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Dereliction of duty: Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the lies that led to Vietnam
Review
Essays
Rather, they reflect deep-seated views about the rightful place of the United States in the world, how the world works, and what values and interests America ought to defend. McDougall uses religious metaphors to describe these traditions. His “Old Testament” of U.S. foreign policy relations, which held sway during America’s first century, contained the tradition of exceptionalism (liberty at home, but no crusading abroad), unilateralism, an American system of states (the Monroe Doctrine principle), and expansionism (the so-called Manifest Destiny). But beginning in 1898, America began to preach a “New Testament” that enjoined the United States to proselytize and even crusade to export its values to a world tom by revolution and war. Hence, four new, and more problematical, traditions were born: progressive imperialism, Wilsonianism, containment, and global meliorism (the attempt to foster democracy, prosperity, and peace through social, economic, and political action). The religion metaphor is apt because foreign policy attitudes, like religious ones, are hard to shape, but susceptible once formed to infinite modification at the hands of evangelists who invoke the sacred to justify the profane, playing on the gut hopes and fears of the public. Similarly, although politicians may try to shape public attitudes on foreign policy (in the name of “educating” the American people), they invariably fmd it an uphill struggle, especially when no clear and present danger can be readily invoked. This is why McDougall’s emphasis on what may appear to be abstract “traditions” is so important in today’s debate and why his historical interpretation buttresses Haass’s policy prescription. One might as well try to alter the tides themselves as to attempt to mold tidal changes in public attitudes-especially today, when America has collected so many traditions and when public attitudes are diverse and fluid. Officials would be better off taking a cue from the surfer, who takes the tides as they come and waits for the best wave that is likely to come along. To assume that public attitudes are beyond your control (humility), wait for the best opportunity that is likely to come (timing), and then form the best posse you can for the task (initiative) are the beginnings of wisdom for an uncertain future.
Wounded Warriors and the Lessons of Vietnam by Michael C. Desch
Masters of War Military Dkwnt and Politics in the Vietnam Era. By Robert Buzzanco. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.400pp. $34.95,cloth; $18.95, paper.) MichaelC. Desch
is as.sistant director and senior research associate at the John M. Olin Insmute for Strategic Studies at Harvard University and author of Ciuilaan Control of IheMditav 7he Changing Sectrnty Environment (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins Unwersity Press, forthcoming). He thanks Frank Gavin, Dick Kohn, Peter Feaver, and Sam Huntington for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this essay.
Summer 1998 I 473
Essays
Rather, they reflect deep-seated views about the rightful place of the United States in the world, how the world works, and what values and interests America ought to defend. McDougall uses religious metaphors to describe these traditions. His “Old Testament” of U.S. foreign policy relations, which held sway during America’s first century, contained the tradition of exceptionalism (liberty at home, but no crusading abroad), unilateralism, an American system of states (the Monroe Doctrine principle), and expansionism (the so-called Manifest Destiny). But beginning in 1898, America began to preach a “New Testament” that enjoined the United States to proselytize and even crusade to export its values to a world tom by revolution and war. Hence, four new, and more problematical, traditions were born: progressive imperialism, Wilsonianism, containment, and global meliorism (the attempt to foster democracy, prosperity, and peace through social, economic, and political action). The religion metaphor is apt because foreign policy attitudes, like religious ones, are hard to shape, but susceptible once formed to infinite modification at the hands of evangelists who invoke the sacred to justify the profane, playing on the gut hopes and fears of the public. Similarly, although politicians may try to shape public attitudes on foreign policy (in the name of “educating” the American people), they invariably fmd it an uphill struggle, especially when no clear and present danger can be readily invoked. This is why McDougall’s emphasis on what may appear to be abstract “traditions” is so important in today’s debate and why his historical interpretation buttresses Haass’s policy prescription. One might as well try to alter the tides themselves as to attempt to mold tidal changes in public attitudes-especially today, when America has collected so many traditions and when public attitudes are diverse and fluid. Officials would be better off taking a cue from the surfer, who takes the tides as they come and waits for the best wave that is likely to come along. To assume that public attitudes are beyond your control (humility), wait for the best opportunity that is likely to come (timing), and then form the best posse you can for the task (initiative) are the beginnings of wisdom for an uncertain future.
Wounded Warriors and the Lessons of Vietnam by Michael C. Desch
Masters of War Military Dkwnt and Politics in the Vietnam Era. By Robert Buzzanco. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.400pp. $34.95,cloth; $18.95, paper.) MichaelC. Desch
is as.sistant director and senior research associate at the John M. Olin Insmute for Strategic Studies at Harvard University and author of Ciuilaan Control of IheMditav 7he Changing Sectrnty Environment (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins Unwersity Press, forthcoming). He thanks Frank Gavin, Dick Kohn, Peter Feaver, and Sam Huntington for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this essay.
Summer 1998 I 473