Volume 42, Number 2, September 2011 assp rt PThe Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations Review SHAFR in the World

Inside... The Long Crisis in U.S. Diplomatic History A Roundtable Discussion on Michaela Hoenicke-Moore’s Know Your Enemy SHAFR Looks at the Arab Spring ...and much more! Passport The Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations Review

Editorial Office: Mershon Center for International Security Studies 1501 Neil Avenue Columbus OH 43201 [email protected] 614-292-1681 (phone) 614-292-2407 (fax)

Executive Director Peter L. Hahn, The Ohio State University

Editor Mitchell Lerner, The Ohio State University-Newark

Production Editor Julie Rojewski, Michigan State University

Editorial Assistant David Hadley, The Ohio State University

Editorial Advisory Board and Terms of Appointment Elizabeth Kelly Gray, Towson University (2009-2011) Robert Brigham, Vassar College (2010-2012) George White, Jr., York College/CUNY (2011-2013)

Passport is published three times per year (April, September, January), by the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations, and is distributed to all members of the Society. Submissions should be sent to the attention of the editor, and are acceptable in all formats, although electronic copy by email to [email protected] is preferred. Submis- sions should follow the guidelines articulated in the Chicago Manual of Style. Manuscripts accepted for publication will be edited to conform to Passport style, space limitations, and other requirements. The author is responsible for accuracy and for obtaining all permissions necessary for publication. Manuscripts will not be returned. Interested advertisers can find relevant information on the web at: http://www.shafr.org/newsletter/passportrates.htm, or can contact the editor. The opinions expressed in Passport do not necessarily reflect the opinions of SHAFR or of The Ohio State University.

The editors of Passport wish to acknowledge the generous support of The Ohio State University, The Ohio State University—Newark, and the Mershon Center for International Security Studies.

© 2011 SHAFR

Page 2 Passport September 2011 Passport The Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations Review

Volume 42, Number 2, September 2011

In This Issue

4 SHAFR in the World Matthew Connelley, Robert J. McMahon, Katherine A.S. Sibley, Thomas Borstelmann, Nathan Citino, and Kristin Hoganson

17 SHAFR Looks at the Arab Spring James Goode, Weldon C. Matthews, Clea Bunch, and Paul Thomas Chamberlin

26 A Roundtable Discussion of Michaela Hoenicke-Moore’s Know Your Enemy: The American Debate on Nazism, 1933-1945 Gunter Bischof, Lloyd Ambrosius, Cora Sol Goldstein, Brian Etheridge, and Michaela Hoenicke-Moore

38 The Attack on Higher Education John T. McNay

42 Debating the Anglo-Celtic Divide Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones and Thomas A. Breslin

45 Bad Policies: Nigerians’ Perceptions of the United States S.U. Fwatshak

50 Kennedy Library Launches Digital Archives Erica Boudreau

52 The 2010 Report of the Advisory Committee on Historical Diplomatic Documentation

54 The Diplomatic Pouch

66 In Memoriam: Lawrence E. Gelfand (1926-2011)

67 The Last Word Mitchell Lerner

Passport September 2011 Page 3 SHAFR in the World

Matthew Connelly, Robert J. McMahon, Katherine A.S. Sibley, Thomas Borstelmann, Nathan Citino, and Kristin Hoganson

Editor’s Note: Matthew Connelly’s were opting not to replace retiring The problem begins with defining piece, “SHAFR in the World,” was diplomatic historians. And when foreign relations as a small and originally delivered at the 2010 OAH there were important initiatives to shrinking sub-field of U.S. history. Conference in Washington, D.C. as internationalize U.S. history, such That definition never made sense part of a plenary session, “The United as those featured in the 1992 Journal intellectually (who were we relating of American History to, States and the World.” It appears here and at the 1997 after all, if not the rest of the La Pietra conference, diplomatic world?) and certainly not politically, in a slightly altered form. Dr. Connelly historians were not in the lead. In if we cared about recruiting graduate was the only panelist contacted by fact, aside from a few standouts students and communicating our Passport who agreed to participate in like Akira Iriye, they were largely research to colleagues. Why, after all, this roundtable. absent—absent from the pages of the would anyone want to join a group JAH and the AHR and absent from that insisted it was a persecuted SHAFR in the World national conference programs, to minority? the point that diplomatic historians To say that U.S. diplomatic Matthew Connelly began to organize protests and historians see themselves as a complain to the media. persecuted minority might seem I well remember one story that like an exaggeration. But consider hen I started graduate school eventually appeared in the Chronicle the results of a poll conducted by almost twenty years ago, it of Higher Education. I heard about H-Diplo in the period preceding the would have been hard to it because the reporter contacted 2009 annual conference. Diplomatic Wimagine that a plenary session on the chairman of my department historians were asked whether “The United States in the World” at the University of Michigan to SHAFR should change its name to could fill a ballroom at the annual ask why they had decided not reflect the fact that an increasing Organization of American Historians to hire a diplomatic historian. I number of its members work in conference. So many scholars are had to explain that the demise of transnational history. They rejected now pursuing international and diplomatic history in Ann Arbor had the idea by more than three to one, transnational approaches to the been greatly exaggerated, though I with one respondent explaining that, history of the United States that could not explain to my chair why if the NAACP kept its name, why the subject has actually become senior historians in the field did not shouldn’t SHAFR? fashionable. But for people like consider me one of their own. It is a curious comparison. me, training to become diplomatic Some diplomatic historians SHAFR’s membership is historians in the 1990s, working insisted that they were uniquely overwhelmingly white and male, outside the conventional frame concerned with power. I think that after all. The organization does of national history was not just a what they really meant was that not keep figures on minority choice. It seemed like the only way to they were the only ones who cared membership, but fewer than twenty survive. about presidential decision-making percent are women. When I asked The long crisis in U.S. diplomatic in war and diplomacy. They had a one former SHAFR president history began decades earlier, when point—one I have often repeated whether the lack of women and leading scholars called for a more to colleagues at Michigan and later minorities is a problem, he pointed international approach to the study at Columbia. After all, how many out that scholars of African- of American foreign relations. wars will this country have to American history are mainly African- There were compelling intellectual wage before some of our biggest American—as if SHAFR was a society arguments: Christopher Thorne, departments recognize that military for the history of white American Charles Maier, and Sally Marks and diplomatic history are worthy of men, not all of those concerned with pointed out that it was impossible attention? the history of the United States in the to understand the impact the United But it is not true that other fields world. States had in the world without of history ignore power. They study Many people are working within doing research abroad. They also the power of patriarchy, the power SHAFR to promote a more inclusive called for giving greater attention of racism, and all the relations of vision. They are not just trying to to “structures,” i.e., the underlying power that are enshrined in law and change the name; they are trying factors that can shape inter-state enforced in courts, expressed through to promote women to leadership relations. new technologies, manifested in the positions and offer students But these arguments were largely management of land and resources, financial support to encourage a ignored, as many U.S. diplomatic and so on. I would argue that more diverse membership. And historians continued to study U.S. identifying our field as uniquely SHAFR conferences and the pages foreign relations using only official concerned with power but powerless of Diplomatic History are featuring U.S. archives. When I went on the to influence our profession is not truly exciting and innovative multi- job market, leading departments only mistaken, it is self-defeating. archival international research on Page 4 Passport September 2011 many subjects besides war and would actually lead to compelling public health and epidemic disease, diplomacy. new work, work that would connect international sport and tourism, But to bring about fundamental different parts of the world while communications networks, change, we need to do more. As still attending to the context and multinational corporations, and long as U.S. diplomatic historians particularity of each place. But over consumer culture can connect global define themselves as a sub-field the last decade, historians have begun processes to local and even intimate of U.S. history, they will face the to meet this challenge: consider, for experiences, such as how we shop, thankless task of persuading other example, Margaret MacMillan on count calories, and use contraception. Americanists that foreign policy the diplomacy of Versailles, Erez These are not all new subjects, but is no less important than newer Manela on the international impact of this new generation brings to bear subjects that seem fresh and exciting, Wilson’s call for self-determination, multi-archival international research such as gender and sexuality, the Barbara Keys on national rivalries as well as a larger vision of how their environment and material culture, or and international sport, Jeremi Suri work can add up to a new history science and technology. Why should on the global 1968 and the diplomacy of the world. Challenges to state we expect them to cede space in of détente, Piero Gleijeses on Castro’s sovereignty, the changing significance conference programs and journals support for revolution in Africa, Arne of territory, the growing salience or give up faculty lines or share Westad’s study of the superpowers of biopolitics, and the increasing Ph.D. fellowships? “It is difficult,” and proxy wars, and Mary Sarotte’s density of cross-border transactions as Upton Sinclair once observed, “to account of the reunification of have come to define a deeper get a man to understand something, Germany. understanding of the recent past. This when his salary depends upon his not In my own work I have been new history does not make artificial understanding it.” gradually shifting from international distinctions between internal and Rather than continue to see to transnational history. It started external affairs, and it is not limited diplomatic history as a subfield with a study of how the Algerian to the level of inter-state relations. of U.S. history or any national National Liberation Front gained Students of international and history, I think we need to recognize independence by isolating France transnational history are proving that that diplomatic history is instead from its allies and winning it is not just a fad. We are beginning a subfield of the larger and still international recognition. My last to see a body of work that shows expanding fields of international book was a global history of the not just promise or potential but real and transnational history. It is population control movement. And accomplishments. international in the sense that, even I am now embarking on a history Along with the success of when working on U.S. foreign of forecasting, projections, and international and transnational relations, historians will work future scenarios, studying how a history come new challenges. To in multiple countries. And it is transnational network of futurologists begin with the obvious, we need to transnational, because they will made claims to prevision a key tool of recognize our limitations. The term explore all of the ways Americans global governance. transnational means little and the are connected to the rest of the There are now many more works term international means nothing in world, whether through migration, on transnational social movements, periods and places devoid of nations, new media, religious movements, such as Cemil Aydin’s comparative which is to say most of world history. environmental change, or epidemic and connected history of Pan- It was only in the last three centuries disease. In this way, diplomatic Asianism and Pan-Islamism and that nations came to displace other historians can count themselves Nick Cullather’s new history of kinds of polities—empires, city states, as part of the global community of the green revolution. And there etc. It is only then that we can begin scholars interested not just in war are even more in the pipeline, to speak of international history, and diplomacy, but also international such as Alison Bashford’s work and contrast it with the history that and non-governmental organizations, on geopoliticians and population transcended or subverted national trade and monetary policy, scientific scientists in Australasia, Mark boundaries. and technological innovation, and Bradley’s exploration of the human Chris Bayly has argued that we countless other subjects that connect rights revolutions of the twentieth are all global historians now, whether different countries or transcend the century, Daniel Sargent’s study we realize it or not. If you read his boundaries between them. of how Americans responded to magnum opus, The Birth of the Modern There have always been powerful globalization in the 1970s, and World, you realize that one cannot arguments for this broader vision, but Brad Simpson’s project on how assume that topics in history can be recent history has made it irresistible. Suharto used international and non- studied in isolation without reference The study of world politics has long governmental organizations to rule to larger processes and patterns. In been motivated by contemporary Indonesia. some ways this broader focus would concerns. Twenty years after the end A more global and transnational appear to provincialize U.S. history. of the Cold War, we need to explore perspective reveals that, long In the realm of foreign relations, the many ways the world has been before the end of the Cold War, allowing for the agency of others changing, and not just through inter- demographic growth and movement, may mean, for instance, questioning state diplomacy. And we should also environmental change, new means of the idea that the CIA overthrew recognize that, in the longer sweep of mass communication, interdependent Mossadegh in Iran and Arbenz in history, the era in which nation-states capital markets, and international Guatemala, as if other Iranians and ran the world may be exceptional, as and transnational organizations were other Guatemalans did not also have global politics once again becomes combining to cause dramatic change parts to play. But in other ways an more pluralistic, with many more and of a recognizably new kind. This international and global frame will different kinds of actors jostling for broader vision has not only revealed highlight the outsized impact that power. the origins of the contemporary era, the United States had even before There have been many inspiring it is also restoring the study of world it became a world power. See, for calls for international and politics to the forefront of historical example, Sven Beckert’s work on transnational history. For some inquiry. Research on the regulation of how the Civil War changed cotton time, it was not clear whether they migration, science and philanthropy, cultivation worldwide, or Marilyn Passport September 2011 Page 5 Lake and Henry Reynolds on how book, No Enchanted Palace, describes only because it is now just part of a much the disenfranchisement of African the UN as designed and built to larger project. Americans served as a model for defend empires and adapt them to a For that very reason, those of racially discriminatory immigration more nationalistic era. Sam Moyn’s us working in these fields should policies in South Africa and Australia. The Last Utopia argues that the very think harder about the place of the And yet a lot of history is local idea of human rights was all but historical profession in the United and national. Not irrelevant to the States and the United States in the every topic will UN in its first world. We are facing a catastrophic reward a larger International history became quarter century. job market for new Ph.D.s. There frame of analysis. a way of positioning oneself My earlier work is also a protracted and worsening This point came showed how the crisis in academic publishing. And home to me outside—and in opposition UN eventually there is little evidence that historians recently when I to—national history, which was became a forum for are having much influence in was talking with a seen as intrinsically nationalistic. national liberation major national decisions or even in prospective Ph.D. But if we study subjects like movements relatively minor decisions that have student. He was international organizations and to protest a big impact on our own profession, deciding between transnational social movements, against imperial such as the leadership of the National Columbia and it should not be to celebrate repression. But Archives. Therefore we cannot be another history them, but to understand them. my more recent complacent. We must think not department. I history of the only about how these new fields of tried to persuade population control research might carve out a place in him by describing movement seeks the profession, but also how they all the ways that, to explain how a might help the profession reestablish over the last decade, Columbia global campaign ostensibly dedicated its place in the United States and has been building a program in to women’s rights and environmental reestablish the place of the United international, transnational, and even protection turned into a war on the States in the world. global history. He said that he was poor. Alas, I have grown discouraged told at the other department that It may be too much to claim that about SHAFR’s potential for playing everyone was doing international, there is now a Columbia school a leading role in this endeavor. I transnational, or global history. of international and transnational have made many of these arguments If this was actually true, it history that is dedicated to more before, such as at the 2009 conference would be absurd. Why should empirical and critical studies of in Falls Church, VA. On that occasion, everyone abandon national or local international organizations and Emily Rosenberg offered the very history? And if, instead, the terms transnational social movements. But sensible suggestion—seemingly with international and transnational we are creating a program that will the support of a large audience—that history are being applied to train students to carry on this kind we change the name of our journal everything, they will soon mean of work in their own way. Each year to Diplomatic and Transnational nothing. It makes me wonder about twenty students, chosen from History. While it is only a name, whether some historians are calling an applicant pool of over 140, enroll identifying our work in a more for a more cosmopolitan approach in our dual masters program with inclusive way would serve as an to history for the wrong reasons: the London School of Economics in invitation to prospective members not because it can help answer international and world history. We who do not think of themselves as important but otherwise perplexing also have eighteen students pursuing doing diplomatic history. We were historical questions, but because of our Ph.D. track in international and told at the time that the leadership how it makes them feel. Especially global history. This year we launched would take up this proposal. But then over the last decade, international a new summer program, the Hertog nothing happened. history became a way of positioning Global Strategy Initiative, which has Not long ago there was another oneself outside—and in opposition created a kind of laboratory in which proposal, this one to shift the date to—national history, which was seen teams of undergraduate and graduate of SHAFR’s annual meeting away as intrinsically nationalistic. But if students use new information from the middle of summer, when we study subjects like international technology to research the origins of many scholars are traveling abroad organizations and transnational contemporary challenges in world for their research. That is why other social movements, it should not be politics, from nuclear proliferation organizations with members who to celebrate them, but to understand to global pandemics. And Adam do research abroad, such as the them. McKeown and I edit a series for Association of Asian Studies, the Perhaps because Columbia is in Columbia University Press that is Association of African Studies, the New York and we can’t help but meant to showcase some of the most Middle East Studies Association, and notice the UN headquarters on the innovative new scholarship. the Council for European Studies, other side of town, my colleagues All along, we have been mindful meet over a long weekend in the fall and I have been publishing a series of how other universities (among or spring. But a crushing majority of of new, more critical histories of them Berkeley, Chicago, Cornell, SHAFR members voted down the international norms and international Harvard, Princeton, Temple, Texas, idea. As long as SHAFR meets in organizations. Adam McKeown’s Virginia, and Wisconsin) are also late June in places like Madison and Melancholy Order examined how the building programs in international, Columbus—expensive and onerous spread of universal suffrage helped transnational, and global history. destinations for many traveling from justify an inter-state system that Other university presses are also abroad—it will remain much smaller would sharply curtail freedom of creating series for new work in these and less international than it could movement. Susan Pedersen is writing fields. In each case, historians of U.S. be. And there will also be far fewer a history of the League of Nations foreign relations have been at the women, since the disproportionate mandate system that will show forefront of these new initiatives. The number who have primary childcare how it aimed to internationalize study of U.S. diplomacy has a secure responsibility find summer recess a imperialism. Mark Mazower’s new place in the historical profession, but particularly inconvenient time to get Page 6 Passport September 2011 away. to reposition themselves as global unmistakably to that basic fact. The Of course, that may be the way universities, building satellite growing numbers of internationally some SHAFR members like it. After campuses and alliances with peer and transnationally focused papers all, most would not have joined institutions overseas. presented at our annual meetings SHAFR if they were not happy with Given these developments, the provide further evidence of SHAFR’s it the way it is. How then can we question SHAFR members should embrace of the internationalist expect a majority will ever vote to be asking themselves is not why turn. In addition, and perhaps change it? Yet my hope is that many they still survive despite the dire most tellingly, the organization’s members have not fully considered predictions of so many in our field. most prestigious book, article, how much more SHAFR could be if it Considering the great and growing and dissertation prizes have in opened its doors—even a little—to a interest in U.S. foreign relations, recent years been conferred with larger and more diverse membership. even a less interesting collection regularity on precisely the kind They may not even be aware of the of historians with less capable of broadly based, internationally structural barriers to entry that keep leadership would have prospered. framed, multiarchivally researched it isolated. The next time they vote, SHAFR members should instead studies that Connelly advocates. they may be persuaded to vote not ask themselves why they have not Thomas Zeiler’s recent state-of- just for themselves, but for friends already seized the opportunity to the-field survey for the Journal of and colleagues who would be eager lead the historical profession into American History nicely captures the to join if it were a different kind of this new era—an era in which the pervasiveness of this trend in U.S. society. As long as SHAFR remains impact of the United States is evident foreign relations scholarship. isolated, I have no doubt there everywhere in the world, and the What then has prompted will be more such opportunities. world is everywhere in the United Connelly’s throwback jeremiad Members will continue asking States. So where in the world is about the supposedly woeful state themselves whether they should SHAFR? of our field? For the author of change SHAFR’s name or change this provocative and surprisingly its conference or change the title Matthew Connelly is Professor of presumptuous piece, one suspects of its journal, when what is really History at Columbia University. that the problem lies with the not-yet- required is a new and more expansive total triumph of the internationalists. worldview. Apparently nothing less than the Dwight Eisenhower once said “SHAFR in the World”: conversion of all specialists in the that if a problem cannot be solved, A Response to Matthew Connelly history of U.S. foreign relations into it should be enlarged. Instead of international/transnational historians waiting for SHAFR to change, we Robert J. McMahon would satisfy Connelly—together might instead change the context with the absorption of SHAFR by in which it operates. We could n an essay that is one part some as yet unformed society of create a federation of associations critical description of an international and transnational for international and transnational area of study, one part historians, a renaming of Diplomatic history in which SHAFR would angryI indictment of History to reflect be the U.S. affiliate. International a scholarly society, that change, and congresses could alternate with and another part To condemn the a rebranding of national meetings, beginning with prescriptive advice Society for Historians the society itself a gathering of all those historians about how to fix both, of American Foreign so as to banish the around the world interested in the Matthew Connelly Relations for devoting term “American.” study of world politics. We can only makes a heartfelt too much attention Only then, with benefit from sharing our work with plea for foreign the proverbial scholars from the places we study. relations historians to to American foreign stake driven into But we can also work together to embrace international relations is like the heart of any advance a common agenda, such and transnational condemning the Society remaining form of as comparing and coordinating approaches to their for the Study of Ancient non-internationalist strategies for promoting our work, subject. By itself, Egypt for devoting too diplomatic histories building international alliances so unremarkable much attention to Ancient of the United States, to strengthen our position in our a plea would not Egypt or berating the would the agenda departments and universities, and likely generate Society for the Study of outlined here be creating support networks for both much controversy. Trees for devoting too realized. junior and senior scholars when they The half-truths and much attention to trees. An element of travel abroad for archival research mischaracterizations silliness pervades and interviews. within which it is a core aspect of It is time, high time, that SHAFR packaged, however, this vision in that members stop being isolationists. along with the straw men Connelly Connelly is criticizing a professional Large crowds now turn out at annual seeks to slay en route, virtually society for focusing too much conferences, curious about the nature guarantee that these musings will attention on the very subject it was and potential of international and rankle more than a few toilers in our formed to study. To condemn the transnational approaches. Leading common field of inquiry—as it has Society for Historians of American scholarly journals regularly feature this one. Foreign Relations for devoting too articles and forums that showcase Historians of U.S. foreign much attention to American foreign the results. There is also a large and relations as well as SHAFR as an relations is like condemning the growing popular audience for work organizational entity have, after Society for the Study of Ancient that can explain the changing nature all, endorsed such approaches Egypt for devoting too much of international relations. The number with considerable warmth and attention to Ancient Egypt or berating of U.S. residents born abroad is enthusiasm. Many of the articles the Society for the Study of Trees approaching a new high. And more featured in the pages of our flagship for devoting too much attention to and more universities are attempting journal, Diplomatic History, attest trees. If an object of study possesses Passport September 2011 Page 7 sufficient importance to warrant an best to study it. Physicists might the wider world simply cannot be organization of scholars committed rightly concern themselves with the addressed satisfactorily through a to its investigation, then it strikes me overwhelming percentage of males lens trained just on the international as curious in the extreme to attack in their discipline, or occupational realm. Fundamental issues such it for not investigating a different therapists with the overwhelming as war, peace, threat perception, subject. Would we blast African percentage of females, but those diplomacy, alliance formation, American historians for neglecting concerns should have no bearing economic need, and trade often hinge U.S. business history? Or biologists on the objects of study within those on matters internal to the United for not being economists? Examining fields or with the research problems, States—matters that bring us into the the external behavior and interactions methods, and theories most pertinent realms of culture, ideology, identity, of a country that for much of the past to their advancement. interest group activity, or domestic century has been Those latter politics. Those searching for the the world’s most issues, of course, most significant factors behind the powerful and comprise the heart George W. Bush administration’s influential nation Behind Connelly’s lamentations of Connelly’s decision to invade Iraq in 2003, or the surely constitutes about our field lurk the same critique. He insists establishment of a national security an intellectual status anxieties that have been that the most state in early cold war America, or the enterprise of reflected in the published essays, appropriate way persistence of the special relationship sufficient value conference papers, and private to study America’s between Israel and the United and complexity conversations of a multitude of role in the States, to take just a few examples, that one need not diplomatic historians for more world—indeed, would almost certainly find internal have to apologize than three decades now. For the the only proper explanations and perspectives more for undertaking it. past generation or more, social way—is from salient than international ones. To compound and cultural history paradigms an international Connelly would have us lop off that the confusion, or or transnational arm of our field in a full-bodied perhaps just to have of course dominated perspective. embrace of his preferred mode of vary the line of the professional landscape A wholesale analysis. Why, we should ask, would attack, Connelly within the discipline of history; adoption of such such a move represent an advance? also indicts the study of elites, the state, enlarged frames Fortunately, we do not face a SHAFR and the and traditional structures of of analysis would stark either/or choice. Instead, field of American economic and political power— force a much historians of American foreign foreign relations the warp and woof of foreign needed intellectual relations can fruitfully follow a history that it relations history—have long transformation more pluralistic approach to their represents for been relegated to the margins. of our field, subject. Doing so makes more sense lacking diversity. according to this intellectually and makes good sense Too few women vision. Presumed professionally. Given the centrality of and minorities ancillary benefits America’s international role to both study diplomatic history, he would be greater professional the domestic history of the United complains. One ex-SHAFR president, visibility for foreign affairs historians States and the history of the world cited in his essay, denied that a lack and a leadership position for a community as a whole, U.S. foreign of diversity was a problem. The reconstituted SHAFR within what relations historians are exceptionally analogy that the unnamed person Connelly considers an especially well positioned to circulate in and offered was that those scholars who innovative and exciting mode of contribute to a range of professional studied African American history historical scholarship. On one level, societies and scholarly debates. Have were primarily African Americans, his is an appealing vision. Who can we taken full advantage of those implying, at least in Connelly’s fail to appreciate the significant opportunities? Probably not. Here rendition of this conversation, that insights about America’s interaction I agree with Connelly, and some of “SHAFR was a society for the history with and impact on the wider world his constructive suggestions for how of white American men, and not yielded by the internationalist turn we might do so more effectively [for] all of those concerned with the in foreign relations scholarship? in the future deserve our careful history of the U.S. and the world.” Opposing that exciting trend would attention. Yet consciously dropping Talk about a straw man! I would be akin to opposing motherhood. one of the forms of identification be astonished if anyone in our But Connelly’s zealotry goes that many SHAFR members use— society actually held such a view. too far, in my view, since he is that of historians of the United Many within SHAFR, as Connelly advocating a one-size-fits-all model States—would be neither a wise himself notes, have been working for diplomatic historians that, if nor an efficacious strategy. There hard to increase the diversity of adopted, would weaken rather would be something fundamentally SHAFR’s membership. Moreover, than strengthen the field, both awry with a society devoted to the the percentage of non-American intellectually and professionally. His study of American foreign relations members of SHAFR—an especially praise for the internationalist and if its member-scholars defaulted on critical measure of diversity given transnationalist wave is attenuated by their intellectual responsibilities for the subject matter of our sub- a puzzling disparagement of studies contributing in substantive ways to discipline—has risen in recent years of U.S. foreign relations that explore key issues concerning the American to approximately 20 percent. the internal sources of America’s historical experience writ large. But as important as the issue of external behavior. As I have argued Behind Connelly’s lamentations diversity might be on organizational elsewhere, the study of foreign about our field lurk the same status and other grounds—and many relations is by its very nature Janus- anxieties that have been reflected of us consider it to be of great faced: the field looks both outward in the published essays, conference significance to the vitality of our and inward for explanations of a papers, and private conversations of society—the question of who studies nation’s international actions. Many a multitude of diplomatic historians a subject should not be conflated of the most important questions for more than three decades now. For with what that subject is or with how about America’s interaction with the past generation or more, social Page 8 Passport September 2011 and cultural history paradigms have a concern for some, it is likely as of course dominated the professional Robert J. McMahon is Ralph D. equally difficult to find on spring or landscape within the discipline Mershon Professor of History at The fall weekends, and certainly the best of history; the study of elites, the Ohio State University. solution would be on-site babysitting state, and traditional structures of at any time of year—something that economic and political power—the seems to be lacking at most scholarly warp and woof of foreign relations Pass the Glue meetings, not just SHAFR’s. Also, history—have long been relegated women have been joining SHAFR in to the margins. At the same OAH Katharine A. S. Sibley increasing numbers; when I became meeting that provided the initial a member in the late 1980s, the venue for Connelly’s critique, a rofessor Matthew majority of women in attendance packed-to-the-rafters session featured Connelly’s clarion call for were wives, but no longer, and the four prominent scholars assessing an internationalization of organization has not changed its time the current state of cultural and ourP field is a continuing refrain in or venue significantly in that period. social history. One of them brashly our organization. A panel at the Twenty percent is of course still too proclaimed that the battle was over; 2009 SHAFR meeting, he reminds small a portion of the membership, cultural history had won the day and us, drew a capacity audience to but from what I have seen, it seems all other subfields now fell within its discuss the topic of changing the more likely that the lack of women ever-expanding domain. organization’s identity from the in our ranks or in our journal reflects Connelly would like to reverse Society of Historians of American female scholars’ interests rather than that trend, restoring diplomatic Foreign Relations, with its quaintly it does the organization’s repressive history to a more central position titled journal, Diplomatic History, to practices. Of greater concern is in the discipline. International and something of a more global scope. the much larger gap in minority transnational modes of analysis offer, Connelly recalls from that gathering representation, male and female, and in his view, the surest path toward Emily Rosenberg’s eminently here certainly SHAFR could be doing renewed prestige, respect, and vigor reasonable suggestion for our more outreach. for foreign relations historians. That journal’s new title: Diplomatic and But Connelly’s chief fire is focused assessment derives in part from his Transnational History. Other names on the field itself. “Rather than observation that such approaches for the society were proposed, too, continue to see diplomatic history are currently fashionable, even— under banners like the Association as a subfield of U.S. history, or any perhaps especially—among some of Historians national history non-diplomatic historians. Connelly of International . . . we need quotes one historian who boasted Topics, United in Bold words, but what do they to recognize that in his department “everyone was New Approaches signify, really? One could just that diplomatic doing international, transnational, (AHI-TUNA . . history is instead or global history.” He calls this . okay, that is a as easily say that the history of a subfield of the “absurd,” rightly wondering if some fish story). Other, American slavery is really another larger and still scholars were “invoking the idea more obscene branch of the history of human expanding fields of international and transnational initials were bondage throughout the world, of international history for the wrong reasons—not intimated, too, and surely it is, but that approach and because it can help answer important by colleagues does exactly what he wants to transnational but otherwise perplexing historical who shall remain avoid, privileging transnational history,” he questions, but because of how it anonymous, approaches without offering a writes. Bold can make us feel about ourselves.” but ultimately compensatory examination of words, but Cutting through the hype, he hits the proposals the particularly different and what do they upon a crucial point: “Especially went nowhere, signify, really? over the last decade, it has become and SHAFR illuminating qualities of the local. One could just a way of positioning oneself outside and its journal While we cannot fully understand as easily say of—and in opposition to—national seem to have human bondage in the United that the history history as intrinsically nationalistic.” remained secure States without reckoning with the of American Perhaps political instincts and within their 1967 international circumstances that slavery is really agendas similar to those that borders. brought it about, what is unique to another branch turned historians away from the Yet as the American milieu is probably of the history of powerful and toward ordinary folks Connelly’s more pertinent to understanding the human bondage a generation ago are now turning provocative and development and pernicious effects throughout them away from nation-states and lively article of slavery here. the world, and toward the transnational and global. indicates, the surely it is, but If that move leads more historians to debate is far from that approach explore the questions and issues that over. Accordingly, does exactly have long animated our field, SHAFR he jabs diplomatic historians for what he wants to avoid, privileging warmly welcomes it. But intellectual being isolationists who prefer the transnational approaches without fashions and political correctness provincial capitals of Madison and offering a compensatory examination aside, what remain most durable in Columbus in sweltering mid-summer, of the particularly different and scholarship are the identification of to more internationally oriented cities illuminating qualities of the local. important historical questions and as well as cooler ones (and not only While we cannot fully understand the pursuit of compelling answers in temperature) on the East or West human bondage in the United to them. So long as SHAFR and its coasts. He slams this organization States without reckoning with the members continue to do that, while further for excluding women, holding international circumstances that maintaining an admirably big tent its conferences during summer brought it about, what is unique to and a tolerance for intellectual and vacations when mothers might the American milieu is probably methodological diversity, we will be want to be home with their children. more pertinent to understanding the fine. Although childcare is no doubt development and pernicious effects Passport September 2011 Page 9 of slavery here. And in the field of exception of a review of a book Bob Schulzinger, “as long as the foreign relations, the situation is no about Canada!). At the same time, United States continues to play a different; indeed, what many of our these works seem to reflect exactly predominant role in world affairs, the membership and contributors find what Connelly wants to promote: origins, development, consequences, most compelling and are most eager they are studies that increase our and alternatives of that role are to address and possibly redress in understanding of the past and bound to attract serious attention.”2 their work are American misdeeds, demonstrate the changing interests of In the world we currently inhabit, tragedies, foibles, and occasionally, our field, with discussions of human submerging those affairs under the successes. rights, developments in Cuba and banner of international history might The current blogs on SHAFR’s Africa, and anthropology. Diplomatic seem like the politically correct website are a measure of how historians are indeed already working stance against the “nationalistic” persistent interest in the American deeply in international history, even approach, which Connelly himself approach is. Masood Raja’s entry on as American history remains the glue rightly finds very shallow, but it does the “Immunitary Paradigm,” which that holds them together. not necessarily enable any deeper uses medical metaphors to discuss Professor Connelly also writes wrestling with the issues so many of American foreign policy, is largely in his brief that even when telling us care passionately about. America-centric in its argument. the story of U.S. foreign relations, In a commentary on Washington’s American historians work in multiple Katherine A. S. Sibley is Professor of approach to Afghanistan and countries, and their international History at Saint Joseph’s University. Pakistan, Raja writes that “the range is another reason for placing discourse of immunization has us in a new field. Those working in Notes: always run through the course of Columbia’s global history program 1. SHAFR blogs on www.shafr.org, [the] US biopolitical regime in varied may do multiarchival research in accessed November 2010. connotations. During the cold war . foreign countries, but outside those 2. Robert Schulzinger, ed., A Companion to . . Communism itself was posited as hallowed halls of Harlem scholars American Foreign Relations (Malden, MA, a degenerative contagion . . . against do not always research abroad. A 2003, 2006), xiii. which the school system and the good number of the monographs larger culture were instrumentalized submitted to SHAFR’s Stuart Bernath Connelly Roundtable to defend,” while today, he notes, prize committee, on which I have Oklahoma fights the “infection” of served for the last three years, did Sharia law. Similarly America-focused not draw from international archives- Thomas Borstelmann is Mary Dudziak’s “An Age Without -a deficiency that in fact has led to Surrender Ceremonies,” which deals heated debate on our committee et me show my cards. I am with the rather anticlimactic ending in the past. Must Bernath Prize partially responsible for this to U.S. hostilities in Iraq (an ending winners use at least one international interchange, since I had the that leaves 50,000 soldiers behind, archive? Some of us said yes; others pleasureL of chairing the program of course). Is this story, like Raja’s, disagreed. The prize description committee for the 2010 OAH annual an international story? Of course. itself is silent on the subject; meeting and organizing the plenary But the comparisons that Dudziak determining its importance is left session on “The United States and draws here about our “age” are not to the discretion of the committee, the World” at which Matt Connelly with the end of Britain’s Falklands which changes each year. Whatever first delivered this paper. I invited war or the Serbian war with Kosovo the merits of international research, him because I knew he would be (although she might have turned a cause I am happy to promote, a insightful and I hoped he would be to those conflicts for parallels) but number of highly compelling books provocative. The audience and I were instead with the end of the U.S. on American foreign relations are not disappointed on either count. I role in Vietnam. Dudziak’s age, like published annually that study have been an enthusiastic (though not Raja’s paradigm, is an American one.1 American individuals, firms, uncritical1) fan of Matt’s work for a There is nothing wrong, of course, bureaucracies, or other entities long time. with making the history of American “related” to other countries in some I am a bit older than Matt and foreign relations writ large a subfield fashion but tell their stories without have watched the same changes he of international history. But how does reference to the archives of those describes. I began graduate school doing so help illuminate the trends countries. Perhaps the archives were in the 1980s at Duke University, that so many of us follow--trends that not available or were not considered when there were still two diplomatic are stemming from Washington or relevant. Of course, some authors historians in that department, Bill other American influences? have less justifiable reasons for their Scott (a Europeanist) and Calvin But perhaps blogs are an omission. Davis (an Americanist).2 After their inaccurate indication of our field, Most important, as the topics retirements, neither was replaced. shaped as they can be by current of such books, as well as the Social history dominated the events like Wikileaks and the latest aforementioned blogs, articles, and landscape, with cultural history pronouncements from the White reviews all indicate, SHAFR members sweeping up fast behind it. Duke House. What about Diplomatic History are and very much want to be part kept its position in military history, itself? The last issue addressed topics of, as Connelly puts it, a “global at least, thereby blunting some of such as the Hohenzollerns and the community of scholars interested not the decidedly appropriate criticism Wilson administration; Japanese just in war and diplomacy, but also of declining attention to diplomatic cinema and U.S. popular culture; and international and non-governmental history, in a nation of unusual Jimmy Carter’s Namibia policy. These organizations, trade and monetary international influence and repeated topics are all distinctly international, policy, scientific and technological military engagements abroad. certainly, but all had an American innovation, and countless other Those social historians taught me link. Indeed, every article, every subjects that connect different a great deal, particularly about power review, on characters ranging from countries or transcend the boundaries and democracy. I did not train as a Kissinger to LBJ, concerned American between them.” Yet at the same time, historian of U.S. foreign relations history in some fashion (with the to quote Diplomatic History editor in a typical way—I had no fellow Page 10 Passport September 2011 graduate students in the field—but transnational history without a very One central figure in this effort is Peter Wood, Bill Chafe, Larry real loss of historical understanding.3 Tom Bender, whose book A Nation Goodwyn, and others gave me an Matt acknowledges the enduring Among Nations offers perhaps the angle of vision onto U.S. international importance of local and national best synthesis to date of U.S. history history perhaps different from that history in his wise warning against and world history and who served more commonly available in other internationalist chic. as the chair of the OAH plenary institutions. Their attention to social Our door swings the other way, session at which Matt Connelly change and the uses of power on too. We need more—much more— delivered the original version of this a local level in the United States transnational research and research paper.6 Whatever its name and the grounded my own more international in archives abroad. International name of its journal, SHAFR should research interests. Such a grounding research is hardly new in SHAFR, be at the very forefront of both U.S. might become still more unusual if where area specialists have long history and global history, for we our field—whatever we call it—were led the way with their unusually are now in an era for which our field to position itself primarily, following rich knowledge of the histories is peculiarly well placed to provide Matt’s suggestion, as a subsection and archives of other nations and leadership. In history departments of international and transnational regions.4 But we need more of it. We everywhere, SHAFR members history. will also benefit from the perspectives should be the most curious, the most I am not especially worried about of world history, an integrating and engaged, and the most widely read loosening our links to domestic social transnational field whose growth participants, building links in all history, however. Ours is a mighty in the past twenty years can be directions and shaping the future of big pasture, expanding all the time. tracked in the membership lists of the the historical profession. We can gauge its breadth from the World History Association and the vitality of SHAFR’s annual meetings pages of the Journal of World History, Thomas (“Tim”) Borstelmann is and the diversity of the articles established in 1990.5 World history the E.N. and Katherine Thompson published in Diplomatic History, as not only broadens our view but also Professor of Modern World History at the Matt notes. I think of us as the hinge tends to lengthen its chronology, University of Nebraska-Lincoln. between domestic U.S. history and saving us from being too focused world history: we function like a on the twentieth century. We should Notes: traditional Western barroom door, certainly shed any remnants of 1. For example, Connelly’s remarkable swinging both ways, and doing so defensiveness about our position global history, Fatal Misconception: The easily, readily, continuously. Sure, in the broad discipline of History Struggle to Control World Population (Cambridge, MA, 2008) does not to my there are a few dust-ups and briefly or the sub-discipline of U.S. history mind adequately engage the enormous raised voices on each side of the door, and exercise genuine leadership in and probably dire consequences of and sometimes it feels more like the ongoing and multifaceted project population growth across the past Blazing Saddles (1974) than Unforgiven of the repositioning of U.S. history two centuries. This increase in world (1992). But connecting the American within world history. population is at the center of John past to the global past is a crucial One way to imagine how U.S. McNeill’s brilliant Something New Under business, one that requires a solid history fits in the broader sweep The Sun: An Environmental History of the foundation on each side of the door. of world and transnational history Twentieth-Century World (New York, 2000). We do this in an awful lot of is to think in terms of connections 2. I did not work closely with either one of them, choosing instead an alternative different ways. Some SHAFR and comparisons. Connections are path to a doctorate, SHAFR membership, folks have written brilliantly on everywhere; they are the bread and a long stint at Cornell, and an eventual the domestic roots of American butter of our field, the most obvious position in world history at Nebraska. international power, which was the “relations” in foreign relations. But 3. My own commitment in this direction subject, after all, of much of the thrust comparisons offer another form of is evident in the courses I teach, ranging of cold war revisionism in its various relations, one that is particularly from world history to U.S. history, and forms. How Americans think about helpful in engaging students in a U.S. history textbook I coauthored, and understand the world beyond and readers in a political culture along with Jacqueline Jones, Peter Wood, Elaine Tyler May, and Vicki Ruiz: Created their borders remains a matter still pervaded by assumptions of Equal: A Social and Political History of the intimately connected to domestic American exceptionalism. Just what United States, 3rd ed. (New York, 2008). developments in the United States— is and what is not distinctive about 4. A particularly distinguished and now to daily life on farms in California’s the United States, including how fairly senior group of area specialists in central valley, in school classrooms it relates to the rest of the world, East Asia comes immediately to mind, in small-town Minnesota, on streets is a question that can be answered including Michael Hunt on China, John in south Florida, in churches along only through careful engagement Dower on Japan, and Bruce Cumings on Colorado’s Front Range, in fast- with the histories of other nations, Korea. food joints in urban Houston, in empires, cultures, and regions. In 5. I have a forthcoming historiographical retail outlets in the suburbs of our increasingly globally conscious essay on this topic. See “A Worldly Tale: Global Influences on the Historiography Philadelphia, in college classrooms era, it will no longer do to analyze of U.S. Foreign Relations,” in Michael from Seattle to southwest Georgia. the American Revolution, American J. Hogan and Frank Costigliola, eds., Productive work in the big SHAFR slavery, the Civil War, or U.S. America in the World: The Historiography of pasture includes attention to culture, imperialism as though they were American Foreign Relations since 1941 (New regionalism, economics, ideology, phenomena unique to these shores. York, 2011). and a myriad of other features of They were not. 6. Thomas Bender, A Nation Among the sometimes peculiar American SHAFR members and leadership Nations: America’s Place in World History landscape. Our field, whatever will do well, at every opportunity, (New York, 2006). See also Bender, ed., we call it, is not subsumed by U.S. to combine their expertise on Rethinking American History in a Global Age (Berkeley, 2002). My own next history. We are not limited to U.S. connections between the United contribution in this direction will be More history. But we are deeply embedded States and the rest of the world with Equal, Less Equal: A New History of the in U.S. history. We cannot float free the growing work of comparativists, 1970s (Princeton, 2011). of that very particular past into some who are placing U.S. history within larger sphere of international or the broad sweep of a global past. Passport September 2011 Page 11 Rediscovering America interest in U.S. history, indicating Ussama Makdisi’s Artillery of a growing demand for scholarship Heaven, about U.S. missionaries in Nathan J. Citino that can explain the domestic roots of Ottoman Lebanon, is grounded in American policies. At the same time, discussions of Cotton Mather and ith his OAH paper, historians of American diplomacy the Indian Removal Act.3 Makdisi’s Matt Connelly has in the Middle East have carved out most recent book, Faith Misplaced, given SHAFR members their own niche, demonstrating new argues that through its support for a usefulW opportunity to reflect on facility with regional languages Israel, the United States squandered the “long crisis in U.S. diplomatic and literatures while featuring the relatively positive image it had history.”1 He notes that international reinterpretations of U.S. politics and earned among Arabs by virtue of and transnational approaches to society as their special contribution. educational activities and Wilsonian studying the U.S. have “actually Both of these trends call into question values. Just as significant is Makdisi’s become fashionable,” as evidenced the argument that SHAFR should chapter on “The Arab Discovery by recent literature that includes his move away from U.S. history. of America,” which explores what own award-winning scholarship. The attacks of September 11, 2001, nineteenth- and twentieth-century Nevertheless, Connelly laments and the ongoing wars in Iraq and America meant to Arab immigrants, that SHAFR has not played the Afghanistan have helped to renew authors, and travelers.4 In America’s leading role it should in rethinking interest in the international context Kingdom, a book based partly on a American history in a global context. for U.S. history and to redefine Diplomatic History article, Robert While urging the society to change diplomatic history as “America in Vitalis traces the racial segregation its name and that of its journal to the World.” University presses that of Aramco oil camps in Saudi reclaim this role, Connelly criticizes now publish series based on this Arabia to the nineteenth-century U.S. diplomatic historians more theme or that feature transnational mining industry in America’s desert fundamentally for “defining foreign approaches include Duke, Cornell, southwest. Vitalis reconceptualizes relations as a small and shrinking and Princeton, in addition to the one Middle Eastern labor history by sub-field of U.S. history.” So long as that Connelly co-edits at Columbia. invoking African American civil they continue to do so, he argues, But America’s recent forays into rights and the competing strategies they will exclude themselves from the Middle East have also fostered of Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. this generation’s most significant a convergence between American DuBois.5 John Calvert, in a new historiographical trend. By adopting foreign relations and Middle Eastern biography of Egyptian Islamist a global approach they could return history, a melding of diplomatic and Sayyid Qutb, stresses how American the field to relevance and finally area studies that society bring the long crisis to closure. has also occurred influenced Connelly appears to set up a for other regions. More U.S. diplomatic historians his subject’s dichotomous choice for SHAFR’s This convergence than ever before have also received conception of future: remain preoccupied with U.S. has happened training in Middle Eastern Islam as a total history--particularly with official because Middle historiography and languages. The modernizing policy and presidential studies--or East historians system. On a embrace international/transnational have begun result is that as scholars have sought tour that took history. Leaving aside arguments considering the to understand the U.S. role in the him from New in favor of a “big tent,” this essay regional role Middle East, they have looked to York to Greeley, considers how SHAFR should of the United America’s domestic experience to Colorado, position itself with respect to other States in the way explain its behavior. In other words, and San scholarly communities, using Middle that they have one aspect of internationalizing Francisco, Qutb East studies as an example. While long studied research on America and the Middle recoiled not Connelly argues that diplomatic the influence of East has been a renewed focus on only from the history should be seen as part of the British and French U.S. history. consumerism “still expanding fields of international imperialism. and racial and transnational history,” he does More U.S. discrimination not explain how SHAFR should diplomatic of cold war relate to the established area studies historians than ever before have also America but also from the public fields that are home to experts in received training in Middle Eastern roles that women succeeded in regional languages and sources. He historiography and languages. The carving out during the era of postwar indicates his hope that SHAFR will result is that as scholars have sought domesticity.6 Middle East scholars emulate the Middle East Studies to understand the U.S. role in the have come to regard U.S. history as Association and other groups focused Middle East, they have looked to crucial for understanding the region on overseas research. Yet it remains America’s domestic experience to they study. to be seen how a SHAFR rededicated explain its behavior. In other words, For U.S. diplomatic historians to international/transnational one aspect of internationalizing studying the Middle East, the use of scholarship would fit into the research on America and the Middle regional languages has gone hand- historical profession’s prevailing East has been a renewed focus on in-hand with a re-examination of regional division of labor. U.S. history. the American experience. Research Middle East studies is arguably Middle East studies has by Peter Hahn in Hebrew and the most important of the fields with discovered America. This discovery Salim Yaqub in Arabic has helped which SHAFR must reckon in the is apparent in the way that senior to internationalize the study of U.S. near future. Given that the Middle scholars such as Rashid Khalidi policy toward the Arab-Israeli conflict East is the current focus of U.S. and Juan Cole have taken up that and shed light on the domestic diplomacy, the next generation of mainstay of SHAFR conference politics surrounding that issue.7 research will emphasize that region panels, U.S. cold war diplomacy.2 Paul Chamberlin’s comparative just as the present one has featured More important is the emphasis and transnational approach links Vietnam. For their part, Middle East that new transnational studies place attempts by Anwar Sadat and historians have lately taken a serious on domestic American history. Richard Nixon to mobilize religious Page 12 Passport September 2011 legitimacy as a domestic political in U.S. Diplomatic History: Coming to States in the World.”) The solution? strategy.8 By studying Egypt’s Closure,” Diplomatic History 16 (January Secession. That will show them. Muslim Brotherhood, Chamberlin 1992): 115-40. It is nice to think that diplomatic has provided new perspective on 2. Rashid Khalidi, Sowing Crisis: The Cold historians only have to go global War and American Dominance in the Middle the rise of Christian conservatives, East (Boston, 2009); and Juan Cole, Engag- (though curiously, Connelly does an emerging sub-field of U.S. history ing the Muslim World (New York, 2009). not mention world history as a in its own right. My work attempts 3. Ussama Makdisi, Artillery of Heaven: potential umbrella field), and they to show what America’s liberal American Missionaries and the Failed Con- will no longer need to persuade development policies in the Middle version of the Middle East (Ithaca, NY, anybody of the importance of their East owed to the New Deal, as well as 2008). work. Oh, what a happy day it will to attempts at reforming Arab lands 4. Ussama Makdisi, Faith Misplaced: The be when we can gather in a tropical by Ottoman statesmen a century Broken Promise of U.S.-Arab Relations, 1820- resort or major metropolis (far from before the cold war.9 I am also 2001 (New York, 2010), 55-102. the wastelands of Madison and 5. Robert Vitalis, America’s Kingdom: interested in how American and Arab Mythmaking on the Saudi Oil Frontier Columbus) to assume the leadership modernizers commonly invoked U.S. (Palo Alto, CA, 2007). role rightfully due to us as the history, but in sharply contrasting 6. John Calvert, Sayyid Qutb and the Ori- multiarchival researchers and experts ways and for different purposes. As gins of Radical Islamism (New York, 2010). on state power that we are! Book me U.S. diplomatic historians’ research 7. Peter L. Hahn, Caught in the Middle East: on the first flight out. has taken them deeper into Middle U.S. Policy Toward the Arab-Israeli Conflict, But wait—who is the us and Eastern sources, American history 1945-1961 (Chapel Hill, NC, 2004); and the them there? I have been a has taken on new meanings and Salim Yaqub, Containing Arab Nationalism: card-carrying (or at least a journal- importance. Through their use The Eisenhower Doctrine and the Middle East subscribing) member of SHAFR (Chapel Hill, NC, 2004). of Middle Eastern languages and 8. Paul Chamberlin, “A World Restored: since 1998, but that is not my only literatures, historians of American Religion, Counterrevolution, and the professional affiliation. The other foreign relations have begun to earn Search for Order in the Middle East,” organizations to which I belong respect from those with regional Diplomatic History 32 (June 2008): 441-69. don’t seem so distracted by a thirst expertise. These U.S. diplomatic 9. Nathan J. Citino, “The Ottoman Legacy for professional leadership. Not historians “work in multiple in Cold War Modernization,” International even the Men’s Studies Association countries,” but they contribute a Journal of Middle East Studies 40 (Novem- or Society for Military History have special knowledge of American ber 2008): 579-97. seemed bent on that. Of course politics and society to an emerging these organizations would welcome dialogue with Middle East experts. money, members, and acclaim, but Connelly is right to say that Where the National and the Global their strategy for obtaining wealth SHAFR needs to rethink its Converge and fame seems to be to engage other place in the scholarly universe fields rather than to sever ties with as international/transnational Kristin Hoganson them if denied a spot in the sun (or historical approaches grow in more strangely, if overwhelmed by significance. Indeed, it is not likely he invitation to participate in the crowds at plenary sessions). that the broad community of this conversation brought to The more I think about it, the Americanists will have a road-to- mind the recent round table on less I know whether I am part of Damascus experience regarding the Tdiplomatic history in the Journal of the “us” that Connelly refers to or relevance of U.S. foreign relations American History (March 2009). Like the “them,” since his essay seems and suddenly discover a need for Thomas Zeiler’s lead essay in that aimed at diplomatic historians (count more tenure-track lines. As historical forum, Connelly’s essay speaks to the his references to “diplomatic” and studies increasingly focus on global theme of identity politics—that is, “diplomacy”) rather than foreign exchanges--“migration, new media, the identity of diplomatic historians, relations historians in general. I must religious movements, environmental who, having succeeded in what confess that I have served on several change, or epidemic disease”-- appeared to be a struggle for survival conference program committees SHAFR members must develop in the 1990s, are now eager for besides SHAFR’s, other editorial more cosmopolitan, less state-centric professional leadership. The novelty boards besides Diplomatic History’s, ways of studying America’s place of Connelly’s remarks lies mainly and various fellowship committees. in the world. But the argument that in his claim that U.S. diplomatic Based on these experiences, I SHAFR’s U.S. history orientation historians should not regard will admit that it can be hard for imposes a liability in its relations with themselves as Americanists. Instead, gatekeepers to set aside their own other disciplines is not borne out by they should identify as international fields and disciplinary preferences the developments described in this and transnational historians. “As fully. However, I have seen cases in brief historiographical essay. In this long as U.S. diplomatic historians which familiarity with a field led to set of circumstances, keeping SHAFR define themselves as a sub-field higher expectations. Furthermore, I anchored in U.S. history is beneficial of U.S. history, they will face the think it is worth noting that editorial not because our expertise in that field thankless task of persuading other boards, conference committee gives us something in common with Americanists that foreign policy members, and fellowship selectors fellow Americanists, but because it remains important, no less than typically sign off on work that falls constitutes what we have to offer newer subjects that seem fresh and outside their areas of expertise. The scholars studying global exchanges exciting.” He goes on to ask why most important thing I have learned from other perspectives. diplomatic historians should expect in my dealings with the ominous others “to cede space in conference “them” is that a major criterion Nathan J. Citino is Associate programs and journals, or give for success is the ability to speak Professor of History at Colorado State up faculty lines, or share Ph.D. to audiences outside one’s narrow University. fellowships.” (Or pack ballrooms as field—to explain to others (sometimes they did at the OAH when Connelly in completely separate disciplines) Notes: presented his paper as part of a why the work matters. No one is 1. See Michael H. Hunt, “The Long Crisis plenary roundtable on “The United going to “cede” anything to “us” if Passport September 2011 Page 13 we cannot make a case for it. That cultural, and labor histories studies as ripe for conquest. Our goes for wider publics, too. pertaining to their subjects? Connelly associates in global studies, like So where should that case sets up the issue as a choice between those in world history, transnational be made? I am all in favor of international and transnational history, translocal history, and area Connelly’s calls to regard diplomatic history on the one hand and national studies fields, have good reasons to history as part of international and local history on the other. But as be wary of Americanists marching and transnational history. I would his own remarks on the importance of in expecting ample attention and like to echo his endorsement of local and national specificity suggest, deferential treatment. Having Emily Rosenberg’s idea to add place still matters, even to would- thought quite a bit about empire, our “Transnational” to our journal’s name. be global histories. Let me provide colleagues in these fields can be wary I hope Connelly follows through a cautionary tale on the dangers of of its many instantiations. on his vision of a federation of thinking it doesn’t. That leaves international history. associations for international and My story centers on a large public Might that offer a more welcoming transnational history by working university that I will diplomatically tent? There may be some who regard to form such a group. I can only keep anonymous. This university, international history as a new way applaud efforts to build support beset by budget woes, is trying to to frame U.S. foreign relations networks for scholars traveling “right-size” its faculty, using student history, but it would be wrong to abroad for research. And I agree course enrollments as one of the conflate the two. Nevertheless, given with Connelly’s point that SHAFR main benchmarks. In recent years that a number of those who are members could learn much from its Global Studies program, a unit beginning to identify themselves as attending more international with no tenure-track faculty lines international historians have had congresses. Although I have not yet of its own, has been gaining majors ties to SHAFR, I would anticipate a attended a World History Association while History has been working warm, family-reunion-style welcome. meeting (http://www.thewha.org) hard to keep its classes full. When I would also expect a pretty nice or a Global Studies Conference (the the instructor of the large U.S. tent, given international historians’ Global Studies website, at http:// foreign relations history survey apparent success in attracting onglobalisation.com/, has intriguing on that campus asked to have it financial backers. (Take a second to references to virtual papers), the calls listed as worthy of Global Studies Google Roger Hertog, the investor I have seen for such meetings (not credit, the dean in charge thought it behind the Global Strategy Initiatives to mention those for area studies might be inappropriate. The reason? that Connelly mentions in his talk.) gatherings) reveal Even though the But just how big is the tent? Is it significant points course covers circus-sized or mere pup? of intersection Connelly sets up the issue as a topics such as It would seem that international with SHAFR fascist aggression, history has tremendous growth members’ choice between international anticolonial potential, due to its geographic interests. The and transnational history on the nationalism, sweep. But it is not clear whether more we get out one hand and national and local collective security, all SHAFR members, much less the and mingle, the history on the other. But as his competing far wider pool of border-crossing better. And while own remarks on the importance modernization and empire studies historians who we are at it, let’s of local and national specificity strategies, and have hesitated to join SHAFR, continue to extend suggest, place still matters, even the Bretton will feel they fit in. Taken literally, a welcoming mat to would-be global histories. Woods system, its “international” is a far narrower in our conferences emphasis on the rubric than world history, for and publications United States as a it refers specifically to relations (both print and electronic) to scholars major player in the twentieth-century between nations. Hence historians whose work does not center on the world rendered it of questionable who embrace other units of analysis United States. suitability for a major that “attempts such as ethnic groups, corporations, But should we all burn our to promote an understanding of commodities, convictions, and Organization of American Historians core global/international processes/ viruses might wonder whether the (OAH) membership cards? And systems from a range of non-local/ state-to-state emphasis implied by what about the American Studies regional perspectives, leaving international history would always Association (ASA) cards so recently the regionally-focused work for suit them well. They might even acquired by some old-time SHAFR students’ Language and Area Studies ask whether a move to international members but so long valued by some requirement.” In other words, a history should be construed as a of SHAFR’s newer members? What U.S. foreign relations history class kind of regrouping in response to would it mean to discard those? might not belong in Global Studies, ballrooms grown too crowded and Would SHAFR lose its relatively regardless of its consideration of non- unruly. Do not get me wrong. As small but growing community of U.S. actors such as Churchill, Stalin, someone interested in the history of colonial, postcolonial, migration, Castro, and Mao, because any class the United States in world context, I diaspora, cultures-of-empire, and that devotes significant attention to heartily welcome efforts to connect borderlands historians, many of the United States really belongs to with world history and its various whom are interested in the blurry area studies. subfields—among them transnational lines between domestic and foreign I am thankful that this case was and international history. But I affairs? successfully appealed, for I do think doubt that severing our ties to the Indeed, doesn’t everybody that twentieth-century U.S. foreign U.S. history field will magnify our who studies topics with a U.S. relations history deserves a place— presence in either the profession or in component—including even however humble—in a major that the public eye. diplomacy, presidential decision- aims to help students understand Indeed, if our goal is to advance making, the exercise of military the making and politics of our own understanding of U.S. foreign power, trade relations, and global global moment. Nevertheless, the relations history by bringing those governance—have good reasons to case has some lessons for those of who are interested in the topic keep abreast of, say, U.S. political, us who are tempted to see global together and by providing platforms, Page 14 Passport September 2011 recognition, and support for their fall and early spring. Knowing that so great, and the potential for scholarship, we should be working to this might strike some as a sinister productive engagement so enhance our relations with the wider anti-feminist plot, I should insist that tremendous, that I want to join U.S. field. We should be reaching my goal is not to keep women (or forces with every historian working out to the many border-crossing and other underrepresented groups) out. on world politics. Some of my cultures-of-empire historians who are To the contrary, I suspect that women respondents suspect I have other not active in SHAFR—to the people are among the “crushing majority” of motives. For Kristin Hoganson, my who came to the ballroom to hear SHAFR members who can barely find arguments evidence “a thirst for Connelly’s fellow panelists, Melani time to exhale during the school year, professional leadership.” Katherine McAlister, Mae M. Ngai, and Nan much less travel. If the real goal is to Sibley calls them “politically correct.” Enstad, and the panel chair, Tom make SHAFR more family friendly, Robert McMahon finds not only Bender. Passport should be publishing then why not experiment with a political correctness, but also “status what they had to say about the “The children’s program, like the Tepoztlán anxiety.” It is true that I believe the United States in the World” and Institute has done? members of SHAFR should be—and soliciting responses to the views that “Where in the world is SHAFR?” in fact already are—playing a leading they expressed in that panel. Connelly asks in closing. I am open role in the development of these new If I had to place SHAFR on a to the “everywhere” implied by the fields of research. But would I keep disciplinary map, I would put it at question. But I would add to that pressing such an unpopular agenda the place where U.S. history and “somewhere” lest we also end up if I aspired to be elected to anything? its subfields intersect with world nowhere in particular. And even if I really am politically history and its subfields. That correct, anxious about my status, and placement would imply stretching Kristin Hoganson is Professor of thirsty for leadership, I might still be ourselves in multiple directions and History at the University of Illinois. right in arguing that SHAFR needs to fitting ourselves to both the smaller internationalize. and larger scales that Bender has Note: I understood from the outset that discussed.1 Such re-mapping might 1.Thomas Bender, “Historians, the Na- I would not win friends with this necessitate more attention to the tion, and the Plenitude of Narratives,” essay, even when I made a small in Rethinking American History in a Global historicity of the nation. It might even Age point about whether it is a good mean reconsidering our geographies , ed. Thomas Bender (Berkeley, 2002), idea to hold SHAFR conferences in of globalization by exploring whether 1-21, 8. places like Columbus and Madison. areas like the Midwest should be seen My point had nothing to do with as places with meaningful histories of Where Do We Go From Here? the Cornbelt—for or against—and contact, colonialism, circulation, and everything to do with airfares and exchange—indeed, as places we need Matt Connelly connections. It applies equally to the not spurn in picking our conference site for the 2012 meeting in Hartford venues. Passport and Storrs. Travelers from abroad— Although my ongoing research want to thank for not to mention those coming from contributes to such a spatial turn by affording me this opportunity and Athens and Austin—would have tackling the myth of the nationally my respondents for taking on my an easier time getting to Chicago argumentsI with such gusto. In their circumscribed heartland, I can or Minneapolis and getting around understand why some might think enthusiasm, I fear they have pilloried town once they arrived. Here again, that part of the appeal of going some ideas that were not in my essay. even if I really am a latte-drinking global is no more conferences in Lest readers believe I am calling East Coast snob, I might still be right the corn belt. And, setting aside on everyone to burn their OAH in arguing that it is harder to find the issue of room rates, I can membership cards and ignore the cheap direct flights to small regional appreciate Connelly’s calls to reduce splendors of the American heartland, airports. transportation expenses so that please allow me to clarify. If we can put my character and more non-U.S. based scholars can Nathan Citino and Tim motives aside, it will be easier participate in our discussions. Borstelmann pose extremely to address the more important Yet non-U.S. scholars are not thoughtful questions about how questions. McMahon accuses the only ones on tight budgets. scholars connect to and learn from me of silliness, half-truths, and Many of us who are U.S. graduate one another. I agree that Americanists mischaracterizations. He tries to students, non-tenure-track faculty, can make incredibly valuable make his own case with a series of and employees of cash-strapped contributions to the study of every analogies. But reasoning through institutions can’t easily afford part of the world. To my mind, the analogies is a flawed method conferences in distant U.S. cities, whole point of international and for proving or disproving any not to mention those on faraway transnational history is to make such proposition. To begin with, we continents or islands. I was able to go connections, and I agree that a deep might draw opposite conclusions to the conferences in Columbus and knowledge of the United States is, from the same analogy. Why, for Madison because it didn’t cost much in many instances, precisely what instance, would one study Ancient scholars in other fields and in other to get there. An extra bonus was that to Egypt without using evidence from I could offer students rides. Yes, by countries want to connect . Unless contemporary civilizations, especially all means, let’s attend professional one is grounded in the history of a if the focus is foreign relations? It gatherings outside the United States, particular place, one cannot even is well known that archeological but let’s keep our annual meetings begin to branch out. Going on to evidence from Babylon and Assyria too. gain real expertise in the history of often provides a very different And please, let’s keep them in other places and to show how these version of how Egypt interacted June, a slot that still leaves ample histories change when we link them with its neighbors, and relying only time for summer research expeditions together is both the hardest challenge on Egypt’s records would create a and reduces the likelihood of and the greatest opportunity these distorted view. And what would we scheduling conflicts with the area alternative approaches have to offer. make of a “Society for the Study of studies associations that meet in the The challenge seems to me Trees”— or one species of tree, or one Passport September 2011 Page 15 tree, to make the analogy exact—that impact if they never leave American I wrote this essay because I ignored soil, climate, and the other shores. wanted to help ensure that there forms of life that make up the larger The best work begins with a is a place in the profession for ecosystem? We might call it “The simple principle: the nature of historians who take up such crucial Society for Missing the Forest for the a historical question or problem problems as war and peace, global Trees.” should determine the sources and poverty and wealth, nationalism Analogies can not only lead to methods the scholar uses to grapple and internationalism. But I am also opposite conclusions, when they with it, not the other way around. concerned about the place of the are poorly chosen they can lead to But there is a crucial distinction to historical profession in American precisely the wrong conclusion, as be made between how individual life and about America’s place in in the case of the former SHAFR scholars choose to pursue their the world. It is not clear whether president who drew an analogy own research and how a scholarly Washington will retain preeminence between our society and one community chooses to define and in world politics. The United States dedicated to the study of African- defend itself. My idea is not that faces tremendous problems, not all American history. It is not that he or every member of SHAFR would do of its own making, and Americans any other member would actually international research, but rather that will not be able to address them say that SHAFR should be a society we would redefine our community entirely by themselves. Historians for the history of white American (and rename it) to include everyone are uniquely placed to explain our men. But the analogy, which he interested in the history of world current predicament, especially the used to argue that we should not be politics. Members would continue many challenges to a U.S.-centered concerned about the lack of diversity to have multiple scholarly identities international system, as well as long- in our ranks, only holds if he assumes and multiple membership cards. term changes in the very nature of that SHAFR’s composition reflects its Most (including myself) would international relations. Conversely, intellectual agenda. doubtless retain a core interest in historians have a crucial role in Nor is SHAFR analogous to a the United States. But those who explaining U.S. foreign relations to society for the study of physics. work on American foreign relations the rest of the world. Is it too much Masculinity and whiteness do using American sources would to ask that, in fulfilling this mission, not matter when one is trying to have more opportunities to engage we read scholarship on our chosen explain the origins and nature of a whole world of scholars who do subjects even when it is not written the universe, after all, as opposed to not see themselves as Americanists in English? And should we not be the origin and nature of U.S. foreign but are nonetheless interested in ready to research the history of relations. Even so, scientists are international relations, including other countries when it can help us making a tremendous effort to recruit U.S. foreign relations. Linked to understand our own? underrepresented groups because other associations in other countries Members of SHAFR, if ours they recognize that they are not and regions, SHAFR would become were not an association of scholars drawing on all the available talent. A a crucial entrepot in the global dedicated to exploring the world, lack of diversity assumes even greater exchange of ideas. why would the newsletter you importance when we recognize that— I would like to think that this is hold in your hands be called and this is not the case in physics— a hopeful vision (note the acronym Passport? So let us begin to realize some of the best work in our field is for the proposed Federation of our organization’s full potential. done by people who do not identify Associations for International and Let us join with our counterparts in with our field because of the way it is Transnational History). I don’t other fields and in other countries now constituted and defined. know why responses to it should and create a global community of While analogies can provoke be filled with so much fear and historians. I believe it will be better useful questions, they do not provide anxiety. Hoganson worries that than fine. It will be great. an answer to the most important after “severing our ties to the U.S. question: where do we go from history field,” SHAFR members Matthew Connelly is Professor of here? Citino is rightly wary of the won’t “fit in.” International and History at Columbia University. notion that we face a dichotomous global historians won’t accept their choice—as Hoganson describes it, a courses and, according to Sibley, will “choice between international and impose litmus tests and deny prizes. transnational history on the one hand McMahon warns that all of this will and national and local history on the drive a stake through the heart of an other.” I can only repeat that local and old and venerable tradition. If only national history is no less important we can fend them off, he concludes, than international and transnational “we will be fine.” history and that imposing a larger I think that the contributors to this frame of analysis can be distorting. forum will be fine whether or not My respondents have identified SHAFR changes. Those who have several excellent works that analyze the most at stake in its future are U.S. foreign relations based on U.S. younger scholars who do not have sources, and I could add many others. jobs or tenure. There is no denying I would not deny any book a Bernath that there are real consequences in the prize simply because it included only competition of ideas, and diplomatic U.S. sources. But as Tim Borstelmann history suffered many losses when it argues, no book should begin with an failed to challenge and engage other assumption of American uniqueness. fields and disciplines productively. Rather, it is a question to be explored But that is all the more reason why, and a problem to be explained. And in considering SHAFR’s future, and those who are mainly interested in especially the future of its younger America’s power must realize that members, we should use logic and they will not be able to establish its evidence and not play on their fears. Page 16 Passport September 2011 SHAFR Looks at the Arab Spring

James Goode, Weldon C. Mathews, Clea Bunch, Paul Thomas Chamberlain

Some Thoughts on the Arab preponderant influence in Cairo. individuals did not express strong Uprisings and American Policy in In their recent history, Egyptians anti-regime views. They only wanted the Middle East have often looked to Turkey for more opportunity than was available guidance. They did so in the 1930s at home. This critical issue must James Goode under Ataturk and again after the become a priority if there is to be 1952 revolution. Anwar Sadat even long-term stability in the region. he situation in the Middle brought a few Turkish political It is common these days to view East has been evolving scientists to Cairo to advise him. the nations of the Middle East as rapidly since January. Once In Ankara, of course, at least until dominoes, one falling after another Tthe regional uprisings spread from Turkey sought admission to the in what might seem an inevitable Tunisia to neighboring Egypt, the European Union, the military leaders process. These nations are, of course, media began to refer to an “Arab took a central role in affairs of state, similar to each other, especially Spring” and an “Arab Awakening,” intervening on numerous occasions when we consider the nature of terms reminiscent perhaps of an to unseat the government of the day their regimes and the longevity of earlier age and of venerable works in order to maintain the integrity of their rulers. Yet we would do well to by nationalists such as Najib Ataturk’s secular republic. If this is remember that these are really very Azuri (The Awakening of the Arab the model the Egyptian generals plan different political entities and that Nation, 1905) and George Antonius to emulate, there could be much strife what befalls one may not provide (The Arab Awakening, 1938). More ahead. much guidance as to what will problematically, many journalists One of the greatest challenges happen to its neighbor. This is as true and pundits continue to characterize facing all Middle Eastern regimes is for the Middle East today as it was these developments as “revolutions.” that their populations are growing for Southeast Asia fifty years ago. A Here, surely, they have gone too far. rapidly. Young people make up Lebanese colleague bristles whenever We have to be clear about the nature a much larger percentage of the he hears the phrase “the Arab street,” of the changes taking place in the population than in the United States which he considers a Western term Middle East today. There really is or the nations of Europe. Forty- that conflates a variety of situations nothing very revolutionary about six percent of Yemen’s population in many different countries. It is what has happened—at least not yet. is under age 15, and 31.8 percent too tempting to suggest a single Egypt provides a good example. of Egypt’s is under age 14; by explanation for all instead of Despite all the youthful enthusiasm comparison, only 27.3 percent of analyzing each state in its own right, and activity of recent months, senior the U.S. population is under age looking at the distinctive features military officers seem to be firmly 20. Many of the Middle Eastern that make it unique rather than only in control. In fact, some observers economies have not provided those that cast it almost as a clone have argued that the removal of adequate employment opportunities, of surrounding nations. The factors President Hosni Mubarak fit well and this signal failure has helped spurring unrest in the monarchies of with the military’s own objectives, to fuel much of the recent unrest. Jordan and Bahrain, for example, or for they were decidedly opposed to Millions of Egyptians, Yemenis, and in the republics of Egypt and Syria, a Mubarak dynasty, especially one Lebanese have routinely been forced are at least as different as they are headed by heir-apparent Gamal to go abroad, especially to the oil-rich alike. Mubarak, who had no ties to the states of the Persian Gulf, to provide How has American policy army. Since the 1952 revolution, all for themselves and their families at contributed to these recent three Egyptian presidents have come home. This set of problems will only happenings? One can make a strong from the ranks of the armed services. worsen, at least in the short run, argument (as Andrew Bacevich did What lies ahead, we have to as popular unrest disrupts normal recently in the Los Angeles Times) wonder, now that all those in Tahrir economic activity. that the disturbances throughout Square who have been advocating Iran has also been troubled the region have come about because for major reforms—certainly long by high unemployment. When I local peoples have taken matters overdue—realize that the army visited there in the summer of 2003, into their own hands, determined to has co-opted their movement? It is I was surprised at the number of change their lives for the better, that difficult not to be pessimistic. The fall young people who were looking they have not needed direction and elections for parliament and president for opportunities to go abroad for prompting from abroad. It should be may clarify the situation, but even education and employment. The a humbling experience for American then we can be confident that without reformist president, Muhammad policymakers to realize that after revolutionary measures, the armed Khatami (1997-2005), was still in years of warfare and extensive costs forces will continue to exercise power then, and most of these in lives and resources, events are Passport September 2011 Page 17 moving in a progressive fashion Islam appears to have been caught off (Upheaval: U.S. Policy Toward Iran in rather independently of Washington’s guard by these recent developments. a Changing Middle East, June 2011). orchestration. It is almost as if that older movement We should be wary of embracing Historians, too, should take note. has become decidedly irrelevant to the concept of a threatening “Shi’a There was a time in the 1960s and younger generations. This is one crescent,” extending from Iran early 1970s when scholars paid little recent trend that calls for careful to Lebanon. Subscribing to this attention to the role of Islam in the monitoring in the coming months. idea may serve the interests of lives of Middle Easterners, believing Fearmongers would have us other nations more than our own. perhaps that understanding Islam believe that the shadow of radical Whatever the truth about Iranian would add few insights to the larger Islam looms menacingly over the objectives and capabilities, the objective of examining regional Arab Middle East today. Yet it seems Obama administration would do societies. Anyone searching library to me that the Muslim community is well to engage the Islamic republic shelves (or databases) for books on handling al-Qaeda as it has handled whenever it can, rather than Islam published before the Iranian such outbreaks of extremism over continuing to isolate it. Revolution will find very few serious the past fourteen centuries; it has Finally, when all these other crises studies. With few exceptions, Western marginalized them and destroyed have been moved toward resolution, scholars had put Islam on the back them if they persisted. No group even those in Yemen and Syria, U.S. burner or dismissed it entirely, advocating violence as the only policymakers will still face the most concluding that such knowledge solution has been able to survive important challenge in the region: had become almost irrelevant to the for long at the center of the Islamic the Israeli-Palestinian issue. Here task of analyzing modern, secular community. there has been very little progress. societies. What is the United States to do? Whatever goodwill, if any, the United There were, of course, many Policymakers can assess each national States may be able to garner from important developments taking place movement in its own right and take current policies in different parts of out of public view. I remember well a a quietly supportive role where that the Middle East, this one issue will conversation with my Persian teacher, seems appropriate. At the moment remain as a litmus test of American who was also a close friend, in the the United States faces two especially commitment to justice. early 1970s. I was living in Mashhad, challenging situations at opposite The Obama administration began an Iranian city of pilgrimage, site ends of the Middle East. In Libya its tenure committed to reaching a of the tomb of the eighth Imam, Ali the United States has intervened to settlement, but its initiative failed, ar-Riza. I had just finished reading save lives, much as it did in Kosovo and even former Senator George Edward G. Browne’s history of the in 1995. Unfortunately, there is no Mitchell abandoned the enterprise. first Iranian revolution, The Persian Boris Yeltsin-like figure to assist the As the White House prepares for the Revolution of 1905-1909, in which United States in coaxing Mu`ammar 2012 presidential election, it has fallen he described in considerable detail al-Qadhafi from power in Tripoli. into the pattern of its predecessors. the religious activism taking place But the United States can afford to Only a president with a strong in the early years of the twentieth be patient in this case. Qadhafi’s mandate has the leverage to make century. Why, I asked innocently, was resources and power will weaken progress on this complex issue. Lame there no such activity today. He told over the coming weeks. We can afford ducks can do little. The president’s me that I was mistaken. Meetings, to wait him out while the opposition eleventh-hour intervention in May discussions, and debates were taking builds its strength and organization. served only to antagonize—and place regularly among members Regarding Bahrain, that tiny embolden—Israel’s supporters. of the ulama and pious Iranians of island-nation in the Persian Gulf, These recent events have reminded all classes. Such events, he assured Washington has spoken very softly us that the White House faces some me, would be largely invisible to a about the heavy-handed response significant challenges in Congress foreigner such as myself. A few years of Saudi Arabia and the al-Khalifa concerning its Middle East policy, later came the revolutionary turmoil family toward local Shi’a opposition. and not only from Republicans. After for which, I have to admit, I was Clearly, more important U.S. interests the president’s testy meeting with the not much better prepared than most are at stake here than in other parts of Israeli prime minister, congressmen Americans. the region, namely access to oil and and senators from both parties Since that time, the focus of an American naval base. But there fawned over Benjamin Netanyahu scholarship has shifted dramatically. is also concern over Iran, which lies when he appeared in the House Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of not many miles across the Persian chamber. These same legislators books have appeared, many of them Gulf and which has remained a have introduced measures that if essentializing the role of religion in principal antagonist of American approved would place far more Middle Eastern societies. Now the policymakers—and the American stringent sanctions on Iran than the prevailing arguments suggest that public, too—for more than thirty administration thinks appropriate. nothing can be understood without years. Should he win a second term, will reference to Islam or, in some cases, How serious a threat is the regime a reenergized Obama engage this that religion is all that needs to be in Tehran? It has its own considerable issue as he promised so eloquently studied. internal problems; we may have in Cairo in June 2009? Or—and this Recent events may contribute contributed to its outsized reputation is the more likely alternative—will to a clearer perspective, which is as a regional giant. Although its soft he become distracted and leave the important as we consider how power can be formidable, especially problem to his successor? Whatever radical Islamists are likely to impact in places like Iraq, Lebanon, and he chooses to do, conditions are the future of the region. Much of Bahrain, each with sizable Shi’a changing, with or without the American policy since 2001 has been populations, its military power has United States. Many Palestinians designed to contribute to the defeat serious limitations. According to are abandoning the quest for a two- and destruction of al-Qaeda, our a recent report, “Iran spends less state solution, opting instead for arch-enemy in the post–Cold War on its military than do most of its a single, unitary state. Changing world and a suitable successor to the individual Gulf counterparts, and its demographics make a single state former Soviet Union. And yet radical weapons are technologically inferior” more plausible than it might at Page 18 Passport September 2011 first appear, for the number of against the sham 2009 elections in the former CEO of Blackwater, to Palestinians and Jews in Israel and Iran and the world’s response to organize its foreign mercenary force.2 the Occupied Territories will soon be them. The Mubarak and Ben ‘Ali equal. Washington’s delay will bring The young, technologically regimes were less confident in their little benefit to its longtime ally in Tel adept Egyptian political activists abilities to deploy violence against Aviv. recognized that they needed to their dissidents while sustaining harness the international news media the elemental legitimacy necessary James Goode is Professor of History to their cause and to communicate for their regimes to endure. As the and Coordinator of the Middle East with each other to coordinate their Egyptian and Tunisian oppositions Studies Program at Grand Valley State activities. One organizer told his lost their fear of their respective University. trainees, “Your cell phone is your regimes, the regimes became at once Molotov cocktail.” The activists weaker and more inclined to resort to consequently developed techniques force. The use of force brought upon The Long View on the Arab Spring to bypass the Egyptian government’s them U.S. and international criticism, monitoring and blocking of electronic which in turn signaled to the Weldon C. Matthews communications. Although the protesters the regimes’ vulnerability. demonstrations that the activists It is hard to imagine that activists in his year’s protests and uprisings had planned in anticipation of other states and in the Palestinian in Tunisia, Egypt, Jordan, Syria, rigged parliamentary elections in territories did not watch this cycle of Yemen, and Bahrain have so far 2010 did not materialize, the April protest, repression, and censure and Tproduced starkly different results, 6 Movement was prepared to lead consider the prospects of replicating but they have all expressed rage at when Egyptians, inspired by the it. the authoritarianism, corruption, mass protests in Tunisia, took to the The civil society activists and and economic failures of these streets early this year.1 opposition groups in the Arab world countries’ governments. American Nothing so far indicates, however, have demonstrated their intentions diplomacy is now being compelled that Egypt is on the cusp of becoming of testing the limits to which the to respond to the changes taking a democracy. The secretive Military authoritarian regimes will go to place at the regional level as well as Council exercises ultimate authority suppress dissent. The erosion of the in individual Arab states. At one end in the state, the government hampers capacity of these regimes to deny of the spectrum of change is Libya. the organization of further protests, their publics’ access to the political Protests there have become a civil and the scheduling of elections realm is unlikely to follow a smooth war, resembling in some ways the for September allows little time trajectory. A period of quiescence recent ethnic conflicts and resource for political parties to organize following the current wave of wars of sub-Saharan Africa. The campaigns. Nonetheless, the April protests will not mean that the United States and its NATO allies 6 Movement and its affiliates have regimes have secured their futures. have become party to the civil war proven that they can mobilize the On the contrary, the example of the for reasons that they have not well Egyptian public to an extent that 1979 revolution in Iran suggests explained. At the other end of the has significantly diminished the that a long period of sporadic and spectrum is Tunisia. Its protests have arbitrary power of the regime over seemingly futile opposition could taken the country in a very different the people. The regime might well culminate in the sudden and nearly direction since the former president, successfully adopt new strategies unforeseen collapse of some of these Zine el-Abidine Ben ‘Ali, fled the to control dissent, but the Egyptian regimes. country. Tunisia seems, at least for pro-democracy organizers cannot To the extent that these processes now, to be progressing toward a be expected to stop innovating, continue and intensify, the United more effective administration with learning from other movements, States will be less able to ignore the more representative institutions. and sharing their experience with Arab publics or to impose its will in The United States and European other opposition organizations in the the region through client dictators countries are promising economic aid Middle East. and monarchs. The roles of Tunisian to secure its political reforms. Tunisia Diversification of media and and Egyptian labor organizers in has never been a force in inter-Arab expanding access to it in the form the democracy movements also affairs or a primary concern for U.S. of satellite television, Internet, suggest that the United States might policymakers. Egypt, though, has and social media are increasingly face difficulty in convincing Arab historically been a trendsetter in the restricting the ability of Arab publics that they have benefited Arab world, and its former president, authoritarian regimes to maintain the from American-sponsored neoliberal Hosni Mubarak, had been among the atomization of their citizens beyond economic policies. most important of America’s clients. state-controlled associations. The Inasmuch as America’s traditional The Tahrir Square protests, failure of these regimes to otherwise Arab client regimes are compelled which achieved Mubarak’s removal contain opposition increases their to become more responsive to their from Egypt’s presidency, were not propensity to resort to violence, publics, the U.S. relationship with spontaneous. They were the outcome which will strain the loyalty of their Israel will come under strain. The of the April 6 Movement’s careful militaries and security forces as they Egyptian opposition and democratic planning and organization, extending are called upon to brutalize their activists, for example, demand back at least three years to its first fellow citizens. In this regard, it statehood for Palestinians. The Arab attempt at organizing protests of is doubtful that Bahrain invited in activists will view the independence Egyptian textile workers to demand Saudi security forces last February of their governments’ foreign policies better pay and conditions. The simply because it lacked the numbers from American direction as a test of movement studied other democracy of security personnel to deal with the these governments’ responsiveness movements in the Middle East and crowds in Manama. It is no surprise to the aspirations of their people. Europe, seeking advice from their that Libyan President Qadhafi is Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu organizers as well as from American relying on hired fighters from sub- was fundamentally wrong when he advisers. The Egyptian organizers Saharan Africa, and the United Arab stood before Congress in May and, also closely observed the protests Emirates has turned to Erik Prince, referring to the protesters in the Arab Passport September 2011 Page 19 world, said that, “we share the hopes Israel. Even if the PLO had, a such as Egypt, Bahrain, and Yemen, of these young people throughout proposal for a state would have been it will also become more difficult the Middle East.” Had he read the irreconcilable with the rejection by for the United States to maintain web site of the April 6 Movement he Israeli Prime Minister Begin’s Likud its relationship with their security would know that its hopes really are Party of the existence of any state services. That relationship had not his. It demands opening Egypt’s other than Israel between the Jordan tightened even before 9/11, as the border with Gaza, ending sales of River and the Mediterranean Sea. The United States partnered with these Egyptian natural gas to Israel, and bilateral peace treaty Carter brokered countries in the campaign against supporting the Palestinians’ Nakba between Egypt and Israel in 1979 jihadist organizations. U.S. access to Day protests of May 15 at the 1949 offered only more process for the regional military bases is also likely armistice lines (the so-called 1967 Palestinians through an associated to be less tolerated by people who “borders”). The movement’s slogan document, the Framework for Peace do not perceive that their security is is “We shall return to Palestine.” in the Middle East. Its proposal increased by American facilities on President Obama stood before of autonomy for Palestinians in their soil. AIPAC a few days before Prime the territories during a five-year We should not presume, though, Minister Netanyahu’s address to transitional period also did not that less American involvement Congress and observed that “a new promise a Palestinian state at the with regional security agencies or generation of Arabs is reshaping the end. A similar formula was revived more limited use of bases will be region. A just and lasting peace can in the 1993 Oslo agreement, which entirely harmful to U.S. security no longer be produced elements in the long run. As Americans lose forged with of autonomy for their enthusiasm for state-building one or two To the degree that the Arab the Palestinians and counterinsurgency operations Arab leaders. protesters can force more openness in the territories in Iraq and Afghanistan, it might Going forward, on their governments in places but no promise be possible for U.S. policymakers millions of such as Egypt, Bahrain, and Yemen, of statehood. Its to consider the question of whether Arab citizens it will also become more difficult autonomy-without- the United States has fallen into have to see for the United States to maintain sovereignty the security dilemma. That is, they that peace is its relationship with their security arrangements might ask if the United States, by possible for services. That relationship had resembled seeking absolute security through that peace to what Begin and an intrusive Middle East policy and be sustained.” tightened even before 9/11, as the the Likud had repeated recourse to massive force, Any United States partnered with these planned for the has presented itself as a threat that administration countries in the campaign against Palestinians in produces regional counter-threats. that takes jihadist organizations. U.S. access to 1977 and resulted They might also wonder whether the this dictum regional military bases is also likely in a Palestinian close U.S. military and intelligence seriously will to be less tolerated by people who uprising against the cooperation with Israel and Arab be forced to do not perceive that their security is Israeli occupation authoritarian states has itself been reconsider the increased by American facilities on in 2000. It cannot a radicalizing force in the Arab United States’ their soil. have been lost on world. It is also worth recalling that traditional the Palestinians although the jihadist organizations policy of that President have taken refuge in failed studied Clinton’s January states and weak states, they also ambiguity in the Palestinian-Israeli 2001 public proposal of a Palestinian frequently established themselves in peace process. Such ambiguity state alongside Israel came only authoritarian states, some of them characterized the land-for-peace in the final weeks of his two-term supported by the United States. formula of the 1967 United Nations presidency and after four months of Arab societies in which governments Security Council Resolution 242, the uprising. can better accommodate dissent which was intended to produce a The ambiguity continues, and can allow the functioning of a peace process, not define its outcome. however. Prime Minister Netanyahu liberal opposition might well be less It left the question of how much land told Congress that Israel envisions conducive towards the radicalization Israel would yield and to whom to peace with a future Palestinian state, of the political opposition. future negotiations between Israel but he rejected the 1949 armistice Some observers have claimed that and the Arab states. The resolution lines as an approximation of its the weakening of authoritarian Arab referred to the Palestinians only borders. Congress displayed nothing regimes will redound to the benefit obliquely in the phrase “the refugee but approval of the prime minister’s of Islamist movements, and by problem.” American peace initiatives speech. Arab publics will not be extension to Iran, and will necessarily since then have ginned up process impressed with American diplomacy harm American security. There can without taking the considerable risks if the term “Palestinian state” turns be little doubt that policymakers in entailed in pressuring the parties to out to mean a few enclaves in the the Islamic Republic welcomed the define an outcome that addressed Gaza Strip and West Bank that fly fall of such a stalwart American client Palestinian statelessness. Palestinian flags but do not control as Mubarak. The Iranian leadership In 1977 President Carter briefly their borders, airspace, or aquifer. must delight even more in the floated the idea of a “Palestinian Arabs are likely to ask how President protests in Bahrain, headquarters to homeland,” hoping to entice the Obama could tell AIPAC that “every the U.S. Fifth Fleet, which controls the Palestine Liberation Organization state has the right to self-defense, waters off Iran’s coast and monitors into the diplomatic process and and Israel must be able to defend its airspace and communications. thereby ease the way to negotiations itself—by itself” and at the same time But the protests in the Arab world with Israel for the Arab confrontation declare that the future Palestinian are hardly an unalloyed blessing for states. Carter did not use the term state must be “non-militarized.” Iran. Its own democracy activists are “Palestinian state,” and the PLO had To the degree that the Arab certainly watching events in Tunisia, not then accepted the principle of a protesters can force more openness Egypt, and elsewhere, drawing Palestinian state existing alongside on their governments in places lessons about how to bring about Page 20 Passport September 2011 more political freedom in Iran. Iran’s and Arab nationalism. The British 2. Mark Mazzetti and Emily Hager, problems also in some ways mirror soon realized that the political “Secret Desert Force Set Up By those of the United States: the nation- leadership of Egypt, Transjordan, and Blackwater’s Founder,” The New York wide protests in Syria are directed Iraq, which had treaties with Great Times, 14 May 2011, http://www. nytimes.com/2011/05/15/world/ against Iran’s main regional ally. Britain and British bases on their soil, middleeast/15prince.html. Even if the regime in Damascus does cared about what happened to the 3. Leon Carl Brown, The Surest Path: The not collapse, the more resources it Palestinian Arabs, in part because Political Treatise of a Nineteenth Century must dedicate to remaining in power, their publics did. In 1937, during Muslim Statesman (Cambridge, Mass.: the less effectively it can serve as the Palestinian Arab revolt, British Harvard University Press, 1967), 177. Tehran’s client and exert pressure on officials recommended the partition Israel through Lebanon. of Palestine into a Jewish and Arab The recent popular mobilizations state, then backed away from it and Living in Interesting Times of Arab opposition movements, the two years later declared that Palestine activists’ deployment of new media, should become a single independent Clea Bunch and the erosion of the arbitrary state of Jews and Arabs. power of Arab governments (and by The efforts of the British to resolve The spring semester of 2011 was a extension the power of their foreign the conflict in Palestine ended badly busy time for scholars who study backers) are all part of an uneven for them and just as badly for some the Middle East. In January, after process that has been evident over the of their Arab client politicians and the fall of the Tunisian government, course of a century. In the interwar kings. Within ten years of the 1948 I gave five public talks in the span period, popular mobilizations Palestine War, military coups— of ten days. A few weeks later, I undermined the bargain between “revolutions,” as their leaders called watched the fall of Hosni Mubarak’s collaborating indigenous elites and them— swept from power the government while sitting at my colonial authorities in the Arab Arab mediating elites with whom home computer in pajamas (it was Middle East. Educated Egyptian Great Britain had constructed a a rare Arkansas snow day). As I youths in 1935, expressing their security system in Egypt and Iraq. alternated between coverage on the demands through print media, British military bases and economic BBC and Al-Jazeera websites, my mobilized urban populations and prerogatives went with the old elites, students and I chatted on Facebook confronted the Egyptian army whose sorry performance during with excited anticipation, and we to achieve the restoration of the the Palestine crisis was a significant commiserated online when Mubarak Egyptian constitution and a new factor in their demise. Those elites initially refused to step down. Within treaty with Great Britain that had also failed in a new style of the span of a month I gave talks on advanced Egypt’s independence. politics in which recently urbanized diverse subjects from radical political Soon after, in Syria, young activists lower classes and powerless but Islam to oil prices, and I answered launched nationwide demonstrations educated middle classes demanded questions from conservative talk and strikes in defiance of the French that the state address their needs and radio hosts, Arkansas politicos, and colonial administration’s efforts to aspirations. financial executives. suppress them and brought about the The populist authoritarian When I ventured into my career dismissal of a collaborating Syrian regimes that emerged in the 1950s path as a Middle East historian in government and French promises and 1960s presented themselves as the early 1990s, I certainly did not to negotiate a treaty with Syria. At defenders of their people against anticipate that my chosen profession the same time, young Palestinian imperialism, monopoly capitalism, would be quite so lively or of interest activists, among them journalists and feudalism. They promised that to anyone beyond my own small and labor organizers, undertook to political democracy would follow cohort of nerdy specialists. The emulate the protests in Syria and revolutionary change. Long before, terrorist attacks of September 11, coordinate their own protests with in 1867, the Tunisian liberal reformer 2001, changed the atmosphere in this them. The Palestinians’ efforts were Khayr al-Din al-Tunisi reflected on profession dramatically and created the outcome of several episodes of modern European history and its a national obsession with the Middle popular political mobilization over meaning for the Muslim world. He East, its people and its history. Almost the previous five years and resulted wrote that sometimes a dictator ten years later, the revolutionary in an extended general strike, “would be accepted by the people events of the “Arab Spring” have followed by a three-year armed for the purpose of extinguishing captivated the American public insurrection against British control of [national] helplessness, delivering the and media. While the demand for the country and Zionist colonization. kingdom from danger, and making information about the Middle East Although Great Britain’s her conditions viable by smoothing increased dramatically between 9/11 counterinsurgency campaign in out the people’s rough spots and and the Arab Spring, it is interesting Palestine was militarily successful, straightening their crookedness. to see how little has changed in British policymakers ultimately felt However,” he added, “the people terms of public perceptions. The compelled to end Britain’s policy usually do not get what they hoped following observations review some of ambiguity toward Zionism in for.”3 Arab publics are now making it Middle East history and consider an attempt to preserve its regional clear that they have not. how current events intersect with the hegemony. During World War profession. I, they had simultaneously built Weldon C. Matthews is Associate relationships with Arab nationalists Professor of History at Oakland We’ve been waiting for the Arab and Zionists to achieve their University. Spring. 2011 marks the culmination strategic goals. The vagueness of of an important phase in the history the Balfour Declaration’s support Notes: of the Middle East. By the late for “a national home for the Jewish 1. Maryam Ishani, “The Hopeful 1990s, many Middle Eastern leaders, people” in Palestine, as opposed to Network,” Foreign Policy, 7 February including Hafez Assad of Syria, King a Jewish state, could not reconcile 2011, http://www.foreignpolicy.com/ articles/2011/02/07/the_hopeful_ Hussein of Jordan, King Fahd of the contradiction inherent in network. Saudi Arabia, and Saddam Hussein simultaneously backing Zionism of Iraq, were entering their twilight Passport September 2011 Page 21 years, and their countries faced a substantial amount of ridicule; directed at American leaders. Yet uncertain succession. That generation however, there are indeed many the notion that the United States can of leaders provided the Middle East “unknown unknowns” in the Middle direct the future of the Arab world with a modicum of stability—at East. How could U.S. officials is false. President George W. Bush least in terms of leadership—during anticipate that several revolutions committed the United States to a the end of the Cold War, but it was would be sparked by the actions of war that he and other policymakers unclear whether their regimes would one angry Tunisian man? Should hoped would cause a domino effect, survive without the drive, charisma, the CIA be closely monitoring the spreading democracy throughout or (in some cases) ruthlessness of moods of vegetable vendors? It is the region, but despite the sacrifice their personalities. In addition, as possible to read the general political of thousands of lives and millions the populations of Arab countries climate and to make analogies from of dollars, the United States did not became increasingly well-educated, past to present, but as historians we inspire a widespread democratic it seemed highly unlikely that they need to admit to ourselves and to the movement. Reform in the Middle would continue to tolerate corruption public that some events are beyond East is taking place at its own pace and abuse in their governments. I prediction. Diplomatic historians are and is directed by local leadership; visited Egypt in July 2010, and it was often asked to forecast the future with it cannot be controlled by external apparent that Egyptians were not an accuracy that is unrealistic. We can parties. prepared to accept the leadership of give educated guesses about events, The image of an all-powerful Mubarak’s son, Gamal. but we should resist the temptation United States was abused by Middle to speak with an authoritative voice Eastern potentates for several I do not own a crystal ball. beyond our capacity. Repeat after me: decades: they blamed the ills of their Historians of the Middle East “I don’t know.” societies on the actions of U.S. leaders have been waiting for the “Arab and thus avoided accountability Spring” to materialize for many The United States will not for their own corruption and years, but it should be emphasized determine the fate of the Middle ineffectiveness. The policies of the that no historian, political scientist, East. Historical accounts of U.S.– United States have undoubtedly area specialist, or policymaker Middle East relations often include affected the Middle East in profound can foretell the future. The term the phrase “missed opportunities.” ways, but the futures of nascent “unknown unknowns” coined by I confess that my writing has been democracies in the region will be Donald Rumsfeld was subjected to peppered with a fair share of scolding determined by their citizens. In

JFK Library Announcement

Due to the need to update its archival storage areas, the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library will provide restricted access to its textual archival collections starting in late summer and extending into the fall of 2011. During that time period, currently estimated to last from August 12 through Nov. 15, 2011, only a select number of collections will be physically available to researchers and to Archives staff members. These include:

--the National Security Files; --the Ernest Hemingway Papers; and --the Audiovisual collections (still images, moving images, and audio recordings).

All other collections will be unavailable for research during the approximately 12-week period and research visits should be planned, accordingly. Without access to materials for research, Archives staff members will be limited in their ability to respond to offsite requests during this period, as well. Please note that all digitized collections, including the President’s Office Files, the John F. Kennedy Oral History Collection, and the White House Photographs, will remain accessible via our website: www.jfklibrary.org.

We urge all researchers to contact the JFK Library’s research room before planning on-site visits: 617.514.1629 or [email protected].

We apologize for the inconvenience and appreciate your cooperation during this period of restricted access.

Sincerely, Karen Adler Abramson Chief Archivist John F. Kennedy Presidential Library

Page 22 Passport September 2011 fact, the United States will have a necessity. contradiction: democratic societies even less influence in democratic Adding to linguistic barriers are are not necessarily stable, nor will societies than in dictatorships and negative perceptions of the Middle they behave in a manner that always monarchies. As historians, we need East. Americans in particular tend favors American policy. Until we to be cautious about prescriptive to be fearful and suspicious of acknowledge that this tension exists, counterfactuals that assign too much the region. There is a widespread American policies will continue to power and influence to the United perception that the entire Middle be comprised of a hodgepodge of States. Certainly, there have been East is a hazardous region filled with expensive ad hoc interventions. In the missed opportunities, but the United suicide bombers and kidnappers. past, naked self-interest has trumped States—as a superpower—has been Although conflict zones in the any desire to encourage reform in the surprisingly powerless to shape the Middle East are dangerous, I am very Middle East, and despite presidential outcome of events in the Middle East. confident that traffic accidents, not language to the contrary, dictators terrorist attacks, are the main threat and kings were the chief American to my health when I travel in Jordan allies. It is important for historians to Our knowledge is still very or Egypt. It is critical that diplomatic understand that these contradictions limited. In the United States, our historians travel to Middle Eastern exist and to point them out when lack of knowledge about the Middle countries, learn the languages, necessary so that students can begin East stems primarily from a language conduct interviews, search for to recognize the unarticulated aspects deficit, which became highly visible documents of historical significance, of U.S. policy in the Middle East. For when it was revealed that the State and expand their understanding example, discussions of women’s Department employed only a few of the region. Many areas of the rights or religious freedom often elide individuals who were fluent in world pose hazards or challenges to problems that exist in Saudi Arabia Arabic prior to the tragedy of 9/11. historians; unfortunately, perceptions or Israel specifically because they are Arabic is a long-term commitment of threats in the Middle East have key U.S. allies in the region. The Arab and is not a typical offering in most become inflated to the point where Spring invites historians to discuss U.S. high schools and universities they impede scholarship. the wider debates of U.S. national (although it is becoming more interests and how they may conflict common). Furthermore, many Appearances matter. Because with deeply prized democratic values students abandon the study of Arabic of limited interaction between and human rights abroad. after one or two years, which is Middle Eastern and Western barely enough time to learn the basic societies, perceptions shaped by Be prepared for turbulence. As structure of the language. Adding to the media and high-level contacts dictatorships fall in the Middle East, a student’s natural frustration with become particularly significant. we must be prepared for an unstable a difficult language is the fact that Specifically, words used by leaders future. Historians are granted the formal Arabic—which is commonly in both societies are viewed by the gift of a long-term perspective, and taught in basic Arabic courses--is public as having special power we know that continuity is the norm fairly useless on the streets of Cairo, and relevance. The use of the term in most societies. We cannot expect Amman, or Baghdad; residents “crusade” by President George W. that democratic transitions in the speak local dialects that almost seem Bush is one example of the way Middle East will be neat, tidy, or unrelated to the formal language that impressions can be shaped by linear. It took centuries of violence, studied in colleges. There are also language (in that case negatively). widespread warfare, and millions practical difficulties involved in As historians, we need to investigate of deaths for Europeans to sift their studying the language in college. the deeper meanings of language tangled mess of ethnic and religious When I attended graduate school, and images and recognize that there groups into stable, peaceful nations. my fellowship required that I carry a are significant cultural barriers Should we expect better from the full load of history courses, take six to acknowledge and deconstruct. Middle East? Although the Middle hours of Arabic each semester, and President Obama has walked a very East is often perceived as an area of teach two full sections (120 students) fine line in vocalizing his support brutality and warfare, it has suffered of Western Civilization; there was for various democratic movements nothing close to the violence of no recognition by the administration in the Middle East; he is attempting Europe during the twentieth century. that learning Arabic would require to encourage reform without It will take time for abused citizens significant extra time from graduate undermining stability—a difficult to trust in their new freedoms of students. Needless to say, historians task indeed. His Cairo address and religion and the press; ethnic and need to cultivate a more positive his May policy speech on the Middle religious conflicts are likely to environment for language acquisition East have done much to redeem the become more pronounced, not less, in in graduate and undergraduate image of the United States in the free societies. programs. Scholars need to Arab world. In terms of U.S. regional policy, encourage students as they struggle it is critical that Israel come to a with Arabic, which is acknowledged The Arab Spring revealed the settlement with the Palestinians. In to be an extremely difficult language primary flaw in U.S. policy.On the past, numerous dictators have for native English speakers, and the one hand, Americans tend to used the issue of the Palestinians ensure that programs of study support the spread of democracy, to deflect criticism from their own permit them to dedicate sufficient believing that democratic societies corruption and abuse. If Palestinians time to language acquisition. Aid will inevitably become peaceful, and Israelis arrive at an amicable from sources such as the SHAFR prosperous allies. On the other hand, settlement, it will remove a powerful Hogan fellowship, which provides U.S. leaders have sought stability weapon from the arsenal of money specifically for language in the Middle East because it is an extremists. studies, is very helpful in this area of key strategic importance I am cautiously optimistic about regard; however, the small number and economic necessity. It is time the future of the Middle East; if of applicants for such aid indicates for the American public and not for a sense of hope, it would be that many historians still view policymakers alike to recognize that difficult to work in this field. 2011 language acquisition as a luxury, not these two goals embody an organic is proving to be an eventful year, Passport September 2011 Page 23 ripe with possibilities, but darkened discussions of these recent events. land that was to become the British by violence in Syria, Yemen, Libya, For decades, some experts tell us, Mandate for Palestine was the focus and Bahrain. It is possible that the peoples of the Middle East have of two competing nationalisms, one the Arab spring will lead to more rejected “freedom” and “democracy,” Arab and one Jewish. On the basis access for historians as previously choosing instead a life of oppression of the 1917 Balfour Declaration, closed archives become open and at the hands of tyrannical rulers. the British took up the paradoxical new sources become available. Finally, we are told, “people power” and ultimately disastrous task of Unfortunately, Syria and Yemen of the kind we saw in 1989 has at establishing in Palestine a “national are now essentially inaccessible to long last come to the Middle East. home for the Jewish people” scholars. Historians who focus on This interpretation, it seems to me, without “prejudicing the civil and the Middle East will continue to face is a vestige of traditional orientalist religious rights of existing non- numerous challenges as the area depictions of the Middle East as Jewish communities in Palestine.” enters a new era, but public hunger backward, unchanging, and prone One of the earliest naysayers in this for information about the region will to despotism. The allusion to 1989, pursuit was the American-dispatched continue to drive the profession in at the same time, seems to suggest King-Crane Commission, which the near future. that it could be Western influence, found that a majority of the local rather than indigenous forces, that inhabitants opposed the formation Clea Bunch is Assistant Professor of might be pointing the way toward of a Jewish state. The commission History and Chair of Middle East Studies a new, democratic modernity. In the concluded that the only way that at the University of Arkansas, Little following paragraphs, I will try to such a state could survive would be Rock. historicize this “Arab Spring” and through a reliance on armed force. argue that the demonstrations of The British soon found themselves in 2011, while certainly historic, are an impossible situation, as “people Revolution and Democracy in the not exactly the first to have swept power” manifested itself in the form Middle East, 1917-20111 through the Arab world and the of a series of demonstrations fueled wider Middle East. Indeed, the region by ethnic tensions: in Jaffa in 1920–21, Paul Thomas Chamberlin has seen as much “people power” as at the Western Wall in Jerusalem in nearly any other in recent history. 1929, and in a massive mandate-wide e have all watched the The late-1910s and 1920s were uprising over the course of 1936–39. dramatic events unfolding years of ferment throughout the After World War II ended, the Jewish in the Arab world with a Arab world. The destruction of the population of Palestine would launch Wmixture of hope and trepidation. Ottoman Empire in 1919, part of the its own revolt against the British To their credit, the students in my global conflagration of World War authorities, who had restricted U.S.–Middle East Relations class at I, opened the door to the creation immigration to Palestine during the the University of Kentucky waited of an entirely new regional order. height of the Holocaust. patiently as we moved through Immersed in the rising tides of To the north of Palestine in the lectures on long-forgotten decades nationalism, the many peoples of Mandate of Syria and Lebanon, the like the 1950s and 1960s for a chance the region—or at least the vanguard French were faring no better. The to discuss the most recent reports of intellectuals in the major Great Syrian Revolt, which lasted of the events taking place in Egypt, cities—looked forward to a chance from 1925 to 1927, was an outpouring Libya, Yemen, and Syria. I began to exercise this new nationalist of “people power” that elicited a teaching my course on the United sentiment in the form of independent harsh response from French imperial States and the Middle East on nation-states. Europe’s great powers authorities. Thousands of Syrians January 12. Two days later, Tunisia’s had other ideas, however. In 1918, were killed in the French crackdown, Zine El Abidine Ben ‘Ali, who had Saad Zaghloul requested permission and parts of Damascus were reduced ruled the country since 1987, stepped from the British High Commissioner to rubble. To this day the metal roof down. On May 2, some sixteen weeks in Cairo to send a delegation to over Damascus’s Souq al-Hamidiya is and twenty-six lectures later, my the Paris Peace Conference to call riddled with bullet holes from French students sat down to take their final for the international community’s aircraft firing at crowds (or, some exam only hours after learning that support for an independent argue, from the crowds themselves Osama Bin Laden had been killed Egyptian state. When his request firing upward). These uprisings came by U.S. Special Forces. Imagine their was denied, Zaghloul appealed largely in response to the impact of dismay at having to write an essay on directly to the Egyptian people, European rule under the mandate ancient topics like Henry Kissinger’s who enthusiastically supported system. But like the uprisings of shuttle diplomacy when much more him. British authorities recognized 2011, those of the 1920s were largely interesting headlines were stretched Zaghloul and the newly formed Wafd spontaneous demonstrations of across the front page of the student Party as a threat to their interests in desire for greater civil sovereignty. newspaper, the Kentucky Kernel! Egypt—namely, control of the Suez The European powers subjected these One of the sentiments that my Canal—and exiled him to Malta in uprisings to harsh crackdowns in students expressed—and no doubt 1919. The move sparked a popular order to regain immediate control picked up from the press—was the uprising that coalesced into the of the situation and then introduced notion that what is happening in Egyptian Revolution of 1919. Unrest political reforms— some token, some the Arab world is “unprecedented.” continued in Egypt until 1922, more substantial. Commentators have drawn optimistic when the British granted nominal The situation began to change with comparisons with Eastern Europe in independence to a new Egyptian the termination of the British and 1989 and issued dire warnings about government. This concession was French mandates in the late 1940s. Iran in 1979 as a way to understand illusory, however, as it contained As Western imperialism receded exactly what it is we are witnessing. provisions that allowed for continued around the globe, two major forces The sentiment that the Arab world British control of much of the emerged in its wake: the postcolonial has, for the first time, come forward Egyptian system. world and the Cold War. The former to demand greater freedom and The situation was even more represented the newest generation democracy seems to pervade public complicated in the Levant. The of anti-colonialists, who were intent Page 24 Passport September 2011 on wiping away the vestiges of to continue the struggle against The 1980s saw another wave of European imperialism and bringing colonialism and neo-imperialism uprisings fueled by Arab “people the “modern” state to the formerly and to assert Arab sovereignty in power.” The Syrian Muslim colonized world. While most of these the international system. Nasser Brotherhood had been waging a emerging states were far from the won admirers around the world and guerilla campaign against Hafiz socialist or democratic utopias that fervent support in the region. So al-Asad’s regime in Damascus in theory they aspired to be, they strong was this tide of support that since 1976. Tensions came to a paid homage to the mass political it appeared, at least for a moment, head in 1982, when the regime movements of earlier generations that Arab nationalist elements might moved to destroy the Brotherhood’s and gained momentum from popular seize power in both Lebanon and Iraq stronghold in the city of Hama. demands for greater sovereignty and in 1958. U.S. military intervention in In a siege that lasted three weeks, self-determination. The postcolonial Lebanon helped to save the regime Syrian armor and artillery leveled world faced a rising threat, however, in Beirut, but the “people power” large portions of the city, killing from the rivalry between the United of the Arab street would become an thousands and breaking the back States and the Soviet Union. Many ongoing concern for the regimes of of the Brotherhood’s insurgency. feared that these superpowers would the Arab world and the superpowers “People power” also surged in the replace the old system of European in the coming decades. Historians of West Bank and Gaza in 1987, when colonialism with a new Cold War U.S. foreign relations already know Palestinians who had lived under imperialism. The new postcolonial what happened in Iran, which is Israeli occupation for twenty years states needed foreign aid, however, on the frontiers of the Arab world unleashed their desire for self- to support economic and social but still within the greater Middle determination in a spontaneous development projects and to create East: Muhammad Mossadegh rode mass uprising. As Palestinian functioning military forces to provide a wave of popular support to power youths threw stones and burned for national security. In many cases, in Tehran only to be overthrown tires, Israeli forces battled to restore national security entailed defending by British and U.S. intelligence control, and Yasir Arafat, along with the contested frontiers left over from operatives in 1953. the rest of the PLO leadership far colonial regimes. Significant unrest was also away in Tunisia, scrambled to claim These post-mandate states of present in the late 1960s and ownership of the uprising. This first the Arab world faced an added through the 1970s. Massive—and Intifada accomplished what years challenge: how to address the “unprecedented”—protests in of superpower diplomacy in the situation in Palestine. Britain’s Cairo in 1967 followed Nasser’s Arab-Israeli conflict could not: it led flirtation with rival nationalisms announcement that he would resign. Arafat to deliver a speech explicitly in their mandate had generated a While this outpouring of “people affirming Israel’s right to exist and nightmare scenario in which two power” was again in support of the renouncing “terrorism,” thus paving peoples with claims to one land regime, it grew out of the popular the way for direct negotiations would engage in what many feared, memory of Nasser’s record of between Israel and the PLO in the especially in the wake of the recent asserting Egyptian sovereignty and 1990s. The first Intifada also opened European horrors, might become independence on the world stage. the door for a new force in Palestinian another genocide. While the Jewish When thousands of students and politics, Hamas, an offshoot of the inhabitants of Palestine prepared workers demonstrated in Cairo, Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood. to defend their last best hope for a Alexandria, and other cities across This Arab “people power” was state they could call their own, the the country the following year, their alive and well at the beginning of Arab inhabitants struggled to hold demands took the form of calls for the twenty-first century. The second on to the land on which they had greater political freedom in Egyptian Intifada in Palestine broke out in lived for centuries. When the British society. Large uprisings would September 2000 and proved far more finally left in 1948 and Jewish leaders continue in Egypt into the 1970s, violent than its predecessor. This announced the creation of Israel, the driven both by discontented youth uprising symbolized the people’s independent Arab states had little reacting to Egypt’s economic malaise opposition to the Oslo peace process choice but to do what they believed and by the resurgent power of the and a general dissatisfaction with they had to do: rush to the defense Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. In the Palestinian Authority and of their fellow Palestinian Arabs. To January 1977, hundreds of thousands the PLO leadership. During my do otherwise would have meant an of Egyptians took to the streets to first summer in Cairo in 2005, unprecedented surrender and the protest Anwar Sadat’s decision, another “unprecedented” wave abandonment of their compatriots, mandated by the World Bank and the of demonstrations was gripping which would likely have destabilized IMF, to end the regime’s subsidies on the city as members of the Kefaya the regimes in Cairo, Beirut, Amman, flour, rice, and cooking oil. So strong movement used cell phone text and Damascus. What followed was a were these demonstrations that Sadat messages to coordinate some of the monumental disaster that challenged elected to reverse his decision and largest protests the city had seen the credibility of these post-mandate restore the state subsidies on basic beneath the radar of the Egyptian regimes and became a rallying cry for foodstuffs. While the protestors were secret police. Five and a half years a new generation of Arabs. driven by the need for access to basic later Mubarak’s regime had learned Indeed, Gamal Abdel Nasser’s necessities, their anger can be read, its lesson and managed to shut rise to power in the early 1950s in part, as a local rejection of the U.S. Cairo’s cell phone network down, was driven in part by a desire model of economic globalization. but the demonstrations continued to rectify the shame of 1948. The The 1979 Revolution in Iran, which nonetheless. Months later, I visited revolutionary regime in Cairo would is likely to be remembered as one of the site in Beirut where Lebanon’s garner enthusiastic support from the great revolutions of the twentieth Rafiq Hariri was killed in by a car the so-called Arab street in Egypt century for the theocratic character bomb allegedly planted by Syrian and throughout much of the wider that it unexpectedly adopted, is yet agents. Hariri’s assassination Arab world. This outpouring of another example of a mass popular sparked a mass uprising, the Cedar “people power” was a response to uprising in the greater Middle East, if Revolution, in which demonstrators Nasser’s Arab nationalist promises not the Arab world itself. demanded the end of Syria’s Passport September 2011 Page 25 military presence in Lebanon. In of the Middle East, but rather the greater democracy taking place in the April, the last uniformed Syrian failure of government security forces Middle East. Second, I will be writing military units left Lebanon, ending or outside powers to smother these at least one new lecture to finish my a partial occupation that had lasted demands. Indeed, these types of U.S.–Middle East course for 2012. I since 1976. The following summer, demonstrations have historically think my students will be pleased. after witnessing the 2006 war in been crushed: by the British and Lebanon amidst a flood of wealthy French in the 1920s and 1930s, by Paul Thomas Chamberlin is Assistant refugees from Beirut in Damascus, I the CIA in the 1950s, or by local Professor of History at the University of watched Egyptian protesters battle a governments in more recent decades. Kentucky. detachment of Mubarak’s riot-gear What struck me as surprising was clad police in front of Ayman Nur’s not a desire for greater democracy Note: political offices in downtown Cairo. I on the part of the Egyptian people, 1. I would like to thank Chapin was back in Beirut in the summer of but Hosni Mubarak’s decision to Rydingsward and Maurice LaBelle for 2007 to watch as Lebanese Security allow the protests in Tahrir Square their comments on this essay. Forces laid siege to Nahr al-Bared, the to continue. To be sure, it seems as if Palestinian refugee camp outside of that moment is now past. Mu’ammar Tripoli, in an attempt to capture or Gaddafi’s brutal counterattack on kill members of the militant group the rebellion in Libya demonstrated Fatah al-Islam. the continued relevance of military My point here is to suggest force against “people power.” The that we ought not to look at civil mounting bloodbath in Syria is unrest gripping the Arab world in starting to look more like a replay 2011 as “unprecedented.” As these of Hama in 1982 than East Berlin in examples (and there are many more) 1989. suggest, the peoples of the Middle That said, I suspect that we are East have not existed in some sort indeed witnessing something of a of complacent stupor in the face watershed in the Middle East. In the of regional despotism. It could coming months and years, as the be argued, in fact, that tensions precise nature of the revolution in between the “West” and the Arab Egypt becomes clear, we will have world are the result not of the Arabs’ a better picture of the legacy of the acquiescence to authoritarian rule 2011 Arab Spring, for it is Egypt, but of their consistent demands the largest and most powerful for greater independence and self- country in the Arab world, that is determination in international likely to set the historical agenda. It affairs. Whether motivated by a thirst was Nasser, not the Syrian or Iraqi for democracy, an anti-imperialist Ba’ath, who captured the spotlight impulse, a desire to control in the heyday of Arab nationalism. natural resources and strategic It was Sadat, with his decision to waterways, or an urge to defend expel Soviet advisors in 1972 and the Palestinian people (or at least realign Cairo with Washington give the appearance of doing so), during the 1970s, who signaled the many of the peoples and states of the beginning of a new era. I would Middle East have insisted on their argue that it was Mubarak, and not ability to function independently outliers like Saddam Hussein and of Western power in the region and Osama Bin Laden, who became on the international stage. At the the most representative visage of same time, many of the region’s the generation of Middle Eastern authoritarian regimes—from the autocrats in the post-Cold War era. Hashemite and Saudi monarchies Thus, I would venture a guess that and the Shah to Mubarak—owe whoever takes the seat of power no small debt to Western support, in Cairo, be it another general or involvement, and intervention in military junta, an opposition figure the Middle East, often in opposition like El-Baradei, one of the Muslim to demands for greater democracy. Brothers, or some other unexpected Let us not forget the January 2006 figure, is likely to be remembered Palestinian parliamentary elections, decades from now as the face of the which resulted in a victory for post-2011 Arab world. In the long Hamas, or for that matter the 1951 run, I suspect that as Cairo goes, so election of Muhammad Mossadegh goes the majority of the Arab world. in the Iranian Majlis. When given However, had I given a prognosis on an opportunity to express their Mubarak’s regime in early February, own political will, the peoples of I would have guessed that it would the Middle East and North Africa still be in power. In the end, I am have not always chosen a course convinced that we shall just have that pleased observers in the United to wait and see. However, at least States. two things are clear. First, far from I would argue that if there is an being unprecedented, the 2011 Arab unprecedented dimension to these Spring is ultimately just the latest uprisings, it is not a desire for greater manifestation of a decades-long freedom on the part of the peoples struggle for self-determination and Page 26 Passport September 2011 A Roundtable Discussion of Michaela Hoenicke-Moore’s Know Your Enemy: The American Debate on Nazism, 1933-1945

Gunter Bischof, Lloyd Ambrosius, Cora Sol Goldstein, Brian Etheridge, and Michaela Hoenicke-Moore

Review of Michaela written by American journalists (xv, 51). Starting with the journalists Hoenicke-Moore. Know Your Enemy: about the rise of Nazism and Hitler’s covering German politics in the The American Debate on Nazism, unleashing of war in Europe. She has 1930s, Americans could never make 1933-1945 read every government document up their minds about whether it penned during World War II in was the mass of German people Gunter Bischof Washington offices and planning who supported Hitler and were groups about ideas of how to treat responsible for the crimes committed the Germans after their defeat. She by Nazism (William L. Shirer) or just his is a very Teutonic book. expounds in great detail on the a small band of “Nazi gangsters,” a Deeply and exhaustively endless debates in wartime America popular image that originated with researched, clearly (and over the nature of the Nazi regime the journalist John Gunther in the Tsomewhat repetitively) argued, it is at and the special path (Sonderweg) 1930s (50). times overburdened by the pedantry Germany took from Frederic the Hoenicke-Moore rightly argues of its documentation. Footnotes are Great to Hitler in its aggressive and that traditional “conservative right” sometimes longer than the text on a expansionist designs. She also artfully vs. “progressive left” arguments do page—a not uncommon occurrence connects American thinking about not do justice to the subtlety of the in obsessive German academic Germany during World War I and the American great debate on Nazism. writing. One begins to wonder, for historical memory of that thinking Conservatives like the influential example, whether the author had in the United States during World journalist Dorothy Thompson to cite every article on “the German War II. In the process she makes it (the “American Cassandra” [52]) character” written in American clear that a structured comparison of recognized a deeply undemocratic, magazines during World War II. American perceptions of Germany authoritarian, aggressive, and Could she have been more selective? and the Germans during World War militaristic German character (53ff.) Fascinating debates on the roots of I and World War II would merit a before the war but rallied support National Socialism in German history separate study. for a “democratic revolution” in are recounted in interminably long The strength of Hoenicke- postwar Germany during the war footnotes (248), and one wishes the Moore’s exposition is her analysis of (190). The influential theologian author had made her arguments the ambiguity of American wartime Reinhold Niebuhr, a progressive, in the text rather in the small print thinking about the essence of Nazi found himself in Thompson’s camp. of footnotes that are relentless in Germany and the character of the He reasoned that humans had a their attention to obscure references. German people. Americans never “universal” capability to do evil and However, no one will be able to reached a consensus during the therefore argued for a mild policy make the argument that Michaela war about how to think about the of reeducation to lead the Germans Hoenicke-Moore did not do her Germans and how to treat them after towards democracy. One should homework. the war. American academics and punish the guilty Nazi tyrants after Know Your Enemy is a brilliant intellectuals offered their advice, the war while acknowledging “the intellectual history of American and German émigré academics profound guilt of the German people thinking about National Socialist voiced their opinions and wielded which is too deep to be reached by Germany. It is also a political history considerable influence in wartime our punishment” (211). of the deep roots of American Washington. Roosevelt himself had Hoenicke-Moore sees the roots postwar planning in vigorous prewar an ambiguous view of the Germans; of the ambiguity of American and wartime debates about the nature reports from American journalists wartime thinking about Germany of the Nazi regime, the culpability in Germany conflicted with each in prewar debates about the nature of the German people in the Nazi other; and Roosevelt’s Cabinet was of the Versailles Treaty and its project of occupation and exploitation deeply divided over the treatment influence on the rise of National of much of Europe, and the mass of Germany. This basic ambivalence Socialism. Americans were already murder of millions of people based had its roots in the “Janus-faced” deeply divided about the rise of the on a racist ideology. Hoenicke-Moore character of the Germans as both a Nazis and the involvement of the has probed every significant account brutal and highly cultured people German people in Nazism before Passport September 2011 Page 27 the war. Out of this came a deep 1943 was an important step in that world” (158), an idea the president division between isolationists (the direction; with it the president subscribed to as well. The State “divisionists” among them wanted committed the United States to Department also weighed in on the the Nazis to fight the Communists fight the war to the end without debate with its view that National [110]) and internationalists about any compromises with the Nazis. Socialism had deep roots in German the extent of American involvement Given FDR’s view that the German culture (168). Under the weight of in Europe. The arch-isolationist people had chosen dictatorship, the this government onslaught, American press of the American heartland, United States wanted a tabula rasa public opinion began to shift slowly controlled by Robert McCormick in Germany after the war so that towards recognizing the culpability and William Randolph Hearst, saw German society could be completely of the German people and rejecting the principal threat in communism. restructured and the wayward the possibility of a negotiated peace, They “normalized” the Third Reich German people successfully even though a majority of Americans to blast Roosevelt and the New Deal reeducated. never came to hate the Germans. (“Jew Deal” [62]) and maneuvered In May 1942 Roosevelt As the end of the war and deftly to keep the United States out established the Office of War German defeat drew nearer, the of war. The American public at large Information (OWI) to lead the debate intensified, especially among did not follow the newspapers that propaganda effort and convince intellectuals, about how to cure were sounding the alarm, and they the home front of the true nature the Germans of their “disease” of were reluctant to identify Germany as of the German enemy. The trouble aggression and racism and divert a threat (69). Maybe as many as half was that the liberal New Dealers in them from the destructive path of of Americans were anti-Semites and the OWI failed to come up with an their history. Hoenicke-Moore is never recognized the seriousness of unambiguous image of the German especially astute in summarizing the prewar Nazi persecution of the enemy; like FDR they worked with the heated debate by intellectuals Jews and later “the dimensions of the the notion that the Nazi clique had between 1943 and 1945 about how to Nazis’ atrocities against the Jews of enslaved the German people (140). deal with Germany (the subtle “Dr. Europe” (72). While the Germans were fighting Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” debates [177- With the coming of the war in a racial war, the OWI followed 216]). She rightly stresses that the Europe, President Roosevelt raised American popular opinion that the traditional historiographical divide the specter of the Nazi conspiracy at United States was not fighting the between harsh wartime indictments home (in subversive elements such German people in “racial war” (142). of collective guilt vs. the more as the Bund) and warned of their Was this a case of the blind leading moderate tendency to blame only the territorial ambitions in the Americas. the blind? In the end the OWI saw its “Nazi gangster” does “justice neither The president repeatedly used the core mission as mobilizing American to the reality of the Third Reich metaphor of the Nazi “gangsters” citizens by educating them about how nor to the complexity of American who were enslaving the German their daily lives would change under thinking about National Socialism” people to heighten the public’s Nazi control and by inviting them (180). Journalists, academics, and awareness of the Nazi threat. His to identify with the many victims of émigrés engaged in this great debate, personal view was akin to that of Nazi-occupied Europe (145ff.). The which still largely downplayed the the prominent British anti-Nazi Lord OWI’s exculpation of the German Holocaust, found the accumulating Vansittart, who directly blamed the people also led to a virtual negation evidence of German atrocities, German people for supporting Hitler of the roots of Nazism in German especially in Eastern Europe, (118). But the isolationists attacked history (149). Even though the OWI beyond belief. “Disease” and “Nazi- the president for wanting to pull followed public opinion more than gangsterism” remained the prevalent the United States into the war in far it educated the public, it was still metaphors both in assessing the away Europe; they felt that America terminated in mid-1943 by Congress. German enemy and thinking about was “invulnerable” and hemispheric Harkening back to World War I, the postwar peace settlement. The defense would be sufficient for many Americans felt that government medical profession added its weight American national security. It was a propaganda about German atrocities to the notions of mental disease. tall order to educate Americans on (such as the eradication of the Czech Psychiatrists felt that the Nazis the Nazi threat, since 82 percent did village of Lidice) were lies. were the symptom of the “paranoid not hate the Germans and did not The War Department had more core of German culture” (223). want to fight them in 1942 (105n2). success in educating soldiers about They were particularly concerned Seventy-four percent of Americans the nature of the German threat with about the long-range consequences felt the country was not at war with its Why We Fight films. Based on of a generation of Hitler Youth the German people but with their scripts by Shirer and Gunther, the indoctrinated in the Nazi spirit and government (134), and 67 percent Capra series projected a clear enemy felt that it might take a generation believed the United States would get image based on the popular notion to undo the mental map of young along with Germans after the war promoted by American journalists Germans. (154). The fight against “ill-informed” and some émigré academics of the Know Your Enemy does a first American public opinion (110) on long Sonderweg of aggression and rate job of exhaustively summarizing Nazi Germany turned into a principal expansion in German history. These and classifying these American battleground. War Department films proffered debates about Nazism and German After Pearl Harbor, Americans the theme that the German people guilt and linking them with the wanted to fight the Japanese, whom eagerly supported Hitler, and the legacies of World War I on American they hated, not the Nazis. Once Nazi Herrenvolk wanted to rule the notions during World War II; the American GIs began to fight the world. They were premised on the influence of these debates on postwar German Wehrmacht in North Africa, idea, which most scholars would historiographical discourses is also the president saw an increased need agree with today, that Hitler’s plan part of Hoenicke-Moore’s long “to narrow the public psychological of world conquest was based on trajectory of American thinking distance from the war” (120). The Haushofer’s geopolitics.1 The war about Germany. Her chapter on “unconditional surrender” doctrine against Germany was thus a struggle “Vansittartism” in the American adopted in Casablanca in early between “the free and the slave debate is particularly rewarding Page 28 Passport September 2011 (241ff.). Lord Vansittart’s views of In her rehabilitation of did not keep important planning the deeply rooted aggressiveness of Morgenthau, however, Hoenicke- bodies like the European Advisory the German character, summarized Moore ignores some of his more Commission informed about basic in his pamphlet Black Record (1941), extreme statements. On August planning, etc. Hoenicke-Moore led him to urge the British to give 24 he pondered in this diary recognizes the basic problem in up their illusions about “good “the possibility of removing all Washington as “a proliferation of Germans”; those were hard to find. industry from Germany and simply plans [my emphasis]” about postwar Vansittart charged the Germans reducing them to an agricultural Germany. As with so many important early on with the mass murder of population of small land owners.” insights, she hides this one in a the Jews and pleaded for sympathy On September 4 he wrote that lengthy footnote (297n12). with the German victims. Vansittart American engineers should be sent Hoenicke-Moore also points was a gifted polemicist. Hoenicke- to the Ruhr to strip its machinery, her finger at another problem in Moore traces Vansittartian views of flood its mines, dynamite its factories, Washington’s wartime decision guilty Germans through the German- and thereby turn it into an area of making, a problem even more Swiss émigré historian Emil Ludwig “ghost towns.”2 Morgenthau’s more basic than the indeterminacy of the directly to President Roosevelt (256ff.) extreme statements seem to point Roosevelt administration: namely, as well as War Department films such beyond mere “trust-busting.” In the complex nature of foreign policy as Your Job in Germany (“your enemy the end, Churchill’s vision of a “fat decision making in a democracy. is German history” [262]). In her but important” Germany seems to Ernest R. May mused a long time archeology of Vansittart’s Sonderweg- come closest to what happened after ago about the fact that beyond the trajectories of German history she the war: namely, allowing for an small segment of American elites ends with Daniel Goldhagen’s recent economic reconstruction of Germany that are interested in foreign policy, bestseller, Hitler’s Willing Executioners, but eliminating the nation as a only 15 percent of the American which also indicts the German people military power.3 public have a general interest in (267). The problem in wartime public affairs and foreign policy. In her chapters on American Washington was that President The rest of the “inattentive” (dice plans for postwar Germany Roosevelt, the self-appointed ignorant) public follow their leaders.7 Hoenicke-Moore launches a “expert” on Germany (based on a If May’s model of American public passionate defense of Secretary of short pre-World War I study trip opinion formation is correct, why Treasury Henry Morgenthau’s ideas, to that country), could never make then did American leaders follow which, by conjuring up notions of up his mind about the nature of the public during World War II on “Jewish revenge,” served as rich the German enemy. He tended to the nature of the German enemy, fodder for Goebbels’ propaganda burden the German people with as Hoenicke-Moore suggests? How machine and fed postwar German responsibility for their support of could the “ill-informed” public pull self pity so well (310ff.). She Hitler (saying, for example, that the its craven leaders by the nose? Was contextualizes Morgenthau’s well- Allies had to make the Germans the Roosevelt administration cowed informed ideas in the 1944 American understand that their “whole by the big German-American voting planning debate on postwar Germany nation” had been waging “a lawless bloc? Had World War I government and insists that they never amounted conspiracy against the decencies of propaganda soured the public on to a “plan” for an “agrarian” postwar modern civilization”4). But given following their leaders again on Germany. His core ideas were that some 40 percent of the American the nature of the German enemy? dismemberment of the Reich and population claimed some degree Was the Jewish American leader deindustrialization of certain areas of German heritage and that the Morgenthau the only man with the of German war production. These American public never came to courage of his convictions? Michaela ideas were firmly rooted in American hate the Germans , Roosevelt the Hoenicke-Moore has written a rich wartime debates about safeguarding politician did not publicly advocate and fascinating book, and like any against the kind of resurgence that this harsher view much. He did good book it raises as many questions Germany achieved after World War insist that unconditional surrender as it answers. I. Morgenthau’s major opponent was did not mean “the destruction of the Secretary of War Henry Stimson, German people.” In the 1944 debate Gunter Bischof is the Marshall Plan who wanted quickly to rehabilitate in his cabinet he sided first with Professor of History and Director of Germany and integrate it into Morgenthau and then with Stimson. CenterAustria at the University of New postwar Europe. Hoenicke-Moore He remained ambivalent about the Orleans. reminds us that Morgenthau operated “German enemy” to the end of the in the long progressive and New war. Warren Kimball created the Notes: Deal tradition of “trust-busting”— popular image of Roosevelt as “the 1. See the brief description of Hitler’s taking apart the cartels of huge state juggler”5; Hoenicke-Moore presents geopolitical vision in Gerhard L. industrial combines. Morgenthau much evidence to indicate that “the Weinberg, Visions of Victory: The Hopes of Eight World War II Leaders (Cambridge, also foreshadowed a postwar waffler” (or “the great fence-sitter”) 2005), 5-38. historiographical school that did might be a more appropriate term. 2. These diary entries are cited in a dense indeed see German heavy industry as Stimson confided to his diary chapter on American postwar planning a vital motor of German aggression that Roosevelt was “the poorest for Germany, where the influence of State (300). His German policies were not administrator I have worked under.”6 Department planning is stressed. See an “aberration.” To the contrary, they This statement gives us a clue about Patrick Hearden, Architects of Globalism: reflected the strain of the American the workings of wartime Washington Building a New Order during World War II wartime debate that felt international that would explain much of the (Fayetteville, AR, 2002), 229-256 (here 242, security required “restructuring of confusion about Germany. Unlike 244). Hoenicke-Moore ignores Hearden and Michael Beschloss’s The Conquerors: the German economy” (300). Unlike Whitehall, Washington exhibited “a Roosevelt, Truman and the Destruction of many liberal idealists in the tradition lack of clear policy guidelines at the Hitler’s Germany, 1941-1945 (New York, of Lord Keynes and Lord Vansittart, highest level” of the decision-making 2002). While Hearden places American Morgenthau did not think the process. Cabinet departments did planning for postwar Germany in a larger Versailles Treaty was too harsh. not share information; Washington European and global context and within Passport September 2011 Page 29 the framework of American national relations with Nazi Germany during documents in considerable detail, security requirements, Beschloss’s book Franklin D. Roosevelt’s presidency. limited FDR’s ability to adopt a is a study of personalities, adding great It contributes, nevertheless, new harder line toward Nazi Germany detail to the workings of the Roosevelt insights into his administration’s prior to Pearl Harbor and later White House and illuminating the many rivalries among Washington elites in the policymaking process before and furnished the cultural foundation making and undoing of the Morgenthau during the Second World War and for American plans to rehabilitate “plan.” its ambiguous plans for postwar postwar Germany as a member of the 3. Weinberg, Visions of Victory, 150. peacemaking. international community. Although 4. Beschloss, The Conquerors, 96. As Americans sought to know a crusade against Nazi Germany 5. Warren F. Kimball, The Juggler: Franklin their enemy, they also revealed who might have seemed more justifiable D. Roosevelt as Wartime Statesman they were, Hoenicke-Moore clearly during World War II than President (Princeton, 1991). demonstrates. She uses the evidence Woodrow Wilson’s campaign 6. Beschloss, The Conquerors, 88. of public and elite opinion not only against Imperial Germany during 7. Ernest R. May’s classic exposition of American public opinion formation in to clarify the diverse reactions of World War I, neither the Roosevelt times of crisis is American Imperialism: Americans to Nazi Germany but administration nor the general A Speculative Essay (Boston, 1968, repr. also to disclose their multicultural public favored that option. This Chicago: Imprint Publications 1991); national identity. She aims, “by restraint expressed the lessons they for a summary and update of his ideas examining representative examples had drawn from their own nation’s on public opinion, see his chapter “The of American official and public history during the previous war as News Media and Diplomacy,” in Gordon understandings of the Third Reich,” well as their views of Germany and A. Craig and Francis L. Loewenheim, to “elucidate the political and cultural its history. Although one might have The Diplomatists, 1939-1979 (Princeton, underpinnings of how Americans anticipated that Americans would 1994), repr. in Akira Iriye, ed., Rethinking International Relations: Ernest R. May and saw themselves, their nation’s role have created a very hostile wartime the Study of World Affairs (Chicago, 1998), on the world stage, and, of course, image of Nazi Germany, this was not 145-177 (here 157). the country that was to become the case. their main adversary” (4). Through In her analysis of the memories remarkably extensive research in of World War I, Hoenicke-Moore primary sources and mastery of focuses on FDR. She denies that Know Your Enemy–And Yourself secondary literature on both German he was shallow or opportunistic, and American history, she has as some critics allege. Yet she Lloyd Ambrosius fulfilled this task. acknowledges that he sometimes Hoenicke-Moore shows that gave that impression to n this excellent study of the American attitudes toward the contemporaries and later historians American debate on Nazism, Germans before and even after the because he “never formulated a Michaela Hoenicke-Moore United States entered the war were comprehensive view of Germany” analyzesI a broad range of issues relatively favorable--and definitely (21). During the war he adopted in the history and historiography more favorable than their views a harder line toward the enemy of Adolf Hitler’s Germany and in of the Japanese. Some Americans than many others, including some the public and official reactions of contrasted the evil Nazi government members of his cabinet, such as Americans. She notes that various and the good German people, Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson, American interpretations and seeing them as Hitler’s victims too. but he also believed that the recommendations for dealing Others, even while recognizing Germans might be restored--or with Hitler’s domestic and foreign the widespread support for Hitler restore themselves--to a respected policies reflected the perspectives of among the Germans, refrained from place in Western civilization and the those making the assessments and seeing them as inherently evil or international community. proposing the appropriate responses barbaric and therefore incapable of FDR’s ambiguous understanding by the United States. Her work democratic reform. Almost without of Germany shaped his wartime “identifies and traces the emergence exception, Americans rejected the decisions. Hoenicke-Moore concludes of the main explanatory models and view that Germans were unable to that “his basic belief in democracy, narratives that Americans formulated change because of an essentially in human decency, and in his to characterize the Nazi regime” and, flawed racial or national character. country’s international vulnerability equally important, considers “the Still others hesitated to believe the and its international responsibility governmental effort to focus these news about Nazi wartime atrocities, all became apparent in his policies views” and describes “the problems it especially about what was later toward Nazi Germany. But it is true encountered” (2). Thus she deals with named the Holocaust, because they that Roosevelt was very flexible, both the public debate and the U.S. discounted the incredible reports as open to change, and deceptive in government’s role in it. likely propaganda similar to that of his tactics” (22). He mostly avoided Hoenicke-Moore focuses on the World War I. Hoenicke-Moore rejects the Manichaean view of the world intellectual dimensions of America’s the division of American attitudes that Wilson held during World War various responses to internal affairs toward Nazi Germany as either harsh I, although occasionally his rhetoric in Nazi Germany and to its external or soft, arguing that this dualism suggested that the United States aggression and war against its failed to grasp the complexity of was engaged in a crusade. He neighbors. A broad study of ideas as official and public opinion. While sometimes spoke about a universal expressed by American journalists, some views tended more toward one conflict between slavery and freedom scholars, films, and government or the other alternative, Americans or between Nazi paganism and officials and as recorded in public more typically qualified their views Christianity. In general, however, he opinion polls, this book approaches with greater nuance and changed concentrated on Germany’s threat the history of U.S. foreign relations them over time as they received new to the United States, especially in from a different perspective. It information. the Western Hemisphere. He drew is not a traditional diplomatic or Favorable public attitudes toward two lessons from Wilson’s failure: he international history of America’s the Germans, which Hoenicke-Moore thought that Wilson and the Allies

Page 30 Passport September 2011 should have required Germany to nation for it. of their history--such as those FDR accept unconditional surrender rather Once Japan bombed Pearl recalled fondly from his childhood than an armistice in 1918, and he Harbor and Nazi Germany declared experiences in Imperial Germany-- believed they should have offered war against the United States, the and create a new Germany without a more equitable peace that would Roosevelt administration launched Hitler and Nazism in the future. have enabled the Weimar Republic to an all-out effort to mobilize the The public debate on Germany reenter the international order sooner. American people. This effort during World War II expressed the In other words, he combined views required the shaping of American efforts by various Americans to about peacemaking that might be public opinion, which was not comprehend Nazism and its place characterized as both harsh and soft. as negative toward Germany as in German history and among the The news from Germany toward Japan. The president and Germans. Hoenicke-Moore notes during the 1930s after Hitler and the his advisers, in contrast to most that some Americans employed the Nazis seized power, as Hoenicke- Americans, regarded Nazi Germany distinction between Dr. Jekyll and Moore recounts, evoked conflicting as the principal enemy. FDR sought Mr. Hyde to explain what they saw interpretations and took on contested to create domestic unity behind the as two different kinds of behavior meanings. She shows the range of war effort with propaganda from by the Germans. This distinction views from different journalists, the Office of War Information, the might explain news about the including notably Edgar A. Mowrer, War Department, and the State murder of Jews and others, which John Gunther, William L. Shirer, and Department, as well as his own at first appeared beyond belief. Dorothy Thompson. Overall their speeches. In his January 1942 State Some Americans who grasped the reporting was quite good, even as of the Union address, he depicted a Holocaust’s terrible dimensions, they struggled to make sense out of global struggle between a Christian such as Protestant theologian the radically new character of Nazi world of freedom and a godless Reinhold Niebuhr, recognized the leadership. Back home, Americans world of slavery. In this war, as he evil of Nazism, but still held out filtered the reports from Germany announced at Casablanca a year later, hope that the good side of Germans- through their own perspectives, the enemy’s unconditional surrender -as of all God’s people--might still which sometimes led them to was the only acceptable outcome. prevail under the circumstances of discount the journalists’ accounts But as Hoenicke-Moore argues, the postwar peace and democracy. Other because of their own anticommunist, president’s critique of Nazi Germany Americans developed the metaphors anti-Roosevelt, or antiwar attitudes. and his pursuit of its unconditional of disease and gangsterism, which Racial prejudice in the United surrender did not rule out a better suggested that the German people States, including the white South’s outcome for the Germans in the were victims of an illness or a crime. preference for maintaining the Jim future than they had experienced This analysis opened the possibility Crow system of segregation and so far in the twentieth century. “In of curing the disease or punishing the inequality, also influenced receptivity Roosevelt’s view,” she emphasizes, criminals, thereby enabling Germany to reports about Nazi claims to Aryan “the goals of unconditional surrender to overcome Nazism. racial superiority over Jews. Outside and the eventual inclusion of the Finally, Hoenicke-Moore notes the South, other Americans also defeated enemy into a new world the implications of the wartime shared anti-Semitic and anti-African order were not contradictory” (127). debate for postwar plans. She American biases. These internal He wanted, in other words, to avoid explains that “just as the multiple factors shaped the American debate the mistakes that Wilson and the arguments that characterized the on Nazism more than the news about Allies had made during peacemaking American debate on Nazi Germany what was happening in Germany after World War I. never merged into a unified enemy or Hitler’s hostile actions against Hoenicke-Moore observes that image, the many proposals put neighboring countries, she concludes. some of this American propaganda, forward for dealing with defeated Unlike most Americans during including even FDR’s, affirmed the Germany did not yield a coherent the 1930s, FDR perceived the danger continuity in German history--its government plan” (271). Roosevelt that Nazi Germany represented and exceptionalism or Sonderweg--that affirmed both the liberal-democratic comprehended the seriousness of culminated in ideals of news from Europe. Hoenicke-Moore Hitler and Nazi the Atlantic argues that “the president had few Germany, but The public debate on Germany Charter and illusions about the dictatorship that that mostly it during World War II expressed the the insistence Hitler and the Nazi party installed allowed for efforts by various Americans to on Germany’s in 1933. Roosevelt understood the change. It rejected comprehend Nazism and its place unconditional fundamental differences between the idea of a in German history and among the surrender and Imperial Germany and the Third racial war against Germans. Hoenicke-Moore notes elimination Reich, and he recognized the threat the Germans but that some Americans employed the of Nazism. To posed by the Nazis’ utopian project. instead called for distinction between Dr. Jekyll and prevent World More important than previous the eradication of Mr. Hyde to explain what they saw War III, he experience and insight was the Nazi leadership supported the news he received from official and and ideology. as two different kinds of behavior Morgenthau informal sources on conditions inside This official by the Germans. This distinction Plan for Nazi Germany” (79). The president orientation might explain news about the murder eliminating used the metaphors of disease and opened the of Jews and others, which at first Germany’s gangsterism to characterize Hitler’s prospect for appeared beyond belief. capacity for regime. He sought to shape public a reformed or war even as he opinion by alerting Americans democratic and Treasury to Nazi ambitions in the Western Germany to take its rightful place Secretary Henry Morgenthau Hemisphere, including the threat of in the new postwar order. Although anticipated Germany’s eventual domestic subversion in the United some of the roots of Nazism might restoration as a reformed nation States. He recognized the prospect of be traced in German history, the without Nazism. Hoenicke-Moore war and endeavored to prepare the Germans could reclaim other aspects emphasizes that “Roosevelt hated Passport September 2011 Page 31 above all the Nazi ideology of racial and delves into the American discourse concerning how the United superiority and the militaristic government’s evaluation of the States should reshape postwar arrogance of ‘might makes right’ prospects of a new war against Germany after the unconditional and did not tire of juxtaposing it Germany during the period 1933– surrender of the Third Reich. with Christian values and other 1941. Part Two, “Mobilizing the Moreover, Hoenicke-Moore’s work religious commandments” (319). American Home Front, 1942–1943,” makes it clear that “the war effort He understood, however, that the consists of three chapters dealing emerges almost as the countermodel Germans themselves would have to with American public opinion and to the lessons of moral righteousness, create their own democratic future the mobilization for war. In this resolute certainty, and ideological because the United States could section, Hoenicke-Moore covers commitment that are derived from not do it for them. “But what this the FDR administration’s initiatives it” (350). Although Hoenicke-Moore study has shown is that--for better in propaganda and public opinion does not touch on the issue of just or worse--the American war effort research as well as the creation of war, Know Your Enemy could be used against Nazi Germany, however the Office of War Information and to refute many of the arguments used appealing as a model or moral Frank Capra’s Why We Fight film by the just war theorists to discuss touchstone in the decades since 1945, series. Part Three, “The Public Debate the morality or the lack of morality was anything but a single-minded on Germany, 1942–1945,” reflects of contemporary wars. Just war crusade” (341-42). the national debate on “what to do theorists, following Michael Walzer, with Germany” and chronicles the assume that the Allies met the criteria Lloyd Ambrosius is the Samuel shifts in American public opinion of just cause when they entered Clark Waugh Distinguished Professor of on Nazism. The author contrasts the World War II. In contrast to Vietnam, International Relations and Professor of two main interpretations of Nazism the paradigmatic unjust war, World History at the University of Nebraska-- prevalent at the time: one postulating War II emerges as the great example Lincoln. that Nazism was a social disease of a just war in modern times. In Just amenable to social therapy (and and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument Review of Michaela Hoenicke- therefore curable) and the second with Historical Illustrations, Walzer Moore’s Know Your Enemy: The claiming that the Nazi Party was a argues that the Nazis were the American Debate on Nazism, criminal gang whose leaders needed “absolute evil,” an “unmeasurable 1933-1945 to be captured, tried, and punished. evil.” Hoenicke-Moore also introduces Cora Sol Goldstein Sir Robert Vansittart’s theories on For Nazism lies at the Germany and explores how they outer limit of exigency, at a ichaela Hoenicke-Moore’s were received, criticized, and used in point where we are likely Know Your Enemy is a the American wartime debate. Part to find ourselves united comprehensive overview Four, “The Governmental Debate on in fear and abhorrence. . . ofM the debates on Nazism and Postwar Plans, 1943–1945,” analyzes . Nazism was an ultimate Germany that took place in the the conflicts among the Office of threat to everything United States in the 1930s and 1940s. Strategic Services, the Department decent in our lives, an The book covers both the polemics of State, and the Department of the ideology and a practice of surrounding the nature of Nazism Treasury. domination so murderous, and the disagreements within the Hoenicke-Moore succeeds in so degrading, even to those Roosevelt administration concerning showing that “during World War who might survive, that the the American postwar plans for II, the United States never achieved consequences of its final Germany, and it offers a detailed a politically coherent consensus on victory were literally beyond compilation of the various currents of whether the enemy was the Nazi calculation, immeasurably opinion about the “German problem” regime or the German nation as a awful. [Nazism was] evil before, during, and immediately after whole” (341). The extent of Nazi objectified in the world, World War II. After the unconditional criminality became evident only and in a form so potent and surrender of Germany, the Nazis in retrospect, and she is correct in apparent that there could “became an archetypal representation asserting that “the very model that never have been anything of evil.” But the author shows that is cited as America’s most successful to do but to fight against this was not always so. She explains intervention was hotly contested at it. . . . Here was a threat to that “the prewar and wartime the time” (342). In what is perhaps human values, so radical American discourse on the Third the most original insight of the book, that its imminence would Reich was fluid and contradictory” Hoenicke-Moore posits that by 1946 surely constitute a supreme (17). the American understandings of Nazi emergency.1 Know Your Enemy is divided rule and ideology were projected into four parts. Part One, “Prelude upon and used to characterize the to War,” consists of three chapters. Soviet Union. “The vocabulary Know Your Enemy shows that in The first chapter covers Franklin D. the liberals of the Roosevelt the 1940s the “supreme emergency” Roosevelt’s thoughts about World administration created to describe an was not so obvious; it was just one War I and the German “character.” ideological enemy ended up being of the many rival perspectives on The second deals with the contrasting applied more consistently and more Nazism prevalent at the time. accounts of Nazism offered by successfully after 1945 to a very Many of the facts presented American foreign correspondents in different opponent in a very different in Know Your Enemy are known Germany from 1933 to 1940. Some type of war” ( 349). among Germanists and historians expressed outright condemnation of Parts Three and Four and the of American intervention in World the Third Reich and others proposed conclusion are the most interesting War II. Hoenicke-Moore provides “to give the regime a chance” (44). of the book. In spite of their more documentation to stress the The third chapter covers the evolving repetitiveness, the last sections ignorance of the American public and clashing interpretation of Nazism of Know Your Enemy successfully about Germany, Nazism, and the in the Roosevelt administration describe the evolution of the elite political tensions in Europe, and she Page 32 Passport September 2011 offers more statistical data to show understanding of Nazism in the Hoenicke-Moore gives a summary how widespread anti-Semitism was United States is a consequence of the of the play, but she describes in American society. It is surprising, very nature of American democracy. Brecht simply as a “German émigré however, that the author writes that playwright,” ignoring his important “contrary to commonly held beliefs, The tension and conflict and complicated political connections even after Americans had entered the in explaining and with Soviet intelligence. The United war against Nazi Germany, popular understanding the Third States during the World War II period views of that country did not coalesce Reich reveal the . . . diverse was a hotbed of espionage, and into a well-focused image of the and compound nature of competing intelligence services were enemy” (1). Whose commonly held American society and the vying for influence on the Roosevelt beliefs is she referring to? Certainly administration’s problems, administration. It is highly likely, in not those of contemporary experts but also deliberate restraint, fact, that many of the people quoted on American-German relations in in trying to impose unity. by Hoenicke-Moore had definite the 1930s and 1940s, or those of Thus, whereas Nazi Germany political agendas. scholars interested in American aimed for racial purification I plan to assign Know Your Enemy propaganda (including film) during and Germans were deprived in my course on politics and culture the period in question. It is true, of the freedom of information because it provides a nuanced and of course, that after many decades and expression, Americans detailed account of the ideological of propaganda constructing World used this freedom to battles concerning the nature of War II as the quintessential “good form their own opinion Nazism in prewar and wartime war” fought for all the right reasons of events in Germany America. Hoenicke-Moore’s book (including the defense of the Jews), and in the process came presents a much needed overview of American popular culture ignores up with narratives, topoi, one of the most fascinating periods the mixed messages concerning and explanations, some of in American political history, and I Nazism and Germany before, during, which turned into enduring certainly hope that it will serve as a and immediately after World War interpretations of Nazi stepping stone for a new generation II. Hoenicke-Moore’s book is the Germany (11). of critical historiography on ideal text to fill this gap in popular American policy during WWII. awareness and introduce the It is undoubtedly true that uninitiated reader to the public and F.D.R.’s America was a democracy, Cora Sol Goldstein is Associate governmental debates on “the nature but to extol the freedom of Professor in the Department of Political of the enemy” that took place in the information in the United States Science at California State University at United States between 1933 and 1945 immediately before and during Long Beach. (250). World War II seems excessive. The This is a long and carefully Roosevelt administration exerted documented book, but certain an enormous degree of control over Note: omissions are worth noting. The public information. That control is 1. Michael Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument with Historical author examines “representative well documented in the literature. th examples of American official Consider, for example, the work of Illustrations, 4 ed. (New York, 2006), 253. and public understandings of the George H. Roeder, whom Hoenicke- Third Reich” (4) to delineate “the Moore does not include in her intellectual side of the American war bibliography. Review of Know Your Enemy effort” and show how the enemy, Although Hoenicke-Moore’s Nazi Germany, was imagined. book reflects her extensive reading Brian Etheridge “How was it portrayed by foreign of secondary sources, she often correspondents, by the president, ignores the political context in which and by American propagandists? her actors develop their ideas and n Know Your Enemy, Michaela How was it understood by a wider agendas. By doing so, she deprives Hoenicke-Moore offers a audience?” (3) Yet her selection of the her narrative of political depth and comprehensive treatment of the “intellectual side of the American war misses the opportunity to discover variedI ways in which Americans effort” seems rather arbitrary and unearthed links and motivations. The understood and responded to needs stronger justification. As it is, people she quotes—American and Nazi Germany. As a work of both the book leaves important categories foreign intellectuals, politicians, and diplomatic and intellectual history, out of the discussion, namely the journalists—are mostly mentioned her book attempts to wrestle with Jewish community and the military. without biographical comments, how people at different levels of The Jewish community was also leaving the reader unsure of who society, from everyday Americans to fragmented in its understanding of they are and how they fit into the policymakers (including President the Nazi phenomenon, often along complicated political landscape of Roosevelt), perceived Germany and partisan lines. The military was their times. For instance, it would how their perceptions interacted with essentially dominated by American be helpful to know more about the one another. In that sense, it does not Nativists, obsessively preoccupied people who expressed particularly limit itself to understanding just the with anti-Communism and virulently interesting (and often surprising) impact of American public opinion anti-Semitic. It is hard to understand views on Germany, such as Samuel on presidential policymaking. Nor why Hoenicke-Moore does not make R. Fuller (82-83), Ernest Klein (85), is the author interested solely in use of the work of Joseph Bendersky John T. Flynn (99), Lieutenant Colonel how the Roosevelt administration and Peter Novick. Another notable Murray C. Bernays (237), Malcolm sought to shape American attitudes absence in the bibliography is George Cowley (249), Albert Salomon toward Germany. She understands Kennan, who had quite distinctive (253-255), and Homer E. Capehart the process as something much and critical views on the German (312). A good example of the lack more organic and complex. Along problem. of political context is the reference the way, she engages in numerous For Hoenicke-Moore, the fact that to Bertolt Brecht’s 1941 play “The historiographical debates that there was not one single and coherent Stoppable Rise of Arturo Ui” (240). are occurring on both sides of the Passport September 2011 Page 33 Atlantic. Ambitious and wide- that stressed autocratic rule and historical continuity by connecting ranging, her book is an impressive bloodthirsty soldiers. Ironically, the Nazism back to traditional German tour de force that will easily become bitter reaction of many Americans elites (Junkers), and (3) they offered the standard work in this area. to the disappointing results of the a universalist view of Nazism that The book is divided into war in the 1920s and 1930s fostered a allowed FDR to portray American four parts and organized in loose stubborn antipathy to these negative political opponents as dupes of chronological fashion. The first views and encouraged a resurgence the Nazi regime or unwitting fifth- part discusses American attitudes of the positive elements of the column stooges. FDR used media and reactions to Germany before German image. elites such as the Committee to American entry into the war. The Layered on top of this broad Defend America by Aiding the Allies, other three overlap and address narrative is FDR’s own encounter the Century Group, and the Fight for the war period in different ways. with and understanding of Germany. Freedom Committee to disseminate The titles of the three sections on Arguing that FDR was the “key these narratives and build support the war reflect the three levels of player in shaping the American for preparedness and eventual analysis—those of popular culture response to Germany in the 1930s involvement. and discourse; elite, opinion-making and 1940s,” Hoenicke-Moore Hoenicke-Moore’s support for discourse; and policymaking wades into the deep and turbulent FDR becomes more evident when she discourse (focusing particularly historiography on the president and discusses his efforts to mobilize the on FDR and, emerges as a American people. First, she confronts later, Henry staunch defender critics who contend that Roosevelt Morgenthau)—that Hoenicke-Moore wades of Roosevelt, trumped up an inauthentic threat structure the into the deep and turbulent describing him as assessment from Germany to rally whole work. The historiography on the president a true democrat support for involvement. She cites organizational and emerges as a staunch dedicated to current scholarship on Hitler’s war framework is defender of Roosevelt, describing decency, common planning to demonstrate that this significant; in a him as a true democrat dedicated humanity, and assessment was valid and prescient. work as ambitious to decency, common humanity, international Second, she defends FDR against and sprawling as and international responsibility. responsibility (17). critics who allege that he was too this it drives the cautious in promoting support for the analysis and the war after Pearl Harbor. She argues connections that are Acknowledging the plethora that mobilization needed to be carried made. Throughout the book it is clear of issues plaguing attempts by out carefully. At the time, there were that these three levels of analysis are historians to triangulate Roosevelt’s still significant reservations about the interwoven and interrelated, but, as true position on anything, she war among so-called “divisionists”— shall be noted later, it is not always nevertheless attempts to trace his some wanted a negotiated peace, exactly clear how. attitudes toward Germany in his many saw the Japanese as the Hoenicke-Moore begins her early public career and asserts that he primary enemy, and still others narrative by discussing American developed and adhered to a version feared communism more than perceptions of Germany in the years of the Sonderweg thesis only after Nazism. Because of these critical leading up to the war. She points Hitler came to power in 1933. Like groups, FDR could not prosecute an out that in the nineteenth century, other Americans who based their ideological war without threatening when the United States was more impressions of Hitler’s regime on the fragile unity he was trying to highly stratified, Americans often reports from foreign correspondents, forge for a long-term commitment. encountered and conceptualized Roosevelt’s views on the Third Reich Third, she counters those who claim Germany in ways that reflected their were formed by a steady diet of bad that his insistence on unconditional class standing. Many working-class news from official sources stationed surrender hampered the war effort. Americans experienced Germany in Europe. All of these reports, from She contends that unconditional primarily through their contact both official and non-official sources, surrender was necessary because with German-Americans, many presented conflicting interpretations of the extensive support among of whom enjoyed a great deal of of the nature of the regime and the Germans for Hitler and the relative respect in American society. These German people’s support for it. weakness of the German resistance. encounters led to the proliferation For his part, FDR had to voice his President Roosevelt was not the of positive stereotypes of Germans opinions carefully; despite his own only policymaker who had difficulty as “hard-working, productive, “more realistic view of German articulating the war to the American thrifty, and reliable,” stereotypes that support for the Nazi regime,” he people; the difficulty in defining would prove to be remarkably deep had to stay in line with mainstream and representing the war was also and enduring (18). Elites praised opinion that the Germans themselves evident in bureaucratic debates about German intellectual and cultural were not to blame for their mobilization. The Office of War accomplishments but worried about government (87). He gravitated Information, the State Department, perceived deficiencies in democracy toward the usage of two metaphors and the War Department all involved and political stability. A small group to explain the relationship. The first themselves in educating Americans of liberals championed progressive was the metaphor of mental disease, about the Nazi threat, but they could Prussian policies, such as Bismarck’s which suggested that Nazism was an not agree about the best way to do efforts at social insurance. As both the affliction that infected the German so. Through its Why We Fight series, United States and Germany emerged body politic. The second cast Nazi the War Department promulgated as world powers, they engaged in leaders as gangsters and suggested the harshest view of the German intermittent conflict that minimized that Germans only supported the people. Sensitive to public opinion, these positive images. During the regime, if they supported it at all, policymakers in the OWI worried Great War positive stereotypes were out of fear. These metaphors, she about getting too far outside the drowned out almost completely argues, served a number of different mainstream. They also disagreed by negative ones promoted by functions: (1) they helped paint about the nature of the enemy (the the United States government Germans as victims, (2) they offered German government or the German Page 34 Passport September 2011 people), so they opted for a nuanced could only be explained by some within the realm of respectable, approach that focused on an abstract mental disease or dysfunction. Often mainstream official debate. What enemy and the effect that the enemy’s invoking science or pseudoscience differentiated the Morgenthau plan victory would have on everyday to diagnose the German condition, from others, she argues, was its American life. The effect of this this approach to the German problem dramatic suggestions for the German strategy, as Hoenicke-Moore points took a variety of forms. Some analysts economy. Morgenthau advocated out, was to encourage Americans looked at individual Nazis (mainly the dismantling and transferring of to think of Germans as the first Hitler), while others focused on German industry to its neighbors, a victims of Hitler broader structures, solution, she stresses, that was firmly and to minimize the such as the nature in line with the trust-busting tradition Jewishness of the But the interpretation to of the German of the United States. However, as Third Reich’s racial which she devotes the family, child- she takes pains to underscore, he and political murder most time, at both the rearing practices, or did not believe in or agitate for the campaign. manners and values, complete deindustrialization of After the United popular and official level, and saw them as Germany: that myth, she argues, is a States entered the is what was derisively contributing to a product of Goebbels’s propaganda. war, public debate known during the war mass psychological Most important, she applauds shifted almost as Vansittartism. Here need. Morgenthau’s emphasis on providing immediately to the book really crackles The most for Germany’s victims over the questions of the with life as she engages popular Germans themselves. postwar world. in a bare-knuckled, bring- interpretation was Her broad sweep demonstrates According to on-all-comers defense offered by Richard a strong command of both the Hoenicke-Moore, of these intellectuals Brickner in a series of history and historiography. She has the different ways and policymakers who books and talks that conducted research in the papers that Americans used psychiatry to of all of the major players, and her conceived the war were excoriated by their explain the behavior extensive footnotes are a treasure and the prescriptions contemporaries for of Germans and trove for other scholars of the period. that naturally advocating fantastical, suggest solutions. Her knowledge of and engagement flowed from those overly punitive, or Although these in historiographical debates on both assumptions defied downright racist policies. observers agreed sides of the Atlantic are illuminating, easy categorization. on a similar way especially for scholars on this side Interpretations to understand the who may not be familiar with how cut across class and political lines. problem, they differed over the the issues have been framed in the Nevertheless, she gamely attempts extent to which average Germans German context. But her impressive to synthesize the disparate range had become infected and hence the grasp of the material and willingness of interpretations into some loose degree to which they needed to to mix it up sometimes threaten to organizing themes. She describes be treated. A third major category lead her astray. Mirroring the reality the first overarching way of for understanding Germany was that the book attempts to chronicle, understanding Germany in terms of gangsterism, which was informed in the issues are so complex that they Sebastian Haffner’s metaphor of Dr. part by the experience of Americans sometimes defy easy categorization Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. According to with gangsters in the 1930s. Whereas and compartmentalization. As a this narrative, the German people the disease metaphor naturally led result, some chapters, such as the were essentially nice and jovial to discussions about “cures” for one on the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde people who unfortunately were the body politic, conceptualizing metaphor, bulge at the seams. In easily misled and brainwashed. the German problem in terms of other places, such as the end of Conceiving of the Germans as gangsters encouraged solutions chapter 9, where she is dealing with Janus-faced helped reconcile their related to punishment and the Goldhagen thesis, discussions seemingly contradictory qualities— supervision. (while always enlightening) can Gemütlichkeit and a disturbing But the interpretation to which seem awkwardly appended or out of propensity for militarism—and she devotes the most time, at both place. The overall impression is that encouraged Americans to envision the popular and official level, is what of a scholar who has full mastery of German soldiers and supporters as was derisively known during the war the issues, has crafted well-informed automatons. This interpretation was as Vansittartism. Here the book really and consistent opinions about many particularly evident in discussions crackles with life as she engages in a of them, and in the end is reluctant of Hitler Youth and the Holocaust. bare-knuckled, bring-on-all-comers to leave any of them on the cutting- If salvation for Germany essentially defense of these intellectuals and room floor (for which the reader is rested with the people themselves, policymakers who were excoriated by grateful in almost all cases). proponents of this interpretation their contemporaries for advocating Similarly, her method for suggested, then eliminating the fantastical, overly punitive, or organizing and presenting the leadership and empowering downright racist policies. She narrative offers clear benefits. By democratic forces in Germany was argues that British diplomat Robert juxtaposing different kinds of cultural the appropriate solution (with Vansittart and his American allies products, she is able to establish a varying amounts of effort and have been vindicated by time and cultural milieu and enable some of supervision prescribed). recent historical research. Moreover, her themes to merge. For example, in Another popular metaphor for she alleges that Vansittartists were chapter 10 she brackets a discussion understanding the German problem unfairly impugned, claiming that of official American postwar planning in elite American discourse was they were far more mainstream with analyses of Hitchcock’s film mental disease. The disease metaphor in their prescriptions than is Lifeboat and a March of Time newsreel was popular, according to the author, widely believed. She contends in order to illustrate the issues and because many Americans concluded that even the German boogeyman ambivalence present in the process. that German behavior was so extreme Henry Morgenthau, the American In another chapter, she discusses the and so far outside the norm that it secretary of the treasury, was solidly “automaton” image of Germans by Passport September 2011 Page 35 analyzing a Disney short and the No, the Germans were not Hitler’s American national security and observations of American journalists first victims. No, most Germans were interests. But their mobilization based in Germany. At the same time, not ignorant about the camps. A case campaign was hampered by a set however, flattening these products can be made that engaging in these of powerful racial, cultural, and and placing them all on the same kinds of public-sphere debates, and political factors that worked in favor plane can obscure other kinds of especially this debate in this context, of the German enemy and obscured connections. A film and a policy is what historians need to do more of, the true nature of the Nazi regime memorandum are very different not the cautious temporizing that can in American public perception. kinds of cultural products that have characterize some work in cultural Prominent American opinion- very different processes. Is there history. Hoenicke-Moore has written makers struggled intellectually to a causal relationship between the a forceful, convincing account that keep the Germans in the fold of a two? Is it possible to draw any hard challenges scholars to revisit how shared civilization—even as the and fast conclusions about cultural Americans understood Germany latter engaged in a “break with production and influence? (Other during the World War II period and civilization”—because to think of authors have tried: for example, what those ideas could mean for how them collectively as a barbarous Steven Casey’s Cautious Crusade we understand ourselves and our people, so the argument went, would dedicates itself to trying to untangle world today. amount to an “anti-German race the relationship between presidential theory” comparable to the Nazi decision making and public opinion Brian Etheridge is Associate Professor view of Jews (251). Large sections of during this time period.) What, of History and Director of the Helen P. the public extended to the Germans for example, is the relationship Denit Honors Program at the University a morally problematic, ethnically between FDR’s use of the disease of Baltimore. based solidarity. These arguments and gangster metaphors and the and sentiments were resolutely general public’s use of them? The challenged by an outspoken group book talks about cultural production Even a Teuton can’t tell it all . . . of commentators and politicians, with the Office of War Information decried as “Vansittartists,” who and other government agencies and Michaela Hoenicke-Moore urged Americans to take the Nazis at shows the fruit of specific initiatives, their word and judge the Germans by but it is not always clear what their deeds. For a broader public the influence these organizations had on am honored that the editors of fight against Nazi Germany lacked others actors (their internal carping SHAFR’s Passport chose my book the urgency and moral clarity it has and complaining about products for a roundtable discussion and I gained in hindsight. notwithstanding). I think those amI grateful to my four colleagues for My esteemed Austrian colleague connections are here, but sometimes their close reading and thoughtful Gunter Bischof, who has written on the way that the information is sliced comments. The wide range of many aspects of war and transatlantic and presented makes it harder for expertise they bring to this task make relations in the twentieth century, them to come through. their commendation and criticism all raises the important question of the In a related vein, Hoenicke- the more significant. The reviewers role of the public in a democracy Moore’s use of the literature on appreciate the premise and main with a globalist foreign policy. It enemy images provides her with achievements of my book and raise seems to me, however, that Ernest a broad unifying framework that questions that deserve further May’s paradigm of the “ignorant” lends coherence to her eclectic attention both from this historian and public has been challenged by Ole source base. But some cultural other scholars. The reviews suggest Holsti, Miroslav Nincic, Melvin critics might contend that it is not that students of U.S. international Small, Ralph Levering, and especially specific enough and that her work is relations, of World War II, and of Tony Kushner, with his work on “undertheorized.” More specifically, German and American political and Anglo-American discourse about the they might quibble with the absence cultural history might find value in Third Reich. There is much evidence of ideas from scholars like Michel different aspects of this book. that a majority of Americans were Foucault, Roland Barthes, and Stanley Lloyd Ambrosius’ work on surprisingly well informed about Fish. They might find her efforts Wilsonianism has profoundly shaped events in Nazi Germany (e.g., 75, at settling old historiographical our understanding of this enduring 137), and as Deborah Lipstadt has scores jarring in a work that American foreign policy ideology, shown, they were certainly well seeks to contextualize knowledge and I am glad he found my book served by American media coverage. production and dissemination and worth reading. As he notes, one of But they were not quite sure what it show how these processes shifted as my objectives has been to integrate all meant and what relevance it had circumstances changed. the multifaceted public debates for their country. To many Americans But this might be an unfair with the government’s responses the reality of the Third Reich was criticism. It is clear that the author and policies—in other words, to confusing, somewhat threatening and sees a greater purpose in her work analyze the broader political culture offensive, yet distant. The apparent than engaging in just scholarly in which the military and political failure of Wilson’s earlier crusade debates. She seeks to address big campaigns against Nazi Germany undermined the notion that the issues regarding German identity that were formulated and carried out. United States had to fulfil a historical stem from the World War II period. For this purpose I had to cast my mission in the world by intervening In particular, she sets out to puncture net widely across three levels: militarily in Europe; the idea of some of the old myths regarding the popular culture and opinion, elite humanitarian intervention was not conflict. No, she charges, Roosevelt and opinion-making circles, and yet on the horizon. was not a weak or devious ruler. No, governmental debates. The Roosevelt Interpretations making sense Vansittartists were not an irrational, administration and an array of of this reality and explaining what vengeful lot; nor were they off-base mainly liberal internationalists it meant for the United States in focusing on justice for Germany’s defined Nazi ideology as antithetical varied considerably, feeding a victims. No, Henry Morgenthau was to American values and Hitler’s complex and unresolved debate. not an inexperienced, vindictive Jew. foreign policy aims as a threat to In line with the Vansittartists, Page 36 Passport September 2011 SHAFR Summer Institute June 22-27, 2012 Does Culture Matter? The Emotions, the Senses, and Other New Approaches to the History of U.S. Foreign/International Relations

Call for Applications

The Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations will hold its fifth annual Summer Institute in Storrs, Connecticut, June 22-27, 2012. Designed for advanced graduate students or early career college teachers interested in exploring the cultural approach, broadly defined, to the history of U.S. foreign/international relations, the program will invite participants to enhance their own training and preferences for new ways of thinking about the field, or to entertain such ways of thinking for the first time. The Institute will feature wide-ranging conversation about assigned readings and the presentation and discussion of the work of each seminar member. Our hope is to nudge participants toward fresh ways of thinking about standard topics or toward new topics altogether, now or in the future. Sessions will also help prepare participants for the job market and offer hints about publication in scholarly journals and with academic presses. The Institute co-directors are Frank Costigliola of the University of Connecticut and Andrew Rotter of Colgate University. Costigliola has recently finished a book on emotions, World War II, and the origins of the Cold War; Rotter is at work on a project concerning the American and British empires and the five senses. Both historians have in the past explored the influence on U.S. foreign relations of gender, race, religion, language, and other factors that could be understood as being shaped by culture. Several leading historians have tentatively agreed to speak at Institute sessions. The program will also include free time for research and at least one off-campus excursion. Each participant will be reimbursed for travel, be provided free accommodation in air- conditioned University of Connecticut housing, and receive an honorarium of $500. The Institute schedule is designed to enable participants to remain in Connecticut for the 2012 SHAFR conference, to be held in Hartford and Storrs on June 28-30. The deadline for applications is February 1, 2012. Applicants should submit a curriculum vitae along with a one-page (single spaced) letter describing how participation in the Institute would benefit their scholarship and career, to Rachel Traficanti at [email protected]. Send questions to Rachel, Frank Costigliola , or Andrew Rotter . Preference for admission to the Institute will be given to members of SHAFR.

Passport September 2011 Page 37 traditional political elites oriented Nazism and World War II continued films to remember the death camps towards Great Britain revived a after the war, as Brian Etheridge’s and not be fooled again by the First World War-derived enemy award-winning scholarship on pleasant surface of a clean and image based on a deterministic German-American postwar memory seemingly friendly country. cultural understanding that limited diplomacy shows. Etheridge, whose One last comment on the subject the problem to Germany. Among study is in some ways the sequel to of presidential leadership, which journalists, refugees, and intellectuals my book, highlights the multiple Bischof and Goldstein both raise but with personal ties or intellectual and malleable functions that the come to contrary conclusions on. In a affinities to German culture, a very three central metaphors of the Third democracy, as in a dictatorship, intent different interpretation emerged Reich—disease, gangsterism, and Dr. and tone can be set at the highest that saw in German aggression, Jekyll-Mr. Hyde—fulfilled. Each was level. As Ambrosius and Etheridge racism, and antidemocratic populism omnipresent in public and official note, I credit Roosevelt with adequate the West’s own ignored dark side. discourse, in movies and magazine leadership and political astuteness, What deserves to be underscored roundtables, in government- and I do not share Bischof’s alarm is the sincerity sponsored over “the waffler.” There is a certain and urgency social science amount of historical evidence for with which many conferences and Philip Roth’s fantasy in The Plot commentators One first has to acknowledge the as part of the Against America. and politicians fundamental difference between preparations for Cora Goldstein, who has written strove to grasp American societal prejudice and the Nuremberg an important study on the U.S. the enormity of the murderous anti-Semitism Trials. The fact military occupation of Germany (as Nazi ideology and of the Germans. But it is also that these images well as a host of insightful articles German policies important to recognize how the did not have a commenting on the occupation of and to put forward former kept Americans from stable, coherent Iraq), is most interested in how the appropriate fully appreciating the seriousness meaning made wartime debates foreshadowed the responses. of prewar persecution and them effective ideological conflicts of the Cold War The challenge understanding the genocide. and useful for and finds two groups in particular, that arises for official rhetoric. the U.S. Army and American Jews, the diplomatic Antisemitism in America While those who not sufficiently taken into account. historian is significantly shaped public underscored She is right to wonder about the how to evaluate responses to events in Germany, the continuities absence of Joseph Bendersky’s The the evidence as did, to an even greater degree, in German Jewish Threat and Peter Novick’s of intermittent political fear of such prejudice. militarism and The Holocaust and Collective American popular anti-democratic Memory. These are two key studies reluctance to go political culture to which, I hope, my work can to war against used the term provide a complement. Bendersky’s Nazi Germany. It is easy—even “disease” to indict and “essentialize” description of the pervasiveness of satisfying—to expose the political a politically and ideologically anti-Semitic attitudes in the officer and moral misjudgment of opinion “sick” nation, others, including the corps is further evidence of the leaders, many of them on the president, emphasized for pragmatic obstacles that the administration right, who pleaded extenuating political reasons Germany’s and liberal interventionists had to circumstances and found things to curability and potential for change. overcome—and, at times, appeased. admire in the Third Reich. But what Similarly, the gangster metaphor The most heart-wrenching stories about someone like the popular was employed by the government in this regard are those of anti-Nazi historian William Durant? He did as a conceptual hinge reconciling activists, both Jewish and gentile, not sweep Nazi brutalities under the two contrary understandings of the who suppressed their own insights rug, but he did argue in 1938 that “German problem.” Both the official into the centrality of German racism “cowardly cruelty represents not and the Vansittartist view focused and camouflaged their messages the soul of Germany but a neurotic on the criminal nature of German so as not to appear engaged in reacting against defeat, suffering and policies, including the conspiratorial “special pleading” (57-60, 72, 310f). fear [of Bolshevism]” and that going preparation for war and mass murder One first has to acknowledge the to war would only produce “another as illustrated in the 1944 movie The fundamental difference between Versailles, another decade of disorder, Hitler Gang, which showed Hitler American societal prejudice and another Hitler.” In a formulation and his henchmen soon after 1918, the murderous anti-Semitism of the that is especially disorienting to read dressed in trench coats, meeting in Germans. But it is also important after the wars in Vietnam and Iraq, backrooms and plotting to overthrow to recognize how the former kept Durant maintained that the United Western civilization. For a wider Americans from fully appreciating States “shall preserve democracy, public, however, the question of the seriousness of prewar persecution not by fighting battles abroad to guilt and responsibility was safely and understanding the genocide. force it upon peoples that show no limited to Germany’s leaders; the Antisemitism in America significantly eagerness or aptitude for it, but by German people were exonerated. shaped public responses to events making it function more successfully Finally, the notion of the Janus-faced, in Germany, as did, to an even than dictatorship” (63f). One can see dual nature of the German people greater degree, political fear of such how one of the non-interventionists’ and their history and culture (which, prejudice. strongest arguments against thanks to Emil Ludwig, dominated Any discussion of American messianic-missionary-universalist lesson plans at military training anti-Semitism in and outside state crusades was seemingly forever camps) could accommodate a range institutions has to be balanced discredited by having been used of interpretations: from remnants by recognition of the countless against Nazi Germany and why of the nineteenth-century notion of Jewish and non-Jewish advocates, “isolationism” was so easily turned the Germans as politically immature journalists, government officials, into a slanderous term.1 cultural overachievers to the stark and private citizens, who, having The contest over the meaning of warnings of the 1945 post-liberation learned about and accepted the Page 38 Passport September 2011 evidence from Nazi-occupied Europe, more successfully used in the Cold that had hampered the Rooseveltian were catapulted into action, warned War against the Soviet Union and mobilization effort. A carefully and wrote about the genocide, and even against political Islamism in the crafted blend of anti-communism planned and carried out rescue “War on Terror.” This point deserves and lessons drawn from the fight efforts. Scholars like Shlomo Aronson further attention, even beyond against the Axis shaped a new and Richard Breitman have shown Marc Selverstone’s excellent study nationalist ideology in significant how very limited those rescue on Constructing the Monolith. What ways— increasing reliance on opportunities were and, because of made Nazism so readily available and ennobling military means, for the nature of the German design, as an easily transferable enemy example. For American foreign how tragically perverse. The single- image for mobilization purposes was policy discourse the war provided minded Nazi determination to realize precisely the early effort to separate a prescriptive model in the guise a racial utopia and the pragmatic Germans from Nazis. Subsequently, of lessons from history, the most Allied coalition war effort requiring references to Nazism as some kind important being the Munich analogy, domestic mobilization of a large of outlandish ideology that kept ruling out appeasement, at times democracy were a terrible mismatch. showing up in different incarnations even discounting diplomacy itself. I am a bit puzzled by (totalitarianism, islamofascism) over These Cold War lessons reinforced Goldstein’s comment that I don’t the next sixty years contributed to a memory of World War II as a provide sufficient introduction and removing Nazism from its proper, Manichean struggle, a memory that background to the many key, mid- specific historical context. How displaced other much more profound level and even minor voices in these we understand “what actually insights and conclusions. The debates. Precisely because of my happened” matters greatly in this disparate implications of the debate interest in showing the complexity case. on Nazism for American foreign of America’s domestic debates over The year 1945 marked an policy during and after World War II key foreign policy themes, I take internationalist and multilateralist deserve further study. great pains to sketch the political moment in American consciousness. Again, my thanks to the editors background and agenda of many Calls for American leadership and to the four reviewers for their of my protagonists. But it is true in setting up organizations and critical reading of my book and their that I also demonstrate that those standards for the promotion valuable comments. individual agendas often did not of human rights and peaceful carry the day. As Bischof and cooperation tapped into a newly Michaela Hoenicke-Moore is Etheridge point out, interpretations accepted sense of the nation’s Associate Professor of History at the cut across political, ideological, and international responsibility and, University of Iowa. partisan lines. equally important, its citizens’ newly Finally, Goldstein draws gained cosmopolitan outlook. But Note: attention to my conclusion that the this version of internationalism was 1. On this point see also Robert West- liberal intellectual war effort against soon supplanted by a new patriotic brook, “Isolationism Reconsidered,” Rari- the Third Reich left a blueprint for orthodoxy, seemingly sweeping tan (Fall 2010): 4-36. an ideological enemy that was much aside the deep political divisions

Host the 2014 SHAFR Annual Conference

Every other year, SHAFR holds its annual meeting in a location other than the Washington, D.C. area. The SHAFR Council would like to hear from members interested in hosting the conference at their institutions in 2014.

The Council requires a brief statement of purpose. Please submit a document of no more than two pages with the following information:

1. The location and its attractiveness as a tourist destination – size and diversity of attractions (in town and regionally), dining and accommodation, transportation facilities, research venues in the area, etc.

2. The institution – quality of the institution (departments, personnel, etc.), programs of interest to SHAFR, institutional support for a conference (accommodations, including variety of hotels, dorms, etc.), conference venue facilities, enthusiasm of administration, funding support, etc.

3. Leadership – explain who you are and who might help you host at your institution, including graduate students and other staff.

All finalists will be asked to provide more details in each of these sections, including cost estimates. Please note that SHAFR is not looking for a fancy marketing scheme but simply an expression of interest and some basic information with some explanation. Council will consider proposals for ALL locations, including west of the Mississippi and foreign destinations.

Please send proposals by JANUARY 1, 2012 to: Peter L. Hahn, Executive Director, at [email protected].

Passport September 2011 Page 39 The Attack on Higher Education

John T. McNay

n the wake of last year’s responsible for the legislation. boilerplate legislation developed by sweeping Republican victories in In the wake of the battles in Ohio ALEC. The organization’s members statehouses across the country, and Wisconsin, anti-union legislation hope that by introducing these wavesI of legislation hostile to both in other states is taking shape as well. radical bills across the nation at the academic unions and universities It would be a mistake to believe that state level in a shotgun approach, have spread across many states in what is going on is random or not they will make incremental progress recent months. The most prominent especially relevant to academia. toward their goals. They note cases are in Ohio and Wisconsin, but History Professor William that only 12 to 15 percent of the nationwide, according to the National Cronon of the University of hundreds of bills introduced in Conference of State Legislators, Wisconsin, who is incoming president state legislatures each year pass 820 bills have been introduced of the AHA, moved briefly to center into law, but over time these laws that would limit or eliminate the stage in this struggle when he promise to have a huge impact. collective bargaining rights of public began to research what he felt was Further, using a political strategy workers, including university faculty. behind the legislation in his state. that writer Naomi Klein has recently In Ohio, Senate Bill 5 would He posted a blog entry on March dubbed “shock and awe,” the drastically limit the ability of all 15 entitled “Who’s Really Behind proponents of this legislation have public unions (police, firefighters, Recent Legislation in Wisconsin often helped to create the conditions state workers, school teachers, and Elsewhere? (Hint: It Didn’t that foster crisis atmospheres; they and university professors, among Start Here)” and wrote a New York then use the pressures of those crises others) to negotiate for salary, Times op-ed piece, “Wisconsin’s to push through their “reforms.” In benefits, and work conditions. As Radical Break.” In these writings he Wisconsin, for example, Gov. Scott a Republican senator who testified revealed the role of the American Walker was elected with a surplus against the bill said, it is a collective Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) but quickly funded several new bargaining bill that does not allow in disseminating this legislation. conservative projects and thereby for collective bargaining. It moved ALEC is a right-wing group funded helped bring on the budget crisis. rapidly through the state legislature, by wealthy conservative activists and Similarly, at least half of Ohio’s with over a hundred pages of corporations whose agenda is clearly $8 billion deficit was generated amendments introduced just hours to undermine labor unions. The by sweeping tax cuts, including before the bill was approved. Among group expressed particular objections a 21 percent reduction in the the amendments was a clause that to the way universities operate. state’s progressive income tax. specifically targeted university Shortly after Cronon’s The barring of collective professors. Faculty who participate revelations, the Wisconsin Republican bargaining is not the only change in service activities such as search Party issued an open records request being proposed. One of the most committees, promotion and tenure to search the professor’s email for widespread legislative efforts committees, or the Faculty Senate, evidence of political activities. They involves creating “charter” would be defined as “managers” and were looking for emails containing universities or private or semi-private would thus be ineligible for union words such as “union” or “rally.” institutions. The basic principle is membership. Implementation of the The UW administration rightly that, in exchange for “deregulation,” bill is on hold for now, as a petition defined the search very narrowly states will provide less public campaign is underway to overturn it and, not surprisingly, nothing of money to support universities. in a referendum vote in November. relevance was found. But since This strategy has been around for In Wisconsin, Democratic April 1, Cronon has not posted on more than thirty years, as some politicians fled the state to prevent a his blog or written another op-ed. universities have tried to portray quorum, but after weeks of protest In his op-ed in the New York themselves as “entrepreneurial” a state senate committee convened Times on March 21, Cronon wrote or “enterprise” institutions—the on March 9, in what is now widely that “Republicans in Wisconsin are terms used to distance the concept seen as an illegal meeting, and seeking to reverse civic traditions from charter schools, which are passed legislation that would end that for more than a century have now widely seen as failures. collective bargaining in the state been among the most celebrated In Virginia, the oft-touted for most state employees. The achievements not just of their state, exemplar of states that have case is now moving through the but of their own party as well.” undertaken university deregulation, courts, where a judge put a hold on While not all states have the strong the University of Virginia has just implementation of the bill and later traditions that Wisconsin does, the announced an 8.9 percent tuition ruled it invalid because Wisconsin’s civic traditions in many states are hike, after an increase of more open meetings law was violated. being challenged by new and radical than 50 percent since 2006. In Meanwhile, several campaigns legislation. Much of it, as Cronon 2010, tuition shot up 24 percent at are underway to recall politicians reports, is not home-grown; it is Virginia Commonwealth University.

Page 40 Passport September 2011 In Texas, tuition has increased an California is planning an 8 percent has spearheaded the creation of astonishing 63 percent since the state tuition increase, although if a planned the Campaign For The Future of universities were partly deregulated tax extension is not passed by the Higher Education, a coalition of in 2003. In Washington state, the legislature, that increase could be 32 faculty unions and groups that aims University of Washington may be percent. The UC-Berkeley chancellor to create a national opposition to seeking as much as a 16 percent has suggested that each campus the sweeping changes to higher ed hike in each of the next two years. be free to charge its own tuition being proposed across the country. Not only are charter universities rate. The CSU system is facing A primary focus of any faculty expensive, but increasingly they similarly dire financial problems. union is academic freedom and are failing to serve their states’ In Ohio, a charter university shared governance—twin issues own citizens. Out-of-state students proposal is expected from the that have been particular targets and foreign students must pay chancellor’s office in mid-August, of the conservative movement. much more for tuition, so places and many of the state’s university Faculty unions have been expanding that might have been reserved for presidents have expressed great in Ohio and elsewhere, largely in-state students are increasingly interest. Ohio State University in response to university budget reserved for those who come from President Gordon Gee has embraced decisions that have taken place outside the state. The University of the idea. “It is an idea whose time without faculty input and without Virginia, for example, despite setting has come,” Gee told the Columbus regard for the instructional mission a cap at 35 percent, has averaged Dispatch in March. In a letter to Gov. of the universities. Just last summer, 40 percent out-of-state students in John Kasich, University of Cincinnati Bowling Green State University won recent years. Abandoned financially President Gregory Williams a hard-fought certification election and otherwise by state legislatures, expressed support for the charter against determined administration “entrepreneurial” universities must university concept, and he cited some opposition and will become an inevitably chase the cash that out-of- of the advantages that would accrue AAUP collective bargaining state students bring. While legislators to universities, including the right of chapter (if SB 5 is defeated). And may be happy with cutting the cost eminent domain, the ability to limit just months ago, faculty at the of supporting the university, all that responses to public records requests University of Illinois at Chicago won has really happened is that the cost and reports to boards of regents, and a certification election and will form has been transferred to students. relief from “burdens” such as civil a joint AFT-AAUP faculty union. The University of Oregon, service and collective bargaining. Questionable resource allocation in a plan known as the “New In Texas, there are several by university administrations was Partnership,” is undertaking a new proposals to measure faculty a key motivating factor in both the new funding structure that would “productivity.” They include ideas BGSU and UIC certification drives. freeze state funding at $65 million such as separating research and Public universities seeking a year for the next thirty years. In teaching budgets and determining greater autonomy have cited the exchange, the legislature would whether faculty actually “earn” their need for greater “flexibility.” But use a $1 billion bond sale to finance salaries. Meanwhile, research would the combination of union-busting the university. When the bonds be measured on its “value,” with and the semi-privatization of mature in thirty years, the state the assumption that some research public universities makes it likely would no longer need to provide is simply not valuable. Proposals that the institutions created will basic financing for the university, would also provide professors large have little academic integrity. as the transition to a semi-private cash rewards based solely on student Furthermore, there is little evidence institution would have taken place. evaluations. The metrics proposed by that this flexibility is designed The University of Wisconsin, the Texas Public Policy Foundation, to benefit students. Nor will it meanwhile, is considering the a Texas-based clone of ALEC, would benefit the citizens who have for “New Badger Partnership,” under gauge faculty productivity by the many decades invested their tax which UW-Madison would become number of students in seats. dollars in public universities with a “public authority” and thereby Other legislation in various the promise that they will benefit receive the “flexibility” to set states, while not directly affecting from those universities’ activities tuition and retain revenues. As higher education, nonetheless in teaching, research, and service. in the Oregon plan, UW would constitutes an attack on the values detach itself from the rest of the that those in academia traditionally John McNay is Professor of History state system and move toward support. Several states are enacting at the University of Cincinnati— becoming a semi-private institution. voter suppression laws, and many Raymond Walters College. Louisiana’s appropriations for its are slashing funding to K-12 system of higher education have been schools, legislation that ensures cut by more than 20 percent in that that even more students who are last two years, but these cuts have poorly prepared and politically been accompanied by a movement disengaged will get to college. toward institutional “flexibility” in Not surprisingly, much of the setting tuition rates. The recently- resistance to these dramatic changes formed Louisiana Flagship Coalition affecting public employees and public is advocating that the main campus universities is coming from faculty of LSU be given the freedom to run unions. Many SHAFR members are its own affairs and set its own tuition. also members of faculty unions and In California, continual deep most of us are public employees. In budget cuts and sharp tuition hikes Ohio, some of us are in leadership are generating widespread discussion positions in the AAUP. I am president about the possibility that private or of the University of Cincinnati semi-private institutions are being chapter; Walter Hixson is president created. With $500 million in cuts of the University of Akron chapter. coming this year, the University of The California Faculty Association Passport September 2011 Page 41 Debating the Anglo-Celtic Divide

Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones amd Thomas A. Breslin

rofessor Thomas A. Breslin’s but in terms of class, region, religion, scale today), Cumbrian, Cornish, and essay “The Great Anglo-Celtic and ideology. There were several Breton. Their Brythonic language DivideP in the History of American very distinctive strands in the English group gave rise to the term “Britain.” Foreign Relations” (Passport, influence on America. Though his essay reads like an April 2011) advances a rash and Furthermore, with reference to exercise in polyfiliopietism, Breslin indefensible hypothesis about the the political and diplomatic entity has not only forgotten about the ethnic backgrounds of presidents. north of France to which Breslin bitterly contested cultural (and It is unlikely that it will pose an refers, why not use the term “British” religious) differences between the effective challenge to more credible instead of the term “English”? Celtic Goidelic speakers and their fellow explanations of foreign relations. peoples are not part of the English countrymen in Ireland and Scotland, Those explanations include both the nation and the English are aware he has also overlooked entirely the studies of the role of “international of that, but Breslin persists with his Brythonic speakers and with them political dynamics” that he thinks misleading nomenclature. Those the genesis of the concept of being should take second place to living in Celtic countries will find his British. The omission has even led the Anglo-Celtic factor and the him to miss a trick in advancing his overarching interpretations and own dubious viewpoint: the Welsh approaches that he refrains from Breslin is either fudging his strand in filiopietism that applies the mentioning, such as those offered definitions to enhance his hypothesis, homeopathic principle and claims by William Appleman Williams or he does not fully understand what that the genius of Thomas Jefferson and Michael Hunt. Furthermore, a Celt is. He is right to think of the and numerous other presidents and while the personalities and beliefs notables stemmed from their ancestry of presidents offer a fascinating and term as a cultural rather than a racial in the land west of Offa’s Dyke. fruitful issue for discussion, the Great construct, but he gives the impression Methodology, definition, and Man Theory of History, debatable of being unaware of a cultural logic are all poor in the Breslin essay. at the best of times, is of limited diversity within Celtic nations that Even a short interpretive essay credibility in the case of a nation complements the variegated nature lacks credibility if it does not lay with America’s checks-and-balances of England and indeed most other down its ground rules. If Breslin constitution. countries. prefers culture to the counting of To offer a rebuttal such as the drops of ancestral blood, how does one that follows might seem quixotic he treat memory? Do his Celtic and or gratuitous, but the exercise is diction offensive. Long ago, ignorant Anglo presidents remember and worthwhile as a defense of the people applied the term “English” to talk about their cultural heritage reputation of those scholars who take immigrants from the British Isles who and say it explains their foreign more cautious and methodologically could not even speak the language, policies? Or does he rely on the sound approaches to the problem of but there is no excuse for historians premise that memories do not ethnicity and foreign policy. Their doing so. America did not fight have to be articulated? If so, does contributions to our understanding “England” in 1812, nor did it side he argue that culture produces of U.S. foreign policy may be more with “England” in 1917. mores without memory, proceeding modest in scope, but they will be Breslin is either fudging his on the assumption that common more enduring. definitions to enhance his hypothesis, backgrounds yield similar outcomes? Let’s begin with Breslin’s use or he does not fully understand what We need to know. of terms deriving from the name of a Celt is. He is right to think of the How does Breslin measure the one of the Germanic peoples who term as a cultural rather than a racial degree and nature of European invaded post-Roman Britain, the construct, but he gives the impression ethnic consciousness in a particular Angles. Can one speak, as Breslin of being unaware of a cultural president and what are the uniform does, of a single English or “Anglo” diversity within Celtic nations that signifiers that permit him to make identity that has imposed a uniform complements the variegated nature comparisons and distinctions? stamp on America? What role did of England and indeed most other Breslin has written previously about other invaders—Saxons, Jutes, countries. What is more, he shows America and China, but in his Vikings, Normans, and many less no awareness of the broad linguistic contribution to Passport he does not sanguinary arrivals since—play in divide between the “P-Celts” and explain why “Anglo” presidents take shaping that nation of immigrants, the “Q-Celts.” The latter spoke an interest in China, while “Celtic” England? What about the residual Irish, Scots Gaelic, and Manx, in the presidents look to Latin America. In influence of the original Celtic Goidelic language group. The former the unlikely event that he can sustain inhabitants? Even more important spoke Welsh (once spoken over much his Anglo-Celtic cultural definitions is the pluralistic nature of English of mainland Britain and the only of presidents, what logic can he society, not just in terms of ethnicity Celtic language surviving on a large advance to explain this postulated

Page 42 Passport September 2011 regional variation? In arguing that Scotland in 1707: did it hammer the Breslin Response Celtic-American presidents opposed Scots or favor them by, for example, socialism because of their cultural giving them access to trade with Thomas A. Breslin tradition, is he aware of the strong America? Has he succumbed to the left-wing tradition in all the main romantic mythology of the 1715 and Celtic nations? 1745 rebellions, regarding them as rof. Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones bases Breslin’s strange judgments Scottish nationalist risings whereas his critique of my hypothesis on particular issues no doubt arise in reality they were religious? As he on the fundamentally flawed from an effort to force wide-ranging cleaves to the principle of avoiding Pclaim that “the Great Man Theory of facts into the straightjacket of an the Brythonic Celts, perhaps he is History, debatable at the best of times, overworked hypothesis. For example, unaware that in 1485 Henry Tudor is of limited credibility in the case of his references to “England’s Celtic and his Welsh army defeated a nation with America’s checks –and allies” feeling “abused by their England’s Richard III in battle, that balances constitution.” In American overlords,” while vague, seem to Henry’s son Henry VIII united foreign affairs, however, the president apply to events occurring prior to England and Wales, and that as a is a both a theoretical and a practical American independence (and thus result the Welsh were enthusiastically Great Man. As Elmer Plischke notes, before the phenomenon of American royalist even after the Stuart “legally, politically, and practically presidents). He may be thinking of succession of 1603, and supportive the president is not only the manager atrocities committed in Ireland by of government from London. in chief of U.S. foreign affairs… the forces of Oliver Cromwell, or the Nationalists regret and deplore that but also, in those circumstances in forced colonization of much of Ulster long phase in Welsh history, which which he chooses, he is diplomat by Scottish Presbyterians. Certainly lasted well into the twentieth century, in chief, and sometimes even his there is an Irish feel to his essay, as but it did happen. Historians should own secretary of state or his own indicated by his preference for the try to deal with the truth. ambassador.”1 Irish spelling of “whiskey” (Scottish, Breslin has missed another trick American presidents have been “whisky”). in the case of Barack Obama. There able to confound constitutional But his instincts for Irish and is no need to subscribe to the claim checks and balances and be historical Irish-American history are erratic. in the humorous song “There Is No Great Men who make large-scale Breslin’s Andrew Jackson was “the One As Irish As Barack O’Bama,” but differences in history. Jefferson’s hero of the Celtic-Americans.” it is clear that on his mother’s side unauthorized Louisiana Purchase But Jackson would have been no Obama, like so many Americans, can changed American history. Polk’s hero to the Corkite and other Irish claim Irish descent. Except as a light- congressionally unauthorized action Catholic immigrants laboring on hearted political theme, this affinity is provoked a war with Mexico and the construction of the Chesapeake probably meaningless. But the onus changed the course of American and Ohio Canal on January 29, 1834. is on Breslin to show exactly why it history. Theodore Roosevelt’s On that day, the president ordered is meaningless in the case of Obama, publicly boasted, “I took the Canal federal troops to (take your pick) but not in other cases on his list. Zone, and let Congress debate, and restore order or crush the strike by What does Breslin mean while the debate goes on the canal the predominantly Irish-American when he asserts that Obama the does also.” workforce. It was the White House’s non-Celt, non-Anglo, may be Presidents embraced an imperial first deployment of U.S. troops “just another . . . Eisenhower”? In role. Before his election, Kennedy for this purpose and is thus not suggesting that Ike was a foreign told the National Press Club that the an inconspicuous event. Breslin policy lightweight, he is swimming next President “must be prepared might categorize it as an instance against the historiographical tide. to exercise the fullest powers of his of what he calls Celtic-American And when he says that Obama office—all that are specified and some presidents’ “occasional bouts of anti- started his presidency as a “foreign that are not … the President is alone Catholicism,” which were, according policy novice,” he should remember at the top.” He quoted Woodrow to him, characteristic of that group. that most incoming presidents Wilson’s dictum that “the President is But this point is meaningless, because are. Furthermore, anyone familiar at liberty, both in law and conscience, Jackson was of Scotch-Irish ancestry with the literary output of the pre- to be as big a man as he can … His and thus, certainly in the eyes of presidential Obama must agree that office is anything he has the sagacity his critics, anti-Celtic. To be sure, he was unusually well informed and the force to make it…. His Woodrow Wilson’s grandfather about the world beyond America’s capacity will set the limit.”2 hailed from County Tyrone. But shores. It bothers Jeffreys-Jones that if President Wilson was a “Celtic There have been English, I have lumped the invaders of American” in cultural terms, we Scottish, Scotch-Irish, Irish, Welsh, the Celtic Isles together. In my need an explanation of his snobbery Cornish, and Breton influences forthcoming work,3 following David towards Irish Americans and of on America. They range from Hackett Fischer’s Albion’s Seed, I his reluctance to endorse Irish ideology to cuisine, from imported do differentiate among the English independence in the wake of the Irish sectarianism to cultural diversity. and their Anglo-American cousins. pro-independence election result of There are many fascinating ways in Anglo-Saxons and other Germanic 1918. And where does the famously which the heritage can be studied. types, whom I term the English, Irish Catholic John F. Kennedy fit in? It does have some significance, of a dominated the Celtic Isles and their A characterization that allows for too modest nature, for foreign policy. But various Celtic inhabitants following many exceptions fails. there is no place for an overarching much fighting over several centuries. Beyond the Irish question, hypothesis like Breslin’s. He has To do so they used one Celtic group Breslin’s essay is on even more invited the fate of Icarus. against another and defeated Scottish parlous ground. If he is of the and Irish ties to Spain and France. oppressed Celts persuasion, he Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones is Professor The English also brought their should at least confess that he is Emeritus of History at the University of mutual antagonisms to North taking sides in the great debate Edinburgh. America, as Puritan New Englanders, about the union of England and Middle Atlantic Quakers, and South Passport September 2011 Page 43 Atlantic Coast Cavaliers. Similarly, 5. Russell F. Weigley, The American Way in North America Anglo-Americans of War: A History of United States Military both struggled against and used Strategy and Policy (New York: Macmillan, Celts and Celtic-Americans. At 1973), xx. fi rst, the North American Celts were mostly Scots-Irish and later mostly Irish. Other Celtic sub-cultures were not consequential in American presidential history. There was no love lost, however, between Scots- Irish and Irish. Thus Wilson, but arguably not Jackson, continued a Scots-Irish versus Irish antagonism across the sea. Accordingly, Jeffreys- Jones’ term of choice, “British,” derived from the Brythonic language group is too narrow to include either the two Celtic groups consequential in American presidential history or all those in the home islands. Thus I use the inclusive term, “Celtic.” Some presidents have been very conscious of their ancestry. Wilson boasted, “I am one of those who are of the seed of that indomitable blood, planted in so many parts of the United States, which makes good fi ghting stuff, --the Scotch-Irish. The beauty about a Scotch-Irishman is that he not only thinks he is right, but knows he is right. And I have not departed from the faith of my ancestors.”4 As noted originally, Grant identifi ed with his English ancestors. Others were less conscious of ancestral culture. But as one historian reminds us, “The relatively remote past is apt to constrain our thought and actions more, because we understand it less well than we do our recent past, or at least recall it less clearly, and it has cut deeper grooves of custom in our minds.”5 As for Obama, whom I describe as having “an unprecedented mix of ethnic backgrounds,” I have not claimed, pace Jeffreys-Jones, that any part of Obama’s cultural heritage is meaningless. It remains to be seen what he does in foreign affairs and also what part of his cultural background he most identifi es with.

Thomas A. Breslin is Professor of History at Florida International University

Notes: 1. Elmer Plischke, Diplomat In Chief: The President at the Summit (New York: Prae- ger, 1986), 488. 2. Tom Wicker, JFK and LBJ: The Infl uence of Personality Upon Politics (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1969), 25. 3. Thomas A. Breslin. The Great Anglo- Celtic Divide in the History of American For- eign Relations (Santa Barbara: ABC-Clio/ Praeger, forthcoming). 4. Edwin A. Weinstein, Woodrow Wilson: A Medical and Psychological Biography (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1981), 178.

Page 44 Passport September 2011 The View from Overseas Bad Policies: Nigerians’ Perceptions of the United States

S.U. Fwatshak

The following essay is part of the population is split nearly 50-50 in the interviewed the Hausa Muslims Passport series, “The View from Southwest. Christianity is dominant personally for over two hours. The Overseas,”which features short pieces in the Southeast, South-south and two persons interviewed differed written by someone outside of the North-central regions, but Islam has in educational status: one is a United States, examining the views a significant population in the North- graduate in mass communication; held by the people and government in central area. There are also various the other completed only primary their country about the United States. religious minorities, such as those education but was in his early 30s SHAFR members who are living abroad, who practice “indigenous” religions. and was married with children. even temporarily, or who have contacts There are no accurate figures to show They differed in the details of their abroad that might be well-positioned which of the two major religions individual perceptions, with the to write such pieces are encouraged to has the higher figures nationwide. less educated one more vocal in his contact the editor at [email protected]. Because of the early influence elaboration of the negative issues of Christian missions, the southern pertaining to the United States, region is educationally more but they agreed on many of the hen Professor Toyin Falola advanced and has a more educated basics. What they told me reflected linked me up with Mitch elite (in the Western sense) than views commonly held by the Hausa Lerner, who had requested the northern region (especially the Muslims, some of which they shared Wa Nigerian to volunteer an essay Islamic-dominated Northeast and but some of which they did not on how Nigerians perceive the Northwest); it has more schools, agree with. They both pleaded that United States, I was delighted. including tertiary institutions, their views remain anonymous. However, I soon realized that my task many of which are privately owned. What is presented here is a would not be an easy one. Nigeria, Although generally the citizens summary of the various shades of Africa’s demographic giant, is a are poor, a few, especially political opinion I heard. Many of the persons diverse nation of over a hundred officeholders, are rich. According who volunteered their opinions million people. Those people have to statistics of the early 2000s, had both positive and negative different ethnic, linguistic, cultural poverty is higher in the Northeast perceptions of the United States. and religious backgrounds, and and Northwest—the regions Although is difficult to get what individuals from various regions threatened by desertification—and could be regarded as a national differ widely in educational skills development is low; the opinion that reflects the views of achievements and in politics. population is rising because birth all, it is not impossible to get a fair Three ethnic groups make up the control measures are being rejected. view of how Nigerians of different majority of the people: the Hausa, These circumstances have strong backgrounds view the United States. the Igbo, and the Yoruba. More than influences on the worldviews four hundred other ethnic groups are of individuals and groups. Perspectives of educated elites scattered across the nation. General There is little consensus (mainly university professors) across Sani Abacha, who was head of among Nigerians, except when the regions, religions, and cultures: state from 1993 to 1998, divided the national soccer team is playing an country into six geopolitical zones: international match. Thus when I 1. The United States is a highly the Southwest, which is largely asked people about their perceptions advanced democracy, and it promotes Yoruba; the South-south, where of the United States, their responses the democratic system of government various minorities live in the oil-rich strongly reflected their diversity. globally. But while it has exported Niger Delta; the Southeast, which I tried to get the opinions of a few worthy ideals to other societies is largely Igbo-speaking; the North- individuals from various ethnic, (e.g., democratic rule, evangelical central (popularly called the Middle religious, zonal, and educational missions), it has also exported Belt), which is inhabited by various backgrounds. Those who volunteered the most depraved debauchery minority groups; the Northeast, information included educated in the guise of cultural values. where the Kanuri make up the single Muslims from the Southwest 2. It has engendered true largest group but are outnumbered (Yoruba), educated Christians from patriotism in its citizens, who by the total population of other the Southeast (Igbo), and educated are dedicated and committed to minority groups; and the Northwest, and uneducated Muslims and their country, but it is arrogant in which is largely Hausa but also has Christians from the North-central its feeling of military might and significant minority populations. region (Christian minorities) and reckless in its military adventures. Islam and Christianity are the Northwest (Hausa). The non-Hausa It usually uses its military power two major religions. Islam dominates volunteers sent me their responses excessively and sometimes in the Northeast and Northwest; the by email and text messages, but I wrongly against other nations.

Passport September 2011 Page 45 3. A country of opportunities, it training for military personnel protection and/or propagation of is genuinely interested in harnessing of different nations. Christianity. UN agencies are seen individual potential. Its motives 11. It assists in a unique in the same light. (The graduate are often suspect, however. way different peoples and Hausa Muslim interviewee knows 4. It is a free and orderly countries in distress. much about the differences.) society, committed to the ideal of 12. Its citizens are very 7. Democrats are more individual freedom (sometimes to determined and will achieve friendly to LDCs, including Islamic a fault!). One Professor stated his anything they aspire to. countries, than Republicans, who views about freedom in the USA 13. Obama’s policy of discussing are regarded as belligerent. in the following words: “In my matters one-on-one with leaders 8. The failure of the United perception America is a wonderful of other countries (especially the States to intervene in the Nigerian country where the dignity of citizens Arab states) has diminished the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) is uncompared with anything. perception that the United States constitutional crisis about the Freedom in almost everything is has a superiority complex and has rotation of the presidency is seen indubitable.” However, while it is improved its international image. as anti-Islam. Muslims believe that receptive to foreigners, it is hostile if President Goodluck Jonathan in its dealings with non-natives. Perspectives of Hausa Muslims were a Muslim, the United States 5. It is a nation that readily of Northern Nigeria: would have intervened to force recognizes and rewards merit and the PDP to respect its zoning hard work. Hardworking individuals 1. The United States is anti- principle. (The less educated Hausa can get to the top of their careers. Islam. For example, it attacked Muslim emphasized this belief; But it dominates the world economy Ghadafi but not the Ivory Coast the graduate did not share it.) and politics, and it arrogates to president, Laurent Gbagbo. Saddam 9. Americans are liars. They itself the right to aspire and to lead Hussein was killed on Arafat day, brought fertilizers to Nigeria but the world in all spheres of human when Muslims commemorate the now they are saying that manure endeavor except soccer, without substitution of a ram for Ishmael, is better. It is difficult to know regard to how other nations feel. an action that symbolizes ransom. which one to use. The point about 6. It is a military and economic The killing is seen by Muslims Americans supplying fertilizers to giant, a superpower, a big brother as a humiliation of Islam. Nigeria confirms the inability of the policing world affairs. Without its 2. The United States less-educated Hausa to distinguish interventions, rogue regimes in stereotypes Muslims as terrorists. between Americans and Europeans. some regions would overrun and 3. Muslims do not trust the 10. The Child Rights Act annex their weaker neighbors. But United States, and goods from that promoted by the United States is un- it has caused political and economic country, including health-related Islamic because a girl can mature at problems in many parts of the world items like food and drugs, are not age nine, depending on her physique, because it pursues its economic and acceptable to Muslims, who see and Muslims believe it is better for a political interests by any means. them as a means of Christianizing girl to be deflowered by her husband It does not care about the lives of them. Foods and drugs—including because he would be the only one she citizens of other countries as much as vaccines—are believed to have knew in her early marital life and she it does protecting its own interests. contraceptives hidden in them to would love him more. The marriage 7. It is a very literate prevent child-bearing and decrease of Senator Ahmed Sani to a thirteen- society in which education is Muslim population growth. The year-old Egyptian girl confirms this held in high esteem and most rejection of polio vaccines by the belief. (The educated interviewee did citizens are educated. However, Northern Nigeria government not hold this opinion personally.) it is draining away some of of Kano state under Governor 11. The United States prevents Nigeria’s skilled personnel Ibrahim Shekarau confirms the other countries from acquiring through its lottery programs. prevalence of this attitude. (The nuclear capabilities by destroying 8. The United States loves two Hausa Muslim interviewees do their efforts in that direction. her citizens and protects their not personally share this view.) 12. Under the pretext of interests wherever they may be in 4. The United States does human rights, the United States the world. Its practice of ensuring not have regard for religion, but prevents the killing of murderers. that its citizens are evacuated when religion is very dear to Muslims. Sparing murderers is un- they find themselves in difficulties One educated Muslim who sent his Islamic; in Islam, one who kills abroad is much appreciated. But it response to me by email however another should also be killed. has continued to treat people from disagreed with the point that the 13. The United States other nations, particularly black U.S. has no regard for religion by mistakenly believes all Hausa- people, as second-class citizens. They stating that, “It was in America speakers are Muslims and every suffer from certain restrictions. that I first prayed as a Muslim problem in Nigeria is associated 9. It promotes education across in a Chapel and lot more.” with Hausa-speakers. the globe by ensuring that different 5. Some Muslims view clothes, 14. The United States operates professional courses are mounted cable TV, and films from the United on the principle of citizenship and for people of various nations; it States and Europe as indecent and not indigeneship for its occupants, has programs for the exchange of un-Islamic and ban them from but in other countries it does not scholars, like the Fulbright Program, their homes in order to prevent promote citizenship. Instead, it and programs for staff development the pollution of Islam. (The two causes people to fight. (This reference for LDCs that help build individual Hausa Muslim interviewees do by the less educated Hausa Muslim and institutional capacities. However, not personally share this view.) was to the so-called indigeneship- Republicans are not friendly to 6. Many Hausa Muslims settlership crises in Plateau state.) Africa or the world. They are hostile do not distinguish between the 15. The United States is a to Obama and this hostility is United States, Europe, Jews, and nation of thieves. They fight in other affecting the American economy. Israel. To them, all represent countries like Iraq and Libya to 10. It provides military one and the same thing: the access those countries’ oil resources. Page 46 Passport September 2011 16. International Radio Media two or more people are going To them, it is a bad nation; it is anti- from Europe have Hausa programs on a journey, they first choose a Islam, uncultured, anti-others. But in which Mallams (Islamic preachers) leader who must be deferred to the sometimes divergent opinions of air their views about the United during the course of the journey the educated interviewee and the less States. Those views, which are largely as the group takes decisions educated one suggest that all Hausa negative, shape public opinion and relates to other people. Muslims may not hold views that are about the United States among 20. In a general sense, Hausa as completely negative as these; such the Hausa people (the majority of Muslims regard the United negativity may be largely limited to whom are Muslims) because the States as a very bad country. the less educated. Still, everyone who Hausa people listen to radio a lot. Whatever it does is seen as bad. volunteered information attributed 17. The United States does many negative traits to the United not have a good culture. Many Perspectives of Uneducated States. These included the arrogance Hausa people that train in that Christians: that drives it to dominate the world country return to Nigeria behaving and to pursue American interests by disrespectfully in their manner of The few contacts I made among any means, even if others are hurt. speech (using vulgar language), un-educated Christians did not yield In order to formulate and in the way they dress (indecently any results. The volunteers said implement a viable Nigeria policy, by Hausa standards), in how they did not know anything about the United States would require a they relate to people (they see the United States; they only knew more careful, in-depth, systematic themselves as superior to others), about white people in general. collection of data that reflects the and in their attitude toward In sum, the educated elite diversity of Nigeria, and it would local customs and cultures. find that the United States has have to analyze that data thoroughly. 18. The United States does some positive attributes. They cite But this short survey may be taken not make goods that benefit economic, educational, and military as a starting point. It indicates that the masses. Their cars consume achievements; citizen determination the United States has a great deal a lot of fuel, unlike those of and patriotism; and democracy and of work to do if it wishes to win the Japanese. Therefore, the freedom. To this extent, the educated hearts and minds in Nigeria. country is anti-poor people. elite across regions, religions, and 19. Americans are too cultures perceives of the United Sati Umaru Fwatshak is Associate individualistic and too independent; States as great nation. The Hausa Professor of History, Department of Hausa/Muslim people believe in Muslims’ information showed that History and International Studies, following their leaders. Among Hausa Muslims generally do not see University of Jos, Nigeria. Hausa Muslims generally, when anything good in the United States.

2011 SHAFR Election

SHAFR has contracted this year with Vote-Now.com to conduct its annual membership election. This summer, each member will receive an e-mail and/or a postcard from Vote-Now.com inviting him or her to vote on-line for the election of officers and for a short referendum on the by-laws. The mailer will include a link to a secure website where votes can be cast. Access codes will be provided. Any member unable to cast an on-line vote may request a paper ballot by notifying the SHAFR Business Office. Questions about the ballot may be directed to the SHAFR Business Office (shafr@osu. edu); questions about technical aspects of voting should be directed to Vote- Now.com. Deadline for on-line voting will remain, as usual, October 31.

Passport September 2011 Page 47 From left: Laura Belmonte, Richard Immerman, Anna Nelson

From left: Marilyn Young, Andrew J. Bacevich, Peter Hahn

SHAFR

Annual Meeting, June 2011

in Alexandria, Virginia

Katie Sibley (left) and Carol Jackson Adams

View from the SHAFR clam bake

Page 48 Passport September 2011 Martin Folly (left) and Darlene Rivas

Molly Wood (left) and Jennifer Walton

SHAFR President Marilyn B. Young wishes to express her heartfelt thanks to the Program Committee for the splendid 2011 conference they put together: program chairs Petra Goedde and Brad Simpson and committee members Dirk Bonker, Jason Colby, Salim Yaqub, Amy S. Greenberg, Sheyda Jahanbani, Mark Atwood Lawrence, and Nicole Phelps. Special thanks also goes out to conference coordinator Jennifer Walton. Photos: Geoff Smith.

Michael Hopkins (left) and Warren Kimball

Passport September 2011 Marilyn Young Page 49 Kennedy Library Launches Digital Archives

Erica Boudreau

he John F. Kennedy Presidential the White House by his personal • Oral history records, which Library, like other presidential secretary, Evelyn Lincoln, as well as include interviews with the libraries, has long been an audio recordings of his telephone Kennedy administration’s Timportant research destination for conversations; the White House ambassadors to France, Guinea, students and scholars of diplomatic Central Chronological Files, which the United Arab Republic, history. Housed there are archival consist of carbon copies of the Malaysia, Cameroon, Israel, materials and museum objects president’s outgoing correspondence; Australia, Ecuador, Denmark, documenting some of the most the John F. Kennedy Personal Papers, Laos, Honduras, Chile, the United important events and international which include childhood letters, Kingdom, Canada, Poland, developments of the second half of diaries, correspondence, academic Romania, Uruguay, and Gabon, the twentieth century: the creation records and notebooks, Navy records, as well as ambassadors to the of the Peace Corps, the Bay of Pigs medical records, manuscript drafts, United States from Tunisia and invasion, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and presidential doodles; and the Brazil. Among subjects discussed the Berlin crisis, the Nuclear Test White House Audio Collection, are the president’s relationship Ban Treaty, increasing tensions in which consists of White House with foreign leaders, including Laos and Vietnam, independence Communications Agency recordings Charles de Gaulle, Gamal Abdel movements in Africa, and the of President Kennedy’s speeches Nasser, and Harold H. Macmillan; creation of the Alliance for Progress. and other public remarks. Also Kennedy’s foreign policy in Africa; Access to these unique materials, found in the Digital Archives are various foreign relations crises, though free of charge and open to images and descriptions of almost including the Bay of Pigs Invasion, anyone engaged in scholarly research, 300 museum artifacts from the State war in Laos, and the Cuban was, until recently, limited to the Gifts Collection; over 400 oral history Missile Crisis; Kennedy’s influence library’s research room in Boston. interview transcripts from the John F. on the stature of diplomats from Now, with the launch of the Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy Oral Third World nations; reactions JFK Library’s Digital Archive in History Collections; materials related to the Alliance for Progress from January 2011, anyone with an to civil rights from the White House Latin American leaders; and internet connection can view entire Central Subject Files; over 1,500 negotiations with the Soviet Union collections of digitized documents, photographs from the White House photographs, audio recordings, Photograph Collection; and over • Photographs, including those moving images, oral histories, 100 moving image files from various related to diplomatic and consular and museum artifacts that have collections at the library. The search service, document meetings heretofore been available only to interface for the Digital Archives with ambassadors to and from researchers with the time and means provides access not only to digitized the United States; meetings with to travel to the library. “Access to a content, but to descriptions of and heads of state, foreign ministers, Legacy,” as the initiative is called, is finding aids for all of the library’s as and other representatives of a public-private partnership between yet undigitized holdings. foreign countries; and receptions the John F. Kennedy Presidential There is a great deal of material for the Diplomatic Corps Library and Museum and the John in the Digital Archives that will be of F. Kennedy Library Foundation. interest to diplomatic historians. The • Related sound recordings, Its objectives are to digitize, index, library uses a controlled list of subject including President Kennedy’s and store permanently millions of headings when cataloging archival remarks at U.S. embassies in presidential documents, photographs, material, and included in that list Canada, England, Venezuela, and audiovisual recordings; provide is the heading “Diplomatic and Mexico, Costa Rica, Germany, and online accessibility to a worldwide consular service,” defined as material Italy; his speeches at ambassadors’ audience; search collections related to diplomatic and consular swearing-in ceremonies; and using metadata; protect historical service in general, as well as materials his remarks to Foreign Service assets through remote replication; belonging or related to specific students and officers and minimize wear and tear on diplomats and consular employees, irreplaceable physical assets. including United States ambassadors • Textual material related to Thus far, Kennedy Library staff to foreign countries. A search for diplomacy, found primarily in have digitized, described, and made all records that have been assigned the President’s Office Files. The available several archival collections this subject heading returns five Countries series includes material in their entirety: the President’s basic categories of material, as well concerning the diplomatic Office Files, which include the as abstracts and finding aids for and consular representation of working files of President Kennedy collections that are not yet digitized: foreign nations to the United as maintained in the Oval Office of States, including biographical Page 50 Passport September 2011 information on ambassadors and 65]; Ambassador to Yugoslavia event or subject using the Related other representatives; folders [1969–72]); and the R. Sargent Shriver Records field; for example, the record about individual countries, Personal Papers (Ambassador to for “Kashmiri Girl,” a painting of a including letters of credence and France, 1968–1970). Other headings young girl from Kashmir, informs the other formal documents relating to likely to yield materials of interest user that the painting was presented ambassadors; and correspondence include “Heads of State,” defined as to First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy by between President Kennedy and material related to the heads of state President Muhammad Ayub Khan foreign leaders, including Charles of foreign nations, and “International of Pakistan during his July 1961 visit de Gaulle and the Shah of Iran. Relations,” defined as material to the United States. However, it The Staff Memoranda series relating to the plans, policies, also includes a link to the Security includes correspondence about procedures, and programs regarding Briefing book found in the President’s ambassadorial appointments, foreign countries or governments, Office Files that prepared President foreign trips, foreign aid, and including material concerning the Kennedy for President Ayub’s visit. relations with colonial powers relationship between the United Similarly, the record for a photograph that were confronting African States and foreign countries or of President John F. Kennedy meeting independence movements. The governments as well as relationships with the ambassador of Tunisia, State Department materials in the between other foreign countries or Habib Bourguiba Jr., lists as a related Departments and Agencies series governments. record a folder from the President’s relate to appointments to the The library uses EMC’s Office Files titled “Tunisia: General, Foreign Service; the performance Documentum software as its January 1959–April 1961.” of individual U.S. ambassadors; digital asset management system Though only a small percentage the death of Prime Minister Patrice (DAMS). Documentum creates and of the library’s collection has been Lumumba of the Republic of manages multiple renditions of digitized thus far, work is ongoing, Congo; disarmament; negotiations the library’s digital assets—high and more content is added to the between India and Pakistan; quality preservation masters, digital archives on a weekly basis. and staff reports to the president print-quality renditions used to Collections that are in the planning summarizing various international fill reference requests, and lower stages for digitization include issues. The Human Rights series of resolution renditions appropriate recordings of President Kennedy’s the White House Central Subject for web delivery. Documentum also meetings, portions of the Jacqueline Files may also be of interest, as provides an interface for the capture Kennedy Onassis Papers that relate it includes reports, memoranda, of the administrative, descriptive, to her role as First Lady, portions of and correspondence between and technical metadata that is the National Security Files, the 1960 President John F. Kennedy, Chief generated by library staff. Digital Presidential Campaign Files, and the of Protocol Angier Biddle Duke, assets and their associated metadata White House Staff Files of various Special Assistant to the President are published from Documentum administration members. Frederick G. Dutton, and various to the Digital Archives portal on the Explore the Digital Archives at state and local politicians library’s newly redesigned website, http://www.jfklibrary.org/Research/ concerning the treatment of where they are fully searchable and Search-the-Digital-Archives.aspx. visiting African diplomats, with viewable by the public. specific emphasis on incidents of Documents are described at the Erica C. Boudreau is Digital discriminatory housing practices file unit (folder) level. Choosing Archivist at the John F. Kennedy and prohibited use of public this level of description provides a Presidential Library. facilities practical compromise between broad, collection-level description and the • Museum artifacts records from time-consuming practice of item- the State Gifts Collection, which level description: library staff is able document the gifts presented to digitally process materials more to President Kennedy and First quickly while still providing rich Lady Jacqueline Kennedy from metadata at a granular level. File- dignitaries and heads of state level access in the digital world also from all over the world, including replicates the JFK Library research a tea set given to Mrs. Kennedy room experience, where researchers by Premier and Mrs. Khrushchev access materials at the box and folder and a sculpture given to President level. The essential experience of Kennedy by President Josip Broz looking through a folder of archival Tito of Yugoslavia materials is maintained, as is the context of the materials. Within In addition to these digitized each file unit, the full text of the materials, the application of documents is searchable, though controlled subject headings across it must be noted that this search all of the library’s archival material uses unedited text extracted from allows for the discovery of several the scanned Tagged Image File undigitized collections that relate Format (TIFF) images using Optical to diplomatic history. Among these Character Recognition (OCR), which are the Ralph A. Dungan Personal is not one hundred percent accurate Papers (Ambassador to Chile), the (and does not pick up handwritten Joseph P. Kennedy Personal Papers text at all). All audiovisual items and (Ambassador to Great Britain), museum artifacts in our collections the William K. Leonhart Personal are described at the item level. Papers (Chief of Mission, Tokyo, Wherever possible, library Japan [1959–62]; Ambassador to catalogers made virtual connections Tanganyika (later Tanzania) [1962– among content related to the same Passport September 2011 Page 51 The 2010 Report of the Advisory Committee on Historical Diplomatic Documentation

April 6, 2011 Those were: By public law and by tradition, the Historical Advisory 1. 1969-1976, VII, Vietnam, July 1970-January 1973 Committee to the Department of State (HAC) embraces 2. 1969-1976, VIII, Vietnam, January 1972-October 1972 two principal responsibilities. The first is to oversee the 3. 1969-1976, IX, Vietnam, October 1972-January 1973 preparation and timely publication of the Foreign Relations 4. 1969-1976, X, Vietnam, January 1973-July 1975 of the United States series. The second is to facilitate public 5. 1969-1976, XIX, Part I, Korea, 1969-1972 access to records that are 25 or more years older than the 6. 1969-1976, Salt I, 1969-1973 date of issue. The Foreign Relations Statute of 1991 (Public Law 102-138 This is twice the number of volumes published the [105 Stat. 647, codified in relevant part at 22 U.S.C. § 4351 previous year, reflecting the stabilization of HO et seq.]) mandates the first of these responsibilities. It following several years of managerial disruption and calls for a “thorough, accurate, and reliable” documentary internal tumult. The HAC congratulates the HO on this record of United States foreign policy. That statute accomplishment, and remains impressed by the uniformly evolved from the public controversy triggered by the high quality of the published volumes. Nevertheless, Foreign Relations volumes published in 1983 and 1989 the improvement in the rate of production should not be that covered the events surrounding U.S. interventions exaggerated. The three volumes published in 2009 is an in Guatemala in 1954 and in Iran in 1953, respectively. unacceptably low number. Further, no progress has been Both volumes omitted documentation on U.S. covert made toward bringing the series into compliance with the activities that either was not made available to the Office statutory requirement that volumes be published 30 years of the Historian (HO) researchers or was not cleared for after the events they document. Indeed, the 6 volumes publication. Knowledgeable scholars rightly criticized published in 2010 did not even meet the target set by the the two volumes–and the series–for falling short of the Office in 2009. This record reinforces the disappointment standard of accuracy and thoroughness, dealing a serious HAC has expressed in prior reports. blow to its credibility and stature. Especially because significant steps have been taken to Over the two decades that have passed since the Foreign resolve the internal turmoil, staff turnover, and managerial Relations Statute of 1991 became law, the HO has sought disruption that plagued the HO in 2008 and 2009, the with good faith to compile volumes that are as “thorough, Committee assesses the 2010 record of publication of the reliable, and accurate” as possible. Our committee Foreign Relations series as discouraging. It is particularly appreciates that the this standard is an exceedingly concerned that the Office lacks the sense of urgency challenging and complex one for the HO to meet in view required to fulfill its statutory obligations. of the explosion of important government documents pertaining to foreign relations for the decades of the 1960s, The Challenge of the 30 Year Rule 1970s, and after and in view of the parallel requirement that volumes be published no later than 30 years after the The HAC is acutely aware of the challenges to publishing events they document. HO has struggled to meet these the Foreign Relations volumes in a sufficiently timely complementary obligations, finding much greater success manner to begin to close the gap. The most salient current in achieving the quality objective than in achieving the goal obstacle, ironically, stems from the 1991 legislation. That of timeliness. As the HO’s inability to close the gap between statute, and a subsequent memorandum of understanding its publication of the Foreign Relations volumes and the 30- between the Department of State and the Central year target has become manifest, our committee’s concerns Intelligence Agency, mandated and greatly facilitated have intensified. research in intelligence files and the incorporation of intelligence documentation in Foreign Relations volumes. The HAC’s second statutory obligation is to monitor An interagency committee established in the late 1990s, and advise on the declassification and opening of the known as the “High-Level Panel” (HLP), provides Department of State’s records, which in large measure guidelines for the publication in the Foreign Relations series involves the Department’s implementation of the of documentation relating to covert actions and other operative Executive Order governing the classification sensitive intelligence activities that had a major impact on and declassification of government records. E.O. 12958, U.S. foreign policy. That more than 40 covert intelligence issued in 1995, and later amended by E.O. 13292 of 2003, activities have now been acknowledged is evidence of mandated the declassification of records over 25 years the success of the HLP. The Foreign Relations series serves old–unless valid and significant reasons could be specified as the primary venue for publishing documentation on for not releasing them. Those orders were supplanted, in the role of intelligence activities in U.S. foreign relations. December 2009, by a new Executive Order (E.O. 13526). Hence, the series has become renowned internationally for openness, which has well served the national interest. Publications of the Foreign Relations Series This invaluable barometer of openness has, however, During 2010, the Office of the Historian published six created substantial delays in the declassification and volumes in the Foreign Relations of the United States series. publication processes. The HO estimates that any volume Page 52 Passport September 2011 with an HLP issue will spend at least one additional year, affairs. and often more, in the declassification pipeline than will a volume which does not contain an intelligence issue which To voice its concerns about the ways in which the current requires consideration, the drafting of guidelines, and declassification system affects the timely production of clearance by that inter-agency panel. Appealing negative Foreign Relations volumes, the committee met quarterly decisions about documents is a time-consuming process, with the director or other representatives of the and on occasion the CIA has reclassified previously Information Security Oversight Office. It also met with released documents. Further, the CIA’s resistance to representatives of the Office of Presidential Libraries to declassifying documents that are already in the public discuss its declassification efforts and the Remote Archive domain presents a severe challenge for the HO to publish Capture program, which operates under the National volumes that meet the standard of a “thorough, accurate, Declassification Center. and reliable” documentary record of United States foreign policy. CIA, we must emphasize, is but one of multiple Conclusion and Recommendations agencies with equities in sensitive intelligence related issues. Notwithstanding the challenges that HO confronts, the Historical Advisory Committee is convinced that the Office The failure of agencies to meet the 120-day deadline, set can and must address its statutory responsibilities with by statute, for reviewing documents chosen for inclusion a more effective strategy and a greater sense of urgency. in Foreign Relations volumes has exacerbated this problem It is preparing 28 volumes for the Carter administration. and frustrated the HO and HAC. Indeed, the Departments Of these only four have been fully compiled, reviewed, of Defense, Energy, and Justice (including the FBI) have revised, and entered into the declassification process. often been as if not more culpable than the CIA for the The Office has yet to begin its research in the Reagan delays. The Historical Advisory Committee is encouraged administration records (1981-88). It may experience further by recent evidence of improvement. Seeming small delays, moreover, as the Office moves to a new location measures, such as regular informal meetings between the this year. HO and CIA, for example, have had salutary effects. Still, the time and effort required to gain release of documents The HAC is working closely with HO to accelerate the deemed vital to producing a thorough, accurate, and rate of publication by focusing on those aspects of the reliable history of U.S. foreign relations continues to process over which HO can exercise control. It has gained constitute a serious roadblock to publication. the concurrence of the Office’s management to establish and enforce a two-year ceiling on the time required to These issues will intensify the challenge of meeting the compile a volume. It has also recommended that HO take 30-year rule as the HO seeks to hasten publication of the multiple measures to expedite publication. These range volumes covering the Carter and Reagan administrations. from formulating a policy that recognizes the need to With the recent additions to its historical staff, the balance thoroughness and timeliness to revising its review Office has now assigned each volume for the 1977-80 and publication processes. Indeed, HO should be able to quadrennium. The HO estimates that at least half of these publish volumes more efficiently if it relies principally volumes will require resolution of HLP issues. The Reagan on an electronic format, reserving printed volumes for administration records contain approximately 8.5 million presentation to foreign countries and similar ceremonial classified pages, and changes in the filing system will occasions. The Committee has also recommended that likely complicate historians’ ability to ensure that they the Office postpone work on those volumes which face have identified and located every potentially useful record intractable declassification issues so that it can concentrate in the National Security collection. on less problematic ones, and that, as it did last year, it publish volumes online as soon as it determines they are Declassification Issues and the Transfer of Department reliable even if some documents remain classified. The of State Records to the National Archives HAC will gladly assist in making this determination. Another possibility is for the HO temporarily to shift During 2010, the committee continued to review the personnel from Special Projects to Foreign Relations to meet State Department’s classification guidelines and to what HAC considers an urgent situation. monitor the application of those guidelines to further the declassification process. It also monitored the transfer of The HAC is pessimistic about HO’s prospects for meeting the Department’s records–electronic as well as paper--to its statutory obligations if its current performance the National Archives and Records Administration. We continues. It nevertheless appreciates the HO’s are pleased to note that notwithstanding the increased commitment and capabilities and is confident that by number of documents that required review, the adopting more efficient strategies for publishing despite Department’s Systematic Review Program achieved its the obstacles to declassification, a determined office can core annual goal of completing the declassification review serve the national interest by reaching the 30-year line of of 25-year old records. Nevertheless, some of these records publication within a decade. It must making doing so its remain classified because of the equities of other agencies highest priority. and departments. Richard H. Immerman In addition, the committee continued to engage in Chair, Advisory Committee on Historical Diplomatic extensive discussion with National Archives personnel Documentation relating to its National Declassification Initiative and the progress of the Public Interest Declassification Board. It Committee Members: also met with the newly appointed director of the National Carol Anderson Laura Belmonte Declassification Center. (NDC) In these discussions James McAllister Robert McMahon it provided recommendations on the priorities for the Trudy Peterson Katherine Sibley declassification reviews. The HAC strongly supports Peter Spiro Thomas Zeiler the NDC, which should promote a more rational and streamlined approach to the declassification and availability of governmental records pertaining to foreign Passport September 2011 Page 53 mat iplo ic P D ou e c h h T

1. Personal and Professional Notes

Jessica Chapman (Williams), Nathan Citino (Colorado State), and Kristin Hoganson (Ilinois) have won fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies. Kenneth Osgood has become the Director of the McBride Honors Program in Public Affairs and Associate Professor of Liberal Arts and International Studies at the Colorado School of Mines Jeremi Suri has accepted the position of Mack Brown Distinguished Chair for Leadership in Global Affairs at the Robert S. Strauss Center for International Security and Law at the University of Texas.

2. Research Notes The Diary of Anatoly Chernyaev, 1991

Marking the 90th birthday of former top Gorbachev advisor Anatoly Sergeevich Chernyaev, the National Security Archive has published on the Web the latest installment of the unique and invaluable Chernyaev diary, covering the final fateful year of the Soviet Union, 1991. Chief foreign policy aide to Gorbachev from 1986 through 1991 and a leading architect of perestroika and “new thinking,” Anatoly Sergeevich remains a champion of glasnost, sharing his notes, documents, and first-hand insights with scholars trying to understand the peaceful end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union. In 2004, he donated the originals of his detailed diaries, covering the years from 1972 through 1991, to the National Security Archive in order to ensure permanent public access to this record -- beyond the reach of political uncertainties in contemporary Russia. Translated into English for the first time by Anna Melyakova and edited by Svetlana Savranskaya of the Archive’s Russia/Eurasia program, this posting on the year 1991 is the sixth installment of the Archive’s publication of the Chernyaev diary, now covering all of the crucial Gorbachev years, 1985 through 1991. For more information, contact: Svetlana Savranskaya 202-994-7000 [email protected] http://www.nsarchive.org

CWIHP Announces the Publication of Two New Documents on the History of the Warsaw Pact

The CWIHP announces the publication of two new documents related to the Warsaw Pact. The first sheds new light on how the Warsaw Pact trained for war at sea during the late 1970s. The second, a speech by Soviet Deputy Defense Minister Akhromeev delivered to the Polish General Staff on the new, revolutionary, defense-oriented Soviet/Warsaw Pact military doctrine of the late 1980s, explains in detail how the Warsaw Pact planned to defend itself against NATO in the waning days of the Cold War. These documents were obtained from the Polish Institute for National Remembrance (IPN) as part of an ongoing partnership between IPN and CWIHP. To access the documents, visit the CWIHP virtual archive at the web page at: http://www.cwihp.org/

CWIHP Working Paper #63: The Interkit Story: A Window into the Final Decades of the Sino-Soviet Relationship

CWIHP is pleased to announce the publication of the latest addition to the CWIHP Working Papers Series, Working Paper #63: The Interkit Story: A Window into the Final Decades of the Sino-Soviet Relationship, by James Hershberg, Sergey Radchenko, Peter Vamos, and David Wolff. Based on newly available documents from the Russian and East-Central European archives, the paper explores the Page 54 Passport September 2011 largely untold story of the Sino-Soviet rivalry and relationship during the latter decades of the Cold War through the activities of “Interkit,” an organization set up by the Kremlin to coordinate Soviet-bloc analysis of and policy toward China from 1967 until the mid-1980s. Containing an appendix of 25 newly translated archival materials, the paper documents Interkit’s shadowy existence through the records of the periodic meetings of China experts from the USSR and its Warsaw Pact allies to consider the political, economic, ideological, cultural, and other dimensions of dealing with their problematic former ally. To download the paper, visit the webpage at: http://www.cwihp.org/

The American Role in the French Nuclear Bomb

The U.S. government secretly helped France develop its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile program, and much earlier than previously realized, according to declassified documents compiled and edited by National Security Archive senior analyst William Burr and published jointly with the Nuclear Proliferation International History Project, an Archive partner. Declassified documents indicate that: * The French made the first move in December 1969, when the Armaments Ministry asked the Pentagon for assistance with the ballistic missile program. * A key moment was a February 1970 meeting between President Nixon and French president Georges Pompidou when the two tacitly agreed on the possibility of “nuclear cooperation” which led Nixon to make a “decision to be forthcoming” to French requests. * Reflecting internal controversy within the U.S. government, in 1971 the Nixon administration made a decision on “minimal” aid: besides assistance with nuclear safety and computer exports, the United States would help France improve the reliability of existing missiles, but not develop new ones. * The French valued U.S. assistance on ballistic missile technology (propulsion, quality control, reliability), but during 1972 and early 1973 they stepped up pressure for more information, including warhead miniaturization and “physics package” and submarine-launched ballistic missile technology, so they could move into the “next generation” of ballistic missiles. * To make France’s case for more advanced technology, during mid-1973 defense minister Robert Galley met secretly twice with senior U.S. officials, including national security adviser Henry Kissinger and Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger. * A key issue in these discussions was the possibility of “negative guidance” which Kissinger said would allow Washington to “critique what you are doing. We can say, ‘That’s the wrong way.’” * Seeking to manipulate France for his European diplomacy, Kissinger wanted to whet Galley’s appetite for more information--to make him “drool”--but “negative guidance” was controversial and it is not clear when it actually became available. * In June 1975, President Gerald Ford, continuing Nixon’s efforts to improve relations with Paris, updated the 1971 guidance by authorizing aid to decrease the vulnerability of French missiles, including reentry vehicles, missile hardening, and information on multiple reentry vehicle technology. To access the documents, visit the web page at: http://www.cwihp.org/

For more information, contact: William Burr 202-994-7000 [email protected]

New Evidence on the Soviet-Led Invasion of Czechoslovakia, 1968

CWIHP is pleased to announce the publication of eleven new documents on Operation Danube, the Polish component of the Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. Released as part of a joint effort with the Polish Institute of National Remembrance, these documents shed new light on Poland’s role in the 1968 invasion. These documents were obtained, translated, and published thanks to a generous donation from John A. Adams and the John A. Adams Center for Military History and Strategic Analysis at the Virginia Military Institute. To view these new documents, visit the CWIHP Virtual Archive at the Wilson Center webpage at: http://www. wilsoncenter.org/

Passport September 2011 Page 55 The Chiquita Papers

Confidential internal memos from Chiquita Brands International reveal that the banana giant benefited from its payments to Colombian paramilitary and guerrilla groups, contradicting the company’s 2007 plea agreement with U.S. prosecutors, which claimed that the company had never received “any actual security services or actual security equipment in exchange for the payments.” Chiquita had characterized the payments as “extortion.” These documents are among thousands that Chiquita turned over to the U.S. Justice Department as part of a sentencing deal in which the company admitted to years of illegal payments to the paramilitary United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC)--a State Department-designated foreign terrorist organization--and agreed to pay a $25 million fine. The Archive has obtained more than 5,500 pages of Chiquita’s internal documents from the Justice Department under the Freedom of Information Act and has published the entire set online. Key documents from the Chiquita Papers are included in the recently-published document collection, Colombia and the United States: Political Violence, Narcotics, and Human Rights, 1948-2010, now available as part of the Digital National Security Archive from ProQuest. The documents provide evidence of mutually-beneficial “transactions” between Chiquita’s Colombian subsidiaries and several illegal armed groups in Colombia and shed light on more than a decade of security-related payments to guerrillas, paramilitaries, Colombian security forces, and government-sponsored Convivir militia groups. The collection also details the company’s efforts to conceal the so-called “sensitive payments” in the expense accounts of company managers and through other accounting tricks. New evidence indicating that Chiquita benefited from the illicit payments may increase the company’s exposure to lawsuits representing victims of Colombia’s illegal armed groups. The collection is the result of an Archive collaboration with George Washington University Law School’s International Human Rights and Public Justice Advocacy Clinics and has been used in support of a civil suit brought against Chiquita led by Earth Rights International on behalf of hundreds of Colombian victims of paramilitary violence. The Chiquita Papers also highlight the role of the Colombian military in pressuring the company to finance the AUC through the Convivir groups and in facilitating the illegal payments. The documents also provide evidence of the company’s payments to Colombian politicians, including former president Álvaro Uribe, who received a substantial donation during his run for governor of Antioquia. More information about the new collection, along with the complete set of Chiquita Papers, is available on the web site of the National Security Archive. For more information contact: Michael Evans [email protected] http://www.nsarchive.org

3. Announcements: CFP: Conference on Policy History June 2012 Richmond, Virginia

The Institute for Political History, the Journal of Policy History, and the Miller Center for Public Affairs at the University of Virginia are hosting the seventh biennial Conference on Policy History at the Marriott in downtown Richmond, Virginia from Wednesday, June 6 to Saturday, June 9, 2012. We are currently accepting panel and paper proposals on all topics regarding American political and policy history, political development, and comparative historical analysis. Complete sessions are encouraged, and individual paper proposals are welcome. The deadline for submission is December 2, 2011. Proposals must be submitted online and must include: 1. Name 2. Institutional Affiliation 3. Status (ABD, Doctoral Student, Associate Professor, etc.) 4. Email address 5. Mailing Address 6. Paper title 7. 150 word abstract 8. 75 word description of educational background, publications, and awards or fellowships Please submit these materials to: http://www.slu.edu/departments/jph/2012%20CFP.html For more information, contact: [email protected] http://www.slu.edu/departments/jph/2012%20About.html

Page 56 Passport September 2011 CFP: Making Sense of Catastrophe: Postcolonial Approaches to Postsocialist Experiences February 2012 Cambridge, UK

Moving from adolescence to adulthood, the postsocialist world is undergoing multi-directional transformations that would have seemed unbelievable twenty years ago. Bustling economic development combines with corruption, violence, and cynicism, which reign over the postsocialist space. Three causal schemes compete to explain this large-scale process. One derives the postsocialist present from the legacies of the Soviet past. Another ascribes responsibility to the global crisis of the traditional West. A third episteme draws on analogies and contrasts between postsocialist and postcolonial transformations, both of which have shaped the 21st century as we experience it. With this workshop, we intend to consolidate a new research agenda that combines three independently developed fields, Postcolonial Studies, Postsocialist Studies, and Memory Studies, in their application to Eastern Europe and Northern Eurasia. Is the terror in places like Katyn or Kolyma, as in Auschwitz, unrepresentable, or have art and history learned how to represent these events? How do we need to revise postcolonial categories such as orientalism, hegemony, or the subaltern when referring to places such as Belarus or Kazakhstan? How are people across the postsocialist world making sense of its serial catastrophes? What does the memory of the past teach us about power and culture in the present and in the future? We invite both theoretical and empirical contributions to these and related questions. We wish to establish a dialogue between experts who specialize in different parts of the planet. Interested scholars from the postcolonial and postsocialist worlds are equally welcome. Proposals shall consist of an abstract of 300-500 words and a short CV. Please send your applications to Jill Gather by October 1, 2011. Please also inform us if you wish help with financing your travel to Cambridge. We will provide participants with accommodation from February 23-26 2012. The reimbursement for travel expenses will be negotiated on an individual basis. For more information, contact: Jill Gather Memory at War project Slavonic Studies MML Sidgwick Site Cambridge CB3 9DA UK [email protected] http://www.memoryatwar.org/events

CFP: St. Antony’s International Review

The St Antony’s International Review invites authors to submit original research manuscripts on topics of contemporary relevance in international affairs. Submissions from the fields of political science, international relations, area studies, interna­tional economics, development studies, and international history will be considered. Articles may take either a theoretical or a policy-oriented ap­proach. STAIR has a broad readership and prizes accessibility of language and content. We are accepting papers for our two issues in 2012, the deadline for the first issue is September 1 and December 1 for the second. STAIR is the only peer-reviewed journal of international affairs at the Univer­sity of Oxford. Set up by graduate students of St Antony’s College in 2005, the Re­view has carved out a distinctive niche as a cross-disciplinary outlet for research on the most pressing contemporary global issues, providing a forum in which emerg­ing scholars can publish their work alongside established academics and policymak­ers. Distinguished past contributors include John Baylis, Valerie J. Bunce, Robert O. Keohane, James N. Rosenau, and Alfred Stepan. Please see the attached call for papers, our website http:// www.sant.ox.ac.uk/ext/stair/ or contact Nina Hall ([email protected]) for more information.

The Office of the Historian Announces that the Proceedings of “Foreign Economic Policy 1973-1976” are Available Online

The Department of State’s Office of the Historian in the Bureau of Public Affairs convened a conference on March 7, 2011, co-hosted by the George Mason University School of Public Policy, which focused on the Foreign Economic Policy, 1973-1976 volume of the Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) series. The keynote address was delivered by Under Secretary of State for Economic, Energy, and Agricultural Affairs Robert Hormats, who authored several key documents in the Foreign Economic Policy, 1973-1976 volume. Transcripts and audio recordings may be accessed on the Office of the Historian website at http://history.state.gov/conferences/2011-foreign-economic-policy/audio-transcripts. Foreign Economic Policy, 1973-1976 examines U.S. policy during a time of great global economic change, focusing on issues such as the end of the fixed exchange rate system envisioned at the 1944 Bretton Woods conference and the transition to flexible exchange rates; the creation of the G-7 economic summit; the passage of the Trade Act of 1974; the launch of the Tokyo Round of GATT negotiations; and North/South relations and commodity policy in a post-1973 oil embargo Passport September 2011 Page 57 world. The significance of the volume and the lessons gleaned from this period by panelists at the conference provided many interesting parallels between the mid-1970s and the present, which are instructive for policy makers, historians, economists, journalists, and the general public alike. For more information, contact: Lindsay Sarah Krasnoff, PhD Historian, Special Projects Office of the Historian U.S. Department of State Washington, D.C. Phone: (202) 663-1942 www.history.state.gov

The Office of the Historian Announces that the Proceedings of “The American Experience in Southeast Asia, 1946- 1975” are Available Online

The Department of State’s Office of the Historian in the Bureau of Public Affairs convened a conference September 29-30, 2010, on U.S. policy and the war in Southeast Asia, 1946-1975, with special emphasis on the years of greatest American involvement in the conflict in Vietnam. Featured speakers at the conference included Secretary of State Hillary R. Clinton, Dr. Henry A. Kissinger and Ambassador John D. Negroponte, participants in the Vietnam policy process, and the late Ambassador Richard C. Holbrooke. The conference showcased and commemorated the completion of the Indochina/Vietnam War documentary histories prepared by the Office of the Historian in the Foreign Relations of the United States series. Transcripts and videos can be found on the Office of the Historian website at: http://history.state.gov/conferences/2010-southeast-asia/videos-transcripts. Dr. Kissinger defended the Nixon Administration’s Vietnam War policy, stating that “most of what went wrong in Vietnam we did to ourselves” and that he was “absolutely unreconstructed” on this point. Ever the realist, he argued that a key lesson from the war must be that when the United States goes to war it must do so as a united country and with a “global strategic analysis that explains to us what the significance of this [going to war] is.” He called the conference “an extraordinary, moving experience in my life.” Ambassador John D. Negroponte, similar to the other speakers, focused on lessons learned from the war. The central one, he concluded, “really goes to the question of Iraq and Afghanistan and many subsequent experiences for me, but I guess it’s pretty simple. Be careful before you take the first step, because once you get in, then you just - you lose a little bit of control about the next ones and the consequences. And it becomes harder to decide to disengage.” Ambassador Holbrooke’s career started in Vietnam - his first posting as a Foreign Service Officer - and was an experience that influenced his thinking throughout his career. In Holbrooke’s speech, he reflected on this experience, concluding that “our goals in Vietnam did not justify the immense costs of the war. Nor do I believe that success was denied to us because of domestic events and lack of patience on the part of the American public.” In short, “success [in Vietnam] was not achievable. Those who advocated more escalation or something called, ‘staying the course,’ were advocating something that would have led only to a greater and more costly disaster afterwards.” The program included a panel on the role of the media on the Vietnam War to explore the impact of the press on public opinion and United States policy. Marvin Kalb moderated the panel, which consisted of journalists Morley Safer, William Beecher, and Edith Lederer, all of whom reported from Vietnam or about the Vietnam War, as well as the late Barry Zorthian, former Director of Media Relations at U.S. Embassy Saigon. Succinctly summing up the subject, moderator Marvin Kalb said: “I think that you have to have lived on Mars to have missed the central role that the media played during the Vietnam War.” Other panels featured thought-provoking presentations by leading American and international scholars on topics such as force and diplomacy, counterinsurgency and pacification, the United States and its allies, and the war at home. Aided by the recollections of participants in the policy process such as Dr. Kissinger and Ambassadors Holbrooke and Negroponte, by documents in the Foreign Relations series, and by presentations of the most recent research by scholars, this conference provided a special opportunity to re-examine the formation, development, and consequences of United States policy in Indochina and the Vietnam War for America and the world. Those in attendance broadened and deepened their knowledge and understanding of the war in Southeast Asia, as will those who read and study these videos and transcripts online at the Office of the Historian website, http://history.state.gov/conferences/2010-southeast- asia/videos-transcripts. For more information, contact: For more information, contact: Lindsay Sarah Krasnoff, PhD Historian, Special Projects Office of the Historian U.S. Department of State Washington, D.C. Phone: (202) 663-1942 www.history.state.gov Page 58 Passport September 2011 Richard W. Leopold Prize

The Richard W. Leopold Prize was designed to improve contacts and interrelationships within the historical profession where an increasing number of history-trained scholars hold distinguished positions in governmental agencies. This prize recognizes the significant historical work being done by historians outside academe. The Leopold Prize is given by the Organization of American Historians every two years for the best book on foreign policy, military affairs, the historical activities of the federal government or biography by a government historian. These subjects cover the concerns and the historical fields of activity of the late Professor Leopold, who was President of the Organization of American Historians 1976-1977. The winner must have been employed in a government position for at least five years. If the author has accepted an academic position, the book must have been published within two years from the time of the change. Verification of current or past employment with the government must be included with each entry. Each entry must be published during the two-year period January 1, 2010 through December 31, 2011. The award will be presented at the 2012 Annual Meeting of the OAH in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, April 19-22. One copy of each entry, clearly labeled “2012 Richard W. Leopold Prize,” must be mailed directly to the committee members listed below. Each committee member must receive all submissions by October 1, 2011. Bound page proofs may be used for books to be published after October 1, 2011 and before January 1, 2012. If a bound page proof is submitted, a bound copy of the book must be received no later than January 7, 2012. If a book carries a copyright date that is different from the publication date, but the actual publication date falls during the correct timeframe making it eligible, please include a letter of explanation from the publisher with each copy of the book sent to the committee members. The final decision will be made by the Richard W. Leopold Prize Committee by February 1, 2012. The winner will be provided with details regarding the OAH Annual Meeting and awards presentation, where s/he will receive a cash award and a plaque.

CFP: 79th Annual Meeting of the Society for Military History Arlington, VA, May 10-13, 2012

The conference theme is “The Politics of War,” highlighting the transition from war to peace, civil-military relations, the dynamics of coalition warfare and the problems of military government and occupation. We encourage a diverse group of participants and especially encourage junior scholars to present their work and to serve on panels. As always, the program committee will consider all panel and paper proposals dealing with important questions of military history. Panel proposals must include a panel title, contact information for all panelists, a brief description of the purpose and theme of the panel, a one-paragraph abstract of each of the papers, a one-page curriculum vita of each panelist, including commentator and chair, and contact information. All presenters, chairs, and commentators must be SMH members at the time of the 2012 meeting. Proposals for individual papers are welcome and should include a brief abstract, a one-page curriculum vita, and contact information. Proposals must be submitted electronically to the conference coordinator, Mr. Matt Seelinger ([email protected]). Deadline for proposals is 1 November 2011. The meeting will be held in the Hyatt Regency Crystal City Hotel in Arlington, Virginia. It is easily accessible by Metro and from Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport. More information on registration and hotel reservations can be found at: www.armyhistory.org.

CFP: Diaspora and Migration: Rethinking African Development in the 21st Century.

The Editors of African and Black Diaspora: An International Journal announce the Call for Papers on Diaspora and Migration: Rethinking African Development in the 21st Century. The 20th century witnessed the large-scale displacement and dispersal of populations across the world as a result of major political upheavals, among them the two European wars, decolonization and the Cold war. Following on these, globalization, spurred by free trade and increased mobility of capital, and new technologies of communication, information, and travel, has accelerated the movement of people, commodities, ideas, and cultures across the world. Diaspora is regarded not as a singular phenomenon but as historically varied dynamic and heterogeneous. While transnational mobility of people may be the result of forced or voluntary migration, of self-exile or expulsion and refugees, people in transit, and are the products of wars, ethnic conflicts and natural calamities. Under the generalized rubric of diaspora and migration, the Editors seek submissions that explore the intersection between diaspora, migration and the discourse of development in Africa in the 21st century. Over the last four decades, the number of worldwide international migrants has almost doubled, from 76 million to 150 million. As migration increased, flows in the form of personal and collective remittances, investments, information and knowledge, tourism and trade have continued to grow at unprecedented rates. Increasingly, multilateral agencies, the World Bank, the IMF Passport September 2011 Page 59 and national governments have focused on the nexus between ‘migration and development’ as a major development policy issue. While the focus of macro-economic impact of migration is designed to facilitate and channel remittances into formal channels of development, other dimensions of policy have not been adequately addressed such as ‘brain drain’, increasing social and economic inequality, support for warring parties in the origin-country, the role of transnational institutions as well as the particularities of postcolonial African states. We encourage contributions that interrogate the full dimension of diaspora and migration and their relationship to African development, the discourse of ‘diaspora engagement’, new models of citizenship and transnationalism in the histories of contemporary African migrations within Africa and beyond, the affective dimensions of migration and diaspora (homesickness, memory, nostalgia, melancholy) and the ways in which these ideas permeate African development in the 21 century. Prospective contributors are invited to send proposals for articles in the form of a 200-word abstract by October 31, 2011. Authors of accepted proposals will be asked to submit articles in final form (in English) by April 30, 2012. All communication regarding the special edition should be directed to Dr. Fassil Demissie (Department of Public Policy), by e-mail: [email protected]

4. Upcoming SHAFR Deadlines: The Stuart L. Bernath Book Prize

The purpose of the award is to recognize and encourage distinguished research and writing by scholars of American foreign relations. The prize of $2,500 is awarded annually to an author for his or her first book on any aspect of the history of American foreign relations. Eligibility: The prize is to be awarded for a first book. The book must be a history of international relations. Biographies of statesmen and diplomats are eligible. General surveys, autobiographies, editions of essays and documents, and works that represent social science disciplines other than history are not eligible. Procedures: Books may be nominated by the author, the publisher, or any member of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations. A nominating letter explaining why the book deserves consideration must accompany each entry in the competition. Books will be judged primarily in regard to their contributions to scholarship. Winning books should have exceptional interpretative and analytical qualities. They should demonstrate mastery of primary material and relevant secondary works, and they should display careful organization and distinguished writing. Five copies of each book must be submitted with a letter of nomination. The award will be announced during the SHAFR luncheon at the annual meeting of the Organization of American Historians. The prize will be divided only when two superior books are so evenly matched that any other decision seems unsatisfactory to the selection committee. The committee will not award the prize if there is no book in the competition which meets the standards of excellence established for the prize. To nominate a book published in 2011 for the 2012 prize, send five copies of the book and a letter of nomination to Professor David F. Schmitz, Whitman College, Department of History, 345 Boyer Ave. Walla Walla, WA 99362. Books may be sent at any time during 2011, but must arrive by December 1, 2011.

The Stuart L. Bernath Lecture Prize

The Stuart L. Bernath Lecture Prize recognizes and encourages excellence in teaching and research in the field of foreign relations by younger scholars. The prize of $1000 is awarded annually.

Eligibility: The prize is open to any person under forty-one years of age or within ten years of the receipt of the Ph.D. whose scholarly achievements represent excellence in teaching and research. Nominations may be made by any member of SHAFR or of any other established history, political science, or journalism department or organization. Procedures: Nominations, in the form of a letter and the nominee’s c.v., should be sent to the Chair of the Bernath Lecture Committee. The nominating letter should discuss evidence of the nominee’s excellence in teaching and research. The award is announced during the SHAFR luncheon at the annual meeting of the Organization of American Historians (OAH). The winner of the prize will deliver a lecture during the SHAFR luncheon at the next year’s OAH annual meeting. The lecture should be comparable in style and scope to a SHAFR presidential address and should address broad issues of concern to students of American foreign policy, not the lecturer’s specific research interests. The lecturer is awarded $1,000 plus up to $500 in travel expenses to the OAH, and his or her lecture is published in Diplomatic History. To be considered for the 2012 award, nominations must be received by February 28, 2012. Nominations should be sent to Professor Robert Dean, Eastern Washington University, 200 Patterson Hall, Cheney, WA 99004-2496 (email: rdean@ewu. edu)

Page 60 Passport September 2011 The Stuart L. Bernath Scholarly Article Prize

The purpose of the prize is to recognize and encourage distinguished research and writing by young scholars in the field of diplomatic relations. The prize of $1,000 is awarded annually to the author of a distinguished article appearing in a scholarly journal or edited book, on any topic in United States foreign relations. Eligibility: The author must be under forty-one years of age or within ten years of receiving the Ph.D. at the time of the article’s acceptance for publication. The article must be among the first six publications by the author. Previous winners of the Stuart L. Bernath Book Award or the Myrna F. Bernath Book Award are ineligible. Procedures: All articles appearing in Diplomatic History will be automatically considered without nomination. Other nominations may be submitted by the author or by any member of SHAFR. The award is presented during the SHAFR luncheon at the annual meeting of the Organization of American Historians. To nominate an article published in 2011 for the 2012 prize, send three copies of the article and a letter of nomination to Professor William Stueck, Department of History, University of Georgia, 232 LeConte Hall, Athens, GA 30602-1602 (e-mail: [email protected]). Deadline for nominations is February 1, 2012.

The Myrna F. Bernath Book Award

The purpose of this award is to encourage scholarship by women in U.S. foreign relations history. The prize of $2,500 is awarded biannually (even years) to the author of the best book written by a woman in the field and published during the preceding two calendar years. Eligibility: Nominees should be women who have published distinguished books in U.S. foreign relations, transnational history, international history, peace studies, cultural interchange, and defense or strategic studies. Membership in SHAFR is required. Procedures: Books may be nominated by the author, the publisher, or any member of SHAFR. A nominating letter explaining why the book deserves consideration must accompany each entry in the competition. Books will be judged primarily in regard to their contribution to scholarship. Three copies of each book (or page proofs) must be submitted with a letter of nomination. The award is presented during the SHAFR luncheon at the annual meeting of the Organization of American Historians. The deadline for nominations for the 2012 prize is December 1, 2011. Submit required materials to Professor Mary Elise Sarotte, School of International Relations, University of Southern California, 3518 Trousdale Parkway, VKS Center 330, Los Angeles, CA 90089-0043 (e-mail: [email protected]).

The Norman And Laura Graebner Award

The Graebner Award is a lifetime achievement award intended to recognize a senior historian of United States foreign relations who has significantly contributed to the development of the field, through scholarship, teaching, and/or service, over his or her career. The award of $2,000 is awarded biannually. The Graebner Award was established by the former students of Norman A. Graebner, professor of diplomatic history at the University of Illinois and the University of Virginia, to honor Norman and his wife Laura for their years of devotion to teaching and research in the field. Eligibility: The Graebner prize will be awarded to a distinguished scholar of diplomatic or international affairs. The recipient’s career must demonstrate excellence in scholarship, teaching, and/or service to the profession. Although the prize is not restricted to academic historians, the recipient must have distinguished himself or herself through the study of international affairs from a historical perspective. Procedures: Letters of nomination, submitted in triplicate, should (a) provide a brief biography of the nominee, including educational background, academic or other positions held, and awards and honors received; (b) list the nominee’s major scholarly works and discuss the nature of his or her contribution to the study of diplomatic history and international affairs; (c) describe the candidate’s career, note any teaching honors and awards, and comment on the candidate’s classroom skills; and (d) detail the candidate’s services to the historical profession, listing specific organizations and offices and discussing particular activities. Self-nominations are accepted. Graebner awards are announced at SHAFR’s annual meeting. The next deadline for nominations is March 1, 2012. Submit materials to Gunter Bischof, University of New Orleans, Department of History, Liberal Arts Building Rm. 135, University of New Orleans, New Orleans, LA 70148 (e-mail: [email protected]).

Passport September 2011 Page 61 The Stuart L. Bernath Dissertation Research Grant

The Bernath Dissertation Grant of up to $4,000 is intended to help graduate students defray expenses encountered in the writing of their dissertations. The award is announced formally at the SHAFR luncheon held during the annual meeting of the American Historical Association. (Applicants for this award will be considered automatically for the Holt, Gelfand- Rappaport, and Bemis grants.) Applicants must be actively working on dissertations dealing with some aspect of U.S. foreign relations history. Membership in SHAFR is required. Procedures: Self-nominations are expected. Please download and complete the application found on the SHAFR web page. The annual deadline for applications is October 1. Submit materials to [email protected]. The subject line of the email should contain the LAST NAME OF APPLICANT only. Within eight months of receiving the award, each successful applicant must file with the SHAFR Business Office a brief report on how the funds were spent. Such reports will be considered for publication in Passport.

The W. Stull Holt Dissertation Fellowship

The W. Stull Holt Dissertation Fellowship of up to $4,000 is intended to defray the costs of travel necessary to conduct research on a significant dissertation project. The award is announced formally at the SHAFR luncheon held during the annual meeting of the American Historical Association. (Applicants for this award will be considered automatically for the Stuart L. Bernath, Gelfand-Rappaport, and Bemis grants.) Applicants must be actively working on dissertations dealing with some aspect of U.S. foreign relations history. Membership in SHAFR is required. Procedures: Self-nominations are expected. Please download and complete the application found on the SHAFR web page. The annual deadline for applications is October 1. Submit materials to [email protected]. The subject line of the email should contain the LAST NAME OF APPLICANT only. Within eight months of receiving the award, each successful applicant must file with the SHAFR Business Office a brief report on how the funds were spent. Such reports will be considered for publication in Passport.

The Lawrence Gelfand – Armin Rappaport Dissertation Fellowship

The Gelfand-Rappaport Fellowship of up to $4,000 is intended to defray the costs of dissertation research travel. The fellowship is awarded annually at SHAFR luncheon held during the annual meeting of the American Historical Association. (Applicants for this award will be considered automatically for the Stuart L. Bernath, Holt, and Bemis grants). Applicants must be actively working on dissertations dealing with some aspect of U.S. foreign relations history. Membership in SHAFR is required. Procedures: Self-nominations are expected. Please download and complete the application found here. The annual deadline for applications is October 1. Submit materials to [email protected]. The subject line of the email should contain the LAST NAME OF APPLICANT only.

Within eight months of receiving the award, each successful applicant must file with the SHAFR Business Office a brief report on how the funds were spent. Such reports will be considered for publication in Passport.

Samuel Flagg Bemis Dissertation Research Grants

The Samuel F. Bemis Research Grants are intended to promote dissertation research by graduate students. A limited number of grants of varying amounts (generally, up to $2,000) will be awarded annually to help defray the costs of domestic or international travel necessary to conduct research on significant scholarly projects. The award is announced formally at the SHAFR luncheon held during the annual meeting of the American Historical Association. (Applicants for this award will be considered automatically for the Stuart L. Bernath, Holt, and Gelfand-Rappaport grants.) Applicants must be actively working on dissertations dealing with some aspect of U.S. foreign relations history. Membership in SHAFR is required. Procedures: Self-nominations are expected. Please download and complete the application found at the SHAFR webpage. The annual deadline for applications is October 1. Submit materials to [email protected]. The subject line of the Page 62 Passport September 2011 email should contain the LAST NAME OF APPLICANT only. Within eight months of receiving the award, each successful applicant must file with the SHAFR Business Office a brief report on how the funds were spent. Such reports will be considered for publication in Passport.

The Michael J. Hogan Foreign Language Fellowship

The Michael J. Hogan Foreign language Fellowship was established to honor Michael J. Hogan, long-time editor of Diplomatic History. The Hogan Fellowship of up to $4,000 is intended to promote research in foreign language sources by graduate students. The fellowship is intended to defray the costs of studying foreign languages needed for research. The award is announced formally at the SHAFR luncheon held during the annual meeting of the American Historical Association. Applicants must be graduate students researching some aspect of U.S. foreign relations history. Membership in SHAFR is required. Procedures: Self-nominations are expected. Please download and complete the application found at the SHAFR web page. The annual deadline for applications is October 1. Submit materials to [email protected]. The subject line of the email should contain the LAST NAME OF APPLICANT only. Within eight months of receiving the award, each successful applicant must file with the SHAFR Business Office a brief report on how the funds were spent. Such reports will be considered for publication in Passport.

William Appleman Williams Junior Faculty Research Grants

The William Appleman Williams Junior Faculty Research Grants are intended to promote scholarly research by untenured college and university faculty and others who are within six years of the Ph.D. and who are working as professional historians. Grants are limited to scholars working on the first research monograph. A limited number of grants of varying amounts (generally, up to $2,000) will be awarded annually to help defray the costs of domestic or international travel necessary to conduct research on significant scholarly projects. The award is announced formally at the SHAFR luncheon held during the annual meeting of the American Historical Association. Membership in SHAFR is required. Procedures: Self-nominations are expected. Please download and complete the application found at the SHAFR web page The annual deadline for applications is October 1. Submit materials to [email protected]. The subject line of the email should contain the LAST NAME OF APPLICANT only. Within eight months of receiving the award, each successful applicant must file with the SHAFR Business Office a brief report on how the funds were spent. Such reports will be considered for publication in Passport.

5. Recent Publications of Interest Anderson, Terry H. Bush’s Wars (Oxford, 2011). Auslin, Michael R. Pacific Cosmopolitans: A Cultural History of U.S.-Japan Relations (Harvard, 2011). Barnett, Michael. Empire of Humanity: A History of Humanitarianism (Cornell, 2011). Bird, Tim and Alex Marshall. Afghanistan: How the West Lost its Way (Yale, 2011). Blang, Eugenie. Allies at Odds: America, Europe, and Vietnam, 1961-1968 (Rowman and Littlefield, 2011). Brogi, Alessandro. Confronting America: The Cold War between the United States and the Communists in France and Italy (North Carolina, 2011). Cabera, Luis, ed. Global Governance, Global Environment: Institutional Visions for an Evolving World System (SUNY, 2011). Clark, Ian. Hegemony in International Society (Oxford, 2011). Doenecke, Justus D. Nothing Less Than War: A New History of America’s Entry into World War I (Kentucky, 2011). Dunn, Charles, ed. The Presidency in the Twenty-first Century (Kentucky, 2011). Feldman, Jay. Manufacturing Hysteria: A History of Scapegoating, Surveillance, and Secrecy in Modern America (Random House, 2011).

Passport September 2011 Page 63 Foreman, Amanda. A World on Fire: Britain’s Crucial Role in the American Civil War (Random House, 2011). Glain, Stephen. State vs. Defense: The Battle of Define America’s Empire (Random House, 2011). Harper, John L. The Cold War (Oxford, 2011). Hanson, Peer Henrik. Second to None: US Intelligence Activities in Northern Europe, 1943-1946 (Republic of Letters, 2011). Hasanli, Jamil. Stalin and the Turkish Crisis of the Cold War, 1945-53 (Lexington, 2011) Hasegawa, Tsuyoshi. The Cold War in East Asia, 1945-1991 (Stanford, 2011). Hayes, Romain. Subhas Chandra Bose in Nazi Germany: Politics, Intelligence, and Propaganda, 1941-43 (Columbia, 2011). Heiferman, Ronald. The Cairo Conference of 1943: Roosevelt, Churchill, Chiang Kai-Shek and Madame Chiang (McFarland, 2011). Henderson, Thomas J. Beyond Borders: A History of Mexican Migration to the United States (Wiley, 2011). Ikenberry, G. John. Liberal Leviathan: The Origins, Crisis, and Transformation of the American World Order (Princeton, 2011). Illing, Robert F. America and the Vatican: Trading Information after WWII (History Publishing, 2011). Iokibe, Makoto, Caroline Rose, Junko Tomaru, and John Weste, eds. Japanese Diplomacy in the 1950s: From Isolation to Integration (Routledge, 2011). Junker, Detlef. The United States and Germany in the Era of the Cold War (Cambridge, 2011). Kalinovsky, Artemy M. A Long Goodbye: The Soviet Withdrawal from Afghanistan (Harvard, 2011). Keeley, Robert V. The Colonels’ Coup and the American Embassy: A Diplomat’s View of the Breakdown of Democracy in Cold War Greece (Penn State, 2011). Kempe, Frederick. Berlin 1961 (Putnam, 2011). Kissinger, Henry. On China (Penguin, 2011). Kitamura, Hiroshi. Screening Enlightenment: Hollywood and the Cultural Reconstruction of Defeated Japan (Cornell, 2011). Kretchik, Walter E. U.S. Army Doctrine: From the American Revolution to the War on Terror (Kansas, 2011). Larson, Erik. In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler’s Berlin (Random House, 2011). Leffler, Melvyn P. and Legro, Jeffrey W., eds. In Uncertain Times: American Foreign Policy after the Berlin and 9/11 (Cornell, 2011). Lesch, David W. The Middle East and the United States: History, Politics, and Ideologies (Westview, 2011). Leustean, Lucian. Eastern Christianity and the Cold War, 1945-91 (Routledge, 2011). Li, Jing. China’s America: The Chinese View the United States, 1900-2000 (SUNY, 2011). Mauch, Peter. Sailor Diplomat: Nomura Kichisaburo and the Japanese-American War (Harvard, 2011). Morgan, William Michael. Pacific Gibraltar: U.S.-Japanese Rivalry Over the Annexation of Hawai`i, 1885-1898 (Naval Institute Press, 2011). Neiberg, Michael S. Dance of the Furies: Europe and the Outbreak of World War I (Belknap, 2011). Nichols, Christopher McKnight. Promise and Peril: America at the Dawn of a Global Age (Harvard, 2011). Peterson, Christian. Globalizing Human Rights: Private Citizens, the Soviet Union, and the West (Routledge, 2011). Pollack, Kenneth M., Raad Alkadiri, J. Scott Carpenter, Frederick W. Kagan, and Sean Kane. Unfinished Business: An American Strategy for Iraq Moving Forward (Brookings, 2011). Rabe, Stephen G. The Killing Zone: The United States Wages Cold War in Latin America (Oxford, 2011). Satow, Ernest. A Guide to Diplomatic Practice, volumes 1 and 2 (Cambridge, 2011). Saunders, Elizabeth. Leaders at War: How Presidents Shape Military Interventions (Cornell, 2011). Schneider, Dorothee. Crossing Borders: Migration and Citizenship in the Twentieth-Century United States (Harvard, 2011). Shen, Zhihua and Li, Danhui. After Leaning to One Side: China and its Allies in the Cold War (Stanford, 2011).

Page 64 Passport September 2011 Siekmeier, James F. The Bolivian Revolution and the United States, 1952 to the Present (Penn State, 2011). Small, Mel. A Companion to Richard M. Nixon (Wiley-Blackwell, 2011). Solomon, Daniel F. Breaking Up with Cuba: The Dissolution of Friendly Relations Between Washington and Havana, 1956-1961 (McFarland, 2011). Stoddard, Brooke C. World in the Balance: The Perilous Months of June-October 1940 (Potomac, 2011). Storey, Ian. Southeast Asia and the Rise of China: The Search for Security (Routledge, 2011). Thomas, Joan Maria. Roosevelt, France, and the End of the Second World War (Palgrave Macmillan). Tillery, Alvin B. Between Homeland and Motherland: Africa, U.S. Foreign Policy, and Black Leadership in America (Cornell, 2011). Walker, William O. Opium and Foreign Policy: The Anglo-American Search for Order in Asia, 1912-1954 (North Carolina, 2011). Warrick, Joby. The Triple Agent: The al-Qaeda Mole who Infiltrated the CIA (Random House, 2011). Zanotti, Laura. Governing Disorder: UN Peace Operations, International Security, and Democratization in the Post-Cold War Era (Penn State, 2011).

Passport September 2011 Page 65 In Memoriam: Lawrence E. (Larry) Gelfand (1926-2011)

in 1982 His leadership in SHAFR is awrence Gelfand, Professor Emeritus recognized by the annual Lawrence of History at the University of Gelfand-Armin Rappaport Dissertation Iowa, passed away on November Fellowship. In addition to The Inquiry, 30,L 20l0 in Irvine, California. The cause he published numerous articles and of death was heart failure. He was 84. A Diplomat Looks Back (Yale, 1968), Born in Cleveland, Ohio in 1926, an edition of the memoirs of Lewis Gelfand attended public schools in Einstein. But Gelfand’s research interests Cleveland Heights. He served in the extended well beyond diplomatic U.S. Army (Infantry) and the Military history and included work on migration, Police in 1944-1946 before returning to political, and Iowa history. In 1979 he his education at (Case) Western Reserve edited Herbert Hoover: The Great War University, where he received his BA in and Its Aftermath, a volume growing 1949 and his MA in 1950. He completed out of the Hoover Centennial Seminars. his PhD at the University of Washington And the breadth of his interests is well in 1958, where he worked with W. captured in his work (alongside Ellis Stull Holt. His doctoral dissertation, published as The Hawley) with Iowa’s Center for the Study of the Recent Inquiry: American Preparations for Peace, 1917-1919 (Yale History of the United States, a center he helped to found University Press, l963), excavated the fascinating—and in 1975 and of which he was director from 1981 to 1994. until that point little-known—story of the American In this role, he edited or co-edited The New Deal Viewed preparatory commission, a group of scholars empanelled from Fifty Years (1984), Changing Patterns in American by Woodrow Wilson to lay the groundwork for the peace. Federal-State Relations (1985), Agricultural Distress in the Gelfand began his academic career at the University Midwest (1986), and Constitutional Issues of the Twentieth of Hawaii in l956 and taught at the University of Century of Special Interest to Iowans (1989). Gelfand Washington (1958-1959) and the University of Wyoming retired from teaching in 1994, but not from his research. (l959-l962) before settling at the University of Iowa He had just completed a manuscript, “Democracy in 1962. He taught at Iowa for 32 years before his and Tyranny,” surveying American relations with retirement in 1994. During that time, he had stints as dictatorial regimes in the middle years of the twentieth a visiting professor at the University of Oregon (1966), century. He was a prolific author of book reviews. the University of Montana (1970), the University of Students who had the good fortune to work with Washington (1974), and—a year of which he was him know well the personal kindness and protective particularly fond— as the Mary Ball Washington devotion he showed to them. Nor will they forget his Distinguished Fulbright Professor of American love of research, especially archival research, his tolerance History at University College Dublin (1987-l988). of opposing points of view, and his willingness to be At Iowa, Gelfand taught many courses but his bread- helpful long after they had launched careers of their and-butter was the immensely popular two-semester own. Indeed, he seemed to take more pride in their survey on the U.S. in World Affairs and an equally success than he did in his own many accomplishments. popular course on World War II. His early research had Gelfand is fondly remembered as a scholar, also left him with a deep and continuing interest in the a teacher, and a colleague. He is survived by history of planning, and in 1984 he and his colleague Ellis his wife Miriam, daughter Julia, sons Daniel Hawley taught an NEH Seminar for College Teachers and Ronald, grandson Benjamin, and sisters on “The New Rationality: Planners and Politicians Betty (Forcheimer) and Eileen (Manning). in Wartime and Interwar America, 1917-1945.” He was also active in Iowa’s graduate program, directing Colin Gordon more than 60 MA theses and more than 20 doctoral Michael Hogan dissertations. In addition, his career at Iowa included Linda Kerber service as Department Chair, and a term as President of the University’s Faculty Senate. He played a significant leadership role in the State Historical Society of Iowa at a critical period of its development and actively supported the professional work of Iowa Teachers of College History. His contributions to public history also included service on the board of the Harry S Truman Presidential Library. This obituary first appeared in the April 2011 Gelfand was one of the leading diplomatic historians issue of Perspectives on History. It is reprinted of his generation. He was a driving force behind the here with the kind permission of the editors. development of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations (SHAFR), and served as its President

Page 66 Passport September 2011 The Last Word Mitchell Lerner

f all the issues of Passport that have with other societies. We should, I think, be very been published during my eight years proud of who we are and what we stand for. as editor, this one has been the hardest And yet there remains, I think, a bit of an to compile.O The difficulties have come not from inferiority complex that hangs undeservedly the content or the authors but from one simple over SHAFR. Our membership seems to try fact that has hovered in the back of my mind hard, almost too hard, to ingratiate itself with throughout the production process: this will be the larger community of professional historians my last issue as Passport editor. For a number of by justifying our work as being more than what reasons, I have decided that the time has come others might think it is. “I am a diplomatic for me to step down. It has been my honor and historian but my work is really (insert trendy privilege to have served SHAFR in this capacity buzzword here),” seems to be the common for so long. Andrew Johns at BYU will replace refrain, one that we start saying as graduate me on January 1, 2012. Andrew and I have had students and that seems to echo in the hallways many conversations about the transition, and I of the AHA conference and beyond. SHAFR am confident that Passport will be in excellent hands in the future. seems to be on a constant quest to find the Next Big Thing, Although there are many people whose contributions in order to ensure that this time it is recognized as being at to Passport need to be acknowledged, one names stands the vanguard of change, instead of leading the resistance. clearly at the front of the list: Peter Hahn. It was Peter who This is not meant as criticism of the Next Big Thing. put together the proposal to move Passport (then called “The Few would argue that the influence of the cultural turn in SHAFR Newsletter”) to Ohio State almost a decade ago. It our field has not been beneficial; in fact, I think it so self- was Peter who oversaw the transition (even choosing our new evident at this point that we should probably stop fighting name), and it was Peter who suggested me as editor. And over about it. Ditto for the transnational approach described the last eight years he has paid every bill, maintained every (and practiced) so well by Matt Connelly in this very issue, record, and proofread every word of every issue. Passport, and for the more multi-archival, internationalist work that much like SHAFR itself, would simply not be the same dots the landscape, and for so many other approaches that without him. Truly, Peter was “present at the creation.” open new windows into our discipline. It is, in fact this Others have provided invaluable assistance. Eight years very breadth of historical approaches that makes SHAFR so ago, I convinced myself that since the actual layout and design exciting, and which bodes so well for the future of our field. of Passport would be easy, I could save SHAFR some money by I worry, however, that this pursuit of the Next Big Thing doing that task myself. After a few weeks of my best efforts, the can come at the expense of the Really Good Old Thing. The cover page looked like something my two-year-old son might description of the very plenary session at the 2010 OAH have done if he were blindfolded, handcuffed, and channeling conference that gave us Matthew Connelly’s article in this very the spirit of Salvador Dali. Fortunately, Julie Rojewski, who was issue of Passport notes approvingly that “the narrow older then my friend and colleague at the Mershon Center, stepped diplomatic history has grown into a wide new sub-discipline in at the last moment to save me from myself. Julie designed of U.S. international and transnational history,” which is the first issue, and although she is no longer my colleague, she described as “one of American history’s most creative and remains my friend; thankfully, she also remains in charge of important salients,” in obvious contrast to the “top-down layout. Allison Sweeney has gone above and beyond the call political history” that preceded it. Newer methodologies have of duty as our copyeditor, as have a number of excellent OSU certainly fleshed out our understanding of American diplomacy graduate students who have assisted in various capacities, in invaluable ways but that understanding is still only complete, including Brian Kennedy, David Hadley, and Ryan Irwin. Bob I would submit, when the state remains a central component Schulzinger and Tom Zeiler at Diplomatic History have been of the discussion. American officials still matter a great deal. supportive, enthusiastic, and even inspirational; Passport can American domestic politics still matter a great deal. American only aspire to follow the path of excellence that they have military exigencies still matter a great deal. And I would simply blazed in our society. To the extent that we have followed this urge SHAFR members to not try so hard to run to the future path, it is in no small part because Bill Brinker, the former that in doing so they completely run away from the past. editor at Tennessee Tech, put us there so many years ago. And And speaking of running away from the past, I will now of course, Passport could not be what it is without the active commence doing so, effective almost immediately, and I leave the participation of the SHAFR membership. My job is remarkably future of Passport to Andrew Johns and the SHAFR membership. easy because of the high number, and even higher quality, I hope it gives you all as much pleasure as it has given me. of the submissions that regularly arrive in my mailbox. For eight years, I have been lucky enough to not only Mitchell Lerner will soon be the former editor of Passport: read these submissions, but also to get feedback from SHAFR The Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations Review. members about Passport, and sometimes about SHAFR in general. That puts me, I believe, in a good position to offer a few concluding thoughts based on my years of service. First, I would reiterate what most already know: SHAFR is an incredibly vibrant, brilliant, and methodologically diverse organization (we are also really tall. Has anyone else noticed this? I think I pulled a neck muscle in Alexandria, looking up at everyone). Literally every issue that we have published contains at least one piece, and usually more than one, that challenges me to re-think my assumptions or to re-conceptualize that which I thought I understood. The input that I receive from people in other disciplines who get exposed to Passport in one way or another is almost uniformly positive, as is the feedback I get from SHAFR members who are also affiliated

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