By Samantha Pergadia '11

Stanley Hoffmann, a Harvard professor and foreign policy commentator, called for a "radical change in the emphasis and usage of power" in U.S. foreign policy, during a public address delivered in Robertson Hall Thursday afternoon, October 15.

Hoffmann's speech was titled “U.S. Foreign Policy, Past and Future,” and was the third in as many days as a part of the Richard Ullman Lecture Series, co-sponsored by the Woodrow Wilson School and Princeton University Press.

“We need to abandon unilateralism on the stage,” Hoffmann said during his Thursday speech. “We need to create zones of multilateral action.”

With regard to the military, Hoffmann said the U.S. needs to lower the numbers of nuclear weapons, avoid foreign deployments and “create a regime of controllable materials.”

Hoffmann asserted “One should not invade or subvert a country about which one needs not,” adding that a class he recently taught at Harvard about the war in Iraq was the “the most unpleasant subject” he’s ever taught because of the “combination of ignorance, arrogance and incompetence," he discovered upon investigating the subject.

“In a country with so much tolerance, I was struck by how there could be so much that was wrong,” Hoffmann said, citing U.S. policy makers' lack of knowledge about Iraq’s history when the invasion was launched.

As a native of Europe, Hoffmann said that he was especially struck with the inability of the U.S. to separate a “generally universal conception of international affairs” from “American pride and self satisfaction.” Hoffmann described the U.S. “arrogance of power,” which he said is “not always entirely visible” power.

Hoffmann argued that the U.S. has a “papa knows best” attitude with regard to foreign policy, which can be overwhelming and off-putting for nations being helped.

He described this attitude as America’s “national can-doism.”

“This is a great failing,” Hoffmann said. “Sometimes it’s great to know what one cannot do.”

He added that there is also a frequent gap in the U.S.’s knowledge and understanding of other countries and “one’s sense of mission.” He said this was particularly the case with Lyndon Johnson and George Bush.

Further, he stated that the U.S. has displayed a great “aptitude for celebrating benevolent imperialism,” while adopting the mindset of “meaning well.” He referenced James Reston’s column in the New York Times after the bombing of Hanoi when he said they did terrible things, but “meant well.”

Hoffmann said that the U.S. needs to be clear and quick to act on the Palestinian issue.

“The worst would be an endless postponement of this issue,” Hoffmann said. “Cancers do not become better by neglect.”

Hoffmann outlined, as two major problems of the U.S., the “remains of isolationism” and “American exceptionalism.” He added that the “extraordinary role of money in the political system” and “the narratives of American democracy” further complicate these issues.

“The key to international policy is compassion,” Hoffmann said. “This has been missing in the last eight years.”

“There seems to be very little in between periods of intense patriotic mobilization on the one hand,” Hoffmann said, “and periods in which quasi-paralysis exists with a kind of unmitigated nonsense.”

Hoffmann also critiqued the notion of a clash of civilizations in discussing the non-Western world.

“This is a nefarious idea” Hoffmann said, “which one can believe in only if one is an essentialist and looks at civilizations as if they had an essence.” 

Hoffmann is the Paul and Catherine Buttenweiser University Professor at Harvard University, and founded Harvard’s Center for European Studies in 1968.