Franklin Roosevelt as World Leader

Abstract

DESPITE THE APPEARANCE of a substantial body of literature on New Deal diplomacy in the last twenty-five years, we still lack a careful study of Franklin Roosevelt's foreign policy leadership. The revisionist and court histories of the sub ject that appeared shortly after the war were more polemical attacks a-d replies than attempts at balanced accounts: the interested student could choose between Roosevelt the deceitful, naive, inept author of postwar communist might and Roosevelt the principled, realistic architect of fascist defeat. Subsequent studies shifted ground and concentrated more on the broad sweep of American diplomacy than on Roosevelt's role in the conduct of foreign policy. Wlhile only one major work went so far as to describe FDR as a wveak president who did not lead or define American foreign policy during World War II, the others limited Roosevelt to the part of a world leader more the subject than the master of external events. The more narrowly focused books that appeared in the 1950S and 196os on such subjects as neutrality, lend-lease, and Yalta, to mention just a few, also subordinated Roosevelt's role to the rush of foreign and domestic developnents.1