In terms of literature, a tragedy is typically defined as a drama that depicts hardship often as the result of the protagonist’s fatal flaw. In tragedies, the audience is often aware of the misfortune that awaits the characters, creating a sense of irony. Fortunately, for William Appleman Williams, the retrospective act of studying history allows a sort of omniscient perspective. His use of “tragedy” in The Tragedy of American Diplomacy perfectly establishes his argument against The United States’ idea of frontier-expansionism and the Open Door Policy he felt resulted in the deterioration of American domestic and foreign prosperity.
Williams’s most apparent example of the tragedy of American diplomacy, as he points out, is in the United States’ relations with Cuba from 1898 through 1961. [1] In freeing Cuba from Spanish tyranny, America’s supposed intentions were to give Cuba independence, encourage economic success and reassure its development into a democracy. One can easily understand through Williams’s argument that the defining incentive for American influence was instead always motivated by domestic capital gain. The United States dominated the island’s economy resulting in control over the sugar industry and prevention of any deviations from its one-crop economy. [2] Furthering that argument is America’s acceptance of corrupt Cuban leaders, but immediate response to civilian transgression to the “economic and political restrictions established by American leaders.” [3] The tragedy that Williams finds is America’s gracious idealistic intentions juxtaposed with its actions’ devastating consequences. The irony in place comes from the obvious expectation — especially apparent when reexamining history — and repetition of these failures.
Though Williams never uses the phrase, a feature of American social and political thought that only enhances the tragedy of American diplomacy is the concept of American exceptionalism. This notion is a self-righteous assertion of American superiority to other less developed, or economically different, states. While the motivation for expansion was always economical, the philosophical justification, recognized by American citizens, business leaders, and policy makers, was the idea of spreading democracy, self-determination, and American ideals. This idea can be seen first in the concept frontier expansion. In his Frontier Thesis, Frederick Jackson Turner argued that “prosperity and representative government were tied casually to expansion.” [4] Thus, part of the American character relied on the nation’s ability to grow.
The irony of America’s idealistic self-conception and its need to spread this idea is in the reality of its effects. Americans promoted self-determination and laissez-fair capitalism —which implies personal responsibility — in rhetoric, but in practice denied these freedoms to other societies. Williams provides the reforms made in Morocco, China, and Nicaragua as examples to this argument. The process of making fundamental changes in these societies created unrest. Rather than allowing these places to determine their own path and participate in a type of free market they chose, the United States wanted to “stop or stabilize such changes at a point favorable to American interests.” [5] As Williams goes on to criticize: “That attempt can only be describes as a selfish violation of the idea and ideal of self-determination, and even an evasion of the moral obligation to accept the consequences of one’s own actions.” [6]
American exceptionalism begins to play an even larger role beginning in Woodrow Wilson’s presidency. Despite a history of ineffectiveness in United States’ foreign policy, Wilson did not consider a different system. [7] He continued in America’s tradition of the Open Door Policy, which as Williams points out, was “America’s version of the liberal policy of informal empire or free trade imperialism.” [8] Rather than reassessing the best approach to participating in the economic development of the global market, Wilson’s attempt was to adhere to traditional American economics and apply those to the global market, which he believed would lead to prosperity. [9] This strategy, which combined “American supremacy with the political theory of classic liberalism,” was manifested in Wilson’s idea of the League of Nations. [10]
The Bolshevik Revolution on 1917 is important in understanding American diplomacy in the 20th century, though Williams suggests it is for reasons not traditionally considered. [11] Williams’s observations focus more on American rhetorical and political reactions to the revolution. He argues that because of Wilson’s fear of “the general feelings of revolt,” “The Bolshevik Revolution became… the symbol of all the revolutions that grew out of that discontent.”[12] The tragedy of this, according to Williams is the revolutions Wilson speaks of were reactions to the policies the West had been imposing.
With F.D.R came the conception of the New Deal. Williams argues that the New Deal only strengthened the traditional system of diplomacy by operating within the outdated order of business and politics, emphasizing trade expansion and the Open Door Policy, and worsening the arrangement of free trade imperialism. [13] According to Williams the New Deal’s policies contributed to the tragedy in that defining “overseas economic activity as essential to the welfare of the United States, American policymakers were exceedingly prone to view social revolution in those countries as a threat to the vital national interests of their own nation.” [14]
Where American exceptionalism acts as the enabler to America’s tragic foreign policy, the need for constant growth in a capitalist market serves not only as the purpose for continuous interference in foreign affairs, but as the catalyst to those states’ reactions. Many small conflicts the United States has participated in throughout its history has been in response to radical revolutions. Williams suggests that perhaps America carries more responsibility in this than previous thought. This is apparent in his description of the relationship between informal empires and their weaker counterparts. While nations were allowed local rule, it was within the limits set by imperial power. [15] This meant, in practice, that one part of society ruled, leading the proletariat more inclined to join a cause that promised them a greater influence in their economic welfare. [16]
Williams argues that United States’ diplomacy is tragic in that its complacency and determination to maintain traditional economic policies have been the detriment to its foreign and domestic welfare. Beginning with frontier-expansionism and manifesting itself in Open Door Policy, America’s relentless hunger for wealth — behind the guise of its supposed exceptionalism — has attempted to spread American economics, democracy, and ideals across the globe. It does this while, at the same time, inhibiting foreign economics, governmental policy, and self-determination — all in the expectation of maximum financial gain for the United States. Williams suggests many foreign political movements have been reactionary to American diplomacy. Thus, through the distribution of “freedom,” America has unintentionally manufactured its own enemies, which it must then destroy to protect the “freedom” it produces. The tragedy of American diplomacy is in the ironic, and America’s inability to perceive it.
- William Appleman Williams, The Tragedy of American Diplomacy ( New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc, 1959, 1962, 1972), 1.
- Ibid, 2.
- Ibid, 2
- Williams quoting Turner, 32
- Williams, Tragedy, 67
- Ibid, 67
- Ibid, 96
- Ibid, 97
- Ibid, 97
- Ibid, 101
- Ibid, 104
- Ibid, 106
- Ibid, 173
- Ibid, 174
- Ibid, 96
- Ibid, 96
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