The Ghost at the Feast: America and the Collapse of World Order, 1900-1941 by Robert Kagan

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Author Robert Kagan has given us an extraordinary book that looks at U.S. foreign policy from 1898 to the attack on Pearl Harbor. This book does not simply offer broad strokes but gets into the key aspects of decision making during this period.

Kagan is a State Department veteran and the author of “Dangerous Nation” which I have not read. This book follows “Dangerous Nation as the second in a trilogy. Some have classified him as a “neo-con” but at this point maybe those attempts to file individuals into defined categories is not as useful as it might have been once.

The United States of the early 20th century was indeed developing into an economic colossus but without the desire to play a large role in international affairs. The country, and its leaders, expressed a high level of disdain and distrust for such affairs, and were very reluctant to get intertwined in the rivalries and great power maneuvering of Europe. Kagan takes us through this period, leading up to the U.S. entry into World War I, with great detail. We get a real view of public opinion, and the political currents running through this question in the U.S. That opinion, right up until the U.S. entry into the War, always had a sizable segment favoring no involvement. The book is worth reading just for the detailed description of the tortured road Woodrow Wilson took from neutrality to American entry into WW I, and how some key public opinion changed over the course of the first three years of the war. Was there something more at stake than anger over German actions?

“Walter Lippmann spelled out these broader interests in the New Republic in the weeks following Germany’s January 30 announcement. He argued that the United States had an interest not in legalisms about neutral rights but in the preservation of an ‘Atlantic Community’ made up of the western and mostly democratic nations on both sides of the ocean. It had an interest in seeing to it that ‘the world’s highway’ should not be closed either to Americans or the Western Allies. It had an interest in defending ‘the civilization of which we are a part’ against the ‘anarchy’ that would result from a German victory. Germany was fighting for ‘a victory subversive of the world system in which America lives.’”

Kagan, Robert The Ghost at the Feast America and the Collapse of World Order 1900-1941 pg. 190

Lippmann articulated a concept that after World War II became a defining principle of U.S. foreign policy. But those that saw a larger U.S. interest in establishing and maintaining an international system based on common “western” values were to be disappointed at the end of the First World War. Wilson failed to bring the country along to this ideal, and despite the victory over Germany the U.S. simply receded, diplomatically, to its pre-war mindset of little or no involvement after the war. Kagan shows us the disaster that entailed, for the world, and for the United States.

“It is the contention of this book that the United States had it within its power to preserve the peace in Europe after 1919, and at a manageable cost. But for reasons having little to do with capacity , Washington policymakers would not take the steps necessary. And while it is customary to focus on the collapse of world order in the 1930s it was in the 1920s that the peace was truly lost. By the time Franklin Roosevelt took office in March 1933, Hitler was already in power in Germany, and the self described “have-not” powers, which included Italy and Japan along with Germany, had already embarked on their determined attempt to undo the fragile order that Americans were half-heartedly attempting to establish.”

Kagan, Robert The Ghost at the Feast America and the Collapse of World Order 1900-1941 pg. 220

Kagan lays out the thesis and then supports it with pretty difficult to argue with facts. With Europe in shambles from the war new diplomatic dynamics were being established, but as mentioned Washington was absent.

As Mark Twain said history doesn’t repeat itself but it does rhyme. As Woodrow Wilson fought for American participation in the League of Nations he was bitterly opposed by the national Republican Party.

“It was the party of Theodore Roosevelt who had asked Americans to ‘take a risk for internationalism.’ But in the process of opposing Wilson and the League, Lodge and his colleagues had radically shifted. The Republican Party became the party it would be for the next quarter century, the party that equated internationalism with Bolshevism, the party of ‘Americanism’ and insular nationalism, the party of rigid abstention from world politics, the party of William Borah. Republicans treated the League as if it were a European plot for world domination. They depicted France and Great Britain not as loyal allies who deserved American support but as greedy imperialists trying to bully and ensnare the United States in their wily scheme.”


Kagan, Robert The Ghost at the Feast America and the Collapse of World Order 1900-1941 pg. 254

And so the short sighted American demand for full repayment of the war debts of Britain and France led to a circular firing squad, with these demands spurring continued allied demands on the defeated Germans for full reparation payments. And with no security structure in place in the absence of American involvement the financial, as well as the security fears of France and Germany, brought the world full circle.

“Americans on the scene-career diplomats, military officers, and political appointees alike-warned throughout the 1920s that the danger of another war was high, that American economic interests were threatened, and that absent a more active American diplomacy a ‘catastrophe’ loomed.”
Kagan, Robert The Ghost at the Feast America and the Collapse of World Order 1900-1941 pg. 302

Kagan’s historical analysis is quite right, and the history is precise. Kagan, of course, is not looking solely at Europe. In much the same manner as in Europe the problems in Asia were beginning to boil over as well. After WW I there was a serious power vacuum in Asia, and the Japanese moved to fill it. The danger was seen, but the will to take the necessary steps, primarily a naval buildup that would allow the U.S. to restore some “equilibrium” in the Pacific, just was not there.

“The U.S. minister to China, Paul Reinsch, warned that if Japan were not contained, it would become ‘the greatest engine of military oppression and dominance’ that the world had ever seen and that a ‘huge armed conflict’ would be ‘absolutely inevitable.’”

Kagan, Robert The Ghost at the Feast America and the Collapse of World Order 1900-1941 pg. 314

Kagan takes us on the road to the Second World War, and how, even with the provocations of Hitler, it was still a non-interventionist bent in American public opinion. One of the issues that has always been of interest to me has been what the world, and U.S. response, to the Nazi policies and actions against the German Jewish population had been. Kagan gives us a truly great chapter on the U.S. response to Kristallnacht, and how that vile pogrom, in 1938, impacted U.S. public opinion in a way that was detrimental to Germany. Another chapter that made this book so very interesting to me.

Kagan has a point of view, and spells it out clearly. Agree or not the book will stimulate thought and discussion, and hopefully move that discussion to a higher plane.

This book is a wonderful read for those interested in this subject matter. Kagan has a chapter in the new book “The New Makers of Modern Strategy” which I have not yet arrived at, but I am looking forward to it. Highly recommended.

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