Tragedy Renewed: <i>William Appleman Williams</i>

Abstract

Hixactly fifty years ago, late in the Eisenhower era, if still early in the Cold War, William Appleman Williams, then a young historian teaching at the Univer sity of Wisconsin, started a revolution of sorts. With the publication of his book, The Tragedy of American Diplomacy, U.S. foreign relations became as never before an exceedingly contentious subject. It has remained so ever since. According to Williams, even in 1959 when Tragedy first made its appearance, U.S. foreign policy was in the midst of a profound crisis. An approach to state craft that had once worked brilliantly had become impossible to sustain. Revolutionary changes were sweeping the world. If the United States refused to adapt to those changes, it would soon find itself facing literal isolation. Yet if they embraced the order, Williams wrote, Americans could help other peoples achieve their own aspirations in their own way and do much to sustain and extend man's creativity. Soon thereafter things got worse?much worse. The counsel offered by Wil liams became less hopeful and more urgent. By 1962, when a new enlarged edition of Tragedy appeared, John F. Ken nedy was occupying the White House. Just a year prior, the Bay of Pigs fiasco