Worldmaking

June 1, 2015
For decades, scholars and public officials have carried on a shopworn debate over whether American diplomacy should be, or has been, “idealist” or “realist” in orientation. Milne (American Rasputin), senior lecturer in modern history at the University of East Anglia, offers a fresh take on an old subject and hopes to change the debate’s terms. If he fails, it’s still a lively try. Through essays on nine distinctive American thinkers and statesmen—Alfred T. Mahan, Woodrow Wilson, Charles Beard, Walter Lippmann, George Kennan, Paul Nitze, Henry Kissinger, Paul Wolfowitz, and Barack Obama—he explores the tensions between diplomacy as art and diplomacy as science, as well as arguments about which aspect is primary. Appropriately characterizing his approach as “an intellectual history of U.S. foreign policy,” he brings his figures alive, accurately portraying and fairly characterizing them. If there’s a problem with the outcome, it’s that Milne takes us to yet another binary paradigm. His thinkers and practitioners, despite what they said on the record, were always too subtle and intelligent to get themselves boxed in that way. But Milne’s is a helpful, fresh, scholarly scheme, though it’s a scheme, as he admits, that may over-organize a messier reality. Agent: Wylie Agency.

Starred review from August 1, 2015
A survey of American diplomacy since the 1890s as reflected in the careers of the men who molded it. Milne (Modern History/Univ. of East Anglia; America's Rasputin: Walt Rostow and the Vietnam War, 2008) chooses nine significant figures whose approaches to diplomacy-either as an art, with inexact methods, or as a science, with a logical approach built from first principles-define his thesis. The tale begins at a point when the country largely avoided foreign entanglements. Alfred Thayer Mahan, in a hugely influential book on the importance of sea power, argued that the U.S. must ready to take an international role to protect its interests. A generation later, Woodrow Wilson took the position that America could only be safe in a world at peace. America's entry into World War I and the subsequent attempt to create the League of Nations were the results. Beginning in the 1920s, and increasingly as the Depression took its toll, Charles Beard made the case for putting domestic issues above all else. But with the rise of Hitler and Stalin, Walter Lippmann and George Kennan pushed for a more active international role, leading to the Cold War, in which Paul Nitze and Henry Kissinger took very different roles. As the Soviet Union faded, Paul Wolfowitz found new threats in the Middle East, threats that have dominated much of Barack Obama's presidency. The overall arc of the book is fascinating, showing how the play of ideas and politics has worked out over more than a century, with some of the most critical episodes in modern history as main episodes in the plot. Milne doesn't paint his protagonists in black-or-white terms; he both praises Kissinger for his role in the rapprochement with China and criticizes him for advocating for keeping the U.S. in Vietnam after it was clear there was nothing to gain there. On the whole, however, the author appears to side with the "artists" over their more dogmatic opposites. A well-documented, full-scale overview of some key makers of modern history.

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Starred review from September 1, 2015

American diplomacy is complicated by many factors: geography, economics, and multiple, uncontrollable actors. Milne (history, Univ. of East Anglia, UK; America's Rasputin) believes that personal background and ideology are vital in understanding how U.S. foreign policy is formulated and implemented. Nine shapers of American foreign policy and the impact of their thoughts and actions are discussed (and only two are presidents--Woodrow Wilson and Barack Obama). Most important for our present situation are the evaluations of Paul Wolfowitz, formerly the U.S. deputy secretary of defense and president of the World Bank, and Obama; opposites in background and thinking about how to approach world problems. The author believes that cautionary and flexible leaders (artists) are better at dealing with a complicated world than those who are certain in their perspective that America can lead the world with the enough application of force and pure example. And the views of the actors can change with the situation. VERDICT Well-documented, insightful, and easy to understand, this analysis is a must-read for anyone interested in this topic. It should be used in college courses.--Daniel Blewett, Coll. of DuPage Lib., Glen Ellyn, IL

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

August 1, 2015
The author of a thoughtful study of the intellectual underpinnings of U.S. foreign policy in the 1960s (America's Rasputin: Walt Rostow and the Vietnam War, 2008), Milne here presents a panoramic intellectual history of U.S. foreign policy from the nation's emergence as a major maritime power in the late nineteenth century to the present. His focus is on the nexus between knowledge and power and, specifically, the men whose ideas inspired and guided U.S. statecraft. Two of Milne's subjects, Woodrow Wilson and Barack Obama, were positioned to steer foreign policy from the top, subject to their personal limitations and the checks and balances of the federal system. The others did so indirectly. Alfred Thayer Mahan, author of a seminal treatise on sea power, drove Theodore Roosevelt's assertions of national interest abroad. George Kennan and Paul Nitze, though opposed in their ideas, shared the intellectual authorship of the Cold War. And the influence of Henry Kissinger's realpolitick and Paul Wolfowitz's reimagined Wilsonianism on the administrations in which they served was likewise dramatic. Milne's stated goal is to reconfigure the standard foreign-policy polemic of the idealists versus the realists into a new paradigm that contrasts artists such as Kennan and scientists such as Nitze, but he wisely does not force this dichotomy. Thanks to the detail and care Milne takes in describing his subjects' backgrounds, the more intriguing narrative that emerges is about the intimate yet fraught relationship between the academy and the levers of power. This is a timely, fascinating work.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)