Preaching to His Choir

Abstract

Professor Perry Anderson devotes “Consilium,” the second part of his extended essay on “American Foreign Policy and Its Thinkers,” to an exploration of the work of some scholar-practitioners who write about U.S. grand strategy and whom he deems key members of America’s “security elite.” He portrays this as a relatively small intellectual community “composed of thinkers whose careers have moved across appointments in government, universities and foundations.” Anderson suggests that among these prolific writers—and notably in sharp contrast to exchanges among diplomatic historians—“direct dispute or polemical engagement are rare, not only because of the extent of common assumptions, but also because writing is often shaped with an eye to official preferment, where intellectual pugilism is not favoured” (pp. 118–19). In light of this observation I want to clarify that I write not only as a confirmed practitioner of diplomatic history, but also as one who seeks no official preferment in government, or, for that matter, in the academy. Let me offer a warning to readers of delicate temperament that they may find my commentary on Anderson as leaning just a trifle on the “pugilistic” side, but it aims simply to correct his deeply flawed interpretation of twentieth-century foreign policy. I trust that readers, delicate and otherwise, might find it of some interest.