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A cool look at Washingten’s mistakes CULLIVER'S TROUBLES, OR THE SETTING OF AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY. By Stanley Hoffmann. ifferest (and often imutually hostile) countries. Add American ideology, and the course of world politics is likely to-affect home opinion either as a disappointment or a shock. As William Vaughan Moody put it: Lies! Lies! It cannot be! The wars we wage Are noble, and our battles still are won ” By justice for us, ere we lift the gage, We have not sold our loftiest heritage. ‘The proud republic hath not stooped to cheat And scramble in the market-place of war... Stanley Hoffmann, in a brilliantly interesting book, has analyzed these contradictions, and the mistakes and the disappointments that attend them. He would like to see an American foreign policy that is a little less ideological in content, a little more coherent in its choice of objectives and a little more skillfully handled at the bureaucratic level. His general message, in fact, might be summed up as “Take it easy!”” The atmosphere of excitement in the Washington bureaucracy surround- Anthony Hartley is the editor of Interplay, a new maga- zine of foreign affairs. i ing the progress of any particular Policy generates, 60 he believes, undue hopes. If the Policy file there is nothin, tent to do but make even louder noises about it. ¢ es oh i hay United Stores is jis sar thing happens. ish 19th-century policy of “guarding the road to India” lingered on until just the other day, when the evacuation of Aden closed that particular chapter. France still imagines that she has interests in Lebanon and Indochina. Concern by German politicians for the homes of the Sudeten Germans is a sort of pale Pan-German remnant. Even Russia often seems to view Germany in terms of 1941 —-an absurdity in a nuclear age. Much of what Hoffmann has to say applies to any foreign policy, and, inasmuch as his book gives the impression that America is peculiarly unsuited to formulate foreign policy, it is misleading. But he does make many shrewd points about Washington’s charac: teristic mistakes. He is right, for example, when he criti- cizes the tendency of American diplomacy to prefer technological and economic, rather than political, solu- tions to problems. A glance at the influence of Mc- Namara on American foreign policy shows how dis- astrous such an approach can be. In general it also has the effect of involving America in situations far more deeply than mere diplomatic steps would do. To give sid or suggest a nuclear, guerantee is to stick onc’ neck out. ‘ Hoffmann would have the American Gulliver content eth 2 Je ¥ et i } Gs Wf wit BL, ye Wen ea eh a confederation the picture of some pro-Eturope cans more orthodux ir their reputation than himself, Presumably America ha- now reached a point where any solution at all of the European imbroglio would be welcomed. Probably, in the long run, it is as vain to ask of 2 country that it should change the style of its foreign policy as to ask an individual to alter his character. Personally I am inclined to think that, for better or worse, the United States is condemned to interventior and even to empire. Hoffmann’s cool view, if it were accepted, might not only help get rid of contradictions and rasbness but might also tend to erode the con- structive features of American policy. It is useful for statesmen to become aware of their own prejudices both in terms of direction and of style, but since thr war American policy has enjoyed a success which no one— except Americans — would have predicts’ ix 1946. If Hoffmann’s hook manages to correct ue distortions and failures of comprehension, it will be » helpful, as well as subtle and interesting, addition to # continuing debate. But it will be of tile help if it simply contributes to a general loss of nerve. * ry NEW! THE ONLY COMPLETE LISTING! TIS PRIVATE SPHANTC