America at 250 Series: The Best and Worst Decisions in U.S. Foreign Policy

For two-and-a-half centuries, the United States has faced a challenging world. Some of its responses have made Americans proud. Others have not. CFR asked members of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations what they considered the best and worst U.S. foreign policy decisions. This event will discuss the results of the project.

To mark the 250th anniversary of the U.S. declaration of independence, CFR is dedicating a year-long series of articles, videos, podcasts, events, and special projects that will reflect on two and a half centuries of U.S. foreign policy. Featuring bipartisan voices and expert contributors, the series explores the evolution of America’s role in the world and the strategic challenges that lie ahead.

FROMAN: Well, good afternoon, everyone. Thanks for being here with us. It’s a great pleasure to welcome you to today’s meeting on “The Best and Worst Decisions in U.S. Foreign Policy.” This is a great way to kick off our America at 250 programming, and you see our logo here for programs that we’ll be having over the course of the year focused on American foreign policy and the lessons learned from history for the challenges that we’re currently facing.

There’s no doubt that we’re at a historic inflection point now, but history has a way of rhyming if not repeating. The debate about the role of the United States in the world goes back to the eighteenth century and our Founding Fathers, many of whom might be called isolationists today for their warnings against entangling alliances. In the nineteenth century, we saw a period that emphasized territorial expansionism and hemispheric dominance. And as we speak, I believe in Washington there’s a meeting with the Danish and the Greenlandic leadership on such issues. And of course, the lessons of the twentieth century are very well known, from the isolationist instincts after World War I—out of which the Council on Foreign Relations was born—to the neoliberalism, to neoconservatism, and now America first. Many of the same issues that we’re debating today have been the subject of debate for 250 years, and that’s why today’s event is so well-suited to kick off this year of programming.

CFR invited members of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations to identify what they viewed as the best and worst U.S. foreign policy decisions, and to explain why. And today, we’ll discuss those findings.

I want to thank Jim Lindsay in particular, our Mary and David Boies distinguished senior fellow in American foreign policy, who directed this project. I also want to thank the rest of the Council, from Meetings and Events to Digital and Communications. This was a whole-of-CFR effort. I will direct you to a really great website that is now up and running with the results of this survey and a video. I think it’s going to be a great resource for teachers in high school and colleges, and for the public at large, to really key off a debate over whether they agree or disagree with the historians’ assessment of what are the best and worst foreign policy decisions.

And I can’t think of a better moderator for this event than our chairman, David Rubenstein. David’s been a longtime supporter of integrating history into the work of the Council. He’s the author of at least three important books on American history: The American Story: Conversations with Master Historians, The American Experiment: Dialogues on a Dream, and The Highest Calling: Conversations on the American Presidency.

But David is more than an author; he is a doer. And his approach to patriotic philanthropy focused on reminding Americans of their heritage and how important it is to our democracy has left a mark on everything from the Washington Monument to the Lincoln Monument (sic; Memorial), the Libraries of Congress to the Smithsonian. And we all benefit from being able to go down to Washington and see copies of the Magna Carta, the Declaration of Independence that just reflect David’s commitment to making history available to us all.

Today David will be joined by Jim, of course; Mary Dudziak, the Asa Griggs Candler professor of law at Emory University; and Chris Nichols, the Wayne Woodrow Hayes chair in national security studies and professor of history at Ohio State University.

I want to remind you all that today’s discussion is on the record. Thank you again for joining us this afternoon.

And with that, I will turn it over to our moderator, David.

RUBENSTEIN: (Off mic)—the panel.

So, Jim, start with you: When did this project start? And did you ever think it was going to end when you started it? (Laughter.)

LINDSAY: Great question. It started in 2019 when you suggested that we should do something like this to look at—(laughter)—the best and worst decisions in U.S. foreign policy history. I was not smart enough to go to law school, I was not brave enough to be a historian, so I became a political scientist. But I’ve always had a lifelong love for history, so I was game to do it.

When I said yes to doing this, however, I did not realize how challenging it would be. And if I—Mike mentioned that this is a whole-of-Council effort, which it very much was, but I want to just single out and thank one person in particular, Christian Wolan, because Christian is the person who built the website that these findings are presented on. And when I went into this, I thought building a website would be easy-peasy. What I have learned over the course of this process, besides a lot of information about American history, is that it is not easy-peasy to build a website, and people like Christian make it possible. So I just want to say: Thank you, Christian.

RUBENSTEIN: So the basic way of doing the—getting the decisions, you could have gone to all the members of the Council on Foreign Relations. You could have gone to people around the country. What was the—who were the people that voted for this? And is that the sole group that voted, one group?

LINDSAY: We went to the members of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations, known as SHAFR. I’m sitting next to a past president of SHAFR. And SHAFR is the foremost organization dedicated to the scholarly study of the history of American foreign relations. And we thought these were the best people, since they spend their careers looking at the history of American foreign policy, to give us their judgments.

RUBENSTEIN: OK. And it took five years to get the research from these people? Why did it take five years? (Laughter.)

LINDSAY: It didn’t take five years. Well, after I said yes to you in my enthusiasm, we had this little thing called COVID—

RUBENSTEIN: Oh. Right.

LINDSAY: —which sort of upended almost everything. And the survey went into the field in the fall of 2003 (sic; 2023), and then we began building the website, decided that launching it in a presidential campaign year wasn’t the right time. But America at 250, this is perfect.

RUBENSTEIN: OK. Well, thanks for doing it.

And tell us about the Society, because I can honestly say I wasn’t that familiar with the Society, a group that were the experts that you’re a part of.

DUDZIAK: So the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations is a—is a(n) organization of historians mostly based in the U.S., but also internationally, who study the United States in the world using various kinds of methodologies, not just one approach—people who study war powers, people who study military actions, people who study economic history, people who study environmental history and U.S. foreign relations and climate change, so—from the settlement on the North American continent to today.

RUBENSTEIN: All right. How many people responded to the survey? How many people participated?

LINDSAY: We have 360 verified SHAFR members.

RUBENSTEIN: OK. Now, some people responded but they didn’t give their email address, so you didn’t count them, right?

LINDSAY: Right, we didn’t count them. We wanted to be able to say these are people who are certified members of SHAFR.

RUBENSTEIN: OK. And what was the biggest surprise to you? All the survey, what—the biggest surprise is what?

NICHOLS: So I haven’t actually mentioned this to Jim yet after all of our conversations. The biggest surprise to me was that—I thought you would have to say the alliance with France to help win the Revolutionary War was the foundation by which you got U.S. foreign policy decisions that we could then rank. It was just sort of, like, de rigueur as a student of history that you have to start with the founding. So that that comes in third on our best list surprised me quite a bit.

RUBENSTEIN: OK. That was not a surprise, though.

NICHOLS: Well, that surprised me that it wasn’t first, that it should have just automatically been first, something related to the founding.

RUBENSTEIN: OK. So let’s go through. The best decision in U.S. foreign policy, the number-one decision, is the—

LINDSAY: Marshall Plan.

RUBENSTEIN: OK. Why is it called the Marshall Plan? Did he come up with it himself?

LINDSAY: Well, I’m a little bit nervous about answering that question given that I have Benn Steil in the audience, who’s the author of THE book on the Marshall Plan. But President Truman knew that if his name were attached to it, it would face very tough going on Capitol Hill. George C. Marshall, who had been chief of staff during World War II, was widely admired and loved; hence, the Marshall Plan. It was Marshall and his staff who put it together. And Marshall, obviously, gave the very famous commencement address at Harvard University in June of 1947.

RUBENSTEIN: OK. So, for all three of you, were you surprised that was the number-one decision? Or, would—if you were voting—I don’t know if you—you didn’t vote.

LINDSAY: Oh, I voted.

RUBENSTEIN: You voted. OK. (Laughter.)

LINDSAY: I voted. I didn’t count my vote, but I—

RUBENSTEIN: You didn’t count your vote, OK. You didn’t want to give you email address. (Laughter.) So, all right, what would you—if you were just saying to yourself—forget what the survey is. What would you say is the greatest foreign policy decision in United States history? Would you agree with the Marshall Plan?

LINDSAY: I probably would have gone with the Marshall Plan. Well, I know I went with the Marshall Plan. But my number two would have been the Treaty of Alliance with France. And I’ll just say, in terms of the survey results, there was great unanimity among historians about the Marshall Plan. It was on 90 percent of the—

NICHOLS: Ninety-point-four-two percent selected the Marshall Plan. And it, by far, was the top decision across those.

RUBENSTEIN: And no Marshall relatives voted, right?

NICHOLS: No.

LINDSAY: Not that we’re aware of. (Laughter.)

RUBENSTEIN: So were you surprised that the Marshall Plan was number one?

DUDZIAK: I think it makes sense. It was important to the U.S. and the future of U.S. foreign relations. It was important to peace in Europe. It was important as a humanitarian matter. So it sort of ticks a lot of boxes in terms of the kinds of interests and concerns that people have about U.S. foreign relations decisions.

RUBENSTEIN: So that was the overwhelming choice, number one. On the negative side, the worst foreign policy decision, what is the worst foreign policy decision, according to the survey?

LINDSAY: The invasion of Iraq.

RUBENSTEIN: And was that as overwhelmingly negative as the other one was positive?

LINDSAY: Yes, it was.

NICHOLS: It was 87.86 percent against, or selecting it as the worst.

LINDSAY: And I will note that there are two aspects of the Vietnam War that made the top ten worst decisions list. One was the Gulf of Tonkin incident in 1964, with the following resolution. And then LBJ’s decision in the spring of 1965 to commit U.S. combat troops to Vietnam. Even if you add those two responses together, they still fall short of the number of people who voted for the invasion of Iraq.

RUBENSTEIN: OK. And today would you say that the invasion of Iraq, had we found weapons of mass destruction, do you think it would have been the same result?

LINDSAY: That’s a very good question. I don’t know how it would have played out. But I do think the Iraq War is not simply the fact we invaded and didn’t find weapons of mass destruction. It is that it turned into a nearly decade-long occupation that cost a tremendous amount of blood and treasure for the United States.

RUBENSTEIN: OK. So for those who may not have the materials, most of you have it, some here online may not have it, why don’t we go down the top ten decisions—best decisions. Jim, why don’t you go through, just read down with the top ten were.

LINDSAY: Number one was the Marshall Plan. Number two is the creation of the United Nations. Number three was the Treaty of Alliance with France. Number four was Louisiana Purchase, which doubled the size of the United States. Then we have the Lend-Lease Act. Then we have the creation of NATO. Then the creation of Bretton Woods, another book topic of Dr. Steil. The Act Prohibiting the Importation of Slaves of 1807. The Monroe Doctrine of 1823. And finally, the handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis in 2023—or, excuse me—in 1962. (Laughter.)

RUBENSTEIN: So of all these, interestingly only one of them is where you have people sitting around saying, we’re making a foreign policy decision, and we have to make it now, and we only have a limited period of time. And that’s the handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Missile crisis in 1962. Were you surprised it wasn’t more highly rated or just?

LINDSAY: I’ll defer to my historian friends.

RUBENSTEIN: Were you surprised the Cuban Missile Crisis wasn’t more highly rated, because that’s often cited as a perfect example of how to make foreign policy, more or less?

DUDZIAK: Well, there’s—of course, it was a tremendously important moment. And there was so much at stake, right? Nuclear war with the Soviet Union. So it certainly deserves to be very high on the list. And on some level, I can’t speak for all my colleagues—oh, there you go—

NICHOLS: I think one of the ways that you can parse this, and one of the things that’s really interesting about the website survey, is that there’s sort of different clusters of decision. This is one that’s formal diplomacy. It’s sitting around a table. We have the handwritten notes. We all teach it. There’s a great CFR simulation that does the Cuban Missile Crisis. That’s one form. But others are sort of an embodiment of values that I think this survey also reflects, are things like the Monroe Doctrine, pushing back against European colonialism in the hemisphere but not being an interventionist kind of U.S. imperialist project, in that moment. Or the act prohibiting the importation of slaves.

One of the big questions at the Constitutional Convention was, you know, what will be the future of slavery? And Thomas Jefferson wanted to get it in there. It’s in his administration that you wind up—and it says in the Constitution—that can happen in 1808. Congress passes that, right? So it isn’t diplomats sitting around a table. It’s the sending a message to the world about the meaning of America and its ideals. I think you see that reflected in the single largest clusters of these bests.

RUBENSTEIN: Now, very few people in America would say, you know, we’re really lucky to have the United Nations—(laughter)—because they’ve done such a wonderful job. So why would you think the United Nations was the number-two best decision? It’s just the concept of the United Nations is good, or because of specific things they’ve actually done? (Laughter.)

DUDZIAK: You know, one of the things that’s interesting about the decisions that happen is that, you know, there are things that—moments in time, and then there are things that happen over the course of history that we don’t end up getting captured in particular decisions. The creation of the United Nations is a moment. It’s after World War II. It’s a moment of great fragility in terms of the future of the world. And so it’s a moment that was productive, at that time, of—you know, of creating an environment that at least had behind it the promise of peaceful intercourse between nations. So it then provides an arena for many other things to happen, whether those things are good or bad, are things that we could do.

RUBENSTEIN: Now, in foreign policy very often one of the most—I would say, most cited decisions as one of the best decisions of the twentieth century, at least, I would say, was the opening to China, which is not on this list. Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger’s opening in China. Why do you think that didn’t even make the top ten list? Didn’t even make the top twenty list either. Any reason for that? It’s not top ten.

LINDSAY: Right. Yeah, but it’s number fourteen on the list here.

RUBENSTEIN: Number fourteen—yeah, you’re right. It’s fourteen, right.

LINDSAY: It came in fourteen.

RUBENSTEIN: Didn’t make the top ten.

LINDSAY: Let me look at my complete list.

DUDZIAK: I think when we compare—obviously, it belongs high on a list of the best things that happen. But one of the things that I think characterizes some of the issues that get high on the list, like Lend-Lease, are the great and somewhat immediate humanitarian benefits of, for example, Lend-Lease, when you have just Europe devastated and so many homeless and hungry. So as well, as you know, providing a peaceful way forward. So I think maybe Nixon, or maybe it’s that Nixon—I have to wonder that—whether unhappiness with Nixon—(laughs)—himself as a leader may have—

RUBENSTEIN: Maybe hurt on happiness with China.

DUDZIAK: Exactly. Could have influenced people’s decisions.

RUBENSTEIN: OK. Let’s go through the worst decisions. The invasion of Iraq, I think probably most people would probably say that was a wise decision to make it number one. Number two, deploying combat troops to Vietnam. I think people probably wouldn’t object to that. But number three, explain what the Indian Removal Act of 1830 was.

DUDZIAK: Well, the Indian Removal Act basically displaced the Cherokee from their home. And led to the Trail of Tears, which was tremendously—you know, I think that for students, especially now, the discussion about Greenland helps put that in context, right? You have an indigenous—you had a sovereign people who had treaty relations with the United States. And they were forcibly removed from their home. So rather than having, you know, ongoing ability to have more peaceful interchange between what, you know, is going to be the United States and indigenous peoples, they were—

RUBENSTEIN: They were removed from Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina.

DUDZIAK: Yes, brutally.

RUBENSTEIN: Moved west. And many of them died in the process of moving.

DUDZIAK: Absolutely. They walked—

NICHOLS: The Trail of Tears, 25 to 30 percent died. But I think if you broaden it out you think about this also as a teaching resource, and why historians would say this, the Indian Removal Act is the first time that Congress legislates in this way, which is part of the Marshall trilogy of cases, that creates then the structure—

LINDSAY: John Marshall.

NICHOLS: John Marshall, right. Chief Justice John Marshall’s trilogy of cases, that creates the structure of treating independent—that formerly sovereign, independent indigenous tribes now as, quote, “wards of the state.” The U.S.’ relationship to them is as a guardian as to a ward, as Marshall said in the 1831 case. And the point there being that you have this transition to them being treated, in his words, as a domestic dependent nation. That’s why this is a foreign policy decision. And it’s a foreign policy decision with real world, terrible, grounded repercussions, that also—back to the ideals, right? Why did this happen in this moment? Didn’t have to happen. It wasn’t part of treaty formation. It happened because gold is discovered on Cherokee land in Georgia. It happened because settlers aren’t keeping to the strict proclamations of 1763, and other deals to not keep moving west. And so this is Congress and Andrew Jackson agreeing to what becomes these atrocities. And that’s why it’s a top five worst.

RUBENSTEIN: Now, The fourth worst decision said there’s support for the overthrow of the Iranian government. Now that was a CIA-led overthrow. What were the adverse consequences of that?

NICHOLS: Yeah, I mean—(laughs)—one thing that’s interesting about the this one, and also what appears later on the list is the overthrow of Jacobo Árbenz in Guatemala, is sort of we find here of CIA meddling, leading to more CIA meddling, to a faith in that covert interventionism in the Eisenhower years, that’s something that historians find to be—sort of culminates in the Bay of Pigs and a number of other disasters. And we could think to our current moments, sort of the ease by which—we were talking about this before we got up here—presidents authorize covert action, because they can, coming at significant expense. So the question is, will the U.S. support democratically elected people, even if they don’t support the U.S.? And this sets a precedent in 1953 and 1954 that’s deeply problematic.

LINDSAY: I mean, I think Chris is quite right. A 1953 coup is almost the proof of concept that leads to further covert operations to unseat people. But I think also one of the reasons this shows up in the survey is that, from the vantage point of SHAFR historians, there were also the consequences of the coup in Iran, that it feeds a narrative that is cultivated and promulgated by the Islamic Republic of Iran, which may be in its death throes as we speak right now.

RUBENSTEIN: Now, if I had voted—if I was a member of the society, which I’m not, I would have voted for number one would have been the best decision was the Louisiana Purchase, because it doubled the size the country for, like, $15 million I think the purchase price was. And let’s think about it, had we not bought the Louisiana Purchase, I mean, this country was probably going to be just an East Coast-related country. This opened us to the west. And then the obviously, the manifest destiny, we kept moving forward. Were you surprised the Louisiana Purchase wasn’t higher, or people forgot about it because it was a long time ago?

LINDSAY: Well, I would say coming in at number four on a list of 250 years, there were a lot of important decisions that you can look at as successes. I think you’re right that Louisiana purchase is there. And I will note that more than half of the survey respondents pointed to the Louisiana Purchase as being significant. And when you read the history of it, on the negotiations, I mean, it’s quite fascinating. Because when the U.S. delegation went to Paris to try to buy—what they were trying to do is buy the city of New Orleans because about a third of U.S. exports came down the Mississippi River. And they were making a proposal to buy New Orleans from France. And Napoleon’s representative surprised them by saying, tell you what, how about you buy the whole Louisiana Purchase?

The other flipside of it is that Thomas Jefferson didn’t think he had the constitutional authority to buy Louisiana. And it ran against his principles that we would call strict constructionism, that the Constitution didn’t explicitly provide for the United States to buy territory, so he couldn’t do it. Other members of his Cabinet, or members of his Cabinet, didn’t have the similar qualms. And this is a case in which Jefferson, not for the first time in his life, subjugated a principle to get what he wanted. Now, he’s not alone among American presidents in doing that, I want to be clear. But it is, I think, a very interesting historical case. And there are a number of really good books about it.

NICHOLS: And, David, I think some historians—and what do you think, Mary? But I think some historians would vote against that, for that very same question. The accrual of executive power that starts in the Washington and Adams and Jefferson administrations is something that we now look at in the world and think, oh, perhaps presidents shouldn’t have as much power as they have. Jefferson was skeptical. Winds up using that power. And over the course of the nineteenth century, you see this continued accretion of power. It isn’t just the imperial presidency of the twentieth—

RUBENSTEIN: And, interestingly, when Jefferson was preparing his epitaph, what he wanted on his tombstone, he didn’t put the Louisiana Purchase. Didn’t mention it. So how many people here, let’s just see a survey. How many people here agree that the best decision, foreign policy decision, the United States government ever made was the Marshall Plan? OK. How many think the creation of the United Nations? How many Treaty of the Alliance with France? Louisiana Purchase? Wow. A lot of people don’t like any of these. (Laughter.) Lend-Lease Act, anybody? Creation of NATO? One or two. Creation of the Bretton Woods system? Act Prohibiting the Importation of Slaves? The Monroe Doctrine? Wow. Handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis? OK, so we have no gigantic consensus, I would say.

Now in terms of the worst decisions, interestingly number ten is the bombing of Nagasaki. Why do you think Hiroshima is not on there?

DUDZIAK: Well, the bombing of Nagasaki—

LINDSAY: It’s not in the top ten.

RUBENSTEIN: Top ten. In the top ten, yeah.

DUDZIAK: Yeah. The bombing of Nagasaki is often thought to be more problematic than—Hiroshima obviously, first use of nuclear weapons, catastrophically, from my perspective, you know, just such a terrible moment in world history. But Nagasaki so soon after, without waiting to see whether Japanese might surrender, was, arguably—you know, why? Why so soon? The literature on this, you know, they had two bombs, so they wanted to use them. They had different kinds of bombs. They get different information about them.

And, you know, one of the things that didn’t happen actually, related to the bomb that’s tremendously important but not on the list because one wouldn’t really know about it, is, you know, the Alex Wellerstein makes clear in his book, which is spectacular I have to say, that the use of the bomb became so normalized in the aftermath of the first use. But then it wasn’t used in Korea. And that, I think, helped established the failure to continually use the bomb in American conflict going forward. So that’s an example of one of the best things that happened that’s not on the list.

LINDSAY: David, one thing I can just add to that, it when you look at the history of the decision to drop the bomb in Nagasaki, originally, the plan was to drop it on August the eleventh, forecast for bad weather. So they moved it up two days to August 9. And that gets back to Mary’s point, that I think for historians the notion was we didn’t give the Japanese government enough time to work through what had happened in Hiroshima, because this was something unknown to anyone in terms of what the devastation was.

RUBENSTEIN: Well, I don’t think they realized what the radiation effect was going to be, among other things. And also the Japanese government had almost a coup going on at the time against the emperor about whether they should surrender or not. Think about this, President Truman left office with a popularity rating of, I don’t know, 15 percent or something like that. Barely carried his bags to the train station. Nobody paid attention to him. He was gone. But of the top six, three of them are his—or occurred when he was president. When you think about it, Marshall Plan, creation of United Nations, and creation of NATO. Why do you think he was so unpopular if he had so many great decisions?

NICHOLS: Those weren’t necessarily seen as Truman’s decisions, right?

RUBENSTEIN: Life isn’t fair is the answer.

NICHOLS: You know, I think we often attribute a lot to presidents and administrations and the broader dimensions of what happens there. I mean, the policy planning for the U.N. happens—before the U.S. is even in the war under FDR. It’s same thing with the structure—even discussions of NATO had preexisted the end of the war, and certainly Truman’s presidency. But I think one thing that that reflects, and your question is great in this sense, is that historians today really value the midcentury system. And it’s because of the world we live in at this moment. So, Bretton Woods, NATO, right, the U.N., Lend-Lease, working with allies, multilateralism—I mean, that is foregrounded in what historians think were the most important decisions.

RUBENSTEIN: Right. Let’s—

DUDZIAK: Can I just, on Truman? Truman was an important president in many respects. For example, civil rights, which actually mattered to U.S. foreign relations during the Cold War. But one of the most important—one of the things that happened during the Truman administration was going to war in Korea without asking Congress for an authorization. They, you know, they just sort of went forward. Truman refused to call it a war. He called it—you know, it’s a police action. And that failure, you know, after World War II to enter a major conflict without getting a formal war declaration from Congress helped set in place.

RUBENSTEIN: We haven’t had a declaration of war since World War II, right?

DUDZIAK: Exactly. And Truman is part of the reason that that happened. So, again, a negative thing that happens, but it doesn’t really show up on the radar of—

RUBENSTEIN: OK. All right, let’s go through the worst decisions. How many people agree that the worst decision was the invasion of Iraq? Oh, wow. We got some people agreeing on something. Number two, how many people agree the deployment of combat forces in Vietnam was the second worst? OK, Indian Removal Act, anybody think that was a disaster? Overthrow of the Iranian prime minister? Senate rejection of the Treaty of Versailles? OK. Forcible removal of the Cherokee Nation? Withdraw from the Paris Agreement? Limits on Jewish refugees from Germany? OK, Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, how many of you agree with that? And the bombing of Nagasaki? OK.

So today what was—if somebody—you’re teaching, let’s say, a student. And you’re giving a survey and you’re giving a summary of this. What is the message you would want to convey to the students? If you’re saying, we had this survey of experts, and the worst decision, the best decision, how would you summarize the results for this for the students who might have a limited attention span?

DUDZIAK: Well, actually, what I would do is this survey is an opportunity for students to sort of dive in. The website that’s been created has all these resources. So it invites students and teachers to engage in the—I don’t always like lists, best and worst. You know, I don’t think you do either. You’re voting the same way sometimes on, you know, worst or best on multiple things. But it’s the debating that gets at the criteria for what actually makes a good decision, what makes a bad decision.

And students and teachers and everyone can sort of dive in and get a broader feel for that because of the way that they’ve—I wasn’t part of the creation of this—the way that they’ve constructed the site, where there’s maps—if you’re a map person, they’re really cool, the nineteenth-century stuff especially; there’s audio; there’s video. And so someone who doesn’t know anything about these particular incidents can really learn a lot, and then by comparing it with others they’re thinking about their values. They’re thinking about, what does leadership look like? So I think it does—the site helps us think through these issues as a—you know, and I think that’s more important than establishing a ranking, even though that’s the approach.

RUBENSTEIN: OK.

NICHOLS: I’d foreground one thing. I think it’s an opportunity to give—to equip students to make debates. It’s just use evidence and critical thinking to debate the pros and cons of two very different kinds of things, prohibiting the importation of slaves and dropping of a bomb. But I would also say it’s an opportunity to think about, for me, when I look at this list and the critical intersection of international and domestic. We use this unwieldy phrase, inter-mestic, right? A lot of these decisions are right at that locus—immigration policy. You know, you could think about a host of these other kinds of questions. And I think students need to understand how foreign and domestic policies are blended.

RUBENSTEIN: Now, what does it say about our foreign policy decision making that in the top ten list there’s nothing since 1962. I mean, have we made any good decisions since 1962? (Laughter.)

LINDSAY: Well, actually, that’s interesting, David. And it gets back to your question about why it is that so many of the decisions by President Truman are on the top-end list but he went out basically with no one sorry to see him go. And I will note that, number one, for the American public foreign policy falls down the list of things they worry about. But I also think there’s an element to which successes get undervalued in public discussion. One of the things on the list, if you want to talk about good ideas or successes since 1962, I mean, I would look at the administration of George H.W. Bush, both in managing the collapse of the Soviet Union and then managing the reunification of Germany. You could also add in the Gulf War.

And I think all three were major successes. Again, I remember when the talk of German unification came back up. Everyone was worried about how it would tear Europe apart. It would lead to war. I believe the prime minister of Britain and the president of France were both opposed. President George H.W. Bush said, no, we’re going to see this through, and we will be better off for it. And he was right. It was a major success. And he was former president at George H.W. Bush at the next election.

RUBENSTEIN: Right. I remember Margaret Thatcher said at the time, I love Germany so much I love two of them. (Laughter.)

LINDSAY: Exactly.

RUBENSTEIN: So why don’t we see if members have questions here? Who has—wow, why don’t we start here, right here.

Q: Henny Sender from BlackRock.

This is a very subjective question, but if you look at the worst decisions how many of them reflect vested interests in the way, you could argue, that number four was very much oil company driven, the overthrow of Mosaddegh? And how many of them reflect flawed information, such as, arguably, the invasion of Iraq. Very subjectively, any one of you take it. How much of it is vested interest? How much of it is flawed information? Thanks.

LINDSAY: Well, I’ll take a first crack at it. Yeah, I do think vested interests play a role in decisions. I don’t think anyone can dispute that. I’m not so sure though that they played this critical role in the case of U.S. support for the overthrow of Prime Minister Mosaddegh. I mean, what, to me, that case shows is the importance of presidents, because when Mosaddegh came to power and the British national oil company was nationalized—I guess, echoes of what we’re seeing today with Venezuela—the British government came to the Truman administration and said: We want your help in unseating Mosaddegh and restoring things to the way they used to be. And President Truman, his advisors, wanted nothing to do with it.

The pivotal event was Dwight Eisenhower becomes president. And he’s much more open to the idea. Much more concerned about the spread of communism. And I think it was that motive that drove it. Now, if you want to find an example here about vested interest, I would go to the Indian Removal Act in the forcible removal of the Cherokee Nation. Because that was clearly driven by a desire for land, gold in particular but land more broadly. So even though under U.S. law our treaties with indigenous peoples, Native Americans, they were—we treated them as sovereign nations, we, in essence, threw them off because they had stuff that we wanted.

RUBENSTEIN: OK. Right here. Question right here.

Q: I won’t stand.

I was shocked or surprised, whichever, with the omission of NAFTA. Having worked with Brad Rockefeller and Bill Bradley in getting it passed way back then, and it was sold to Congress and to every department of government as something that was of economic, financial, business investment, and national security importance. And it’s turned out that way. And it’s not mentioned at all. Why is NAFTA not—and it’s still controversial. It was controversial at the time. It only passed by one vote. Anybody have an answer?

DUDZIAK: I don’t have—I don’t have a substantive answer. I have a methodological answer. I wasn’t part of creating this survey. All surveys are impacted by the population that’s filling them out. And I think what you’ve got is teachers who end up focusing—and researchers who focus on, most of the time, things other than—(off mic)—in U.S. foreign relations. So you’re absolutely right that it is this important and consequential—do you have the numbers?

NICHOLS: Yeah, I’m looking through it to see—

LINDSAY: Well, North American Free Trade Agreement was number fifty-eight on the best list. I would make a broader point, Roger, which is that, as I sort of look at the responses, Mary’s right about the population. My sense is that members of SHAFR are not as focused on economic issues as another population might be. Because for me, when I look where I would think of sort of the worst decisions, at least two that would come immediately to mind for me would be, one, the Embargo Act of 1807, succeeded by the Non-Intercourse Act of 1808, in which we decided we were going to show England and France who we were by cutting off trade, which essentially amounted to cutting off our own nose and almost destroying the country. And then I would also say the Tariff Act of 1830, better known as the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, which didn’t cause the Great Depression but certainly helped speed it along. I would have put those at or near the top ten, but they’re way down the list in terms of SHAFR historians.

RUBENSTEIN: Well, those responding were not focused on trade or economic interest so much, I think. OK, right here.

Q: Roman Martinez.

Also in the vein of omissions, I didn’t see Reagan policies that led to the downfall of the Soviet Union. I would have thought that would have been right up there. And secondly, sort of interesting, the number ten best decision, handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis, 468 points. Number thirteen, the Bay of Pigs invasion, 472 points. And if the Bay of Pigs fiasco had not been mishandled, there would have been no missile crisis.

NICHOLS: I mean, I suppose we do have a number of Reagan-era decisions on the list. You’re hard pressed to find the signature Reagan action that foreign relations scholars would teach—because we’re not. We wouldn’t choose a speech, right? We wouldn’t choose at the Berlin Wall. And you wouldn’t choose—is rollback policy a single policy? Is it a doctrine, as articulated like the Monroe Doctrine? Would you do specific engagements? What are the pros and cons of that? What if we wind up talking about rollback and Beirut? You know, then, right? Defense build-up proceeds, right, so Carter is actually pushing that forward in ’79 and ’80. So you see real appropriations buildups just in that moment. So when we’re teaching the fine-grained piece of that, you know, is it then the rhetoric of the Reagan administration? That’s not easily discerned as a decision, per se.

I mean, that’s the real challenge there. It’s survey, right, it’s a binary choice. Is it this or is it this, rather than, you know, the Reagan administration’s policies. Then, of course, there’s just a wealth of scholarship on the Cold War that makes every kind of argument under the sun about who should get the most credit for the policies that helped wind up with the end of that. And all of us historians of this teach it ad nauseum, which means we simply cannot pick, within the complexity of that, more simple answers about which Reagan policy did what, unfortunately.

LINDSAY: If I may just say just one thing to that, because I think it’s important. I’m glad you asked that question because it gets to the heart of the reason why I wanted to do this project. I wanted to do lists, not because I believe that lists are inviolate. I think Mary’s comments on that point are spot on. But that lists create an opportunity to have a conversation. And hopefully, a productive conversation when people say, well, what about this? And having once taught undergraduate students, it’s the sort of thing that really can engage them by having them grapple with a whole series of questions—why was this here? Why wasn’t that here? Why do you value this over that? And that’s why we built this website, which provides a vast array of resources, as Mary points out, so not just high school students, or college students, or graduate students, but lifelong learners can learn a lot more about our history. And I think it’s important at this moment, in which we’re clearly at inflection point as a country in terms of how we want to chart course in the world today.

RUBENSTEIN: We wanted to do it not because it was easy, but because it was hard. Is that right?

LINDSAY: Well, I thought it was going to be easy. It turned out to be hard. But I—you know—

RUBENSTEIN: OK. All right. Back here.

LINDSAY: —would challenge us to make it stronger.

RUBENSTEIN: This gentleman back here. And then we’ll get—OK. Here and then there. (Laughter.) And I don’t want to fight over the microphone, but just speak up. Get another microphone.

Q: Very quick, sir. It’s working now. Other mic, OK. Thank you. Bob McClure, Council member.

Very quickly. Any comment on twenty-five occurrences here of bad foreign policy decisions. Four are in this century. The most recent good decision, as mentioned earlier, had to deal with the fall of—the collapse of the Soviet Union, fall the wall. Have we lost our touch?

NICHOLS: Well, so—well—(laughs)—that’s a big one. I think one of the things that this survey reflects is how historians are indoctrinated to move away from presentist judgments generally. So we tend to call the first pass at history journalism, and often deride it, frankly. And I don’t think that that’s necessarily warranted. But we wait to see what outcomes look like. And so the very near past—I think, if it were up to me—this wasn’t the question. But I think the pulling out of the Paris accord may look better or worse in twenty-five years. I’m surprised it made the top ten worst at this point for professional historians. I mean, I think it may look terrible, don’t get me wrong, but it may also seem overblown as a rhetorical move, and wait till we see what climate change and other things look like. So have we lost our touch is a question historians, you know, often say, let’s wait and see—see what the outcomes will look like.

But I do think it’s telling. I mean, just—the subtext of your question is, you know, is U.S. foreign policy moving in a productive direction that professional experts deem to be appropriate, right, and historic? And I think this survey suggests less so than in the past.

RUBENSTEIN: Of course, when you’re doing it you’re surveying decisions as opposed to occurrences. And lots of times occurrences, it’s hard to point to one decision. But, OK, we have somebody online.

OPERATOR: We will take our next question from Cameron Thomas-Shah.

Q: Well, good afternoon. And thank you so much for taking my question. Happy America 250.

Can you expand a little bit more on your comment on the implications of civil rights and foreign policy? Particularly it’s a comment made by Dr. Dudziak. And also the blending of domestic and foreign policy made by Chris. In fact, I was very happy to see number eight, the implications of the—or, actually, the ending of importation of slaves. But there were also comments made about historians’ infatuation with midcentury foreign policy decision making. So I’d be happy to hear the panel’s comment on that. Thank you.

DUDZIAK: Yeah. So thank you so much for that question. And, you know, during the Truman years, you know, Harry Truman did accomplish important things as a matter—in terms of civil rights. But one of the things that got civil rights really on the agenda as a crucial issue for presidents from Truman, Eisenhower, who wasn’t all that interested in it, LBJ, who actually was pushed by his aides to do more because of, in part, foreign policy issues. You know, the U.S. was, you know, emerging as such an important world leader in the aftermath of World War II. And the U.S. was trying to expand its, you know, relations with peoples around the world, especially after African nations became independent. And they would send their diplomats to the United States. The diplomats would want to go from New York, where the U.N. was, to Washington, D.C., to present their credentials to President Kennedy. They’d stop to get a cup of coffee and get thrown out of a diner because they were Black.

So, you know, this is just the early ’60s version of something that was really on the radar screen in the 1940s. And when peoples of other countries would say to American diplomats, why should we want to ally ourselves with you—people in India and elsewhere—why should we want to ally ourselves with the United States when you treat our people who look like us this way? Incidents of lynching, African—Blacks, Black Americans, were news around the world. This was in part because the Soviet Union used race in America as a principal anti-U.S. propaganda theme. So every time when there was a problem within the United States, the Little Rock crisis for example, where nine African American—nine Black children were being—you know, federal troops had to escort them into school through a white mob yelling at them.

And this was, you know, propaganda used by the Soviet Union that was, American diplomats said, you know, to the president, this propaganda is really effective because there’s so much truth in it. When Brown versus Board of Education was up before the Supreme Court, the U.S. brief—U.S. filed a brief on behalf of the plaintiffs. Why would they do that? And the justice department includes a quote from the secretary of state saying that it is in the context of the world struggle between freedom and—between democracy and communism that the problem of discrimination must be viewed. So racism within the United States was a foreign policy problem. And the U.S. came to understand that justice at home actually matters to U.S. foreign relations.

That realization and that progress was tremendously important during that period. I think it’s also a lesson that we should be more attentive to across the decades. And I think that those kinds of issues actually matter very much in our present moment. So thank you for asking that question.

RUBENSTEIN: OK. Here. Right here. Do we have a mic?

Q: I’m going to ask a way-out question, following on yours. Why didn’t anybody include suffragettes and the suffragette movement, which was major in the decision making on World War I? It was argued all throughout. It had an enormous influence on whether we were going to go to war. And it was the first big-time war we went into. Half the electorate.

DUDZIAK: Thank you for asking that question. And, of course, the movement for the right to vote for women was tremendously important and consequential. And those—and the suffrage movement had posters around the White House, you know, criticizing President Wilson. There was, of course, violence against the suffrage movement. And the—and it helped moving towards the constitutional amendment that parts of the suffrage movement basically promised Wilson that they wouldn’t oppose going to war if he supported suffrage. And the only one of—the only votes against World War I was actually Jeanette Rankin, the very first woman who served in Congress. And she thought that we needed to spend more time thinking about whether Americans should be sending their children to fight. The U.S. had a naval war that it was facing, but, of course, in World War I, the United States were all in on sending troops.

RUBENSTEIN: She voted against the Second World War, too.

DUDZIAK: Yes. Yes.

NICHOLS: And that question also opens up one of the things—a decision making process we had in trying to think through the list. Which is, you know, how do Americans who are involved in transnational movements but maybe aren’t policymakers fit, right? So there’s an Anglo-American suffrage movement, or, you know, I’m thinking about the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, which I’ve written a lot about, the first two American women to win the Nobel Peace Prize. Jane Addams and Emily Balch are members, right? But there’s no one decision. Is it the Kellogg-Briand Pact to outlaw war that should be the one that we include for the transnational peace movement run by women? What does that look like? And so that’s the challenge of that sort of thing. It’s absolutely in every history class that we teach, but it isn’t quite quantifiable in the way that this sort of survey needs to operate.

RUBENSTEIN: OK. I think probably we would have—OK. OK.

Q: Thank you. Bob Scott, Adelphi University.

To what extent are the worst decisions characterized by manipulated and false information? I think about the invasion of Iraq. I was on duty during the Gulf of Tonkin incident, so I know firsthand what was going on there. Those are two examples of false information. Perhaps others are too. So to what extent has that influenced the voting?

DUDZIAK: Can I say, you know, it’s—in both of those incidents it’s not just false information, but it’s also a—it’s, at best, an ambiguous situation that is then drawn upon in the context of electoral politics. I think that’s a crucial part. It’s something that we haven’t been talking about. But, you know, the president rushing forward, why? Because LBJ was facing an election. He needed to look strong about war against Barry Goldwater. And the same in the other context. So you’ve got this sort of Bush in an election basically red-baiting opponents of the march to war in a way that was reminiscent of McCarthyism. And so at best an ambiguous situation. Why not wait? Well, let’s rush forward, because that’s going to help me solidify my electoral base. And presidents have done that to get elected or reelected.

LINDSAY: I would just add to that, I think in a number of these cases administrations actually had good information, but they were driven to act precisely for what, to Mary’s point, is their calculation of what they stood to win or lose domestically in terms of American politics. I mean to me, what was fascinating in sort of having to write up the decision to send combat troops to Vietnam in 1965, is that the Johnson administration, the president, had great information. And Johnson and McNamara, neither of them believed they were going to win. What LBJ said was that this was the worst damn mess he had ever seen. And we know he said it because we have the phone conversations that he taped. So he took the country into a war in which he didn’t think we were going to win, but publicly he was projecting a very different view because, again, to some extent—

RUBENSTEIN: Well, McNamara and Johnson both did that. On the Gulf of Tonkin, we actually—one of our ships, I think the Maddox, was hit, maybe inadvertently.

LINDSAY: On August 2.

RUBENSTEIN: But the Turner Joy was probably not. And that was where we knew the Turner Joy wasn’t hit, but we went ahead and got the Tonkin resolution passed. Yes, right here.

Q: Thank you. (Coughs.) Excuse. My name is—my name is Steve Buffone.

I just have a question about comparing this survey and those who are surveyed with perhaps other surveys. Apropos of the point that the latest best decision is 1962, right, or that NAFTA is not reflected, because those who were surveyed are historians. I’m just wondering, are there other surveys out there about the best and worst American foreign policy decisions that reflect the views of contemporary practitioners, or those sorts of things?

LINDSAY: None that I’m aware of.

NICHOLS: And, it’s worth saying, you can download from the website the full list. And you will see NAFTA—there are lots of more recent decisions on the full list. You can see how many votes—how the weighted averages look, that sort of thing.

RUBENSTEIN: OK. Right here.

Q: (Off mic)—Harvard Law School.

I’d like to take you back to the challenge that Mr. Lindsay raised and a speaker before about Ronald Reagan, considered one of the most successful and impactful presidents and presidencies, and suggest two possible actions, decisions that might be considered for the list. One is the Strategic Defense Initiative, which helped win the Cold War, right? That was a concrete action. And the second one that changed, I think, the mindset around the world in terms of democracy was President Reagan’s 1982 address the parliament, the Westminster address, which led to the National Endowment of Democracy to build up the infrastructure of democracy around the world. We maybe have turned away from that, but would either of those have warranted consideration for top ten?

NICHOLS: SDI we talked about.

LINDSAY: We talked about that. I should go back maybe just to just put everything in context. This project began by myself and a research assistant reading ten major history, foreign policy textbooks. We came up with almost 700 things that we could call a decision. And I was all gung-ho for having SHAFR historians go through all 700 decisions that I came up with. (Laughter.)

NICHOLS: We were not. (Laughs.)

LINDSAY: By my research assistant, Margaret Gach, said, no, they will not do this. So we pared it down to under 200. And then we had arguments about what should be on, what should go off, because at the end of the day we wanted it to be manageable. And again, we had very sort of earnest debates about what should be on or what should be off. So that is just always a challenge that we’re going to—

RUBENSTEIN: Related to that, just the increase in defense spending that Reagan did was fairly dramatic compared to what had happened before. Then that may have been propelling the Cold War to end more than almost anything else.

OK. We are just about out of time. Maybe one more question. I see one hand in the back.

Q: Alexandra Starr with International Crisis Group.

When we look at this list of the best decisions, it’s pretty obvious that the current administration is not following the underlying principles, right, that undergird those—you know, those decisions and, more broadly, that orientation or view of the United States. And Jim Lindsay, you talked about this a little bit, like, trying to spark a conversation. But how do you think it’s possible to sort of disseminate, or—at this particular moment the idea that some of the most successful decisions that have been made in foreign policy have been undergirded by a very different set of principles and view of what the United States can be in the world?

NICHOLS: Well, I’d love to single out one that we haven’t talked about, and maybe also speaks to your question, the withholding of visas from Jewish refugees who were fleeing Nazi tyranny. I was really pleased to see that it comes in at eighth on the worst list. And the more you unpack how and why that happened, you get a sense of both the complicity of the State Department, the FDR administration, the American public. In 1939 I looked up roughly 70 percent of Americans didn’t want to extend visas to those fleeing Nazi tyranny. And, you know, it tells you something about the American people. It tells you about something about our values, unfortunately. And it tells you how experts, we need to keep having these conversations and thinking about these ideals. And how complicated it is to move through crises, especially when they “other.”

A lot of these decisions, another way to think about it, is manipulating information in the context of an us-versus-them scenario, and not—you know, many of the best decisions here are multilateral partnerships, working with other people, yes, leading—the U.S., leading, but not always taking the foremost position there, right? And I think that’s a critical way of clustering some of the ideas here. And I’m hoping that we’ll have lots of conversations about this, write op-eds, have people debate this sort of thing. But I think that was one I didn’t expect necessarily, the withholding of visas. And I think it’s a really important one that I love to teach. The story of the St. Louis being turned around. Two hundred and fifty of 900-or-so people on that vessel die in death camps, right? Because the U.S. didn’t open just that much room for 900 human beings, when it had the capacity, right?

So this—you look at what’s going on with ICE and other things right now, I mean, is this who we are, is the question you should ask. And if historians are asked to look back at the past, we say some of the worst decisions that administrations and citizens have been complicit in have been those that do not embody American values.

RUBENSTEIN: So let me make two final comments. I want to thank everybody for your participation and for the role in putting this together. The foreign policy decision that I remember the most affecting me was when I was in, I think, the eighth or ninth grade there was a Cuban Missile Crisis. And my teacher said, I’m not going to give you any homework tonight because we’re not going to be here tomorrow. (Laughter.) It was fairly disconcerting. But when you look at public policy schools, when they teach how to make foreign policy decisions or good strategic decisions, they often cite the Cuban Missile Crisis as a way of actually sitting down, having a rational discussion, ignoring, in the end, what the generals wanted to do—which was to bomb—and coming up with the quarantine.

But two things that people don’t remember, that I now learned about it, was, one, we had an agreement with the Russians that we would take our missiles out of Turkey, the Jupiter missiles, but we wouldn’t tell the American people. So we had a deal with the Russians. Oh, we can trust you, the Russians, but don’t tell the American people. That was surprising. And secondly, it turns out, we didn’t know this at the time, that while the Soviets removed their strategic intercontinental ballistic missiles, they didn’t remove the tactical nuclear weapons, which we didn’t know they had at the time, right? Had we known that, it would have been looked at differently. All right, how did—go ahead.

LINDSAY: Maybe I just want to close this—I want to, again, thank you personally for pushing us to do this project.

RUBENSTEIN: Thanks for getting it done. You did a great job.

LINDSAY: And to the work you do supporting history. (Applause.)

RUBENSTEIN: How many people here—final question. How many people here think the decision to create the Council on Foreign Relations should have been the most important foreign policy decision. (Laughter, applause.) All right, guys? OK. Thank you all.

LINDSAY: Thank you, David.

RUBENSTEIN: Thanks a lot.

(END)

This is an uncorrected transcript.