William Appleman Williams - Criticism

Criticism

To some degree, Williams's economic interpretation of American diplomacy has been criticized on the same grounds as Charles A. Beard's larger economic analysis of American history. In 1974, for instance, N. Gordon Levin Jr. compared Williams to Beard and argued that the Open Door model "is inadequate because it insists on forcing all political-moral and strategic motivations" for American foreign policy into "the Procrustean confines" of relentless economic expansion. Williams' response was that he was merely re-stating what American intellectual and political leaders said at the time.

Another serious critique of Williams's work was offered by Robert W. Tucker in 1971, followed by Robert James Maddox in 1973, and by Howard Schonberger in 1975. Tucker’s arguments challenged those of Williams by arguing that United States foreign policy had been generally passive, rather than aggressive, before 1939. Tucker’s arguments were elaborated and expanded later by other scholars. Maddox in The New Left and the Origins of the Cold War criticized Williams, Lloyd Gardner, and other revisionist scholars for alleged pervasive misuse of historical source documents and for a general lack of objectivity. Williams and the others published detailed rebuttals in the New York Times Book Review in 1973.

In 1986, Arthur Schlesinger Jr., whom Williams always distrusted for his closeness to power brokers, criticized him from a liberal perspective in The Cycles of American History. In the 1950s, Schlesinger had accused Williams of "Communist" influence, because of Williams's critique of U.S. policy toward the Soviet Union in American-Russian Relations and the Monthly Review article "Second Look at Mr. X," a response to George F. Kennan's Foreign Affairs article "The Sources of Soviet Conduct," published under the moniker Mr. X in 1947.