Thomas J. McCormick

DRIFT OR MASTERY? A CORPORATIST SYNTHESIS FOR AMERICAN DIPLOMATIC HISTORY

The state of modern American diplomatic history somehow mirrors its subject matter: Camelot to crisis to conundrum-and then the ennui of the new brown decade. What once imparted vitality and verve, excitement and expectancy to the field was the dynamic impact of left-revisionism. Its great virtue was to rescue historians from the sterile political science debate over realism versus idealism. The result was a new debate that was more honest and fervent, and conceptually more challenging and sophisticated. Revisionism, for friends and opponents alike, became the great intellectual multiplier. William Appleman Williams alone, in an incredible tour de force, not only stimulated and/or outraged, but probably made more careers than any historian since Charles A. Beard. Attacking or footnoting his basic thesis became a leading cottage industry. That salubrious spread effect began to slow even before Jimmy Carter proclaimed our national malaise. The writing (or at least the publication) of revisionist-oriented diplomatic history fell from 25-30 percent of the whole in

Behind the Throne: Servants of Power to Imperial Presidents, 1898-1968

During the American rise to world power in the last hundred years, a new presidency has also arisen, a presidency that uses military, economic, political, and personal power that the constitutional founders of the 1780s would have thought highly improbable and dangerous. Behind the Throne argues that United States presidents have received foreign policy advice from a new breed of government servants whose first loyalties were to the chief executive, not the bureaucracy or the public. These servants of power defined world views for the president, not only advising but often taking action to implement those world views. The essays in this volume focus on nine servants of power. Brooks Adams, brother of Henry Adams and advisor to Presidents McKinley and Roosevelt, greatly influenced early American expansionist thinking by supporting Frederick Jackson Turners Frontier Thesis. Charles Conant, in the same era, profoundly affected Americas economic relationship with Asia and Latin America. During the Wilson administration, Admiral William Capertons views influenced foreign policy in the Caribbean and Latin America. Controlling J. P. Morgans overseas investments, Thomas Lamont had direct access to and considerable influence upon every president in the 1920s and 1930s. Adolf Berle, advisor to Franklin Roosevelt, guided the United States economic and security policies for the post-World War II era, preparing the way for both the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. As members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Senator Arthur Vandenberg and Senator Gerald P. Nye championed United States isolationist policies in the early years of the cold war. Vandenberg later turnedinternationalist and used his position as ranking Republican on the Committee to promote President Trumans foreign policies in Congress. His advice to Truman was crucial in the founding of the United Nations and the Organization of American States. Thomas Mann, Undersecretary of Sta