The Tragedy of American Diplomacy

 The Tragedy of American Diplomacy is one of these classic and famous books that's just faintly disappointing once you actually get around to reading it. I came to it knowing that it was supposed to be the definitive critique of U.S. foreign policy that launched the whole genre of New Left historiography. I found it instead to be somewhat leaden and clumsy in its prose, and basically focused on the wrong questions. 

To be sure, the core of William Appleman Williams's thesis is inarguable. The basic "tragedy" of American foreign policy, as he sees it, is that our nation proclaimed the ideals of self-determination and anti-colonialism, but then we lived to contradict them. 

Graham, Revisited

 In yesterday's post, after devoting about 75% of the piece to expounding all the good reasons to despise Lindsey Graham—I ended by admitted that, in spite of everything, I always sort of liked him. 

It was seemingly hard not to. Even during Biden's last State of the Union speech in 2024, he at one point made some inside joke and pointed at Graham. "Lindsey knows what I'm talking about," he said. Cut to a shot of Graham giggling in the audience. 

Lindsey Graham

 By any reasonable standards, Lindsey Graham—the Republican Senator from South Carolina who died over the weekend—was a pretty terrible person. 

He knew exactly who and what Donald Trump was. In his own short-lived bid for the White House in 2016, Graham correctly diagnosed Trump as a "xenophobe" and a "bigot." Graham's own policy views obviously inclined him to the paradoxical mix of warmongering neocon hawkism and genuine patriotic idealism that motivated a figure like John McCain—in other words, the polar opposite of a corrupt transactionalist like Trump. 

The Folly of Despotism

 My post the other day about Albert O. Hirschman's The Passions and the Interests ended with something of a cliffhanger, so I wanted to swing back around to revisit it now. 

As Hirschman documents extensively in that book, early modern political thinkers were fundamentally concerned with the question of how to curb more effectively the human propensity to violence and despotism—given that mere "moralistic exhortation" had at best proved ineffective (and at worst had itself inflamed the tendency to persecution and war). 

The American Peril

 Two days ago, the Wall Street Journal reported on an alleged Iranian plot to assassinate Donald Trump in the midst of the ongoing war in the Middle East. 

What?! Assassinate our head of state in the midst of ongoing negotiations? 

Oh, you mean—exactly what we just did to them about four months ago? 

The Heel-Turn

 I was listening to the latest episode of the Rational Security podcast yesterday, and they devoted a segment to reporting that Michael Cohen, Trump's former personal attorney and fixer turned critic, has now apparently changed his mind for a second time and become a Trump loyalist again. 

For those who missed the intervening change of heart, Cohen at one point renounced his friendship with Trump and said in effect that he regretted ever knowing him. Indeed, Cohen notably testified against Trump at his New York trial. 

Let Them Be Left

 The New York Times ran a story yesterday whose headline says it all: "Trump, Ending Decades of Protection, Opens Wild Habitats to Drilling and Mining." 

Even without reading the article I could have guessed what, specifically, he had done. Back in law school, I recall reading the 1995 Supreme Court case that dealt with the definition of the term "harm" in the Endangered Species Act.