Ryan M. Irwin on David Allen’s *Every Citizen a Statesman: The Dream of a Democratic Foreign Policy in the American Century*

David Allen’s Every Citizen a Statesman is about an ambitious, unfocused project that never had a chance at success. The Foreign Policy Association, the book’s subject, was an organization that thrived for a time in the interwar years, offering a participatory alternative to the now famous (then fledgling) Council on Foreign Relations. If the Council pulled together experts for closed-room parlays, the Association flung those doors open to the people, hosting public conversations about democracy and diplomacy. Ultimately, the Council won. U.S. foreign policy became the plaything of U.S. elites after World War II. But the Association’s story bears witness to a road not taken—its failure serving as a reminder that weighty topics were not always cut off from the American public.

This provocation could be engaged a few ways. On one level, Every Citizen a Statesman is a clapback against the default elitism that dogs most histories of U.S. foreign affairs. The book traces the experiences of people who participated in the Association’s events, juxtaposing this community against the establishment of insiders who later dominated foreign policy thinking. The semantics matter. (Community good; establishment bad.) And Allen’s central point is that his community once enjoyed more influence than the so-called establishment. For a brief time between the world wars, the Association hosted influential gatherings in luxurious hotels, distributing pamphlets that studied complex issues from multiple perspectives, and this work reached presidents and secretaries of state, as well as philanthropists, scholars, volunteers, and countless regular Americans.

The book is also about the public sphere, specifically the way elite perceptions of the public guided assumptions about what was possible and why. The American public sphere was malleable, Allen argues, and his eyes are set on an unusual dynamic: During the interwar years, elites took public opinion seriously but advanced wildly different claims about its origins and nature. Some prominent thinkers said that opinion could be sculpted for the public. But the Association advanced a different belief. Its champions, initially women mobilized by the suffrage cause, insisted that consensus followed legitimacy, not the other way around, and that the former arose naturally from active, informed, and open-minded public discussion. If cultivated correctly, this public—American citizens who participated in Association affairs—would express its will, establishing the foundation for a truly democratic foreign policy.

This vision never materialized and Allen spreads the blame judiciously. Eventually, the Association’s papers became pedantic, spinning readers in circles of indecision. The group’s members were not as egalitarian as they pretended to be. They were white wealthy urbanites who enjoyed socializing in posh hotels. And as the geopolitical stakes intensified, the Association responded flatfootedly to the Council’s rise, struggling to defend the idea that open talk made better policy. By the time McCarthyism squeezed life from the Association’s spirit, it was a shell of its former shelf. Increasingly, members lived in suburbs, and many were apathetic about the original premise that the public had a will worth worrying about. Allen does not pretend that a different speech or a better conference panel would have changed the Association’s fate, but he rejects the premise that foreign policy was (or is) unsusceptible to democratic control. Americans once believed the public could and should guide foreign policy. Although the Association failed, what was possible once can be possible again.

We should all agree with this sentiment, and Every Citizen a Statesman rewards a close read. U.S. foreign relations historians have grown cynical in recent years—emphasizing only the very worst aspects of American power—and Allen cuts a different path through his source material, charting the setbacks of a flawed project without ever denigrating its motivations. He brings his characters to life in fully realized chapters. The book’s research is exemplary. For historians of midcentury international thought, its key intervention is that women initially guided the Association’s work, establishing a far-reaching, influential network that carried forward assumptions and methods of mobilization from the progressive era. By showing the public sphere’s malleability, Allen enlarges our understanding of gender politics after World War I.

Every Citizen a Statesman also crashes up against three problems. First, the Association is often the least interesting part of the book’s story. The group hosted events in interesting spaces and its members conceptualized democracy, power, and diplomacy in noteworthy ways. But the Association itself was banal, especially in the context of the times, and its opponents evinced more sophisticated, impactful interpretations of law and politics. Second, the welfare/warfare state changed the workings of democracy and foreign policy during the mid-twentieth century. Rather than wrangling with the implications of this fact, Allen leans into the Association-Council relationship, which provides the reader with a morality play about openness that feels aloof to the tsunami of war mobilization. The most important stuff happens off stage. Allen’s third problem is that he’s too good a historian to ignore the Association’s elitism, so he hedges his main message, praising the organization’s intentions while acknowledging its contradictions. Maybe the Association bears witness to a road not taken—a road worth revisiting. Candidly, as I read Every Citizen a Statesman, my mind drifted toward the horrific implications of foreign policy by Twitter. Count me out.