NONFICTION: A vibrant journalistic history assesses the critical value of foreign policy in an age of U.S. isolationism.
"The Ghost at the Feast: America and the Collapse of World Order, 1900-1940" by Robert Kagan; Alfred A. Knopf (688 pages, $35)
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From sea to shining sea. That phrase from "America the Beautiful" encapsulates the United States' two-oceans problem: its relative geographic isolation from the world's flashpoints and chronic conflicts. Domestic concerns often trump foreign policy in our collective imagination; it's practically a birthright to turn inward, breathlessly following pop-star scandals rather than, say, an intifada or two, or a potential nuclear mishap in battle-scarred Ukraine.
Was this navel-gazing always an issue? In his judicious, vibrant "The Ghost at the Feast" — the second installment in his sweeping history of our country's foreign policy — Robert Kagan excavates the transformational early decades of the 20th century and the nation's rocky emergence onto the global stage. Most Americans were as ignorant of internationalism in 1900 as they'd been in 1800, he observes, but with a surge in technological breakthroughs, such as the telegraph, and faster, more efficient means of travel, the republic's commercial interests rapidly meshed with those of Europe, Asia and South America.
As John Hay, Theodore Roosevelt's secretary of state, opined in 1902, "the financial center of the world, which required thousands of years to journey from the Euphrates to the Thames and Seine, seems passing to the Hudson between daybreak and dark."
While this is well-trod terrain, Kagan sticks to the U.S.' cherry-picking among internal affairs of other nations. He launches "The Ghost at the Feast" with a robust, if familiar, account of the Spanish-American War, unpacking fin-de-siècle politics and its players with finesse. As World War I exploded and German U-boats torpedoed passenger ships, Woodrow Wilson dithered; but a few direct hits on American targets convinced him to join the Allies. (Kagan is both critical and laudatory of Wilson, a nuanced assessment of this problematic leader.)
The interregnum between the two wars was also volatile, from peak German inflation and humiliation to the collapse of the stock market, rendered with brio here. Franklin Roosevelt and Congress labored long and hard, taking extreme measures to stabilize an economy in free-fall even as Hitler rolled out the fascistic Third Reich.
Roosevelt was itching to bolster the fledgling transatlantic coalition, but by 1937 the public had withdrawn into the citadel of its continent; polling suggested that an overwhelming majority considered involvement in the Great War a colossal mistake. "The middle of the 'court-packing' was not an opportune moment to seek greater presidential authority in matters of war and peace," Kagan writes of FDR. "The 'permanent' Neutrality Act, which he signed into law in May, marginally increased his flexibility, but it did not permit him to designate and level sanctions at an aggressor — which is what mattered to the Europeans."
In the end the Axis forced Roosevelt's hand. Kagan concludes his chronicle with Japanese bombers swarming over Pearl Harbor, the death knell to American isolationism. "The Ghost at the Feast" is a briskly written, engaging tutorial at a moment when foreign policy has again run aground in the shallow waters of our self-absorption.
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A contributing books editor for Oprah Daily, Hamilton Cain reviews for the Star Tribune, the New York Times Book Review, the Washington Post and the Boston Globe. He lives in Brooklyn.
