a newspaper report or statement from a United Nations inspector would have provided balance to Bush's assertions. Moreover, it was clear by mid-2003 that Bush not only led the United States into a war with Iraq and the radical Islamist world, but that his doctrine of preemptive war put the country at odds with many of its traditional allies and with global public opinion. The push for early publication of the new edition, which appeared in time for use in the fall 2004 semester, resulted in a collection that misses a major aspect of what diplomatic historians and their students will be discussing for years about Bush's war in Iraq. At the very least, the edition should have included a diplomatic historian’s preliminary evaluation of preemptive war or of the intelligence problems in Bush's decision-making process.

Textbook publishers seem to be encouraging frequent updating of editions not simply to take account of the latest scholarship or events, but to combat the increasingly sophisticated used-book marketplace. They have an interest in issuing versions that are different enough so that previous editions are difficult to use in class, but not so different that they would take too much time and effort by the editors to produce.[29] Given the rapidly rising cost of textbooks, professional organizations such as SHAFR should address this issue with publishers.

There have been improvements, to be sure, in the format as well as the content of recent editions of Major Problems. The numbering of documents in each chapter makes the book easier to use in class and homework assignments. The more consistent inclusion of bibliographic information for primary source documents has been helpful, and chapter introductions are more comprehensive. Major Problems has come a long way from its earliest incarnations, when there were often only two or three primary sources per chapter, far fewer foreign documentary sources, and almost no attention to the cultural aspects of foreign relations. Merrill and Paterson continue to improve the collection so that it is more representative of a range of viewpoints, addresses more of the issues considered by historians, and is better adapted for classroom use as an accompaniment to lectures, as the basis for discussions, and as the source material for writing assignments. I hope that the editors, as well as other professors who assign this collection, will consider this critique to be a contribution toward more reflective classroom use of these volumes and toward further improvements in the future.

Endnotes

[1] See, among others: Thomas Paterson et al., American Foreign Relations: A History, 2 volumes (Boston, 2005), sixth edition; Mary Beth Norton et al., A People and a Nation: A History of the United States, 7th edition (Boston, 2005); Thomas Paterson, ed., Kennedy's Quest for Victory: American Foreign Policy, 1961-1963 (New York, 1989).

[2] Dennis Merrill, Bread and the Ballot: The United States and India's Economic Development, 1947-1963 (Chapel Hill, 1990); Dennis Merrill, ed., A Documentary History of the Truman Presidency, 35 volumes (Bethesda, MD, 1995-2002).

[3] William Appleman Williams, ed., The Shaping of American Diplomacy, 2 volumes (Chicago, 1956 [1st edition] and 1970 [2d edition]).

[4] References to specific pages of the current edition of Major Problems will be in the text, as here; other references will be in endnotes.

[5] For a recent AP dispatch that exemplifies such challenges, see: "Below That in China," Harrisburg Patriot-News, 24 June 2005, A5.

[6] Harper’s argument is much more sophisticated than George W. Bush’s recent comments on Yalta. For representative coverage in my local newspapers of Bush’s attacks on FDR’s actions at Yalta see “President Critical of FDR’s WWII Decision,” Carlisle (PA) Sentinel, 8 May 2005, A1, and “That Was Then: Second-Guessing Yalta Belittles Sacrifices of Earlier Generations,” Harrisburg Patriot-News, 8 May 2005, A6.

[7] For Heiss, "culture" refers to the coded language that U.S. diplomats, acting from arrogance and ignorance, used to characterize Iranian Prime Minister Mossadeq, whom they called unmanly and mentally unstable. One might point out to students that such characterizations of foreign leaders continue: in the 1990s the CIA referred to Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide as a "psychopath." See Steven Holmes, "Administration is Fighting Itself on Haiti Policy," New York Times, 23 October 1993, A1.

[8] Nick Cullather, Secret History: The CIA's Classified Account of its Operations in Guatemala, 1952-1954 (Stanford, 1999).

[9] Thomas Borstelmann, "'Hedging Our Bets and Buying Time': John Kennedy and Racial Revolutions in the American South and Southern Africa," Diplomatic History 24 (Summer 2000): 435-63.

[10] Stanley Karnow, In Our Image: America's Empire in the Philippines (New York, 1989), chap. 6, "Dependent Independence." If I were redesigning this chapter, I would include material on the impact of U.S. military bases abroad and the non-military interactions between U.S. soldiers and sailors and their hosts as further examples of ways that non-diplomats engage in "foreign relations." See Katharine H.S. Moon, Sex Among Allies: Military Prostitution in U.S.–Korea Relations (New York, 1997); Cynthia Enloe, Bananas, Beaches and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics (Berkeley, 1990).

[11] Among the minor details here is the continued characterization of the Louisiana Purchase as comprising 828,000 acres rather than square miles (vol. 1, 80).

[12] Samuel Flagg Bemis, "American Foreign Policy and the Blessings of Liberty," American Historical Review 67 (January 1962): 291-305.

[13] When teaching the war in the Philippines I also use the brilliant comparison of U.S. policy toward the Philippines with earlier policy toward American Indians in Walter Williams, "United States Indian Policy and the Debate Over Philippine Annexation," Journal of American History 66 (March 1980): 810-31.

[14] Thomas Bender, "Founding Fathers Dreamed of Uprisings, Except in Haiti," New York Times, 1 July 2001, IV-6; David Brion Davis, Revolutions: Reflections on American Equality and Foreign Liberations (Cambridge, MA, 1990), esp. chap. 2; Winthrop Jordan, White Over Black: American Attitudes Toward the Negro, 1550-1812 (Chapel Hill, 1968), esp. 375-99; Tim Matthewson, "George Washington's Policy Toward the Haitian Revolution," Diplomatic History 3 (Summer 1979): 321-36; Donald Hickey, "America's Response to the Slave Revolt in Haiti, 1791-1806," Journal of the Early Republic 2 (Winter 1982): 361-79.

[15] For primary sources by Bishop, see Matthewson, "Abraham Bishop, 'The Rights of Black Men,' and the American Reaction to the Haitian Revolution," Journal of Negro History 67 (Summer 1982): 148-53; for Dwight, see Davis, Revolutions, 51-52 and 111, n.52; on Jefferson, see especially Matthewson, "Jefferson and Haiti," Journal of Southern History 61 (May 1995): 209-48; on Pinckney, see Sylvia Frey, Water from the Rock: Black Resistance in a Revolutionary Age (Princeton, 1991), 232-33.

[16] W.E.B. DuBois, The Suppression of the African Slave-Trade to the United States of America, 1638-1870 (Boston, 1896. Reprint. Mineola, NY, 1970), 70, and see 70-93 more generally.

[17] Edward Crapol, "The Foreign Policy of Antislavery, 1833-1846," in Redefining the Past: Essays in Diplomatic History in Honor of William Appleman Williams, Lloyd Gardner, ed. (Corvallis. OR, 1986), 85-103.

[18] Williams, The Shaping of American Diplomacy, 2nd ed., 1:427-28 (on the 1905 Chinese boycott of U.S. goods) and 432-34 (on the "Gentleman's Agreement" of 1907).

[19] Luis Martinez Fernandez, "The Birth of the American Empire as Seen Through Political Cartoons (1896-1905)," OAH Magazine of History 12 (Spring 1998): 48-54; Kristin Hoganson, Fighting for American Manhood: How Gender Politics Provoked the Spanish-American and Philippine-American Wars (New Haven, 1998); Abe Ignacio et al., The Forbidden Book: The Philippine-American War in Political Cartoons (San Francisco, 2004).

[20] James Weldon Johnson, "Self-Determining Haiti," The Nation 111 (28 August 1920 and 4 September 1920): 236-37, 266-67, excerpts reprinted in Eyewitness: The Negro in American History, William L. Katz, ed. (New York, 1967), 391-92. A current essay by Haitian-American author Edwidge Danticat, written for a popular audience, appeared in the Miami Herald on 25 July 2005, and is at <http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0725-20.htm> (accessed 29 July 2005).

[21] Paul Gordon Lauren, Power and Prejudice: The Politics and Diplomacy of Racial Discrimination (Boulder, CO, 1988), 76-101.

[22] Elizabeth McKillen, Chicago Labor and the Quest for a Democratic Diplomacy, 1914-1924 (Ithaca, NY, 1995), especially chap. 5.

[23] Williams, The Shaping of American Diplomacy, 2d ed., vol. 2, chap. 2.

[24] Martin Luther King, Jr., "Declaration of Independence from the War in Vietnam," Ramparts (May 1967): 33-37, reprinted in Vietnam and America: A Documented History, Marvin Gettleman et al., eds. (New York, 1985), 306-14; on the web at <http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0115-13.htm> (accessed 30 July 2005).

[25] "The Brave New World Reaches Java" (editorial), Christian Century 62 (21 November 1945): 1276.

[26] Raymond Kennedy, "The Test in Indonesia," Asia and the Americas 46 (August 1946): 341-45.

[27] Henry Luce, "The American Century," Life (17 Feb. 1941), reprinted in Diplomatic History 23 (Spring 1999): 159-71, followed by essays by prominent diplomatic historians addressing its themes.

[28] See, e.g., John Tirman, "How We Ended the Cold War," The Nation (1 November 1999), already the right length for an anthology, and David Cortright, Peace Works: The Citizen's Role in Ending the Cold War (Boulder, CO, 1993).

[29] The inclusion of new materials in the suggested readings of each chapter could be more systematic. Among important recent books on the Nixon/Kissinger years not noted in the relevant chapter are Piero Gleijeses, Conflicting Missions: Havana, Washington, and Africa, 1959-1976 (Chapel Hill, 2002), and Peter Kornbluh, The Pinochet File: A Declassified Dossier on Atrocity and Accountability (New York, 2003). The chapter on Wilson has no references to studies by Lauren and McKillen, cited above.