Sumner Welles, Postwar Planning, and the Quest for a New World Order, 1937-1943

Christopher D. O'Sullivan

October, 2008
Cloth, 1 pages,
ISBN: 978-0-231-14258-8
$60.00 / £35.50

Christopher D. O'Sullivan's remarkable study, Sumner Welles, Postwar Planning, and the Quest for a New World Order, 1937-1943, shows that there is still much to consider in FDR's foreign policy. O'Sullivan concentrates on Welles's world view, especially as the undersecretary laid it out for the Political Subcommittee of the Advisory Committee on Postwar Foreign Policy in 1942-43. It turns out that Harley Notter's 1949 official publication, Postwar Foreign Policy Preparation, doesn't tell the half of it: O'Sullivan portrays Welles as coldly hostile to all the West European powers-Allies as much as enemies-and resolved to create a global Pax Americana on the Monroe Doctrine model after the war. Given FDR's tendency to rely on Welles's advice, at least until the fall of 1943 and to some extent beyond, this book promotes a new look at U.S. war aims.

Series

• Gutenberg-e

About the Author

Christopher D. O'Sullivan teaches history at the University of San Francisco. He received his Ph.D. from the London School of Economics and his BA from the University of California at Berkeley. He previously worked as a reporter for the San Francisco Examiner. He recently received a 2002 research award from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, as well as the 2002 Winant-Lublin Research Fellowship from the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute. He is currently working on a history of the United Nations for the Anvil Series, and spends his summers in Northern Ireland where he has been investigating the issues of identity, history, and ethnic and religious conflict.

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