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Achievements and Pitfalls of American Diplomacy, 1776-1980

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

Extract

Few documents have so influenced the course of history as has the American Declaration of Independence, now more than two centuries old. The Founding Fathers seem to have realized, with their usual clairvoyance, that no diplomacy can succeed without representing some intrinsic values, and the great Declaration established a moral basis for American international relations by announcing principles of universal validity. As Abraham Lincoln pointed out, “Our Declaration of Independence meant liberty not alone for the people of this country but hope for all the world for all future time. It means in due course the weight should be lifted from the shoulders of all men.” In the spirit of the Declaration of Independence no other human experience in the last two centuries has been so attractive to liberty-seeking people as the American experiment — called, not without warrant, “the permanent revolution.” In the early years of the Republic, Thomas Paine stated with prophetic vision:

So deeply rooted were all the governments of the old world, and so effectually had the tyranny and the antiquity of habit established itself over the mind, that no beginning could be made in Asia, Africa, or Europe, to reform the political condition of man. Freedom had been hunted round the globe; reason was considered as rebellion; and the slavery of fear had made men afraid to think.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1980

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References

1 These were the first treaties concluded by the United States. In the treaty of alliance each of the parties agreed to “make all the efforts in its power against their common enemy,” Great Britain, and not to conclude a peace without the formal consent of the other and “not to lay down their arms until the independence of the United States shall have been … assured.” The treaty of amity and commerce, concluded on the same day with France, is remarkably similar to commercial treaties of today. For example, it contains a most-favored-nation clause with respect to commerce and navigation.

2 Regular diplomatic relations between the United States and Russia were established only in 1809, when the American Minister, John Quincy Adams, arrived in St. Petersburg after an exhausting journey of seventy-five days.

3 Franklin and some other militia diplomats spent much time in London as agents of one or more colonies. There were collaboration and competition among them. These relationships and their contacts and negotiations with British government offices were a halfway preparation for diplomatic functions.

4 The classic work for this period is Bemis, Samuel Flagg, The Diplomacy of the American Revolution (New York, 1935)Google Scholar. Concerning the background and activities of some leading American diplomats and their partners in European countries, see the journalistic book, Bendiner, Elmer, The Virgin Diplomats (New York, 1976)Google Scholar. Documentary materials are available in the volumes edited by Wharton, Francis, The Revolutionary Diplomatic Correspondence in the United States (Washington, 1889)Google Scholar. For peacemaking in 1781–1783 a masterly book is Morris, Richard B.'s The Peacemakers (New York, 1965)Google Scholar. The Austrian Press Service published in 1976 a documentary on the occasion of the bicentennial, Contemporary Austrian Views of American Independence. The celebrated French scholar's, Jean-Baptist Duroselle, recently published book, France and the United States (Chicago, 1978)Google Scholar, contains a concise chapter on the diplomacy of the American Revolution, pp. 12–33. For a substantial bibliography see Ferrell, Robert H., American Diplomacy: A History (New York, 1975).Google Scholar

5 See below for discussion of these questions, pp. 225–226.

6 The three categories of cases were:

1. Claims for damages sustained by American and English citizens, respectively, through the capture of ships or through other confiscations.

2. St. Croix River boundary arbitration.

3. Compensation by United States for prewar debts.

7 Moore, John B., A Digest of International Law (Washington, 1906), I:113.Google Scholar

8 Kennan, George F., American Diplomacy 1900–1950 (Chicago, 1951), p. 100Google Scholar. Kennan further developed these ideas in Realities of American Foreign Policy (Princeton, 1954), pp. 4849Google Scholar, and more recently in The Virginia Papers on the Presidency: The White Burkett Miller Center Forums, ed. Thompson, Kenneth W. (Washington, D.C., 1979), pp. 329.Google Scholar

9 Morgenthau, Hans, In Defense of the National Interest (New York, 1951), p. 13Google Scholar. Morgenthau suggested that out of the struggle between the opposing conceptions, “three types of American foreign policy have emerged: the realistic —thinking and acting in terms of power —represented by Alexander Hamilton; the ideological —thinking in terms of moral principles but acting in terms of power —represented by Thomas Jefferson and John Quincy Adams; and the moralistic —thinking and acting in terms of moral principles—represented by Woodrow Wilson. To these three types, three periods of American foreign policy roughly correspond, the first covering the first decade of the history of the United States as an independent nation, the second covering the nineteenth century to the Spanish-American War, and the third covering the half century after that war.” Morgenthau pointed out that this division “refers only to prevailing tendencies, without precluding the operation side by side of different tendencies in the same period” (ibid., pp. 13–14).

10 See for a comprehensive presentation, Osgood, Robert E., Ideals and Self-interest in America's Foreign Relations (Chicago, 1953).Google Scholar

11 For evaluation of realists, idealists, legalists, and moralists in the post-Second World War era, see Thompson, Kenneth W., Political Realism and the Crisis of World Politics (Princeton, 1960), pp. 245251CrossRefGoogle Scholar. In a symposium, Foreign Policy Morality, Theodore M. Hesburgh and Louis Halle wrote on the meaning of moral idealism and political realism in foreign policy and several authorities in these fields commented on the same topics. Kenneth W. Thompson wrote the Preface and the Concluding Remarks (Council on Religion and International Affairs, New York City, 1979). Beitz, Charles R. in Political Theory and International Relations (Princeton, 1979)Google Scholar examines the “Morality of States” and the problems of “International Distributive Justice.”

12 For the first hundred years of the foreign relations of the United States, see Foster, John W., A Century of American Diplomacy (Boston and New York, 1901)Google Scholar. Merli, Frank J. and Wilson, Theodore A., eds., Makers of American Diplomacy (New York, 1974).Google Scholar

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14 Truman, Harry S., Year of Decision (Garden City, N.Y., 1955), p. 350.Google Scholar

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19 A state treaty with Austria was concluded in 1955. For details see, Allard, Sven, Russia and the Austrian State Treaty (Pennsylvania State University Press: University Park and London, 1970).Google Scholar

20 Acheson, Dean, Present at the Creation (New York, 1969), p. 225Google Scholar. Cf. Kennan, George F., Memoirs 1925–1950 (Boston, 1967), pp. 313324Google Scholar. Jones, Joseph M., The Fifteen Weeks February 21–June 5, 1947 (New York, 1955), pp. 148198Google Scholar. Ferrell, Robert H., George C. Marshall as Secretary of State, 1947–1949 (New York, 1966), pp. 7498Google Scholar. Kertesz, Stephen D., “Peacemaking on the Dark Side of the Moon: Hungary 1943–1947,” Review of Politics, 40 (1978), 469498.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

21 Quoted by Ferrell, , George C. Marshall, pp. 7273.Google Scholar

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23 See for the development of new forms of diplomacy in Western Europe and the diplomacy of European integration, Kertesz, Stephen D., The Quest for Peace Through Diplomacy (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1967), pp. 92129.Google Scholar

24 During GATT's first 25 years, six major trade negotiations took place under its auspices: in 1947 (in Geneva), in 1949 (Annecy, France), 1951 (Torquay, England), 1956 (Geneva), 1960–61 (Geneva, the “Dillon Round”), and 1964–67 (Geneva, the “Kennedy Round”). As a result, the tariff rates for thousands of items entering into world commerce were reduced, or bound against increase. The Kennedy Round negotiations alone reduced the average level of world industrial tariffs by about one-third. The concessions agreed upon in these negotiations have affected a high proportion of the total trade of GATT countries, and indirectly, the trade of many nonmembers as well. GATT has thus contributed greatly to the immense growth in world trade since 1948.

25 It happened to be the fourth point in a series of suggestions in his address.

26 Since the Second World War this was the first major action of Soviet combat troops outside Eastern and Central Europe. Soviet military interventions in East Berlin (1953), Budapest (1956), and Prague (1968) are still vividly remembered.

27 Ali Mazrui, Professor of Political Science at the University of Michigan. Lecture, Reith. The Listener, 29 11 1979, p. 745.Google Scholar