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Reviews in American History 31.1 (2003) 152-160



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FDR:
Architect of the American Empire?

Thomas Alan Schwartz


Justus D. Doenecke. Storm on the Horizon: The Challenge to American Intervention, 1939-1941. Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 2000. xix + 549 pp. Notes, bibliography, and index. $39.95.
Frank Ninkovich. The Wilsonian Century: U.S. Foreign Policy Since 1900. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999. 320 pp. Notes and index. $27.50 (cloth); $18.00 (paper).
David Reynolds. From Munich to Pearl Harbor: Roosevelt's America and the Origins of the Second World War. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2001. x + 209 pp. Bibliography and index. $24.95 (cloth); $14.95 (paper).

In the immediate aftermath of the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington, Americans seized upon the comparison with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, a historical precedent for the outpouring of patriotism and expressions of national unity against the new evil of terrorism. However, recent months have shown that both American politics and popular culture have come back to many of their pre-September 11 concerns. Compared with the disruptions of everyday life after World War II began, the war on terrorism seems to demand little from the general public beyond getting to the airport earlier.

But at least in one regard the comparison between September 11, 2001, and December 7, 1941, may be all too apt. In both cases, these surprise attacks have unshackled American foreign policy and military power, with the result that in each case, the United States has become determined to shape a world order conducive to its ideals and interests. Who could have imagined only a few years ago American soldiers fighting in Afghanistan, operating from bases in formerly Soviet Central Asia, and being deployed to more than 20 countries to train local forces to fight terrorists? We now have a "Bush Doctrine" that promulgates such concepts of "anticipatory self-defense" and "preemptive deterrence" and places Saddam Hussein's Iraq in its cross hairs. From the candidate in the 2000 election who promised a "humbler America," we have an America that, as Andrew Bachevich recently put it, "lays claim to [End Page 152] wider prerogatives for employing force to reorder the world." 1 Talk of an American "Empire," its role and responsibilities, is no longer the conversation of critics of U.S. foreign policy, but cuts across the entire spectrum of opinion. The American colossus truly bestrides the globe, to the satisfaction and consternation of friends and enemies alike.

Writing before September 2001, both David Reynolds and Justus Doenecke take us back to a time when Americans debated fiercely whether they should become involved in the emerging global struggle with the original "Axis of Evil" led by Adolf Hitler's Germany. These two books are surprisingly complementary. Reynolds tells the story from the perspective of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, as his thinking evolves from an unhesitating, supportive telegram to British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain on his way to the Munich conference—"Good Man," Roosevelt wrote, in what he later said was the shortest telegram he ever sent—to a determination in early 1941 to do everything possible, including provoking an incident in the Atlantic Ocean, to defeat the Nazis. For its part, Doenecke's book provides an intellectual history of Roosevelt's "anti-interventionist" opponents. Doenecke deliberately avoids using the more traditional term "isolationists," as this was the pejorative used against them by their opponents. Read together, these two books give a sense of the political and intellectual environment in which Roosevelt made his choices, understood the possibilities, and tried to evade the constraints on his actions.

David Reynolds is one of the leading historians of twentieth-century Anglo-American relations, a scholar whose work has gone far toward both defining—and undermining—the concept of a "special relationship" between the two "Anglo-Saxon powers," as the French might characterize them. 2 From Munich to Pearl Harbor, however, seems more like a book for the educated reader or college student: succinct, clearly written, and bold in its argumentation, but not heavily footnoted in the...

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