Book Review: United States: Power, Freedom, and Diplomacy
| Author | Norman A. Graebner |
| DOI | 10.1177/002070206401900421 |
| Published date | 01 December 1964 |
| Date | 01 December 1964 |
| Subject Matter | Book Review |
BOOK
REVIEWS
571
The
report
of
the
Londonderry
Act
is
called
for
without
recognition
of
the
extent to
which
it
protects the
right
to
a reasonable
day of
leisure
for
many
Canadians.
The
author
concludes
by
what
is
to
my
mind
a
quite
unjustifiably
complacent
statement,
that
the
over-all
situation
in Canada
is
a
good
one.
In
summary,
this
is
a useful
book
of
reference and
if
not
accepted
uncritically
will
help
in
the
informed protection of
the
fundamental
rights
of
Canadians.
House
of
Commons
ANDREW
BREWIN
Ottawa
United
States
POWER,
FREEDOM,
AND
DIPLOMACY.
The
Foreign
Policy
of
the
United
States
of America. By
Paul
Seabury.
1963.
(New
York:
Toronto:
Random
House. xiii,
424pp.
$6.90)
In
this
thoughtful and
scholarly
analysis
of
American behaviour
in
the
Cold
War,
Professor
Seabury
is
concerned
not
only
with
the
quality
of
established
United
States
policies
abroad but
also
the
intellectual
and
institutional
factors
which
impinge
on
the
free
and
proper
functioning
of
the
American
system
in
the
area
of
foreign
affairs.
Whether
he
writes
of
such
conceptual
problems
as
isolationism,
bipolar-
ism,
and
ethics,
or
such
institutional
questions
as
the
role
of
public
opinion
in
policy
formulation,
his
intimate
knowledge
of
the
best
in
existing
literature
is
always
in
evidence.
Much
of his
commentary
exposes
the
chief
irony
in
American
life-the
widespread
fear
of
the
concentration
of
the
decision-making
power
within
the
nation
and
the
simultaneous
encouragement,
because of
fear,
of
that
concentration
in
the
interest
of
national survival.
Like
many
writers
before him,
Professor
Seabury
is
critical
of
the
American
tendency
to
rationalize
many national
policies
and pro-
grammes
as elements
of defence
against
the
varied
challenges
of
the
U.S.S.R.
He
notes
that
decisions
in
such
tangential areas
as
foreign aid,
civil
rights,
educational
and
scientific
development,
as
well
as
in
a
wide
spectrum
of
government-sponsored
domestic
programmes,
are
designed
to
prove
that
the
United
States
is
either
keeping
pace
or
winning
the
competition
for
prestige
and
power. No
longer,
the
author
observes,
is
there
much
relationship
between
the
vast
defence
effort
of
the
United
States
and
the
actual
creation
of
improved
conditions
in
world
politics.
The
single-minded
concern
for
power
promises
the
alleviation
of
none
of
the
fundamental
problems
which
plague
the
globe;
it
guarantees
neither
eminence
nor
security. Power,
he
fears, has
become
an
end
in
itself.
This
volume's
final
chapter
is
at
once
its most
ambitious
and
its
least
satisfactory.
In
his
search
for
a
national
purpose
which
will
meet
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