Author: morrowj

Which diplomatic leaders have been the most significant in US history?  I think it is incredibly difficult to judge the significance of a diplomat.  Diplomatic leaders are called upon in times of crisis and so one must take into account the seriousness of the situation a diplomat is dealing with and the effectiveness of his or her diplomacy in diffusing that situation.  Creating a top ten list of the most successful American diplomatic leaders (1 being the most significant to 10 being the tenth least significant) is challenging due to the nearly three and a half centuries of US diplomacy and the changing historical contexts over the years.  My objective in this post is actually to discuss a very insignificant US diplomatic leader, which I will get to in a short while.  In the meantime, I’ll provide a short list of a few significant diplomats who found success in their diplomacy.

1.  Benjamin Franklin.  How could I not include Ben Franklin, father of electricity? During the American Revolution Franklin served as a US ambassador to France.  During these years he balanced diplomatic relations with Britain and France, convincing the French to fight alongside the Americans while negotiating peace treaties with Britain.
2. William Seward.  The American Civil War represented an incredibly significant threat to the existence of the United States.  Seward’s ability to keep Britain and France from recognizing the Confederacy as an autonomous state helped ensure Union victory and the existence of the United States as we know it.
3. Ronald Reagan.  Diplomacy with any government representing a different ideology is always difficult.  US diplomacy with the Soviet Union is as difficult as it came.  Reagan found success in being flexible and being willing to compromise during his relations with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.

One of the least significant US diplomatic leaders in US history is William Donovan.

On July 11^th, 1941 before the US entered the war, FDR appointed William Donovan as head of the newly created post Coordinator of Information.  The purpose of the C.O.I. was incredibly vague, giving Donovan the freedom to organize and run his intelligence agency as he pleased.  Donovan was a successful lawyer from Buffalo whose outlandish and unpredictable fighting style during the First World War earned him the nickname “Wild Bill” and a Medal of Honor.  He ran against FDR for lieutenant governor of New York on the Republican ticket and lost.  But FDR recognized Donovan’s ingenuity and fighting spirit and thought he would be a valuable member of his cabinet.

The Japanese attacks on Pearl Harbor on December 7^th, 1941 marked a very real and significant threat to the United States.  The attacks shifted the American mood from isolationism to interventionism. And so in 1942, FDR transformed the C.O.I. into the Office of Strategic Services placing it under the jurisdiction of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.  With Donovan at the helm, nothing was off limits, from assassinating foreign leaders and engaging in ridiculous kinds of propaganda to conducting absurd covert operations like injecting Hitler’s food with female hormones so that Hitler would lose his mustache and masculine voice.  Donovan tried to win the war in a Hollywood style – single-handedly – and that was the kind of diplomacy that suited his style but the efforts of the O.S.S. with a few exceptions, amounted to little in the grand scheme of things.

There are a number of reasons for Donovan and the O.S.S.’s insignificance during World War II.  Donovan’s personality is one reason.  His fearlessness and recklessness were not traits best suited for a leader of an intelligence gathering agency.  Before the creation of the O.S.S. American intelligence agencies were scattered throughout branches of the army and federal government.  The US’s inexperience at having a centralized intelligence agency and FDR’s willingness to let Donovan run his own show is another reason.  On that same point, Donovan and the Allies’ enemies, the Nazis, Fascists, and Russians had been conducting espionage and cover warfare for decades.  They were able to handle the bulk of what the O.S.S. threw at them.  Wild Bill Donovan faced a significant task in being put in charge of the O.S.S. but unlike Ben Franklin, William Seward, and Ronald Reagan, he was unsuccessful in his duties as a diplomat.

Donovan never fulfilled his dream of heading a domestic centralized intelligence agency after the war.  Maybe it’s best he never did.

James Madison

By John Morrow

Kate Martin spoke at Dickinson College last Wednesday about the history of U.S. government surveillance and its implications today.  At this event hosted by The Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues, Ms. Martin sought to answer fundamental questions regarding the processes set up by the Constitution in deciding the legality of government surveillance – particularly on electronic communications.  While laying out the arguments for and against National Security Agency surveillance, Kate Martin examined the historical context of liberty and national security to develop a well-rounded perspective on this issue.

Every year The Clarke Forum invites a prominent public speaker to give a lecture to students in honor of Constitution Day.  I imagine they would have a difficult time finding somebody more qualified to speak on this issue than Kate Martin.  As the current director of the Center for National Security Studies in Washington D.C. Kate Martin is an expert on the preservation of civil liberties in the face of government interference.

A study of the Constitution’s influence on national security policy today, however, must acknowledge the circumstances that shaped its creation.  Kate Martin offered us that in her speech by citing two distinct problems arising from the Constitution that hinder clarity on law making today.  “When the Constitution was written,” Martin explains, “there were in some ways two restraints on the power of government.  One was the Constitution or the law and the other was the lack of a technological capacity of the government to listen on everybody’s communications all the time.”  Of course the founders of the Constitution and leading foreign policy experts of a young United States had no way of foreseeing cell phone calls and email chains as a threat to national security.  However, Kate Martin’s quote hints at a fundamental issue – the significant change in the meaning of national security and the resources accessible to the government over more than two centuries.

In 1792, James Madison claimed that “every word [of the U.S. Constitution]… decides a question between power and liberty.”  The power entrusted to the government through the constitution is meant to preserve liberty at home.  The question of how to preserve liberty could not be more different today than in 1792.  Coming off the heels of revolution, the United States of the late 18th century was mostly concerned with sovereignty.  Balancing expansionism, neutrality, and involvement with Europe, the U.S. was just finding its place in the world.  George Herring argues in his comprehensive study of U.S. foreign relations From Colony to Superpower that “if the United States could avoid war for a generation… the growth in population and resources combined with its favorable geographic location would enable it ‘in a just cause, to bid defiance to any power on earth’ ” (From Colony to Superpower, 56).  National Security and the preservation of liberty in the 1790’s is not quite the same as the email hackers and airplane hijackers we face in the 21st century.

With everything Kate Martin said and much that can be learned by studying U.S. diplomatic history it is only natural to want a conclusive answer on what the NSA is doing right and what it is doing wrong.  We live in an exciting time.  The world is moving, perhaps, faster now than it ever has.  Yet this is where it is necessary to be level headed.    In Martin’s words, this issue “is a question that our country hasn’t decided and that we all need to participate in thinking through how it should be decided.”  I believe, as Kate Martin does, that more and more information on this topic will be revealed in years to come.  It is necessary for us – whose interests are directly involved – to come to a conclusion over time together.