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The Myth of American Diplomacy: National Identity and U.S. Foreign Policy
In this major reconceptualization of the history of U.S. foreign policy, Walter Hixson engages with the entire sweep of that history, from its Puritan beginnings to the twenty-first century’s war on terror. He contends that a mythical national identity, which includes the notion of American moral superiority and the duty to protect all of humanity, has had remarkable continuity through the centuries, repeatedly propelling America into war against an endless series of external enemies. As this myth has supported violence, violence in turn has supported the myth.
The Myth of American Diplomacy shows the deep connections between American foreign policy and the domestic culture from which it springs. Hixson investigates the national narratives that help to explain ethnic cleansing of Indians, nineteenth-century imperial thrusts in Mexico and the Philippines, the two World Wars, the Cold War, the Iraq War, and today’s war on terror. He examines the discourses within America that have continuously inspired what he calls our “pathologically violent foreign policy.” The presumption that, as an exceptionally virtuous nation, the United States possesses a special right to exert power only encourages violence, Hixson concludes, and he suggests some fruitful ways to redirect foreign policy toward a more just and peaceful world.
The Myth of American Diplomacy shows the deep connections between American foreign policy and the domestic culture from which it springs. Hixson investigates the national narratives that help to explain ethnic cleansing of Indians, nineteenth-century imperial thrusts in Mexico and the Philippines, the two World Wars, the Cold War, the Iraq War, and today’s war on terror. He examines the discourses within America that have continuously inspired what he calls our “pathologically violent foreign policy.” The presumption that, as an exceptionally virtuous nation, the United States possesses a special right to exert power only encourages violence, Hixson concludes, and he suggests some fruitful ways to redirect foreign policy toward a more just and peaceful world.
- GenresHistoryNonfiction
392 pages, Hardcover
First published March 3, 2008
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November 23, 2018
When Native American King Philip was killed in 1676, they left his head on a pole for DECADES as an early CandyGram to Natives that overwhelming sadistic force was officially “Ye only game in Towne”. The Europeans actively chose to reject mutual coexistence. Air Force military historian John Grenier argues, “Americans created a military tradition that accepted, legitimized, and encouraged attacks upon and the destruction of noncombatants, villages and agricultural resources launching shockingly violent campaigns to achieve their goals of conquest.” Unrestrained warfare became the name of the game. Female captivity narratives conveniently turned the “invader into the invaded and created the foundation for any act of retribution that might follow,” argues Tom Englehardt. It should be noted that white women at the time were legally in a position of “civil death” having no rights at all. For example, Anne Hutchinson stuck out as “exceptionally bold” and was banished for it. “Euro-Americans projected their violence onto slaves” and natives as well, by saying both oppressed groups were secretly dying to be the oppressors. What a perfect new country for any motivated immigrant without morals! Want free land? Take it by force from a native. Want free labor? Take that by force from a kidnapped black person. Race became the easy solution to most problems and governors had to hold back the people from going “out against the Indians who annoyed the frontiers”. The “Enlightenment” comes along in which Rousseau writes in his measured wisdom that Native-Americans and Blacks could never deserve the rights of man. Hixson writes, “The only rights of man available to Indians and African American slaves was to abandon their land or culture or both.”
Hixson astutely reveals, “The Revolution of 1776 was the first ever ‘nationalist’ revolt. Noam Chomsky has repeatedly stated that the greatest threat to US foreign policy wasn’t Communism, it was Nationalism. You can’t have other countries keeping their stuff from you through Nationalism, and yet the US was the first successful attempt to do it. Nationalism grew faster here than in Latin America, Hixson says, because the 13 colonies were much smaller in size and closer to each other than in Latin America. Post 1776, our message was: “a foreign policy that rejected co-existence in deference to relentless dispossession and annihilation of people singled out in the Declaration of Independence as “merciless Indian savages”. The ‘Sage’ of Monticello, T Boy Jefferson, calling the original occupants of his country “merciless Indian savages” while freely raping his own slave, speaks well for early American Exceptionalism (although in his defense, Jefferson did see war against other countries with actual guns as a last resort). Roger Kennedy notes that it was Jefferson that put the odious policy of Indian removal in place as the ‘solution’ for Native Americans. Jefferson thus starts the official odious US settler-colonialism experiment. Jefferson “would not tolerate proposals to incorporate Indians” and so he rebuffed Creek leader Alexander MacGillivray’s overture to set aside Native reserve land within the Louisiana Purchase (which MacGillivray saw as stolen from natives) but Jefferson would have none of it. When he wrote the Declaration, Jefferson owned “more than 150 slaves”. Jefferson also once said that women best functioned as “objects of our pleasure”. Famed historian Gordon Wood recently revised US History (post Sally Hemmings DNA) with the words, “the new United States was not just a republic, it was a slaveholding republic.”
About the Native issue, clearly lost on whites was the fact that natives had happily fed themselves without wetiko, a.k.a. white, help for thousands of years in the same spot. Washington advocated their removal, calling them “beasts of prey”, while gentle Ben Franklin discussed God’s plan “to extirpate these savages in order to make room for the cultivators of the earth.” The later Trail of Tears was a clear message to all non-compliant tribes, because it was obviously forced on one of the five most compliant tribes. The Alien and Sedition Acts soon equates “criticism of national policy with being un-American.” Think of Jacksonians as “reactionary Jeffersonians”. Tocqueville saw our entire nation as a “white man’s country” and felt racism was actually strongest in the North. One Seneca man said, “You have got our country, but you are not satisfied, you also want to force your religion on us.” Centrist historian Arthur Schlesinger writes The Age of Jackson without once mentioning Indians or Indian removal - what a sellout. Wouldn’t it be great if the Mexican War became known more accurately as, The 1846 Invasion? This brings up the theme of regenerative violence throughout American History – we need something outside ourselves to get riled about, some group who must pay for our greed and lust so we can push forth our narrative of progress. Decades of our TV shows reflect this dominant theme of regenerative violence from knights fighting for maidens to basic Westerns. Like the Creek Indians, the U.S. often fights others that once admired the US, like Emilio Aguinaldo and Ho Chi Minh, who once believed in the U.S. and paid for it. President Wilson screws around with the Mexican elections and their Revolution because we owned their mines and oil fields. WWI creates our Military-Industrial Complex. WWI disintegrates the Progressive Movement after the majority sell out under “a new spirit of intolerance that challenges the right of any man to utter his independent judgement.” To make the world safe for “democracy”, Wilson had to encourage “white supremacy, authoritarianism, xenophobia, and repression of the Left.” Peace Activism threatens national identity because it puts internationalism before American unilateralism (U.S. nationalism). Hixson sees the root of Hitler appeasement lay in the quandary that Hitler hated Communists just as much as he hated the Jews. Few Cold War warriors mention that the US had its hand further up Japan’s posterior than Russia ever could hope to gotten on its own ‘satellites’.
In Iran, we replace nationalist-for-the-people Mossadegh in1953 with the dictator Shah and his brutal SAVAK - a great example - to anyone thinking of defying US wishes. Then in ’54, the US sees Guatemala also doing amazing things for the people which must be stopped; the leader Arbenz’s achievements will only lead other countries to imitate him, that “threat of a good example”. Arbenz goes down. Others soon learned from the demo - Successful examples of nationalism elsewhere must always die: American nationalism is the only player on the playground. The CIA acknowledges the US supported Indonesian PKI Massacre is “one of the worst mass murders of the twentieth century.” Then look at the US supported death of 180,000 Timorese soon after. Note that neither “peaceniks” Eugene McCarthy and RFK advocated withdrawal from a country the US had obviously invaded when they both ran for President. And let us pause to admire the crowning Alanis Morissette “Isn’t it Ironic?” Achievement of the Vietnam War: it succeeded by “uniting Vietnam while bitterly dividing the United States.” Establishing “law and order” was used as a code word by Nixon and others to rein in the Black Power Movement. Always remember that centrist ‘journalist’ Thomas Friedman, whose face looks like a mouth sore shoved on a breadstick, once said (channeling Mark David Chapman’s next Album title), “My motto is very simple - Give War a Chance”. The incarceration rate today is 6X over what it was in 1970. The international community (from the UN on) threatens the Myth of America and so must be opposed. “There can be no universally valid tenets and practices of international law as long as the U.S. carries out its relentless pursuit of global domination” says Carl Boggs. For Hixson, the future is to not glorify state violence but end the cycle of regenerative violence and he leaves us with these words: “U.S. foreign policy is a lethal, pathological force emanating from a self-serving national mythology.”. This is another amazingly good book by Walter whose work Noam really likes.
Hixson astutely reveals, “The Revolution of 1776 was the first ever ‘nationalist’ revolt. Noam Chomsky has repeatedly stated that the greatest threat to US foreign policy wasn’t Communism, it was Nationalism. You can’t have other countries keeping their stuff from you through Nationalism, and yet the US was the first successful attempt to do it. Nationalism grew faster here than in Latin America, Hixson says, because the 13 colonies were much smaller in size and closer to each other than in Latin America. Post 1776, our message was: “a foreign policy that rejected co-existence in deference to relentless dispossession and annihilation of people singled out in the Declaration of Independence as “merciless Indian savages”. The ‘Sage’ of Monticello, T Boy Jefferson, calling the original occupants of his country “merciless Indian savages” while freely raping his own slave, speaks well for early American Exceptionalism (although in his defense, Jefferson did see war against other countries with actual guns as a last resort). Roger Kennedy notes that it was Jefferson that put the odious policy of Indian removal in place as the ‘solution’ for Native Americans. Jefferson thus starts the official odious US settler-colonialism experiment. Jefferson “would not tolerate proposals to incorporate Indians” and so he rebuffed Creek leader Alexander MacGillivray’s overture to set aside Native reserve land within the Louisiana Purchase (which MacGillivray saw as stolen from natives) but Jefferson would have none of it. When he wrote the Declaration, Jefferson owned “more than 150 slaves”. Jefferson also once said that women best functioned as “objects of our pleasure”. Famed historian Gordon Wood recently revised US History (post Sally Hemmings DNA) with the words, “the new United States was not just a republic, it was a slaveholding republic.”
About the Native issue, clearly lost on whites was the fact that natives had happily fed themselves without wetiko, a.k.a. white, help for thousands of years in the same spot. Washington advocated their removal, calling them “beasts of prey”, while gentle Ben Franklin discussed God’s plan “to extirpate these savages in order to make room for the cultivators of the earth.” The later Trail of Tears was a clear message to all non-compliant tribes, because it was obviously forced on one of the five most compliant tribes. The Alien and Sedition Acts soon equates “criticism of national policy with being un-American.” Think of Jacksonians as “reactionary Jeffersonians”. Tocqueville saw our entire nation as a “white man’s country” and felt racism was actually strongest in the North. One Seneca man said, “You have got our country, but you are not satisfied, you also want to force your religion on us.” Centrist historian Arthur Schlesinger writes The Age of Jackson without once mentioning Indians or Indian removal - what a sellout. Wouldn’t it be great if the Mexican War became known more accurately as, The 1846 Invasion? This brings up the theme of regenerative violence throughout American History – we need something outside ourselves to get riled about, some group who must pay for our greed and lust so we can push forth our narrative of progress. Decades of our TV shows reflect this dominant theme of regenerative violence from knights fighting for maidens to basic Westerns. Like the Creek Indians, the U.S. often fights others that once admired the US, like Emilio Aguinaldo and Ho Chi Minh, who once believed in the U.S. and paid for it. President Wilson screws around with the Mexican elections and their Revolution because we owned their mines and oil fields. WWI creates our Military-Industrial Complex. WWI disintegrates the Progressive Movement after the majority sell out under “a new spirit of intolerance that challenges the right of any man to utter his independent judgement.” To make the world safe for “democracy”, Wilson had to encourage “white supremacy, authoritarianism, xenophobia, and repression of the Left.” Peace Activism threatens national identity because it puts internationalism before American unilateralism (U.S. nationalism). Hixson sees the root of Hitler appeasement lay in the quandary that Hitler hated Communists just as much as he hated the Jews. Few Cold War warriors mention that the US had its hand further up Japan’s posterior than Russia ever could hope to gotten on its own ‘satellites’.
In Iran, we replace nationalist-for-the-people Mossadegh in1953 with the dictator Shah and his brutal SAVAK - a great example - to anyone thinking of defying US wishes. Then in ’54, the US sees Guatemala also doing amazing things for the people which must be stopped; the leader Arbenz’s achievements will only lead other countries to imitate him, that “threat of a good example”. Arbenz goes down. Others soon learned from the demo - Successful examples of nationalism elsewhere must always die: American nationalism is the only player on the playground. The CIA acknowledges the US supported Indonesian PKI Massacre is “one of the worst mass murders of the twentieth century.” Then look at the US supported death of 180,000 Timorese soon after. Note that neither “peaceniks” Eugene McCarthy and RFK advocated withdrawal from a country the US had obviously invaded when they both ran for President. And let us pause to admire the crowning Alanis Morissette “Isn’t it Ironic?” Achievement of the Vietnam War: it succeeded by “uniting Vietnam while bitterly dividing the United States.” Establishing “law and order” was used as a code word by Nixon and others to rein in the Black Power Movement. Always remember that centrist ‘journalist’ Thomas Friedman, whose face looks like a mouth sore shoved on a breadstick, once said (channeling Mark David Chapman’s next Album title), “My motto is very simple - Give War a Chance”. The incarceration rate today is 6X over what it was in 1970. The international community (from the UN on) threatens the Myth of America and so must be opposed. “There can be no universally valid tenets and practices of international law as long as the U.S. carries out its relentless pursuit of global domination” says Carl Boggs. For Hixson, the future is to not glorify state violence but end the cycle of regenerative violence and he leaves us with these words: “U.S. foreign policy is a lethal, pathological force emanating from a self-serving national mythology.”. This is another amazingly good book by Walter whose work Noam really likes.
June 5, 2017
Hixson depicts U.S. foreign policy as a manifestation of the nation's powerful hegemonic, manly, and "enemy-othering" identity. From its inception requiring genocide of Native Americans, to its current unjust policies in the Middle East, Hixson criticizes the tendency of the United States to dominate, "civilize" and wage war over diplomacy. However, Hixson fails to offer solutions to counter the hegemonic nature he so strongly condemns, nor does he account for the more altruistic actions the US has sought in stopping genocide or funding development, albeit minimal.
July 2, 2008
I fully agree with the author's thesis in this historic look at how the "American" cultural identity allows and often mandates the use of force against perceived enemy-others. He does well to give examples of domestic "psychic crisis" during the major wars involving our imagined national community. Any student of history, politics, or sociology could take something away from this book. Where I thought Hixson fell short was his writing. His thesis would be more accessible would he have wrote it thematically rather than chronologically. Too often, historians choose to write history in the order events occurred. Ordinarily, I have no problem with that, but Hixson's thesis warrants a thematic narrative that eludes to historic examples rather than a historic narrative that eludes to thematic examples.
January 8, 2010
One of the most eye-opening books about American history that I've ever read. Hixson came to speak in my US & Vietnam history class after we'd finished reading the book, and he's a great speaker - some of his ideas I don't immediately concur with, but this book is fascinating; if you like Howard Zinn's "A People's History of the United States" you'd love this.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews