[Dear H-Diplo Members: We will be posting today, in five parts, our
roundtable review of Tony Smith's _Foreign Attachments: The Power of
Ethnic Groups in the Making of American Foreign Policy_. Please feel free
to respond to the roundtable. Comments will be posted on H-Diplo when we
resume our regular schedule on 4 January 2001.

Best wishes for the new year from the H-Diplo editors and editorial
board. -- D. Labrosse]

------------------------------------------------------------------------
H-DIPLO ROUNDTABLE REVIEW

Tony Smith.  _Foreign Attachments: The Power of Ethnic Groups in the
Making of American Foreign Policy_.  Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
2000. x + 224 pp. bibliographical references and index. $35.00 (cloth),
ISBN 0674002946.

Review Editor: Gerald Horne

Reviewers: Robert Dean, Andrew DeRoche, Mark Lawrence, Elizabeth McKillen
------------------------------------------------------------------------


Editor's Introduction by Gerald Horne
<gchorne@email.unc.edu>

As the following reviews suggest, Tony Smith's new book is bound to stir
widespread interest in the groves of academe -- and beyond.  In assessing
the impact of various ethnic and racial groups on U.S. foreign policy,
Smith has tackled an enormously complicated and sensitive issue.  Just as
some find it acceptable to tell biting jokes about other ethnic groups --
but not their own -- inevitably some readers of this work may agree that
*those* groups need to be curbed in their ability to influence U.S.
foreign groups but certainly not their own -- which is simply reflecting
the "vital interests" and the "common good" of the nation.

As I read these reviews, one point that comes quickly to mind is the
question of sources.  It was not necessary for this book to engage primary
sources in languages like Armenian, Spanish and Hebrew -- to cite just a
few examples -- but, ultimately, if we are to gain deeper understanding of
this phenomenon of domestic influences on U.S. foreign policy, this
awesome research task must be tackled.  Likewise, interviews with
officials and others in the "homeland" -- be it Armenia, Cuba or Israel --
too would be useful at some point.  Still, the fact remains that Smith's
book stands as a landmark in the field and merits the widespread attention
that it undoubtedly will continue to garner.

********************************************

Review by Gerald Horne

For some time now I have thought that the often hysterical melding of
concerns about "multi-culturalism" and more trivial concerns. e.g. whether
or not African-American students sit together in campus cafeterias,
actually mask a much more substantive concern:  the inherent fissiparous
tendencies that inhere in the settler state that is the U.S. This book
inferentially confirms this suspicion with its insistent focus on the
powerful Israeli and Armenian lobbies.  For Tony Smith presents a
different picture of "multi-culturalism," a picture -- I might add -- that
is much more relevant to the pressing concerns actually faced by the U.S..
In the process, he contributes to the discourse on the construction of
"whiteness," i.e. how was it that those who warred on the shores of Europe
-- English vs. Irish, German vs. Dutch, Russian vs. Pole -- somehow are
reconciled as "white" over here?  Smith cogently underscores the crucial
role of the Cold War in this process, noting how "containment managed to
bring closer together Euro American ethnicities in a common bond of
anticommunism and American patriotism."  (p. 56)  The question, of course,
is what will be the impact on this cohesion in light of the Soviet Union's
collapse?  The author points out cogently that after the U.S.-led NATO
bombing of Serbia, among the first to protest were Serb-Ameicans.  It
appears that this weighty post-Cold War question helped to bring this book
into being.

For the author is quite concerned with the impact of certain ethnic groups
on U.S. foreign policy though he notes with apparent satisfaction "the
role of Polish Americans in the eventual breakup of the Soviet empire in
Eastern Europe."  (p. 57)  Of course, it is not easy to condemn the role
of certain groups in influencing foreign policy while not doing the same
to others when the "common good" is so hard to define.  It is not clear to
me, at least, that the disappearance of the Soviet Union was a boon for
Africa -- or African- Americans for that matter.  The author does note
sagely and correctly that "African American hopes for US foreign policy
did not meld with geopolitical thinking in Washington as easily as did the
concerns of Jewish or Euro-Americans" (of course the latter two are not
incongruent) but this simply underscores the difficulty in defining
precisely a "common good" for such a diverse, sprawling nation. Likewise,
if it can be said that "Jewish Americans played a role in breaking up what
might otherwise have been a budding relationship between Washington and
Moscow" it is not clear to me if this were altogether positive -- even for
the U.S. ruling elite. (p. 59)  Put bluntly, the disappearance of the USSR
which followed in the wake of the breakdown of this "budding relationship"
has led to a resurgence of "Islamic fundamentalism," a China strengthened
as a direct outgrowth of anti-Soviet policies, ditto for a European Union
and a budding European defense organ that very well may lead to the
unravelling of NATO.

The author devotes a number of pages to the Israeli lobby, noting in that
context that "it surely mattered that all four of George Bush's top
advisers on the Middle East were reportedly Jewish" and that "thanks to it
American supporters, Israel may often know more than the Pentagon about
the thinking at the Defense Department."  (p. 123)  The author concludes
that it "appears that a foreign state with the active help of a powerful
domestic lobby is trying to determine American policy in a critical region
of the world." (p. 161)  If these assertions are accurate, one wonders how
far back in time this influence extends and what role it may have played
in such controversial matters as the Jonathan Pollard case and/or the
Israeli bombing of the U.S. Liberty.

Of course, the author misreads certain aspects of this complex picture.
For example, when a Latino group suggests that they want to "help shape"
U.S. policies within the hemisphere -- a legitimate request by any measure
-- the author suggests that this means they want to play a "dominant
role." The author talks quite a bit about the "common good" but in a
nation riven with class, racial, ethnic and other divisions, invoking this
warm phrase is no substitute for an operative definition of what this
phrase might mean.  Thus, I am not sure if there is an "objective national
interest irrespective of class, ethnic or gender perception" though I am
willing to be convinced otherwise. (p. 44) The author also seems to have a
critical view of affirmative action but in a book of this character it
might be useful to examine -- even in passing -- how this policy manifests
in other nations, e.g.  Malaysia.  This raises another point:  the reader
would benefit if told how other "settler states" -- e.g. Canada or New
Zealand or Australia -- handle problems similar to those the U.S. faces.

Thus, the author concedes that those groups -- e.g. African Americans and
Native Americans -- that "can demonstrate they have been marginalized by
the greater society, should be entitled to claim a priority of ethnic
rights over national obligations." (p.140)  Two points arise:  this sounds
like a rationale for the kind of affirmative action that the author
otherwise seems to disdain and why not include on this list both
Mexican-Americans and Asian-Americans, both of whom -- particularly in the
Far West -- certainly can fully "demonstrate they have been marginalized
by the greater society."?  Likewise, I am not as negative toward Mexican
immigration patterns northward as the author seems to be and, in any
event, those patterns are driven by a larger political economy hardly
susceptible to rhetorical blandishments or less than comprehensive
intervention.

Still, Prof. Smith amply demonstrates that the question of "multi-
culturalism" is much more complicated than the racial composition of
campus cafeterias might suggest.  And for that, we all owe him a debt of
gratitude.


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