US Foreign Policy

"Yes, that’s right, he did. Actually the word was first coined, I believe, by Bernard Baruch. Lippmann was the one who popularised it. This book was actually written in World War II and he was partly looking ahead to the possibility of a Cold War with the Soviet Union. He could see the seeds of it even in the middle of World War II. So it really is a far-sighted book. The book is a powerful critique of failures of US foreign policy in the interwar period – that is where it begins. Lippmann argued that Americans had fallen prey to the delusions of liberal and universal ideas. They believed that peace could be achieved without calculations based on real strength, whether by insulating itself from power politics or placing its trust in international institutions and law. The country, he believed, also fell prey to the false notion that geographical distance, rich resources and ocean flanks gave America ‘free security’. The net result was an insolvent foreign policy that left the nation vulnerable and polarised. The book is a plea by Walter Lippmann for America to rediscover the realities of power politics that he believed the Founding Fathers had grasped. Lippmann counselled that America needed to rebalance its power and commitments and use the classical tools of negotiated spheres of influence, military muscle and alliances. Not only was a renaissance in strategy necessary to secure America by restoring a favourable balance of power abroad, it was also needed to prevent foreign policy dividing the country at home and creating a damaging internal conflict. Also, in the moment of victory it could overreach itself and get involved in a new antagonism and collide with another great power. Lippmann’s fear was that the wartime alliance with the Soviet Union, Britain and the United States would fall apart after the war and the world’s hope for peace rested on those great powers. He argued that in order to avoid new confrontations, the US needed to recognise the limits of its own domain and the legitimate orbit of other states like the Soviet Union. That is where he saw the Cold War potentially originating – America wouldn’t know the limits of its own power, particularly in the moment of victory. The true shield of the republic was not nature’s blessings or utopian idealism, but clear-eyed statecraft that respected both power and the limits of power. It is an eloquent vision of tough restraint in the age of the masses – a vision that resonates today. I think this is a book about America finding itself becoming increasing powerful as it mobilised itself for its intense struggle. It was lurching from a country that before World War II was much more reluctant to generate military power and intervene abroad to becoming a country that didn’t know where to stop. The way that America lurched from one extreme to the other was something he referred to as the deadly cycle. He says that it is ‘too pacifist in times of peace and too bellicose in times of war’. He thought there was not enough middle ground."