Re-thinking Nicholas J. Spykman : from historical sociology to balance of power

This is a self-archived version of an original article. This version may differ from the original in pagination and typographic details. Author(s): Title: Year: Version: Copyright: Rights: Rights url: Please cite the original version: CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ Re-thinking Nicholas J. Spykman : from historical sociology to balance of power © 2019 The Author Published version Holmila, Antero Holmila, A. (2020). Re-thinking Nicholas J. Spykman : from historical sociology to balance of power. International History Review, 42(5), 951-966. https://doi.org/10.1080/07075332.2019.1655469 2020 Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=rinh20 The International History Review ISSN: 0707-5332 (Print) 1949-6540 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rinh20 Re-thinking Nicholas J. Spykman: from historical sociology to balance of power Antero Holmila To cite this article: Antero Holmila (2019): Re-thinking Nicholas J. Spykman: from historical sociology to balance of power, The International History Review, DOI: 10.1080/07075332.2019.1655469 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/07075332.2019.1655469 © 2019 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group Published online: 16 Sep 2019. Submit your article to this journal View related articles View Crossmark data Re-thinking Nicholas J. Spykman: from historical sociology to balance of power Antero Holmila Department of History and Ethnology, University of Jyv€ askyl€ a, Jyv€ askyl€ a, Finland ABSTRACT This article examines Nicholas J. Spykman’s scholarship beyond geopolitics and International Relations (IR). Because his works have mainly been studied through these prisms, I argue that we have overlooked the most important underlying current of his work: historical sociology. As a result, the prevailing view of him is overtly narrow. When Spykman’s scholarly output is examined from the 1920s to 1940s, an entirely different view of Spykman emerges. Essentially, his fundamental understanding of world affairs derived from the German sociologist Georg Simmel’s theories. In the 1920s and 1930s, Spykman transmuted these underpinnings into IR that later in the 1940s guided his two major works: America’s Strategy in World Politics and posthumously published The Geography of the Peace. Moreover, his magnum opus, America’s Strategy, was not primarily about geopolitics but a forceful contribution to the American debate between isolationism and internationalism. His main goal was to make the Americans understand that geography with its links to economic and military matters made isolationism a futile approach to US national security. This article will contribute to a more multidisciplinary appreciation of his work highlighting his significance and impact by showing how his scholarship reached beyond geopolitics. KEYWORDS Geopolitics; historical sociology; Nicholas J. Spykman; rimland; containment; isolationism; internationalism; historical turn; balance of power …to call him only a geopolitician would mean underrating his scholarly versatility … Hans Haas in Social Forces (1942) 1 Introduction Recently, geopolitics has globally re-emerged as an important frame of analysis in a variety of disciplines, including International Relations (IR) and History. 2 As part of the return of geopolitics, scholars have re-kindled their interest in the writings of the Dutch-born American scholar Nicholas John Spykman (1893–1943), the founder of the Yale Institute of International Studies in 1935 and best-known for his geopolitical concept of rimland: ‘Who controls the rimland rules Eurasia; who rules Eurasia controls the destinies of the world’. 3 While the rediscovery of CONTACT Antero Holmila [email protected] ß2019 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way. THE INTERNATIONAL HISTORY REVIEW https://doi.org/10.1080/07075332.2019.1655469 Spykman is both commendable and perhaps long overdue, it is mainly characterized by the same tendency that has shaped his reputation since the end of World War Two: geopolitics. The purpose of this article is to rethink Spykman’s writings on world affairs in a different light. First, I will show that in order to have a more complete understanding of Spykman’s arguments, especially put forward in his two major books, America’s Strategy in World Politics (1942) and The Geography of the Peace (1944), we must examine them in the context of his long-term scholarship instead of ex post facto frame of Cold War containment. Secondly, I will examine these books in the historical context of their making when American politics and society was embroiled in fundamentally important national debate between isolationism and internationalism. What is more, isolationism and internationalism were not only political or ideological concepts (isms) but they were also geographical constructs often based on simplistic assumptions about American relative safety from the troubled Eurasian littoral –the tendency Spykman fought hard to debunk. Spykman’s diverse understanding of world affairs stemmed from his personal experiences in the Near East (1913–1919) and in the Far East (1919–1920) and was furthered by his studies at Berkeley in the early 1920s, in the field of historical sociology as a disciple of Frederick J. Teggart, who had studied historical geography and social institutions. 4 As I will show throughout this article, all Spykman’s works, spanning the period of nearly quarter of century, were rooted into sociology of Georg Simmel (1858–1918), particularly on his functional-pragmatic views of society whether in terms of power relations, conflict, reconciliation or processes of socialization. Yet, the major paradox about Spykman lies in the fact that while his reputation today is based on geopolitics and IR realism, these epistemological foundations have barely been noted. Further, his contemporaries also viewed him differently. Hans Haas, a political scientist from Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina, captured the essence when he argued that Spykman was not just a geopolitician but also ‘a first-rate, if not the best, contemporary geographer, historian, and political strategist all in one’. 5 Yet, subsequently these diverse assessments of Spykman have disappeared, implying that today’s scholars have largely neglected Spykman’s early writings and focusing on a narrow area such as ‘rimland’. Such focus is indicative about the strength of Cold War ethos and Spykman’s utility in the era which sought to find frameworks and models of containment but it does not do justice to Spykman’s diversity, for whom geopolitics was only a means to an end, not an end in itself. What is more, even his most direct geopolitical utterances relied on sociological premises that have hitherto only rarely been discussed. 6 To start with, I will briefly examine the ways in which Spykman has been considered in the historiography of IR and Geopolitics, as it underscores the reasons why re-thinking Spykman in a multidisciplinary context is needed. Historiography without history: Spykman, international relations and geopolitics According to Colin S. Gray’s recent assertion, Spykman ‘has been apparently air-brushed even from scholarly, let alone more popular works on history, politics and strategy’. 7 On the one hand, his statement hits receptive chord especially if Spykman is contrasted with other better-known early realists and contemporary thinkers on geography and power politics including Halford Mackinder, George F. Kennan, E.H. Carr, Reinhold Niebuhr and Hans Morgenthau. On the other, Gray’s claim is nevertheless exaggerated since it is also plausible to argue that in many areas of thought he never disappeared. Writing at the height of the Cold War in the 1950s and 1960s, IR scholars like Edgar S. Furniss, Ernest B. Haas and Ladis Kristof among others recognized Spykman’s contribution. In 1960, Kenneth W. Thompson named him as a scholar who together with Niebuhr, Carr and Morgenthau played ‘the decisive role’in the development of International Relations. 8 Finally, during the heyday of the Cold War years, Spykman’s rimland thesis formed the geopolitical foundation for the containment to the extent that Geoffrey Parker was compelled to name it as ‘Spykman–Kennan thesis of containment’. Finally, in professional 2 A. HOLMILA cold warrior cadres, Spykman’s views also featured as a longstanding stable in the curriculum of the Industrial College of the Armed Forces’‘Natinonal Security Seminar’. 9 In line with ‘historical turn’in IR, there has been an uptick on ‘the US hegemony question’ and historical origins of IR as a scholarly discipline and as a consequence Spykman has also received more attention. 10 Nevertheless, he is almost exclusively considered from a geopolitical framework. Jeremy Black’s recent work is a fair illustration: ‘Spykman developed a “rimland thesis”,anidea,basedonMackinder’s marginal or inner crescent, which gave geopolitical focus to his concern about the dynamic geopolitics of Eurasia’. 11 In contrast, Olivier Zajec’s biography Nicholas John Spykman: l’invention de la g eopolitique am ericaine (2016) remains the only fulllength study of Spykman’s career. Importantly, Zajec’s starting point is simmelian sociology. 12 Yet, the extent to which Simmel’s sociology explicitly underlined Spykman’sworkisdifficultto ascertain since Spykman never directly referred to Simmel. Therefore, while Simmel ‘was there’,I will place additional importance to Spykman’s anti-isolationist position at Yale as the key to understand his geopolitical thinking. In existing literature, Paulo Jorge Batista Ramos’dissertation ‘The Role of the Yale Institute of International Studies in the Construction of the United States National Security Ideology, 1935–1951’, is the only full-length study in which Spykman’sworkis examined within the institutional setting of Yale and thus also is valuable for this article. 13 The major oversight in geopolitical reading of Spykman is that his views are often read backwards, meaning that analysis of Spykman’s contributions starts with the Geography of the Peace and ends with America’s Strategy, spanning roughly two years while foregoing the previous two decades, leading to a ahistorical decontextualized view of Spykman. Illuminating this tendency, Campbell Craig has written: ‘I regard Niebuhr’s emphasis upon political and moral philosophy to have been fundamentally more influential upon American Cold War Realism than was Spykman’s much more geopolitical work’. 14 Meanwhile, in his introduction to the Geography of War and Peace, Colin Flint has written: ‘if there is one single purpose to this book, it is to debunk Nicholas Spykman’s belief that “Geography is the most important factor in foreign policy because it is the most permanent”. The quote is illuminating because of its inaccuracy’. 15 While such arguments seeks to engage with critical geography in the (justified) quest to expose the futility of geographical determinism, placing Spykman into such category distorts his much broader scholarly basis for the convenience of an argument. For example, even a cursory look of his argumentation from the late 1930s could hardly be labeled as deterministic: It should be emphasized, however, that geography has been described as a conditioning rather than as a determining factor [ …] It was not meant to imply that geographic characteristics play a deterministic, causal role in foreign policy. The geographical determinism which explains by geography all things from the fourth symphony to the fourth dimension paints as distorted a picture as does an explanation of policy with no reference to geography. The geography of a country is rather the material for, than the cause, of its policy. 16 As the passage shows, and it could be repeated many times over, he was more versatile in his writings than the dominant perspectives would make us believe. On balance, there has always been a minority, which has been aware of Spykman’s diverse work. For example, Edgar S. Furniss Jr. was already suggesting in 1952 that over-hasty readings of Spykman’sAmerica’s Strategy ignored what he had written before the war; and the same tendency applies today. 17 While Rosenboim has recently noted that Spykman’s work was clearly multidisciplinary, what follows here is an examination of how that was the case, how his multidisciplinarity is discernable and what were the very reasons for his intellectual positioning. The focus will shift from geopolitics to Spykman’s historical sociology. 18 Spykman and the sociology of international relations In 1920, Spykman arrived at Berkely with ‘an ambition to prepare himself for a career in which he would be able to contribute to a better understanding of world affairs’. 19 In 1923, he earned THE INTERNATIONAL HISTORY REVIEW 3 his doctorate which was subsequently published by the University of Chicago Press in 1925 under the title The Social Theory of Georg Simmel. 20 Spykman’s entry into academia was persuasive and his work partly helped to situate American sociology in the rapidly expanding field of social sciences. Albion W. Small, the reviewer of the book and the don of American sociology in the early twentieth century, noted with enthusiasm that ‘[t]he author’s Preface alone should cause drastic searchings of heart among the Americans who call themselves social scientists’and in the ‘Conclusion the author packs some rare words of wisdom’. 21 Yet, under the influence of his PhD supervisor, Frederick J. Teggart, Spykman’s object of inquiry moved into international sociology –a turn not surprising given his own personal experiences in Asia and the Middle East. In 1933, Spykman claimed that his view of international relations was a form of sociological enquiry, holding that the concept of society, applies for the international society too. 22 The basis for such claim was particularly seen in two of his early articles, ‘The Social Background of Asiatic Nationalism’, published in the American Journal of Sociology in 1926 and ‘United States and the Allied Debts’published by a German journal in 1929. 23 The former was a discussion of power relations between ‘Western imperialism’and ‘Asiatic nationalism’, drawing from (albeit implicitly) Simmel’s sociology. In the context of orient-occident cultural interaction Spykman wrote: Contact between different cultures always leads to disturbances in the realms of ideas and to reconsideration of accepted values. This is especially the case if two cultures are very dissimilar. It would be hard to conceive two worlds farther apart than the dynamic, aggressive West and the passive contemplative East. 24 Here, Spykman’s dichotomy relied on Simmel’s concept of strangers which held that separate populations originally inhabits their own living spaces but the arrival of the stranger (in this case the Western powers), shattered the native culture’s sense of universalism by exposing it as provincial. ‘The primitive community’, Spykman wrote, lost ‘much of its self-contained exclusiveness’. 25 Next, the arrival of stranger which Simmel had conceptualized as ‘the one who comes today and stays tomorrow’, changes the economic pattern of the native society since the new capitalistic ‘strangers’bring in structures which are permanent. The same was observed by Spykman when he wrote that ‘[t]he capitalistic invasion caused an agrarian revolution and changed agrarian production from a natural economy to a pecuniary economy [ …] The fact that the capital employed is of foreign origin causes a permanent drain’. 26 According to Olivier Zajec, the article was a ‘transposition’of Simmel’sPhilosophie des Geldes into the realm of international sociology’. 27 Overall, the article illustrated ‘that the structures of these revolt movements were more complex than a simple schema of opposition between Western imperialism and indigenous nationalism would suggest’. 28 The key word here is ‘opposition’which he had discussed at length in his dissertation. 29 In 1942, the same foundation was found in America’s Strategy:‘In international society, as in other social groupings, there are observable three basic processes of co-operation, accommodation and opposition. Not only individuals and groups but also states maintain the tree types of social relations’. 30 These lines exemplify Spykman’s fundamental understanding of IR as functional processes that are constantly moving and negotiated. Further, there is very little room for determinism in such vision. Following Asian-West relations, the second of his tow early articles moved the geographical lens to transatlantic relations and international political economy in his article ‘United States and the Allied Debts’, published by a new Heidelberg-based journal Zeitschrift f€ ur auslandisches € offentliches Rech und volkerrecht in 1929. 31 The article is significant for it was the first one in which Spykman grapples with US foreign policy. While the piece was about the timely question of Inter-allied war debts, it was not merely about political economy but also ‘subtly cultural’,as Zajec has noted. 32 Cultural tendency was manifested in Spykman’s juxtaposition of different American and European views regarding the handling of the WWI debts and loans. Once again, the way in which Spykman dissected these different views essentially relied on the simmelian 4 A. HOLMILA ‘stranger’conception where European and American cultures formed the antipodes within the ‘West’where one side could hardly understand the other. Spykman, by then naturalized US citizen, took upon himself to explain to Europeans American views about the debt question. What further underlined this was Spykman’s chosen forum: a new German legal journal published under the auspices of Heidelberg university. The article had two key passages which exposed Spykman’s theoretical foundations and which also found their expression in his later works too. Firstly, in the introduction, Spykman rejected idealism in human affairs –and by extension –in international relations. Writing about the post-WWI situation he noted: The period of noble sacrifice for the cause of humanity was over and the period of hard bargaining had begun, –if love, honor and morality were still invoked it was usually to point out that somebody else should make a sacrifice. Human nature being what it is, this is only natural. 33 In other words, functional pragmatism was the way to manage all types of relations whether between individuals or nations. Secondly, his conclusion further bore the marks of his cultural approach in which he situated himself –as Zajec notes –an arbiter between Europeans and Americans. If European nations could separate war debts they owed to the US from their demand for war reparations owed by Germany and conduct ‘businesslike’affairs with the USA, ‘the people of the United States’, Spykman wrote, would be ‘willing to do their share in the final liquidation of the horrible nightmare of useless destruction of life and wealth which almost caused the complete annihilation of Western civilization’. 34 These lines also implied the rejection of idealism in favor of pragmatism. Indeed, Spykman’s call for ‘businesslike’reflected his functional pragmatism drawn from Simmel’s concept of Vergesellschaftung (socialization) where social interaction or ‘these processes of mutual influencing’created the matrix of society. 35 At the same time, Spykman’s own socialization into scholarly international society took place when he was actively engaged with the League of Nations social circles in Geneva, for example in 1927 having acted as the deputy director of le Bureau d’etudes internationals de Gen eve (BEI) under Alfred Zimmern. 36 The extent to which Geneva experiences shaped Spykman’s supposed ‘conversion’from ‘idealist’to ‘realist’–the concepts which in themselves are not clear cut or singular –is open to debate not least since Zimmern’s reputation in particular is characterized by idealist approach to IR. 37 According to Zajec there never was such conversion, since Spykman had already in his The Social Theory of Gerog Simmel constructed the world and human relations which constituted it in relatively dark terms. 38 What is more certain, however, is that during the 1930s, the role of geography rose in prominence in Spykman’s thinking. 39 One of the major factors for such development was directly related to his epistemic community at Yale which in the 1920s and throughout 1930s was one of the major academic bastions of isolationism. One facet of isolationism was based on the link between American historical geography and the supposed security it offered –a view which Spykman could not accept either on political or on epistemological grounds. Spykman and the political geography of isolationism Scholarship on isolationism is vast and its main features are well known so there is need not to reiterate them here. 40 Hence, I will observe only the most salient issues that are directly relevant in terms of understanding Spykman’s anti-isolationist positioning. Above all, neither isolationism nor internationalism were monolithic or stable concepts but viewpoints and arguments evolved and changed over time. As Stephen Wertheim has shown, post-WWII internationalism was different to pre-war internationalism which had stood in opposition of power politics. It was only after the fall of France, Pearl Harbor and the beginnings of American postwar planning when the concept of internationalism took a fundamental turn. 41 Thus, between 1941 and 1943 American foreign policy elites campaigned for a new type of internationalism in which power politics was not THE INTERNATIONAL HISTORY REVIEW 5 only legitimized as a foreign policy option but begun to form the core of new internationalist thinking. The transition from pre-war (legalist) internationalism to a more bellicose internationalism was far from easy or certain. At the top, the Roosevelt administration was hesitant –not least since the concerns over public opinion. Although by 1942, postwar planning in the State Department was in full swing, the administration was reluctant to open public discussion on the US role in the world for the fear of isolationist backlash which could potentially lead to a prolonged debate between isolationists and internationalists, ultimately having negative effect on the war effort. 42 In institutional setting, the struggle between isolationists and internationalists that the administration treaded had raged at Yale, for example, the birth place of the America First Committee, since the early 1930. 43 The founding of YIIS in 1935 by Spykman, Frederick S. Dunn and Arnold Wolfers formed the counter to Yale’s isolationism but their fought an uphill battle. For instance, in February 1941, the director of the Yale Daily News could proudly claim that 1486 out of 2000 Yale students were isolationists. 44 According to Ramos, when in the early 1930s Spykman served as Director of League of Nations Association he had found the work frustrating since his goal to ‘shift the emphasis to a more realistic policy [had] a faint chance of success’. 45 Yet, his writings in the mid-1930s clearly bore the mark of such efforts. In late 1934, he published a circular in the Yale Daily News urging the USA to join the League of Nations. 46 Earlier in the year, at the Alumni University Day he had argued against the isolationist views that, ‘[w]e live in an inter-dependent world, and no incantations about self-sufficiency, and not even the daily compulsory reading of Washington’s Farewell Address in the public schools is going to alter that fact’. 47 The tone was strikingly similar to his arguments later found in America’s Strategy. The key piece that laid out the internationalist program for YIIS was his winter 1935 article ‘States’Rights and the League’. 48 The question of power formed the core: The creation of international order is not a matter of the abolition of force but a change from the use of force as an instrument of national policy to the organization of the use of force by the community [ …] Nobody has yet invented a means of influencing human behavior which is not a variation of the method of persuasion, barter, or force. 49 Bringing his sociological view into argumentation, Spykman lamented that those people who abhor the use of force by the wrong people, are all in favor of moral sanctions. Not being sociologists, they could not be expected to realize that a social technique [socialization] which is efficacious in preventing Mrs. Thistlebottom from eating peas with a knife is not necessarily adequate to prevent a military dictatorship from embarking on a war of conquest. 50 Whether the League would survive or not remained to be seen. More certainly, Spykman argued, moral sanctions as a way of regulating international system would be flawed as the citation above illustrates. The only solution was US participation in world affairs with pragmatic compromises devoid of idealistic approach advocated by isolationists. But, characteristically, Spykman could not help but to offer an ironic view of what these compromises might mean in practice: ‘On the beautiful quay along the Lake Geneva’, he wrote, there would be ‘three bronze plaques’commemorating the compromising spirit: ‘The central one will be of Wilson, whose idealism inspired the vision, the flanking ones will be of General Araki and General Goering, who, by their sabre-rattling insistence on states’rights, forced men’s minds to a practical approach towards realization’. 51 As we know, ‘Arakis’and ‘Goerings’never re-joined the League and less than five years on, with the outbreak of WWII, its’demise was final. As it was, instead of practical compromise, favored by Spykman, Germany and Japan became to pose geopolitical challenges to the isolationist US –an issue that later formed the core of America’s Strategy. Politically, Spykman’s activity with internationalism, concentrating around the work of the League of Nations Association, can be garnered from a number of sources, including press reports from the 1920s and 1930s where Spykman’s name consistently appeared in connection 6 A. HOLMILA with peace and world affairs conferences. The New York Times offered a telling example in winter 1935 (coinciding with the working out of the YIIS program) when it noted: ‘Spykman [ …] told the diners our entry into the League was the only way to protect our interests in the Far East from Japanese domination’. 52 Increasingly, however, Spykman’s internationalist tendencies were conditioned by the opposition to his colleagues’isolationism which included academic stars like the leading American scholar on international law, Edwin Borchard and the historian Samuel Flagg Bemis. The latter was ‘the founding father’of US diplomatic history who had won the Pulizer Price in 1927 and in 1936 had authored a highly influential isolationist study A Diplomatic History of the United States (1936) to be further elaborated in his 1943 book, The Latin America Policy of the United States. 53 Another influential Yale isolationist historian was A. Whitney Griswold, who was also active in the America First Committee and whose 1938 book The Far Eastern Policy of the United States, formed, according to one review, the ‘exigencies of his isolationist point of view’. 54 Spykman, then the director of the Institute, commented on the matter to the Rockefeller Foundation which funded YIIS: ‘Griswold, with a predilection for isolation, has undoubtedly been influenced in the selection and presentation of historical material, although he has accepted a good many of the criticisms of his non-isolationist colleagues’. 55 In essence, it was this ‘geography of isolationism’which Spykman viewed dangerous. Academically, it was not sustainable and politically, it was offering Americans flawed sense of security, summarized by Charles A. Beard, another celebrity diplomatic historian in 1939: ‘The United States is a continental power separated from Europe by a wide ocean which, despite all changes in warfare, is still a powerful asset of defense’. 56 In 1942, Spykman contented that ‘There is still a danger that the erroneous ideas regarding the nature of the Western Hemisphere inherent in isolationist position may tempt people to urge a defensive strategy …’. 57 Thus, America’s Strategy offered steely response to ‘geography of isolationism’. Whereas Griswold had sought to demonstrate in his Far Eastern Policy that the region was not particularly important to the USA, Spykman later contended that the isolationist had accepted the fascist conception that the world should be organized into a few large-scale hegemonic systems operating planned and integrated regional economies. In that ‘New Order’the isolationist envisaged for the United States a position of leadership over Western Hemisphere [ …] Because it is surrounded by oceans, it seemed to offer an opportunity for hemisphere defense through hemisphere isolation [ …] it appeared that the integrated states could survive in the coming struggle for power by the adoption of a simple defensive policy. 58 Finally, Spykman’s political argumentation was derived from a deep understanding of history, clearly evident in the introduction to America’s Strategy when he discussed the issue of isolationism versus internationalism: …even if the past should favor one side more than the other, it would not follow that the side thus favored represents the wiser policy. Historical precedent and the voice of the Fathers can be used as a means to gain support for a doctrine but not as proof of its soundness. Not conformity with the past but workability in the present is the criterion of a sound policy. 59 Here, the references to ‘historical precedent’as a legitimizing tool for ‘proof of soundness’ were not only applications of historical thinking or polemics against the likes of Griswold but is also linked to Simmel’s epistemological approach to knowledge. According to Simmel, knowledge always directed and organized action, despite the fact that validity of such knowledge could not be proven. In other words, as Spykman viewed it, the knowledge derived from Washington’s farewell address had directed and organized isolationist action while the validity of such action in the 1940s America could not be proven. This idea was explicitly manifested in America’s Strategy: ‘Not conformity with the past but workability in the present is the criterion of a sound policy’. 60 THE INTERNATIONAL HISTORY REVIEW 7 of International Thought. From the Origins of the Modern State to Academic International Relations (London: Routledge, 2014); Robert Vitalis, White World Order, Black Power Politics: The Birth of American International Relations (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2015); Matthew Farish, The Contours of America’s Cold War (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010). 11. Black, Geopolitics, 166. 12. Zajec, Spykman: l’invention de la g eopolitique am ericaine. For Spykman’s role in establishing the interwar school of realism in the USA, see Olivier Zajec, ‘Legal Realism and International Realism in the United States during the Interwar Period. Neglected Reformist Convergences between Political Science and Law’,Revue Fancaise de Science Politique, lxv (2015), 785-804. 13. Paulo Jorge Batista Ramos, ‘The Role of the Yale Institute of International Studies in the Construction of the United States National Security Ideology, 1935–1951’(PhD dissertation, University of Manchester, 2003). For the institutional examination, see also Inderjeet Parmar, ‘American Hegemony, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Rise of Academic International Relations in the United States’in Nicolas Guilhot (ed), The Invention of International Relations Theory: Realism, the Rockefeller Foundation and the 1954 Conference on Theory (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011), 182-209, see esp. 189-91. 14. Colin Craig, Glimmer of a New Leviathan: Total War in the Realism of Niebuhr, Morgenthau, and Waltz. New York: Columbia University press, 2004), 47, cf 38. 15. Colin Flint, ‘Introduction: Geography of War and Peace’, in Colin Flint (ed), Geography of War and Peace (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 4. 16. Spykman, ‘Geography and Foreign Policy, I’,The American Political Science Review, xxxii (1938), 30. 17. Furniss, Jr., ‘The Contribution of Nicholas John Spykman’, 385. 18. Or Rosenboim, ‘Geopolitics and Empire: Visions of Regional World Order in the 1940s’,Modern Intellectual History, xii (2015), 357. 19. Frederick J. Teggart, ‘In Memoriam: Nicholas John Spykman, 1893–1943’American Journal of Sociology, xlix (1943), 60. 20. Nicholas J. Spykman, The Social Theory of Georg Simmel (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1925). 21. Albion W. Small, ‘Review: The Social Theory of Georg Simmel by Nicholas J. Spykman’,American Journal of Sociology, xxxi (1925), 84-7. On Spykman’s impact on American sociology, see David Frisby’s introduction in Spykman, The Social Theory of Gerog Simmel (London and New York: Routledge, 2004), vii-xxxiv. 22. Nicholas J. Spykman, ‘Methods of approach to the study of international relations’, in Proceedings of the Fifth Conference of Teachers of International Law and Related Subjects Held at Washington, DC, April 26–27, 1933 (Washington: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1933), 58-61. 23. Nicholas J. Spykman, ‘The Social Background of Asiatic Nationalism’,The American Journal of Sociology, xxxii (1926), 396-411 and Spykman, ‘United States and the Allied Debts’,Zeitschrift f€ ur auslandisches € offentliches Rech und volkerrecht, i (1929), 155-84. 24. Spykman, ‘The Social Background’, 405. 25. Ibid., 403-4. 26. Spykman, ‘The Social Background’, 402. Simmel cited in George Ritzer et al. (eds), Encyclopedia of Social Theory (Thousand Oaks, 2005), 700. Original, Georg Simmel, Soziologie: Untersuchungen € uber die Formen der Vergesellschaftung (Leipzig, 1908), 685. 27. Zajec, Spykman: l’invention de la g eopolitique am ericaine, 161. 28. Ibid., 156. 29. Spykman, The Social Theory, esp. 95-114. 30. Spykman, America’s Strategy, 15-6. 31. Spykman, ‘United States and the Allied Debts’, 155-84. 32. Zajec, Spykman: l’invention de la g eopolitique am ericaine, 186. 33. Spykman, ‘United States and the Allied Debts’, 155. 34. Ibid., 181. 35. Spykman, The Social Theory, 29-30. 36. Zajec, Spykman: l’invention de la g eopolitique am ericaine, 178-9. 37. On Zimmern’s idealism, see Paul B. Rich, ‘Reinventing Peace: David Davies, Alfred Zimmern and Liberal Internationalism in Interwar Britain’,International Relations, xvi (2002), 117-33. 38. Zajec, Spykman: l’invention de la g eopolitique am ericaine, 184-7. 39. The two major geographical pieces which Spykman published in the 1930s are ‘Geography and Foreign Policy, I’,The American Political Science Review, xxii (1938), 28-50 and ‘Geography and Foreign Policy, II’,The American Political Science Review, xxii (1938), 213-36. 40. On isolationism, see e.g. John A. Thompson, A Sense of Power. The Roots of America’s Global Role (Ithaca and London, 2015); Andrew Johnstone, ‘Isolationism and Internationalism in American Foreign Relations’,Journal of Transatlantic Studies, ix (2011), 7-20 and Thomas N. Guinsburg, ‘The Triumph of Isolationism’, in Gordon Martell (ed), American Foreign Relations Reconsiderd 1890–1993 (New York and London, 1994), 90-105. 41. Wertheim, Tomorrow, the World. 14 A. HOLMILA 42. Hoopes and Brinkley, FDR, 55. 43. On the America First Committee, see Andrew Johnstone, Against Immediate Evil: American Internationalists and the Four Freedoms on the Eve of World War II (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2014), 102-4. 44. Cited in Ramos, ‘The Role of the Yale Institute of International Studies’, 91. 45. Spykman cited in Ramos, ‘The Role of the Yale Institute of International Studies’, 167. 46. Spykman, ‘US Isolation Wrong, Spykman Says’,Yale Daily News no. 61, 4 December 1934. 47. Spykman, ‘the Study of International Relations’;Yale Alumni Weekly, 16 Mar 1934, cited in Ramos, ‘The Role of the Yale Institute of International Studies’, 103. 48. Spykman, ‘States Rights and the League’,The Yale Review, 24/2 (1935), 274-92. 49. Ibid., 285. 50. Ibid., ‘States Rights and the League’, 285-6. 51. Ibid., ‘States Rights and the League’, 292. 52. ‘Praised on League Stand’,the New York Times, 7 Feb. 1935, 11. See also ‘Women Urge Men to Form Societies for Cure of Wars’,the Washington Post, 19 Jan. 1928, 20; ‘Women Seeking to Clarify Policy of United States in Pan America’,Christian Science Monitor, 19 Jan. 1928, 1; ‘to Discuss Relations with England at Yale’, the New York Times, 23 Mar. 1930, N3; ‘League Association Fears Sour Isolation’,the New York Times, 12 Feb. 1932, 3; ‘Ask Independence for Philippines: Foreign Policy and World Peace Group Urge Roosevelt to Take Initiative’,the New York Times, 2 Jan. 1934, 10; ‘Yale Group to Get Trip to Washington’,Christian Science Monitor, 1 Nov. 1934, 3; ‘Newspaper Specials: Condensed Items of Financial Interest From American Newspapers’,Wall Street Journal, 4 Nov. 1933, 3; ‘Reich Coup Stirs a Spirited Debate’,the New York Times,29 Mar. 1936, 30; ‘New League Urged for All Nations’,the New York Times, 11 May 1936, 3. 53. Samuel F. Bemis, A Diplomatic History of the United States (New York: Henry Holt and Co, 1936); The Latin America Policy of the United States (New York: Harcourt Brace & Co, 1943). 54. Ramos, ‘The Role of the Yale Institute of International Studies’, 115-6. 55. Rockefeller Archives Center, RG 1.1, Series 200, Box 417, Folder 4955: Nicholas Spykman’, Report for the Year 1938–1939’, 118. 56. Charles A. Beard, Giddy Minds and Foreign Quarrels (New York: Macmillan, 1939), 65. 57. Spykman, America’s Strategy, 450. 58. Ibid., 196. 59. Ibid., 7. 60. Ibid., 7. 61. RAC, Rockefeller Foundation Archive, Folder 4945, box 416, series 200 RG 1.1, ‘Excerpt from Trustees Confidential Bulletin, 5 May 1942’,p.1. 62. RAC, Rockefeller Foundation Archive, Folder 4945, box 416, series 200 RG 1.1, Lambert Davis to George W. Gray, 29 Apr. 1942. 63. Rosenboim, The Emergence of Globalism, 60; Gray, ‘Spykman, the Balance of Power’; Brian Blouet, Globalities: Geopolitics and Globalization in the Twentieth Century (London: Reaktion Books, 2004), 120. 64. Zajec, Spykman: l’invention de la g eopolitique am ericaine, 317. 65. C. J. Friedrich, ‘America’s Strategy in World Politics’,The American Historical Review xlviii (1942), 155-6; on Friedrich and Kissinger, see Kaplan, The Return of Marco Polo’s World, 167-8. 66. Henry M. Wriston, ‘America’s Strategy in World Politics’,The American Journal of International Law 36/3 (1942), 518. 67. Haas, ‘America’s Strategy in World Politics’, 112. 68. Richard H. Heindel, ‘America’s Strategy in World Politics’,Journal of Modern History xiv (1942), 548. 69. Isaiah Bowman, ‘Political Geography’, 352. 70. Spykman cited in Ramos, ‘The Role of the Yale Institute of International Studies’, 108. 71. Wertheim, Tomorrow, the World. 72. G.H.E. Smith, ‘America’s Role’, BR1. 73. R.E.Runser, ‘Must We Play Power-Politics’,The Washington Post, 5 Ap. 1942, S10. 74. ‘The Power Factor in World Order: A Bookshelf Review’,The Christian Science Monitor, 1 May 1942, 22. 75. Spykman, America’s Strategy, 64. 76. Ibid., 465 and 458. 77. Beck, ‘America’s Strategy in World Politics’,Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, iii (1942), 238. 78. Spykman, America’s Strategy, 457. 79. Spykman, The Social Theory, 126-7. 80. See ‘Geographical Reviews’,Geographical Review xxxiv (1944), 672-4. 81. Nicholas J. Spykman, ‘Geopolitics: The Struggle for Space and Power by Robert Strausz-Hup e and Geopolitik: Doctrine of National Self-Sufficiency and Empire by Johannes Mattern’,The Political Science Quarterly, 57/4 (1942), 598-601. 82. Robert Strauz-Hupe, ‘The Geography of the Peace’,Military Affairs 8/2 (1944), 145. 83. Orville Prescott, ‘Books of the Times’,The New York Times, 24 Apr. 1944, 17. THE INTERNATIONAL HISTORY REVIEW 15 84. Hans Kohn, ‘Geography and Peace’,The New York Times, 23 Apr. 1944, BR4. 85. Kohn, ‘Geography and Peace’, BR4. 86. Spykman, Geography of the Peace,3. 87. Spykman, ‘Methods of approach to the study of international relations’, 61. 88. Johannes Mattern, ‘Book notes’, 472. 89. Zajec, Spykman: l’invention de la g eopolitique am ericaine, 390-400; Olivier Zajec, ‘Introduction  aThe Geography of the Peace, de Nicholas Spykman: Une r einterpr etation critique’,Res Militaris, iv (2014), 1-36. Online: http://resmilitaris.net/ressources/10186/34/res_militaris_article_zajec_introduction___nicholas_spykman__ the_geography_of_the_peace.pdf 90. Zajec, Spykman: l’invention de la g eopolitique am ericaine, 399; Zajec, ‘Introduction’, 18-9. 91. Spykman: l’invention de la g eopolitique am ericaine, 390-400, esp. 399. 92. See also Zajec, ‘Introduction’, 24-5. 93. Spykman, America’s Strategy, 258. 94. Ibid., 466-7. 95. Spykman was even dubious of strong united Europe as it would be also detrimental to US interest to maintain precarious balance of power in Europe. 96. Spykman, The Geography, 61. 97. William T.R. Fox, Super-Powers: The United States, Britain and the Soviet Union –Their Responsibility for Peace (New York: Harcourt Brace & Co, 1944). 98. Zajec, Spykman: l’invention de la g eopolitique am ericaine, 406; Zajec, ‘Introduction’, 26. 99. Ibid., 406; Ramos, ‘The Role of the Yale Institute of International Studies’, 262-3. 100. See Ramos, “The Role of the Yale Institute of International Studies’, 248-54; 263. 101. Teggart, ‘In Memoriam’, 60. 102. Spykman, The Social Theory,v. Acknowledgement For the valuable help, advice, comments and suggestions for writing this article, the author would like to thank the anonymous reviewers, Pertti Ahonen, Andrew Williams, Or Rosenboim, Hagen Schulz-Forberg, Matti Roitto and Pasi Ihalainen. Disclosure statement No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author. Funding The work was supported by the Finnish Academy [grant number: 275589]. Notes on contributor Antero Holmila is Associate Professor of Modern History at the University of Jyv€ askyl€ a. 16 A. HOLMILA