The Foreign Service Journal, June 2009

J U N E 2 0 0 9 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 77 spectrum contains no mauve, nothing but plain black and white.” Just the kind of world view needed to be Amer- ica’s first official propagandist? John Brown, a Foreign Service officer for more than 20 years, compiles the Public Diplomacy Press and Blog Re- view (http://publicdiplomacypressand blogreview.blogspot.com/) . He also teaches at Georgetown University and is a contributor to Place Branding and Public Diplomacy , a journal published by Palgrave Macmillan. A Seminal Figure Traitor to His Class: The Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt H.W. Brands, Doubleday, 2008, $35, hardcover, 896 pages. R EVIEWED BY J OHN S TARRELS When George W. Bush upended the post–World War II tradition of a multilateral U.S. foreign policy, he not only repudiated the example of his fa- ther, but that of Franklin Delano Roo- sevelt, who painfully crafted an alliance system that set the terms of reference for American diplomacy over six decades. With our advantage of hindsight, it is all too easy to forget how difficult it was for FDR to overcome the power of the isolationist lobby and public aversion to international affairs. How he did so constitutes approximately one-third of H.W. Brands’ magisterial biography of our 32nd president, Traitor to His Class: The Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roo- sevelt. Brands, the Dickson Allen Ander- son Centennial Professor of History at the University of Texas at Austin, re- minds us at the outset that “Roo- sevelt’s first-term allergy to foreign policy was topical rather than sys- temic; he kept clear of the world not because he lacked strong views but because he realized that his views weren’t generally shared” by the U.S. public. Thus, a major part of FDR’s campaign to prepare Americans for the nation’s foreign policy challenges was sounding the alarm on the grow- ing menace posed by international fascism — without unduly panicking the public and handing his domestic enemies yet another weapon with which to attack him. Like all smart politicians, Roosevelt knew he needed more than slogans to make his case. A supreme pragmatist, he used all tools at his disposal. One of the more effective ones, according to Brands, was obfuscation. Before a large Chicago crowd in the summer of 1937, for example, he called for a “quaran- tine” against German and Japanese ag- gression. But he didn’t spell out what he meant by that term: “In fact, lest his audience — in Chicago and beyond — think he was advocating military action, he stressed the opposite: ‘It is my de- termination to pursue a policy of peace.’’’ FDR’s machinations could only take him so far, however. By the summer of 1940, Hitler’s Wehrmacht sat astride Western Europe and was on the verge of invading Britain. This is whereWin- ston Churchill entered the picture. As Brands and other historians have noted, it was Churchill, more than any other foreign leader, who kept FDR fully ap- prised of the Nazi menace through pri- vate briefing papers, which passed under the radar of the White House communications system. As Britain’s military situation continued to deterio- rate, Churchill increased the pressure for more American arms. FDR under- stood the gravity of the situation, but continued to be wary of isolationist pressures. Desperate or not, Churchill had to wait until FDR deemed the time right for more robust action against the Germans. In that regard, Adolf Hitler baffled Roosevelt, Brands observes. Was he a madman, or a more conventional politician masquerading as one? To get a handle on his nemesis, FDR sent Under Secretary of State Sumner Welles to Berlin to meet with the Ger- man leader in early 1940. Welles re- ported back that, compared with his chilling reception by Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop, “Hitler was a sweetheart, at any rate in personal style and tone.” In terms of substance, however, no progress was made. Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor quickly triggered a congressional dec- laration of war on Tokyo. Citing Ger- many’s military alliance with Japan, Hitler did precisely what FDR wanted him to do by declaring war against the United States on Dec. 11, 1941. Traitor to His Class may strike the community of FDR experts as painfully obvious in its analysis, but I nonethe- less urge you to read it. Not only is its prose straightforward and free of jargon but, more importantly, it provides real insights into the life of one of America’s most fascinating and seminal public fig- ures. It’s hard to imagine what our world would have been like without him. John Starrels, aWashington, D.C.-area writer, was a senior public affairs offi- cer at the International Monetary Fund until his retirement in 2006. B O O K S