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73 Foreign Aff. 142 (1994)
The Tragedy of Cold War History: Reflections on Revisionism

handle is hein.journals/fora73 and id is 150 raw text is: Review Essay The Tragedy of Cold War History Reflections on Revisionism ?fohn Lewis Gaddis It has been well over three decades now since the historian William Appleman Williams first called upon his colleagues in the profession to undertake a search- ing review of the way America has defined its own problems and objectives, and its relationship with the rest of the world. In The Tragedy ofAmerican Diplomacy, surely one of the most influential books ever written about the history of U.S. foreign relations, Williams rejected the celebratory tone that had characterized earlier scholar- ship, insisting that the record of this nation's foreign policy had been a tragedy because of the gap Americans had allowed to develop between aspira- tions and accomplishments. We had preached self-determination but objected when others sought to practice it; we had proclaimed the virtues of economic free- dom even as we sought to impose eco- nomic control. The result, Williams concluded, was that America's humani- tarian urge to assist other people is undercut-even subverted-by the way it goes about helping them. The classical definition of tragedy is greatness brought low by some funda- mental flaw in one's own character. When one considers the difficulties the United States created for itself through its own hubris and arrogance during the Vietnam War era, it is hardly surprising that Williams' tragic view of American diplomacy seemed, to a great many peo- ple at the time, to make sense. To a good many even today, it still does. JOHN LEwIs GADDIS was President of the Society for Historians of Amer- ican Foreign Relations in 1992. This essay was the 1992 presidential address and has previously been published, in a different form, in Diplomatic History, with whose permission it appears here. Gaddis is also the author of The United States and the End ofthe Cold War: Implications, Reconsiderations and Provoca- tions, (Oxford, 1992). [142]

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