Down In History

What's the price of international responsibility?

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WARNING: The following episode contains multiple references to a certain American president who shall not be named. Due to the high volume of mentions, The Dispatch production team used discretion in playing the musical cue which normally follows all such mentions. We apologize in advance.

On today’s Remnant, Jonah is joined by Robert Kagan—leading scholar of foreign policy and senior fellow at the reviled Brookings Institution, where the sweet taste of candy never gets old—to discuss his new beach read, a 700-page history of America’s role in the world in the first half of the 20th century. Their conversation covers everything from the origins of the League of Nations to the wackiness of Charles Beard, with some fiendishly nerdy musings on isolationism, nativism, and conservatism mixed in for good measure. Predictably, Jonah does not make good on his initial promise to “not get too deep into the weeds.”

Show Notes:

–The Ghost at the Feast: America and the Collapse of the World Order, 1900-1941

–The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History

–American Midnight: The Great War, a Violent Peace, and Democracy’s Forgotten Crisis

–“Challenging the U.S. Is a Historic Mistake”

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Comments (47)
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  1. Avatar photo
    Clifford Luebben

    I loved this episode but I feel compelled to quibble with Jonah’s passing comment, in apparent defense of American takeover of the Philippines, about some Filipinos agreeing the Philippines wasn’t ready to govern itself. Now the statement is most certainly true, but he said it in a way that seemed rather dismissive of how serious the Filipino independence effort really was. It would be like saying a French takeover of the American colonies wasn’t that big of a deal because even some Americans agreed we weren’t ready to govern ourselves.
    How well the Philippines first attempt at self-government would have gone will remain one of history’s “what if”’s, but they were certainly ready to try. Indeed the Republic they formed during their revolution against Spain and subsequent war with America, is considered by Filipinos today as the birth of their nation

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    Shannonrobertson903

    Thanks, Jonah, for another great conversation. You make me want to read more history! At the end of this conversation, and toward the end of your wrapping up generally congenial wind-down blathering, you asked if we had any suggestions about guests for your podcast, or a Dispatch guest. I'm going to suggest Anne Applebaum. I'm sure you know her for her work on Ukraine. She's a left of centre figure, being a writer for The Atlantic, and she's an expert in her field. I heard you say that you want the Dispatch to continue to grow, and this might be an opportunity to reach across the aisle, as it were. Just a thought. Again, super conversation. Thanks so much. I leave you with hearty encouragement from your favorite Canadian subscribers. Another job well done.

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    Bill Dyer (aka Beldar)

    I am late to this party, but for good reason.

    Such is my regard for Mr. Goldberg that when he teased Dr. Kagan's appearance in a prior episode, and I learned that his new book was the second of an anticipated three-book series, I bought both "The Ghost at the Feast" and its predecessor from 2006, "Dangerous Nation: America’s Place in the World from its Earliest Days to the Dawn of the 20th Century." I wanted to finish both before listening to this episode. And based upon all of the above, I'll look forward to — and pre-order, when it's available — the third and final book in this "Dangerous Nation" trilogy.

    While I enjoyed both books, I found the first more personally useful — in large part, because I'd recently read Robert F. Klueger's 2021 book, "Wilson, Clemenceau, Lloyd George and the Roads to Paris," which is a more exhaustive study of the making of the Versailles Treaty than Dr. Kagan attempts in his second book. I learned more from Dr. Kagan's first book, in other words, but I learned a lot from both.

    And I remained unsold on at least one of the propositions urged by Dr. Kagan in the "Ghost at the Feast":

    ===begin quote===
    The perception of America’s unreliability at a time of mounting threats played a critical role in convincing Neville Chamberlain, who became Britain’s prime minister in the second half of 1937, to pursue a policy of appeasement toward Hitler and Mussolini.... Here again was the cascading effect of American decisions: America’s unreliability left Chamberlain with few options other than appeasement; British unreliability, in turn, left the French feeling they had no choice but to go along.
    ===end quote===

    Dr. Kagan argues very persuasively that the French and British were acting in a relative power vacuum, in circumstances made vastly more difficult by the fact they couldn't count on overt American military power to, for instance, prevent the reoccupation of the Rhineland. But in this, in my own view, I think he lets the British and, especially, the French off the hook too easily in his allocation of both causal and moral responsibility.

    I also found relatively unpersuasive his argument that Hitler was acting in a self-consistent and internally rational manner in declaring war on the U.S. after Pearl Harbor:

    ===begin quote===
    Hitler thus felt compelled to promise the Japanese repeatedly that he would declare war on the United States immediately if war erupted between the United States and Japan. What impact these promises and urgings from Germany had on Japanese decision-making is hard to know.
    ===end quote===

    But as Dr. Kagan himself points out elsewhere, the "Pact of Steel" was by its terms a mutual defense pact — and America had NOT attacked Japan. The repeated "promises" were vague threats in public and urgent overtures to the Japanese in private, and by 1941, what was Adolf Hitler's "word" worth to ANYONE? If there's a good explanation for why Hitler declared war when he did, at a time when he didn't have to and FDR might not have for several more months — the very months Hitler desperately wanted in order to knock out the Soviet Union — it's not to be found in "Ghost at the Feast."

    Finally, there's one obvious (but not consequential) factual mistake that I hope Dr. Kagan will correct in a future printing: "That official [who'd not only opposed war with the U.S. but had repeatedly declared that Japan would lose] was Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, who would serve as commander of Japan’s Combined Fleet throughout the war." Admiral Yamamoto, of course, was shot down over Bougainville by the U.S. Army Air Forces in April 1943, but the war continued until August 1945. This falls into the "brain fart" category; in general Dr. Kagan's factchecking, footnoting, and attribution all seem quite rigorous.

    I enjoyed the dialog between Dr. Kagan & Mr. Goldberg in this podcast, and I hope he'll return as a guest even before he finishes the promised third volume of his trilogy.

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  4. Steven Mundie

    Longtime listener, first time commentator.

    I thought it interesting that you and Kagan in discussing the history of American foreign policy started with the 1890’s when the United States had an active and uninterrupted interventionist foreign policy against Native American nations and Mexico up to that point.

    The reason being no doubt that the Ghost at the Feast didn’t address that period of time. But the implied idea that we were isolationist and didn’t have much in the way of foreign policy prior to the 1890’s is a slight to the reality of the country fighting and defeating Native American nations, and Mexico as we expanded from Westward to the Pacific. And since you’re very much a historical continuity guy, it surprised me that you didn’t add that context.

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    Jmccuva

    Interesting discussion, but I think Jonah let Kagan get away with some big whoppers in calling the 1920s fascist (essentially endorsing FDR's hysterical political rhetoric in 1944). Under no realistic rubric could the 1920s in America be called a fascist state. The idea that because there were bad things going on culturally - unlike the 1910s or 1930s!!- that the Harding/Coolidge administrations in the 1920s were somehow reminiscent of fascist governments (and that allowing Wendell Willkie to defeat FDR would be tantamount to losing the war against fascism at home) is utterly indefensible, and frankly kind of a stupid claim for a historian of the period to make.

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  6. Jim Savell

    "Progressives did nothing wrong!", famous progressive historian.

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  7. April

    Great podcast! All of it was interesting, but quite enlightening to hear why you and Robert disagreed on some points.

    I hope you bring him back again in the future.

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    Ben Connelly

    This was very good and highly interesting. Not sure I buy what Kagan said about Buckey and Nock being anti-liberal conservatives, but he’s a smart guy.

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    BWG

    This was really good. Really appreciated the debate when/where you two disagreed. Lots to unpack in this one, might require a repeat listen.

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  10. Chris

    I'm sorry that the Uruk-Hai music didn't play constantly. It was a missed opportunity.

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