muddling through, 1945-56

I have long believed that a defining characteristic of American foreign policy is a tendency, perhaps even a preference, for muddling through. U.S. policymakers frequently make incremental decisions and then make minor adjustments as time goes on. What they call "strategy" is rarely more than an agreement on some vague overarching goal.

I've just finished a fine book that persuasively argues that is how the United States and Britain developed their foreign policies during the first post-World War II decade. In his Grand Improvisation: America Confronts the British Superpower, 1945-1957 (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2018)  Derek Leebaert says that period "was a world without any American 'grand strategy,' and one in which most every move by Washington was a desperate improvisation."

I wish I could write a book like this, deftly combining vivid personal details with big picture analyses. Leebaert has read widely, both in recent academic tomes and in archival boxes of numerous officials.  He was the first to get declassified a seminal document, NSC-75 on British Military Commitments from July 1950. He knows and explains easily what was going on in Washington and Whitehall.

Among his arguments: Secretary of State Acheson was no Anglophile.
- The British bluffed America into aiding Greece in 1948; they weren't really ready to pull out.
- Truman stumbled into the Berlin blockade, following the British innovation.
- George Kennan is highly overrated by later historians and was often sidelined by others when he was a senior official.
- One of the key players, rarely mentioned by most historians, was Trruman's Treasury Secretary John Snyder. He often presided at US-British meetings held in Acheson's office.
- The Joint Chiefs of Staff time and again opposed overseas involvements.
- US foreign policy was weakened by the influx of "emergency men" and later women, who took over from the career professionals.

Refreshingly revisionist but deeply sourced.