Presidents, Diplomats, and Other Mortals

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Presidents, Diplomats, and

Other Mortals

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Presidents, Diplomats, and

Other Mortals Essays Honoring Robert H. Ferrell

Edited by J. Garry Clifford and Theodore A. Wilson

University of Missouri Press Columbia and London

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Copyright © 2007 by The Curators of the University of Missouri University of Missouri Press, Columbia, Missouri 65201 Printed and bound in the United States of America All rights reserved 5 4 3 2 1 11 10 09 08 07 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Presidents, diplomats, and other mortals : essays Honoring Robert H. Ferrell / edited by J. Garry Clifford and Theodore A. Wilson. p. cm. Summary: “Examining the role of the United States in the international arena from the 1860s to the present, these essays in honor of Robert H. Ferrell consider presidents from Lincoln to Bush, as well as the success or failure of diplomatic efforts in Russia, Nicaragua, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, and elsewhere”—Provided by publisher. Includes index. ISBN 978-0-8262-1747-9 (alk. paper) 1. United States—Foreign relations—History. 2. United States— Diplomatic history. I. Clifford, J. Garry (John Garry), 1942– II. Wilson, Theodore A., 1940– III. Ferrell, Robert H. JZ1480.P7433 2007 327.73—dc22 2007003913

This paper meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, Z39.48, 1984. Designer: FoleyDesign Typesetter: BookComp, Inc. Printer and binder: Thomson-Shore, Inc. Typeface: Minion The University of Missouri Press expresses its sincere appreciation for the contribution of the Virginia Commonwealth University Foundation toward the publication of this book.

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To the Memory of Lila Ferrell and Frank Merli

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Contents

Preface ix Introduction: Individuals, Narratives, and Diplomatic History Theodore A. Wilson 1

I. A Nineteenth-Century Icon Toward a More Perfect Union: Lincoln and the Death of Slavery Howard Jones 15

II. Early Twentieth Century A Tale of Two Kennans: American-Russian Relations in the Twentieth Century Eugene P. Trani and Donald E. Davis 31 Our Man in Managua: Lawrence Dennis and the 1926 Nicaraguan Crisis Richard H. Bradford 56 A Friendly Problem: Washington’s Assessment of Anastasio Somoza García William Kamman 71

III. FDR: The Sphinx Blundering on the Brink, 1941: FDR and the 203–202 Vote Reconsidered J. Garry Clifford and Theodore A. Wilson 99 America and Saudi Arabia, Act I: The Conference of Franklin D. Roosevelt and King Ibn Saud in February 1945 Ross Gregory 116

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IV. From Eisenhower to Reagan Eisenhower, Khrushchev, and the U-2 Affair: A Forty-Six-Year Retrospective William B. Pickett 137 Lyndon Johnson, Dean Rusk, and the China Question Charles M. Dobbs 154 Scenes of Disaster: Johnson, Nixon, and the Dramatic Uses of Famine Nick Cullather 174 Washington and Doha: The Beginnings, 1971–1974 Miriam Joyce 189 Cinema and National Defense: Another Look at Ronald Reagan and Hollywood Stephen Vaughn 208

V. Background of Post–Cold War Crises Revisionism: George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and the Origins of the Iraq War Terry H. Anderson 231 Crisis without End: The United States and Iran from Truman to Bush James Goode 250 Clinton’s Wilsonian Military Interventions: A Critique Thomas H. Buckley 264 Harry S. Truman, George W. Bush, and the Perils of Regime Change Arnold A. Offner 281

Appendix: Robert H. Ferrell, Teacher and Scholar The Young Bob Ferrell: From Yale to Indiana J. Garry Clifford 307 Robert H. Ferrell: An Appreciation Lawrence Kaplan 316 Robert H. Ferrell’s Ph.D. Students 327 About the Contributors 331 Index 335

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Preface

THE SEED FOR THIS BOOK was first planted in the mid-1980s when Ted Wilson,

Arnie Offner, Tom Buckley, Bill Kamman, Cal Davis, Gene Trani, Frank Merli, Garry Clifford, Joyce Goldberg, and several other former students of Robert H. Ferrell talked about writing a book of essays in honor of Ferrell’s anticipated retirement from Indiana University. We knew that Ferrell and other former students of Samuel Flagg Bemis had put together such a book when Bemis had retired from Yale in the mid-1960s, but for various reasons the Bemis “festschrift” had never been published. We assigned essays and approached publishers and editors who were, for the most part, discouraging. Then Bob Ferrell retired abruptly from Indiana University in 1988, and the project languished. It revived again in the summer of 2005 when Bob Ferrell’s daughter, Carolyn, and her husband, Lorin Burgess, invited many of us to an extraordinary event known as a “book bash” in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The idea was to have former students, friends, and colleagues of Bob’s attend a weekend reunion at his home in Ann Arbor with the ostensible purpose of earmarking books from his tenthousand-volume private library to be sent to his students and friends upon his death. Several of us wrote short memoirs and spoke nostalgically about our apprenticeships, beginning in the late 1950s and going forward through the following three decades, under RHF’s guidance. We reminded ourselves how fortunate we were to have studied at Indiana’s state university with such a special scholar-teacher who always turned down opportunities to move elsewhere. Galvanized by that weekend in Ann Arbor, we vowed to reactivate the book of essays in Robert Ferrell’s honor. Happily, Beverly Jarrett, director of the University of Missouri Press and a great admirer of RHF, stepped forward to offer us a contract. We decided to focus on discrete essays involving presidents and diplomats who put their stamp, for good or ill, on the course of American foreign relations. Some of us revisited essays that we had begun earlier. Even as she awaited the birth of her daughter, Amanda, Carolyn Ferrell did all she could to speed the project along without letting her father know what was afoot. ix

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To keep the contributors on deadline—and partially to repay our mentor for all his help and encouragement over the decades—we arranged to have a special session in his honor at the annual meeting of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations (SHAFR) in June 2006. On that occasion, with Bob Ferrell present but unaware of our full intentions, we announced the completion of this volume of essays. In preparing these essays for publication, we thank Bev Jarrett, director, and Jane Lago, managing editor, of the University of Missouri Press. We wish to acknowledge the helpful financial support provided by the University of Connecticut Research Foundation, the University of Kansas Department of History, and the Virginia Commonwealth University Foundation. Bob’s dear friend Larry Kaplan merits acknowledgment for his persistent questioning about when a collection such as this would be done. Eugene P. Trani played an instrumental role in ensuring that the work was published. For reading and critiquing individual essays, we are grateful to Frank Costigliola, Thomas G. Paterson, Wesley Renfro, Marc O’Reilly, Deborah Kisatsky, Calvin D. Davis, and the anonymous referees for the University of Missouri Press. Thanks too for technical assistance and other help from Mark Boyer, David Brown, Hal Wert, Christine Luberto, Betty Hanson, Ellen Offner, and Carol Davidge. We thank Kathy Bennett for preparing the index.

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Presidents, Diplomats, and

Other Mortals

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Theodore A. Wilson

Introduction Individuals, Narratives, and Diplomatic History

President John F. Kennedy once said. “Things are So it has been with the history of American foreign relamade to tions. The essays that compose this collection offer a broad range of interpretive viewpoints and confront aspects of America’s participation in world affairs stretching from President Abraham Lincoln’s stance on the global blight of slavery to the obsession of President George W. Bush with the concept of “regime change” anywhere and everywhere. But however diverse the approaches and topics covered, they share a commitment to tracing the ideas and actions of individuals in shaping American foreign policies. Diplomacy always had resulted from the actions of numerous persons and groups, and as the international responsibilities of the United States grew exponentially over the course of the twentieth century and the early years of the current era, so too did the constituencies seeking to influence or constrain the conduct of diplomacy. In a pluralistic environment, foreign policy arises from the complex interaction of domestic concerns, popular attitudes, political calculation, and, as well, apparently irrational assumptions and beliefs. Thus, training the historian’s spotlight solely on individual advisers or leaders, suggesting thereby that they personify the national will, would appear to contradict common sense. Nonetheless, the human equation does matter. The views espoused and the actions taken by individuals remain central to understanding how and why policies are enunciated and implemented (or not). As the essays in this collection argue, individual human beings, and not abstractions such as the eastern establishment, the military-industrial complex, or the United States, undertake the decisions that historians subsequently chronicle and debate. Of course, the activities of individuals do not constitute the totality of America’s diplomatic experience. Indeed, as several of the essays that follow make clear, much that happens is in response to external influences that the policy makers themselves little “THINGS DO NOT HAPPEN,”

happen.”1

1. Quoted in Hartford Courant, October 1, 2006.

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understand and react to without weighing the possible consequences. Nevertheless, what individuals do or choose not to do is central to understanding diplomacy in peace and war. As the scholar David Brion Davis once wrote, “When all allowances are made for . . . trends and climates of opinion, one must ultimately come down to the men who precipitated change.”2 The history of American diplomacy is in this sense a mosaic of innumerable biographies. These essays also acknowledge the pervasive influence of accident, of unintended consequences, and of contingency in the historical record of America’s role in foreign affairs. The irony implicit in the work’s title, Presidents, Diplomats, and Other Mortals, is deliberate. Historians are by nature excellent Mondaymorning quarterbacks. We know the outcome of wars and crises that the historical actors themselves could only dimly perceive. Presidents, Diplomats, and Other Mortals also acknowledges the contributions of a distinguished teacher and scholar, Robert H. Ferrell. According to academic tradition, “a volume of learned articles or essays by colleagues and admirers, serving as a tribute” is a fitting salutation to a distinguished mentor who has influenced so many acolytes. We who are contributing “learned articles or essays” are some few of the colleagues, former students, and innumerable admirers of Robert H. Ferrell, a renowned historian of American foreign affairs. The scholarly contributions of “Mr. Ferrell,” the term of address by which he was known to several generations of students, archivists, and editors, are legion—some fiftyfive books with several more in press and a richly deserved reputation as a pivotal figure in the academic field of diplomatic history in the United States. The last two essays, written by a longtime friend, Lawrence Kaplan, and one of RHF’s early students, Garry Clifford, attempt to capture the insightful historian, ambitious academic, compassionate mentor, and deeply principled human being whom his friends and students have been privileged to know. The fifteen substantive essays offer analytical narratives of the participation of individuals and small groups of policy makers in the work of devising and putting into effect policies determining the place of the United States in the international arena. These investigations into the historical record span from the 1860s to the early twenty-first century. They treat aspects of U.S. engagement with Europe, Latin America, Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. And they take up issues ranging from the international condemnation of human slavery, the forces propelling America’s economic expansion abroad, the eternal struggle between executive and legislative branches over determination of foreign policies, the relations of democracies with authoritarian leaders and rogue 2. Davis, The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1966), 489.

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nations, the tendency of democracies toward self-induced paranoia and xenophobia, to advocacy of such concepts as internationalism, unilateralism, nationbuilding, and regime change. Perhaps most notably, these essays to a quite remarkable degree emulate the approach to scholarly writing of the individual scholar with whom their authors apprenticed—either formally as his students or as young scholars struggling to find a voice. Seeking to describe the nature of Robert H. Ferrell’s lifelong influence on those eager undergraduates and jaundiced graduate students who had studied with him for forty years, I once noted the absence of a “Ferrell school” in the sense that RHF propounded some particular interpretive perspective or demanded that his students adhere to the ideological stance that he himself espoused. His students, indeed, reflect opinions and values across the political spectrum, some directly challenging Ferrell’s own historical convictions and judgments. But all his students agree that there does exist what might be termed the “Ferrell approach,” a clearly framed set of values and beliefs. The “Ferrell approach” begins with the passionate conviction that the study of history offers benefits that all informed citizens require: an understanding of how and why the society and world in which we live came to be, the inculcation of the skills associated with critical inquiry, and the development of a healthy skepticism about accepting “truths”—whoever may be propounding them—at face value. That conviction leads to passionate advocacy of writing history not merely for the members of a dissertation committee or for one’s peers but for a broad general readership. And, of course, that conviction leads to equally passionate advocacy of the primacy of the historical narrative as the methodology by which these aims are best realized. Over the past forty years, this form of expression has been subjected to ridicule as representing an intellectually barren approach, one long past its “sell-by” date and lacking any rigor beyond the stringing together of essentially meaningless anecdotes. Are historians who employ narrative approaches, as positivists such as Leopold von Ranke asserted, pursuing mere activity—a persistent vacuuming of the historical carpet until an underlying pattern heretofore obscured by the dust of ages stands forth? Or does each historian select from the impedimenta dumped from the bulging vacuum bag a different hodgepodge of items, establish unique linkages between them, and thereby fashion a story that could not otherwise have been told? The essays in this volume, we are persuaded, demonstrate that the analytical narrative remains relevant and continues to flourish. Without beginning this story with Herodotus, the Greek chronicler reputed to have “invented” history, we can note that the narrative was the only mode

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of historical discourse until very recent times. In his classic essay on the subject, “History as a Literary Art,” one of the great modern practitioners of narrative history, Samuel Eliot Morison, argued for narrative as central to the “great tradition” in the writing of American history. Although this essay was written in the 1930s, Morison’s pugnacious claim that history is preeminently a literary art, his plea for commitment of the historian to the craft of writing, and his bemoaning of the low estate into which good writing had fallen still have a contemporary flavor.3 Why had historical narrative as practiced by the professional guild fallen so low by Morison’s day? He proffered two chief causes. The first was dominance of the Rankean/positivist school of “academic history,” bringing general acceptance among academic historians that the past tells its own story and the historian’s only task is to uncover what already is there. Thus, Morison asserted, Ranke’s laudable emphasis on the means of “discovery” (archival research, a hierarchy of evidence, rules about citations) became the sole and unremitting end. The second chief nemesis of narrative history was vehemently described by Morison in a vitriolic review essay, “History through a Beard,” of Charles Austin Beard’s President Roosevelt and the Coming of the War, 1941 and in Morison’s American Historical Association Presidential Address, “Faith of an Historian.” That foe/adversary/enemy was the dreadful blight of historical relativism as espoused by Beard, Carl Becker, and other so-called Progressive historians. These relativists had propounded two evils. They had mocked the very idea of an objective history. “Hoping to find something without looking for it, expecting to obtain final answers to life’s riddle by resolutely refusing to ask questions—it was surely the most romantic species of realism yet invented, the oddest attempt ever made to get something for nothing,” Becker had observed. Equally repugnant to Morison, the relativists had also dismissed as unimportant and trivial elements of the historical process national/international institutions and leaders, heretofore the focus of Ranke’s inquiries and of positivist history generally. As Beard noted: “Ranke, a German conservative, writing after the storm and stress of the French Revolution, was weary of history written for, or permeated by, the purposes of revolutionary propaganda. Written history that was cold, factual, and apparently undisturbed by the passions of the time served best the cause of those who did not want to be disturbed.”4

3. Morison, By Land and by Sea: Essays and Addresses (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1953), 289–98. 4. Becker, “Everyman His Own Historian,” American Historical Review 37 (1932): 250; Beard, “Written History,” American Historical Review 39 (1934): 221.

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Samuel Eliot Morison saw nothing wrong in giving emphasis to “drum and bugle history,” for recounting tales of grand adventure, of battles won and empires lost, made possible the portrayal of grand themes, painting those vast historical canvases that the artists/historians whom Morison most admired found congenial. Above all, the focus on individual action in the context of national and international conflict opened the way to artistic expression, or what Morison termed style. He quoted Alfred North Whitehead: “The sense for style is an aesthetic sense, based on admiration for the direct attainment of a foreseen end, simply and without waste. . . . Style is the ultimate morality of mind.”5 Such prescriptive claims regarding the correlation of writing and an elitist notion of what is “good” and “tasteful” may strike discordant notes today, but Morison’s “History as a Literary Art” is still worth reading for its practical suggestions about how one goes about the task of producing superior historical writing. Unfortunately, the violent hostility of Morison (and the vast majority of his peers during the 1930s and 1940s) to relativism overcame an innate distaste for positivism. It seemed, indeed, that an entire generation of political and diplomatic historians followed in their footsteps. This comment should not be taken to mean that no outstanding narrative history was written, but what Dominic DiCapra subsequently termed “Gradgrind monographs,” the making of individual bricks and choking on brick dust, held sway. Indeed, it is generally accepted that the emergence of the Annales school—with all its implications for the way historians do history and for the self-confidence of those who inhabit the subfield of international history—began as a rebellion against the prevailing fixation with politics, war, and diplomacy among French historians of the 1950s and 1960s. Lucien Febvre’s disparagement of histoire evenementielle was a direct attack on the narrow, documents-grounded study of French diplomatic and political history then holding sway. By the 1980s historical scholarship in America had reached a point at which narrative history was acknowledged as a mode of presentation peculiarly congenial to practitioners of diplomatic and military history and, therefore, proof of their antiquarian bent and lack of “analytical vigor.”6 In one sense, the historiographical preoccupation of the past two decades in the subfield of international history resulted from determination to find out why the subfield evolved in the “peculiar” way it did and whether some radical change of direction, infusion of new ideas, or transcendental insight could reinvigorate its

5. Quoted in Morison, By Land and by Sea, 292. 6. See, for example, the critique by Michael Hunt,“The Long Crisis in Diplomatic History: Coming to Closure,” Diplomatic History 16 (Winter 1992): 115–40.

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practitioners. While the process of self-examination continues, the conclusion of many was to forgo reliance on archaic, childish storytelling in favor of nonnarrational systems of description such as those holding sway in social history. Surprisingly few have asked whether the alleged inadequacies of narrative to support sustained analysis have come about because diplomatic historians either have not tried very hard or have not found it easy to tell ingenious, interesting, original stories. The problem in my view results from lack of imagination combined with unwillingness even to acknowledge that study of history is at heart a creative enterprise. One of the gurus of our subfield, John L. Gaddis, has argued to the contrary that diplomatic historians “are very good at narration, which is to say that we have no difficulty demonstrating a favorite proposition of the historian Edward Potts Cheyney: that ‘all events, conditions, institutions . . . come from immediately preceding events, conditions, and institutions.’”7 This dismissive assessment of any explanatory or interpretive function equates the act of narration with such harmless activities as building sand castles at low tide and skywriting. If Gaddis is correct in defining historical narration so narrowly, those who pursue it are doing nothing more than playing and replaying Trivial Pursuit—describing and classifying familiar or long-forgotten curiosities, linking them together in the most simple chronological sequences, all the while energetically wielding the scissors and slapping on the paste (to paraphrase R. G. Collingwood’s characterization of positivist history) to rack up points (entries in one’s CV) in an unending, circular board game with no purpose save peer recognition. This is certainly the judgment of Peter Novick. In his encyclopedic, often tendentious survey of the doing of history in the United States, That Noble Dream: The “Objectivity Question” and the American Historical Profession (1989), Novick castigated attempts to reintroduce narration as a central, organizing force as intellectually feeble and politically debauched. He acknowledged that “the idea of a revival of narrative had several obvious attractions for historians. As disciplinary identities became blurred, historians could define the distinctive essence of their craft, their autonomous realm, as ‘telling stories.’ In the fact of multiplying centrifugal forces within the historical discipline, a narrative focus could be integrative.” He admitted that numerous distinguished historians had enlisted in the crusade for writing what Bernard Bailyn termed “essential narratives . . . the great challenge of historical scholarship.”8 But Novick argued that

7. Gaddis, “New Conceptual Approaches to the Study of American Foreign Relations,” Diplomatic History 14 (Summer 1990): 406. 8. Bailyn, “The Challenge of Modern Historiography,” American Historical Review 87 (1982): 7.

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the narrative vogue soon collapsed, and for good reasons. Some worried that historians, blinded by the “litcrit fog,” would tumble into the abyss of total relativism, embracing the heretical view that “historical narrative is just another form of fiction.”9 Others objected that narratives, grounded in implicit rather than explicit ontological arguments, did not contribute to the ongoing, pivotal debate about overarching interpretation and methodology. As does John Gaddis, these critics focus on the presumed proclivity of narrative historians to tell small, inconsequential stories, to celebrate discrete parts of the historical experience as equivalent to (or greater than) the whole. Still more serious, advocates of the “new narrative history” had an unspoken agenda: defense of the objectivity of historical inquiry. Espousal of narrative construction thus represented a counterattack on the assorted manifestations of relativism—from Beard to Michel Foucault and Clifford Geertz—that had toppled historical objectivity from its pedestal. Critics pointed to the inherent contradictions in the neo-narrativist argument. Scholars such as J. H. Hexter espoused the centrality of narrative (or what he called “the rhetoric of history . . . ordinarily deemed icing on the cake of history, but . . . mixed right into the batter, . . . [affecting] not merely the outward appearance of history . . . but its . . . essential . . . capacity to convey knowledge of the past as it actually was”) as a way to have their cake and eat it too.10 Far more devastating to the cause of a narrative revival was the charge that it served as equerry to established authority, that its ideological valence was inherently skewed. Eric Monkkonen observed that the call for a return to narrative offered “an interesting parallel with Reaganism and the New Right: a demand for a return to simpler times and simpler tales, for a world no longer mired in complexity and opacity.” Peter Novick’s judgment was also blunt: “Many objected to the inherent political conservatism of narrative histories, in which structures were implicitly accepted as a given background against which individual actors shaped events, treating those structures as unproblematic. Narratives were thus conservative in a sense which transcended the left-right continuum.” Novick drove home the point by suggesting that, like narrative history as practiced in the West, those Stalinist accounts that emphasized the role of Stalin rather than structural determinants were “conservative” by “their tacit exculpation of the system.”11 If so, heaven forbid that anyone embrace narrative history! No attention was given to whether narrative history was or 9. Quoted in Novick, That Noble Dream: The “Objectivity Question” and the American Historical Profession (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 625. 10. Hexter, “Rhetoric,” in his Doing History (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1971), 68. 11. Quoted in Novick, That Noble Dream, 623, 622.

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was not “creative,” apparently since it seemed self-evident that such a mossbacked, antediluvian mode of inquiry was totally deficient in everything of value. The recent revival of narrative history, as reflected in the essays in this collection, challenged these gloomy assessments. Indeed, recent perspectives drawn from literary theory, the philosophy of history, and that arcane mathematical conceptualization, chaos theory, support the claim that narrative history is not a peripheral or trivial undertaking but central to the historian’s endeavor to reconstruct a meaningful past. The narrative form, storytelling, is not merely an option. It is what those who study history do. As well, the narrative form is not necessarily linked to a particular ideological orientation but, rather, serves the purposes of storytellers across the spectrum of conviction about the wellsprings of human behavior and individual/group action. Benedetto Croce’s observation that where there is no narrative there is no history compares interestingly with the statement of Peter Gay, otherwise hostile to Crocean relativism: “Historical narration without analysis is trivial, historical analysis without narration is incomplete.” Narrative is thus, as Roland Barthes noted, “simply there like life itself.”12 In sum, the explosion of concern with “narrativity” suggests that telling stories is, in one way or another, central to our existence as human beings. Paraphrasing Thomas Jefferson, Robert Ferrell once wrote that “we are all traditionalists and we are all revisionists.”13 By this he meant that historians should attempt to explain fully the circumstances, opportunities, and pressures that influence foreign policy decisions by presidents and their advisers, always remembering that the historical actors themselves cannot know the outcomes that historians are attempting to explain. In this sense historians always try to “revise” our understanding of why and how actors behaved by gathering and assessing new evidence. Ferrell taught his students and colleagues to integrate new evidence and new interpretations within a tightly organized narrative that lets historical actors speak and allows the historian to render fair judgments. Permit one final tussle with these theoretical phantasms—chaos theory. The significance of this esoteric body of knowledge was brought to the diplomatic history guild’s attention by H. W. Brands’s 1992 Bernath Lecture, “Fractal History, or Clio and the Chaotics.”14 Ducking for now the fascinating issues of contingency and unanticipated consequence (that is, the phenomenon of a Texas tornado being caused by a butterfly flapping its wings in Brazil), which are rel12. Gay, Style in History (New York: Basic Books, 1974), 189; Barthes, Music, Image, Text (New York: Hill and Wang, 1977), 79. 13. Ferrell, “Presidential Address,” Newsletter of the Society of Historians of American Foreign Relations, December 1971, p. 1. 14. Brands, “Fractal History, or Clio and the Chaotics,” Diplomatic History 16 (Fall 1992): 495–510.

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evant to but would greatly complicate the story, allow me to suggest how Brands makes a case for a scientific (mathematical) underpinning for the centrality of narrative to historical inquiry. Two points are noteworthy. First, Brands observes that the chief implication of fractal geometry for history “may be that there is no one way of viewing or describing history that is inherently more valuable, legitimate, or praiseworthy. Changing the lens of the microscope, zooming in or zooming out, makes the subject under examination neither more understandable and revealing, nor less. It simply shows a different aspect of the complexity that exists at all scales.” Brands concludes that explaining the past requires explaining “all the orders of complexity”—certainly making clear that there is more than enough work for anyone who signs on for the enterprise.15 More problematic, Brands claims that fractals/chaos theory supports in mathematical terms the possibility of predicting aggregated human actions. But Brands hastens to acknowledge that historical theories “have yielded meager results,” and he concludes that the stance of the artist rather than the scientist’s confident swagger should be the historian’s model. “Historians, like other artists, struggle to explain what it means to be human.” It is, Brands says, and I agree, a vehicle for an understanding of self.16 Is narrative history innately conservative, unable in that romantic formulation of our art to “speak conscience to power”? No. Is narrative history valueladen? Yes, insofar as any form of intellectual inquiry reflects the assumptions and beliefs of the human being who is conducting the investigation. Historians tell different stories, and the landscape of those stories is shaped by governing values and beliefs as well as by the time and place in which the stories are created and recounted. Do those stories “speak conscience to power”? Except in those most private recesses of our hearts, we tend to say no and, indeed, to avoid the question. Our stance is that of Saul Bellow in Humboldt’s Gift, whose protagonist desperately wished to believe that those who thought and wrote and those who acted could communicate. “Stevenson was a man of real culture,” Bellow’s Humboldt claims, “Stevenson was Aristotle’s great-souled man. In his administration cabinet members would quote Yeats and Joyce. The new Joint Chiefs would know Thucydides. Humboldt would be consulted about each State of the Union message. He was going to be the Goethe of the new government and build Weimar in Washington.”17 If one argues that fashioning a narrative is “empowering,” then 15. Ibid., 500–502. 16. Ibid., 509–10. 17. Bellow, Humboldt’s Gift (New York: Viking Press, 1975).

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whoever tells the dominating stories (whether the novels of white dead males or Walter LaFeber’s widely used text on the Cold War) possesses power. What benefits does the narrative approach confer? First, reconceiving any period however large or small—seeing unity at some levels and discrete, possibly random behavior at others—offers opportunities for fascinating and instructive stories about the past. Second, telling these stories demands a commitment both to the totality of historical experience and to the awareness that insight comes from imaginative recourse to example, anecdote, the telling detail. Third, as RHF always reminded his students, stories have natural (or seemingly so) beginnings, middles, and ends, and they manifest two other attributes: (a) They are complete in themselves—that is, following the story’s internal logic does not require acceptance of elements external to the events being described, the story being told. (b) They engage the interest/curiosity/need of the reader/auditor to discover how the tale turns out; therefore a successful narrative enlists its recipients in the process of storytelling—causing them to be participants in an unfolding drama. In sum, a historical narrative requires acceptance of one’s reconstruction of a past as authentic on procedural and emotional grounds. That outcome requires artistic skill, perseverance, and creativity. Narrative history comes in all sorts of packages and reflects all fashions. It is possible to do as many types of narratives—uplifting, tragic, comic, ironic—in international history as there are stories to be told. The coeditor of this collection, Garry Clifford, once pointed out that Franklin Roosevelt claimed he “had little sympathy with Copernicus,” for that learned astronomer “looked through the right end of the telescope, thus greatly magnifying his problems. I use the wrong end of the telescope and it makes things much easier to bear.” Clifford uses this piece of Rooseveltian whimsy to exemplify the “irreverent self-confidence that Roosevelt brought to statecraft” and to remind us how a given interpretation of FDR and U.S. foreign policy before Pearl Harbor is determined by “the focus [meaning vantage or point of view], or framework, that one adopts.”18 But there is a corollary to be extracted from this self-mocking comparison. What one can learn (even what sorts of questions one thinks to ask and assumes are important) may differ markedly depending upon which end of the telescope is employed.

18. FDR to Felix Frankfurter, March 11, 1943, in Max Freedman, ed., Roosevelt and Frankfurter: Their Correspondence, 1928–1945 (Boston: Atlantic, Little, Brown, 1967), 692, quoted in J. Garry Clifford, “Both Ends of the Telescope: New Perspectives on FDR and American Entry into World War II,” Diplomatic History 12:2 (Spring 1989): 213–14.

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That insight is hugely reinforced by Stephen Jay Gould’s marvelous depiction of a paradigm shift in evolutionary theory resulting from the ordering of 500 million years of biological successes and failures into a historical narrative. In Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History, Gould moves contingency front and center on the stage of historical explanation. “A historical explanation does not rest on direct deductions from laws of nature, but on an unpredictable sequence of antecedent states, where any major change in any step of the sequence would have altered the final result. This final result is therefore dependent, or contingent, upon everything that came before—the unerasable and determining signature of history,” Gould reminds us. He continues: “We are especially moved by events that did not have to be, but that occurred for identifiable reasons subject to endless mulling and stewing. . . . We can argue, lament, or exult over each detail—because each holds the power of transformation. Contingency is the affirmation of control by immediate events over destiny, the kingdom lost for want of a horseshoe nail.”19 This is heady, liberating stuff, for it confirms that gut feeling that the historian creates a past by the act of choosing a moment/month/era/eon as the contingent beginning point of her/his narrative. What it makes possible—at least for me—is the fusion of an approach to historical explanation perhaps best termed “accidentalism” (which, as Gerhard Weinberg reminds us, emphasizes “the uncertainties inherent in developments, . . . the role of chance, [and] . . . the impact of the unanticipated”)20 with renewed attention to the significance of the exceptional, unique elements of the American sociopolitical milieu. Historians tell stories. They especially enjoy telling stories that bring to life the ironies and unexpected twists and turns characteristic of human relationships. They find, not surprisingly, the convoluted story of America’s emergence as an imperial power a source of unfailing fascination and amusement. They love to puncture the more absurd manifestations of self-importance—whether encountered in the White House, the precincts of the Department of State and the Pentagon, or among friends and colleagues. As do the essays in this volume, they seek to tell plain stories, tales varnished only by a limitless passion for the past and faith in its imaginative reconstruction as vital to understanding our world and ourselves.

19. Gould, Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History (New York: W. W. Norton, 1989), 283, 284. 20. Weinberg, World in the Balance: Behind the Scenes in World War II (Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England, 1981), xii.

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I A Nineteenth-Century Icon

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Howard Jones

Toward a More Perfect Union Lincoln and the Death of Slavery

HE WAS KNOWN AS THE TALL , lean, gangly, and homely ax-swinging rube from

the Illinois prairie—a baboon, a gorilla, an ape who at the most possessed a boorish intelligence and at the least had all the characteristics of a pathetic hick who told sometimes humorous but usually pointless stories. Modest and unassuming, he swore that he would kill anyone he found uglier than he was. The husband of a mentally troubled wife who remained loyal to the Union despite having four brothers in the Confederate army, he was a brooding and melancholy man who dreamed of his death, was devastated by the passing of his young son Willie, and suffered the agony of leading the Union in a war that sent more than 600,000 young Americans to their graves. This man was Abraham Lincoln, the Great Emancipator who in writing the Emancipation Proclamation sealed the death of both slavery and the Old South and, in so doing, helped to protect the Union against foreign intervention while bringing about a new birth of freedom for the American republic.1 If the above analysis is accurate, it does not appear that way to all writers. According to Lerone Bennett Jr., author of Before the Mayflower (1962) and executive editor of Ebony magazine, Lincoln’s fame as “the great emancipator” is a myth. In his recent work, Forced into Glory, Bennett alleges, “No other American story is so enduring. No other American story is so comforting. No other American story is so false. Abraham Lincoln was not ‘the great emancipator.’ . . . The most famous act in American political history never happened” (emphasis Bennett’s). If not for the courage of the slaves themselves, “Blacks 1. Allen C. Guelzo, Abraham Lincoln: Redeemer President (Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1999), 388; James G. Randall, Lincoln the President: Midstream (New York: Dodd, Mead, and Co., 1952), 370. This essay derives in part from my Abraham Lincoln and a New Birth of Freedom: The Union and Slavery in the Diplomacy of the Civil War (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1999) and Union in Peril: The Crisis over British Intervention in the Civil War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992). Earlier versions of this essay were presented as a public address before the Abraham Lincoln Institute at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History and as the Lampros Lecture at Weber State University.

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would have remained in slavery to 1900 or even longer.” It was Lincoln who declared in September 1858, “I do not suppose that in the most peaceful way ultimate extinction [of slavery] would occur in less than a hundred years.” Lincoln’s calendar “would have pushed emancipation to September 1958 ‘at least,’ twenty-nine years after the birth of Martin Luther King Jr. and four years after Brown v. Board of Education. If Lincoln had had his way, Oprah Winfrey, Martin Luther King Jr., Jesse Jackson Sr., Lena Horne, Booker T. Washington, Thurgood Marshall, Duke Ellington, Muhammad Ali, Jesse Owens, Louis Armstrong, . . . Hank Aaron, Maya Angelou, Debbie Allen, . . . Malcolm X, Rosa Parks, . . . Alex Haley, and even Clarence Thomas would have been born in slavery. . . . If he had had his way, millions of twentieth-century Whites would have been in ‘Gone With the Wind’ instead of watching it.”2 Bennett is not alone in calling Lincoln a racist. John Hope Franklin asserts that “the fight for union that also became a fight for freedom never became a fight for equality or the creation of one racial world.” Allen Guelzo argues that Lincoln’s early lack of concern regarding slavery resulted from a racism that marked so many fellow Americans. Fond of minstrel shows, Lincoln felt no compunction against telling racial jokes, often using darky or even the “N-word” in his stories. His belief in black inferiority typified his times. To Joshua Speed’s sister Mary in September 1841, Lincoln recounted seeing “twelve negroes” all “chained six and six together” on an Ohio River steamboat. A horrific situation he noted, and yet “amid all these distressing circumstances, as we would think them, they were the most cheerful and apparently happy creatures on board.” Indeed, Lincoln compared them to “fish upon a trot-line” and discerned innate differences between them and white people. “One, whose offence for which he had been sold was an over-fondness for his wife, played the fiddle almost continually; and the others danced, sung, cracked jokes, and played various games with cards from day to day.”3 Racist? White supremacist? Hypocrite? Is Bennett correct in denouncing the Emancipation Proclamation as “a ploy” to keep most slaves in bondage until 2. Bennett, Forced into Glory: Abraham Lincoln’s White Dream (Chicago: Johnson Publishing Co., 2000), 6–7, 20; Lincoln’s fourth debate with Stephen A. Douglas at Charleston, Ill., September 18, 1858, in Roy P. Basler, ed., The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, 9 vols. (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1953–1955), 3:181 (hereafter CWL). Bennett’s book-length study grew out of his earlier article “Was Abe Lincoln a White Supremacist?” Ebony, February 1968, pp. 35– 38, 40, 42. 3. Franklin quoted in Merrill D. Peterson, Lincoln in American Memory (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 384; Guelzo, Lincoln, 127; Lincoln to Mary Speed, September 27, 1841, CWL, 1:260. Lincoln often related the story of an “old Virginian” who stropped “his razor on a certain member of a young negro’s body” (Guelzo, Lincoln, 127).

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Lincoln could implement his infamous scheme of black colonization?4 How shall we record Lincoln’s legacy? Diametrically opposed to Bennett’s portrayal is the South’s image of Lincoln, which, paradoxically, results in an equally damning assessment of the president. According to the latter argument, Lincoln’s election to the Oval Office in 1860 fulfilled the South’s worst fears and drove it into secession. Southerners perceived Lincoln as a fanatical, wild-eyed abolitionist—a fervent follower of Boston’s William Lloyd Garrison, who had founded the Boston Liberator to expose the immorality of slavery and publicly burned the Constitution in an effort to advance immediate emancipation without compensation to slave owners. After Lincoln’s election, or so did many southerners believe, this “Black Republican” intended to revive the insanity of John Brown by forcing the South into racial equality through amalgamation of the races. Lincoln sought to destroy the Old South. Which interpretation of Lincoln is correct: Bennett’s? Or the South’s? The reality was somewhat different though similar in results. Lincoln at first only mildly opposed slavery, wishing to contain its spread and thereby promote its “ultimate extinction.” In 1837 he admitted that Congress had “no power, under the Constitution, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the different States.” He therefore wished “to make and to keep the distinction between the existing institution, and the extension of it, so broad, and clear, that no honest man” could fail to discern the difference.5 Lincoln preferred a peaceful process of gradual emancipation with compensation to owners, followed by colonization of freed blacks. Emancipation by choice, he insisted, was preferable to emancipation by the sword. In either case, however, the outcome would be the end of slavery and the destruction of the Old South. Lincoln’s views toward slavery underwent evolutionary changes while he was president. At the outset of the war, he sought to preserve the Union as he knew it in 1861; by mid-1862, he advocated an improved Union that rested on the death of slavery. What had happened in that single year? The war itself had provided a profound learning experience in ways that no one could have expected. Lincoln’s First Inaugural Address of March 1861 highlighted a mystical and permanent Union that exalted the natural-rights principles of the Declaration of Independence. Secession would destroy the Union;

4. Bennett, Forced into Glory, 9. 5. Lincoln’s speech at Springfield, Ill., June 16, 1858, CWL, 2:461; Lincoln’s speech at Peoria, Ill., October 16, 1854, CWL, 2:248; Protest in Illinois Legislature on Slavery (signed by Congressman Lincoln), March 3, 1837, CWL, 1:75.

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so the Union must destroy secession. An inescapable corollary of this stand was the destruction of slavery—the cornerstone of the Old South, according to Confederate vice president Alexander Stephens. Integrally related to the sanctity of the Union was another critical issue that proved inseparable from slavery—the need to block foreign intervention in the war. The Confederate shots fired on Fort Sumter in April 1861 unleashed a whirlwind of events that transformed a disparate collection of Americans into a nation dramatically different from that before the war. Preservation of the Union—the republic itself—soon transcended into the creation of something higher: a “more perfect Union.”6 Crucial to this lofty objective was the abolition of slavery. By the time Lincoln became president, he had adopted a moderate position on slavery in terming it a legal right but a moral wrong. The republic, he had insisted during the 1850s, had gone awry in supporting both liberty and slavery. The U.S. Constitution was supposed to embody the liberal spirit of the Declaration of Independence. Yet the great document of 1776 emphasized the natural rights of liberty, while the Constitution protected a slave owner’s property by due process of law. Morality and the law were in conflict. As president, Lincoln confronted the ancient struggle between human rights and property rights that emerged as the chief impetus to civil war. Lincoln had been jarred into this reality by the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854. Democrat Stephen A. Douglas had set off a political firestorm by sponsoring a bill that repealed the Missouri Compromise of 1820 by erasing the ban on slavery above the 36° 30' line west of Missouri and potentially opening all KansasNebraska territory to slavery by the principle of “popular sovereignty.” Passage of the act, Lincoln declared, “took us by surprise—astounded us. . . . We were thunderstruck and stunned.” The Kansas-Nebraska Act violated the sacred mission of the Founding Fathers, who had “contemplated the progressive improvement in the condition of all men everywhere.” Slavery became a “monstrous injustice,” undermining “our republican example of its just influence in the world.” With the Kansas-Nebraska Act, “our republican robe is soiled, and trailed in the dust.” The only way to “repurify” the republic was to restore the principles of the Declaration of Independence.7 Lincoln denounced popular sovereignty as a subterfuge for spreading slavery into the new territory. In Missouri, “slavery lost no time in marching right 6. Lincoln’s First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1861, CWL, 4:265. The phrase, of course, comes from the U.S. Constitution. 7. Lincoln’s speech at Peoria, Ill., October 16, 1854, CWL, 2:255, 276, 282; James M. McPherson, Abraham Lincoln and the Second American Revolution (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 126.

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in and going to the utmost verge of that boundary. . . . Will it not go, then, into Kansas and Nebraska, if permitted?” Popular sovereignty only appeared to be high-principled. “The doctrine of self government is right—absolutely and eternally right.” But popular sovereignty violated that right by allowing people to choose slavery. No one has the “right to do wrong.” Was not slavery “a total destruction of self-government, to say that he too shall not govern himself ? When the white man governs himself that is self-government; but when he governs himself, and also governs another man, that is more than self-government— that is despotism.” The Founding Fathers sought “to give all a chance.” Popular sovereignty violated the principle of self-government by finding “moral right in the enslaving of one man by another.”8 Were negroes, Lincoln asked, “property in the same sense that hogs and horses are?” This was “notoriously not so.” Blacks had “mind, feeling, souls, family affections, hopes, joys, sorrows—something that made them more than hogs or horses.” Was not slavery “a gross outrage on the law of nature?” In condoning slavery, Americans were “descending from the high republican faith of our ancestors, to repudiate that principle and to declare by the highest act of our government that we have no longer a choice between freedom and slavery—that both are equal with us. . . . We were proclaiming ourselves political hypocrites before the world, by thus fostering Human Slavery and proclaiming ourselves, at the same time, the sole friends of Human Freedom. . . . No man is good enough to govern another man, without that other’s consent. I say this is the leading principle—the sheet anchor of American republicanism.” The negro was “entitled to all the natural rights enumerated in the Declaration of Independence, the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”9 Lincoln insisted that the Union could not fulfill its obligation to liberty when burdened by slavery. “He who would be no slave, must consent to have no slave. Those who deny freedom to others, deserve it not for themselves.” Enslavement of any human being was tyranny. “If the negro is a man, why then my ancient faith teaches me that ‘all men are created equal.’” What a “perfect liberty” the

8. Lincoln’s Fragment on Slavery, July 1, 1854 (?), CWL, 2:222; Lincoln’s speech at Springfield, Ill., October 4, 1854, CWL, 2:244; Lincoln’s speech at Peoria, Ill., October 16, 1854, CWL, 2:265, 266, 274; Lincoln’s Fifth Debate with Douglas, Galesburg, Ill., October 7, 1858, CWL, 3:226; Guelzo, Lincoln, 186–87. 9. Lincoln’s speech at Springfield, Ill., October 4, 1854, CWL, 2:242, 245, 246; Lincoln’s speech at Peoria, Ill., October 16, 1854, CWL, 2:266; Lincoln’s First Debate with Douglas at Ottawa, Ill., August 21, 1858, CWL, 3:16; Guelzo, Lincoln, 190–91, 220; John Patrick Diggins, On Hallowed Ground: Abraham Lincoln and the Foundations of American History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), 8.

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slaveholders “sigh for,” he facetiously told a large Illinois audience in the 1850s— “the liberty of making slaves of other people.”10 That said, Lincoln maintained a pragmatic view toward race relations and, unlike the abolitionists, never promoted racial equality. “My own feelings will not admit of this; and if mine would, we well know that those of the great mass of white people will not.” The reality of prejudice in both North and South dictated that “we can not . . . make them equals.” The creators of the Declaration of Independence “did not mean to declare all men equal in all respects.” Their ideal was a “free society . . . constantly looked to, constantly labored for, and even though never perfectly attained, constantly approximated and thereby constantly spreading and deepening its influence, and augmenting the happiness and value of life to all people of all colors everywhere.” They “meant simply to declare the right [of universal freedom], so that the enforcement of it might follow as fast as circumstances should permit.” We must always bow to necessity—to the prevailing public tenor of times. “So I say in relation to the principle that all men are created equal, let it be as nearly reached as we can.”11 Lincoln had nonetheless long regarded slavery as a moral wrong. In a letter dated April 4, 1864, he declared, “I am naturally anti-slavery. If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong. I can not remember when I did not so think, and feel.” Lincoln confronted many opponents in arguing the moral wrong of slavery, including the followers of John C. Calhoun, who insisted that slavery was a positive good, as well as those like Douglas who were morally indifferent. But to all those who took no stand against the institution, Lincoln’s most incisive declaration on the matter was unanswerable: “Although volume upon volume is written to prove slavery a very good thing, we never hear of the man who wishes to take the good of it, by being a slave himself.”12

10. Lincoln to Henry L. Pierce and others, April 6, 1859, CWL, 3:376; Lincoln’s speech at Peoria, Ill., October 16, 1854, CWL, 2:250, 266; Diggins, On Hallowed Ground, 36; James M. McPherson, Drawn with the Sword: Reflections on the American Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 183–84. 11. Lincoln’s speech at Peoria, Ill., October 16, 1854, CWL, 2:256; Lincoln’s speech at Chicago, July 10, 1858, CWL, 2:501; Lincoln’s speech at Springfield, Ill., June 26, 1857, CWL, 2:406–7; Lincoln to Albert G. Hodges, April 4, 1864, CWL, 7:281; Harry V. Jaffa, A New Birth of Freedom: Abraham Lincoln and the Coming of the Civil War (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 2000), 166; David H. Donald, Lincoln (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1995), 633–34 n. 221; Don E. Fehrenbacher, “Only His Stepchildren: Lincoln and the Negro,” Civil War History 20 (December 1974): 293–310; George M. Fredrickson, “A Man but Not a Brother: Abraham Lincoln and Racial Equality,” Journal of Southern History 41 (February 1975): 39–58. 12. Jaffa, A New Birth of Freedom, 74, 108, 110; Guelzo, Lincoln, 9; Lincoln to Albert G. Hodges, April 4, 1864, CWL, 7:281; Lincoln’s Fragment on Slavery, July 1, 1854 (?), CWL, 2:222.

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Then why did Lincoln refuse to make an antislavery declaration at the outset of his presidency in 1861? He believed slavery “the root of the rebellion,” asserting that “nothing else has put constitutional government in danger” (emphasis Lincoln’s). But he could not say this because of domestic political considerations as well as the threat of intervention by England and France. To focus on slavery would alienate three important groups of Americans: residents of the border states of Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland, and Missouri (slave states that had not joined the Confederacy); northerners who opposed a war on behalf of black people; and those believed to be loyalists in the South who might somehow regain control of the government. But Lincoln’s concern about the home front led to troubles abroad, where he assumed that contemporary observers understood that slavery had caused the conflict. His public pronouncements on preserving the Union, combined with the South’s denial of slavery’s importance to the sectional conflict, convinced the British and French that it was not an issue. This surprising position on the war by both antagonists led to shallow solutions such as that proposed by the British foreign secretary, Lord John Russell, who saw no connection between the Union and slavery and called on the North to accept southern separation over bloodshed.13 Lincoln regarded abolition as a threat to the Union and preferred gradual emancipation with compensation, followed by colonization of freed blacks. The abolitionists “would shiver into fragments the Union of these States . . . rather than slavery should continue a single hour.” Whites and blacks could not live together peacefully as free people. “My first impulse would be to free all the slaves, and send them to Liberia,—to their own native land,” he asserted in 1854. As for the youths or sickly left behind, “the South will be compelled to resort to” an “apprentice system” similar to that of the “indentured servants” in Illinois.14 The war’s demands, combined with lukewarm support for gradual emancipation and colonization, pushed Lincoln into outright emancipation. In mid-July 1862 he clarified his intention to use his powers as commander in chief to adopt any means necessary to win the war. To Secretary of State William Seward and Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles, Lincoln declared that the rebels had “made war on the Government” and “were subject to the incidents and calamities of war.” Emancipation would undermine the Confederacy and was therefore “a military necessity, absolutely essential to the preservation of

13. Lincoln’s “Reply to Emancipation Memorial Presented by Chicago Christians of All Denominations,” September 13, 1862, CWL, 5:423–24; Jones, Union in Peril, 22–23, 106. 14. Jaffa, A New Birth of Freedom, 164; Guelzo, Lincoln, 130; Lincoln’s speech at Peoria, Ill., October 16, 1854, CWL, 2:255.

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the Union.” It was crucial to take a stand against slavery. “The Administration must set an example.”15 Nine days later, at a cabinet meeting on July 22, Lincoln justified emancipation as a military action. After a moment of silence, Seward (himself mildly antislavery) declared opposition to any effort “to proselyte with the sword.” We must wait for a victory on the battlefield so that the action might not appear to be “the last measure of an exhausted government, a cry for help . . . our last shriek, on the retreat.”16 Such action might provoke British intervention by appearing to be a frantic effort to instigate slave revolts. Lincoln agreed to wait until the Union won that battle. Thus the chief impetus in Lincoln’s resort to emancipation was practical in nature—the military needs of the war. To New York financier August Belmont, the president affirmed his hard line toward the South: “This government cannot much longer play a game in which it stakes all, and its enemies stake nothing. Those enemies must understand that they cannot experiment for ten years trying to destroy the government, and if they fail still come back into the Union unhurt.” He could wait no longer: “The truth is, that what is done, and omitted, about slaves, is done and omitted on . . . military necessity.” Lincoln was emphatic. “Now is the time.” To underline his argument, he told Horace Greeley in the New York Tribune: “My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that.”17 In the meantime the Union suffered another defeat at Second Bull Run in late August at the hands of Gen. Robert E. Lee and, as Confederate forces prepared for a daring raid north, seemed destined to lose the war. News of Bull 15. Donald, Lincoln, 362; Howard K. Beale, ed., Diary of Gideon Welles: Secretary of the Navy under Lincoln and Johnson, 3 vols. (New York: W. W. Norton, 1960), 1:70–71 (July 13, 1862); Gideon Welles, “The History of Emancipation,” Galaxy 14 (December 1872): 842–43; Stephen B. Oates, “Lincoln’s Journey to Emancipation,” in his Our Fiery Trial (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1979), 76–77; James M. McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 503–4; Benjamin P. Thomas and Harold M. Hyman, Stanton: The Life and Times of Lincoln’s Secretary of War (New York: Knopf, 1962), 238. 16. Thomas and Hyman, Stanton, 238–40; Donald, Lincoln, 365; David Donald, ed., Inside Lincoln’s Cabinet: The Civil War Diaries of Salmon P. Chase (New York: Longmans, Green, 1954), 99–100; William H. Seward, Autobiography of William H. Seward from 1801 to 1834, with a Memoir of His Life, and Selections from His Letters from 1831–1846, ed. Frederick W. Seward, 3 vols. (New York: D. Appleton, 1877), 3:74. 17. Lincoln to Belmont, July 31, 1862, CWL, 5:350; Lincoln to Greeley, August 22, 1862, CWL, 5:388.

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Run encouraged Russell in England to push for a joint armistice of several European states that would constitute recognition of the Confederacy and force the Union to the peace table. Even the coldly pragmatic prime minister, Lord Palmerston, leaned toward intervention. He urged his colleagues, however, to wait for the clinching blow that would surely result from Lee’s expected followup victories in the north. The Union’s long-awaited battlefield victory came in razor-thin fashion on September 17, 1862, when at Antietam Creek near Sharpsburg, Maryland, Union and Confederate forces grappled in the bloodiest single day’s fighting in the war. As evening hours descended, the casualty total reached 24,000, all American. Lee ordered his badly pounded armies back into Virginia as Union Gen. George B. McClellan’s equally battered legions claimed victory by virtue of their holding the field. In truth, the outcome was a lethal stalemate that, combined with the two-day bloodbath at Shiloh in early April, starkly revealed the growing horrors of the war and intensified the call for foreign intervention. But Lincoln could now claim the victory that he so sorely needed.18 Less than a week after Antietam, on September 22, the president assembled his cabinet to announce his preliminary proclamation of emancipation. “Gentlemen,” he began, “I have, as you are aware, thought a great deal about the relation of this war to Slavery.” At the Union’s lowest point—when Lee’s armies seemed poised to assault Washington, Baltimore, and Harrisburg—he had decided that if Federal forces held off the rebels, he would take a decisive step toward emancipation. “I said nothing to anyone; but I made the promise to myself, and (hesitating a little)—to my Maker. The rebel army is now driven out, and I am going to fulfill that promise.” This was his decision alone, and he considered the issue closed. “I do not wish your advice about the main matter—for that I have determined for myself.” As of January 1, 1863, all slaves in states still in rebellion were to be “forever free.”19 Among the proclamation’s justifications was its implicit call for destroying the Old South. The pronouncement was constitutional in that its central thrust fell within Lincoln’s military powers as commander in chief. It was legal in that emancipation would not take place in loyal states where property in slaves remained safe under the due-process clause. It was political in averting a confrontation 18. For the best treatment of the battle of Antietam, see James M. McPherson, Crossroads of Freedom: Antietam (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002). 19. Seward to CFA, circular, September 22, 1862, U.S. Department of State, Papers Relating to Foreign Affairs Communicated to Congress, December 1, 1862 (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1863), 195; Donald, ed., Inside Lincoln’s Cabinet, 149–51 (September 22, 1862); “Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation,” September 22, 1862, CWL, 5:434; Jones, Union in Peril, 173–74.

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over slavery with the border states, the southern Unionists, and conservative northerners. And it had a diplomatic dimension in discouraging foreign intervention by making the war into a humanitarian crusade against slavery. “From the expiration of the ‘days of grace,’” Lincoln told a government official in referring to the hundred days between the emancipation announcement and its actual implementation, “the character of the war will be changed. It will be one of subjugation and extermination. . . . The [old] South is to be destroyed and replaced by new propositions and ideas.”20 The Emancipation Proclamation drew a mixed reaction. Abolitionists and blacks were critical, though pleased that Lincoln had turned the nation in the right direction. Union soldiers overwhelmingly concluded that the fighting had evolved into a war for liberty. Southerners bitterly complained of a violation of states’ rights and proclaimed a war for the liberty of owning slaves. And, despite Lincoln’s hope to discourage foreign intervention, it had a shockingly opposite effect. Many British observers ignored the Union’s claimed conquest at Antietam and irately attacked him for a desperate attempt to salvage victory by stirring up slave insurrections. William Stuart, British chargé in Washington, denounced the proclamation as applicable only in areas where the Union had no “de facto jurisdiction” and bitterly remarked that it made no “pretext of humanity” in being “cold, vindictive, and entirely political.” If Lincoln and the Republicans were to win the congressional elections of November 1862, “we may see reenacted some of the worst excesses of the French Revolution.” The president intended to rip the South apart by inciting slave revolts and racial war.21 The British press blasted the proclamation as a sick piece of hypocrisy. Lincoln’s sole intention, according to the London Times, was to set off a “servile war” by encouraging the slaves to “murder the families of their masters” while they were at the battlefront. Was “the reign of the last president to go out amid horrible massacres of white women and children, to be followed by the extermination of the black race in the South? Is lincoln yet a name not known to us as it will be known to posterity, and is it ultimately to be classed among that catalogue of monsters, the wholesale assassins and butchers of their kind?” Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine ridiculed the proclamation as “monstrous, reckless, devilish.” To defeat the South, the Union “would league itself with Beelzebub, and seek to make a hell of half a continent.”22 20. Lincoln quoted in T. J. Barnett to Samuel L. M. Barlow, September 25, 1862, in McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, 558; Donald, Lincoln, 398. 21. Stuart to Russell, September 23, 26, October 7, 10, 1862, PRO 30/22/36, Great Britain, Foreign Office, Russell Papers, Public Record Office, Kew, England. 22. Times (London), October 7, 1862, p. 8, and October 21, 1862, p. 9; “The Crisis of the American Civil War,” Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine 92 (November 1862): 636.

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Seward had been correct: Antietam had not provided the clear-cut victory the Union needed, leading the British to regard emancipation as a last-ditch effort to avert Union defeat in the war. Lincoln had played “his last card,” sarcastically declared the Times. “He will appeal to the black blood of the African; he will whisper of the pleasures of spoil and of the gratification of yet fiercer instincts; and when blood begins to flow and shrieks come piercing through the darkness, Mr. lincoln will wait till the rising flames tell that all is consummated, and then he will rub his hands and think that revenge is sweet.”23 Public pressure for intervention set off a bitter two-day cabinet debate inside the British government. Chancellor of the Exchequer William Gladstone urged mediation to end this savage war. Russell sought to stop the war in the name of peace. Palmerston remained hesitant, direly reminding his colleagues that slavery complicated the issue. How could the intervening power force the North and South into an agreement on slavery without itself joining the war? Secretary for War George Cornewall Lewis insisted that the war must render its own verdict—that intervention would lead to an Anglo-Union war with the British effectively on the side of the slaveholding South. At this propitious moment, Napoleon III in France proposed a Great Power arbitration that implied the use of force in compelling both North and South to lay down their guns. But Britain’s recent ill-advised decision to join France (and Spain) in a military expedition to collect debts in Mexico kept the emperor at arm’s length; Russia would have no part of any action that might prove injurious to its Union friend during the Crimean War; and, most important, the British did not want war with the Union. On November 12 the cabinet voted overwhelmingly against intervention.24 The Emancipation Proclamation sounded the death knell of both slavery and the Confederacy and thus became the defining moment in the Civil War. Bennett, contemporary British observers, and other critics have missed the point in denouncing the proclamation as hypocritical rhetoric that freed not a single slave. They have ignored the power pulsating in its closing words: “Upon this act, sincerely believed to be an act of justice, warranted by the Constitution, upon military necessity, I invoke the considerate judgment of mankind, and the gracious favor of Almighty God.”25 The Emancipation Proclamation heightened the momentum toward the abolition of slavery and thereby became the heart and soul of a revolution that created a better Union. 23. Times (London), October 7, 1862, p. 8. 24. For an account of these events, see Jones, Union in Peril, chaps. 9–10. 25. Lincoln to Chase, September 2, 1862, CWL, 6:428–29; Emancipation Proclamation, January 1, 1863, CWL, 6:30.

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Former slave Frederick Douglass at first attacked Lincoln’s restraint but ultimately admitted that he had gone as far as circumstances allowed. On April 14, 1876, at the unveiling of the Freedmen’s Monument honoring Lincoln in the nation’s capital, Douglass poignantly asked: “Can any colored man, or any white man friendly to the freedom of all men, ever forget the night which followed the first day of January, 1863, when the world was to see if Abraham Lincoln would prove to be as good as his word? I shall never forget that memorable night, when in a distant city I waited and watched at a public meeting, with three thousand others not less anxious than myself, for the word of deliverance which we have heard read today. Nor shall I ever forget the outbursts of joy and thanksgiving that rent the air when the lightning [the telegraph] brought to us the emancipation proclamation.”26 In his autobiography, Douglass noted that the document contained “in its spirit a life and power far beyond its letter. Its meaning to me was the entire abolition of slavery, wherever the evil could be reached by the Federal arm, and I saw that its moral power would extend much further. It was in my estimation an immense gain to have the war for the Union committed to the extinction of slavery, even from a military necessity. It is not a bad thing to have individuals or nations do right, though they do so from selfish motives. I approved the one-spur-wisdom of ‘Paddy,’ who thought if he could get one side of his horse to go, he could trust the speed of the other side.” Douglass understood Lincoln’s political predicament. The president hated slavery but “always proceeded against it in a manner the least likely to shock or drive from him any who were truly in sympathy with the preservation of the Union.”27 Douglass praised Lincoln for rising above contemporary prejudice in doing what was right. “In all my interviews with Mr. Lincoln I was impressed with his entire freedom from popular prejudice against the colored race. He was the first great man I talked with in the United States freely, who in no single instance reminded me of the difference between himself and myself, of the difference of color.” Lincoln had a twofold mission, Douglass asserted in Washington in 1876: to preserve the Union and to end slavery. “Had he put the abolition of slavery before the salvation of the Union, he would have inevitably driven from him a powerful class of the American people and rendered resistance to rebellion impossible.” The abolitionists considered Lincoln “tardy, cold, 26. Quoted in George Anastaplo, Abraham Lincoln: A Constitutional Biography (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1999), 200. 27. Douglass, Life and Times of Frederick Douglass: Written by Himself (Cleveland: George M. Rewell and Co., 1883), 430–31, 435–36; Holzer, Lincoln Seen and Heard (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2000), 183.

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dull, and indifferent,” but popular sentiment found him “swift, zealous, radical, and determined.” Lincoln “shared the prejudices of his white fellow-countrymen against the negro,” but “in his heart of hearts he loathed and hated slavery.” As Union forces fought toward Richmond in 1865, Lincoln asked for Douglass’s help in persuading blacks to come over to the Union side. “What he said on this day,” Douglass recalled, “showed a deeper moral conviction against slavery than I had ever seen before in anything spoken or written by him.” Lincoln “was not only a great President, but a great man.”28 Douglass was not the only black leader to praise Lincoln. W. E. B. Du Bois considered Lincoln a human being with human frailties. “We love to think of the Great as flawless. We yearn in our imperfection toward Perfection—sinful, we envisage Righteousness.” But, Du Bois asserted to readers of the Crisis, “I love him not because he was perfect but because he was not and yet triumphed.” Lincoln was “big enough to be inconsistent, merciful; peace-loving, a fighter; despising Negroes and letting them fight and vote; protecting slavery and freeing slaves. He was a man—a big, inconsistent, brave man” who had to save the Union and free the slaves. Nearly a century after the war, Martin Luther King, like Douglass, stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, opening his “I have a dream” speech of August 1963 with the words: “Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flame of withering injustice.”29 Lincoln deserves acclaim as the Great Emancipator for turning the nation in an antislavery direction that culminated in the abolition of slavery by the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865. At the outset of the war, Lincoln did not envision the revolution that would engulf Americans during the next four years. He could not know the divided republic would undergo a crucible of fire that cleansed it of slavery and forged a more perfect Union. But in his all too brief afterglow of victory, he must have recognized that, in the grand scheme of history, the Civil War facilitated the nation’s transition from slavery to freedom. He might even have recalled these piercing words, “Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable!” Trumpeted by Daniel Webster in the Senate in 1830 and publicly repeated by Lincoln more than twenty years later, this famous 28. First Douglass quote in Allen T. Rice, ed., Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln by Distinguished Men of His Time, 8th ed. (New York: North American Review, 1889), 193; second Douglass quote in Anastaplo, Lincoln, 199; third Douglass quote in Douglass, Life and Times, 435–36. 29. Du Bois quoted in Diggins, On Hallowed Ground, 3–4, 276; King quoted in James M. McPherson, “Lincoln the Devil,” New York Times Book Review (review of Bennett, Forced into Glory), August 27, 2000, p. 12.

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declaration best expressed the president’s understanding of the Civil War. Liberty could not exist without the Union, just as the Union could not survive without liberty. “The moment came,” declared Lincoln, “when I felt that slavery must die that the nation might live!”30 Lincoln regarded emancipation as timeless in its implications for freedom. The struggle, he told Congress in late 1861, was “not altogether for today—it is for a vast future also.” Almost two years later, in the Gettysburg Address of November 19, 1863, he applied these principles to all humanity when declaring that Americans were engaged in a contest to determine whether a nation “conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal, . . . can long endure.” These mere 272 words constituted an eloquent explanation of a republican form of government in which Lincoln deified death as essential to life by exalting “a new birth of freedom” that arose from the death of slavery.31 Lincoln’s legacy belongs to the ages. This deceptively ordinary man took a leading role in the eternal contest between liberty and tyranny and, by helping to rid the republic of slavery, safeguarded the Union against foreign intervention while moving it toward true nation status. He remained the pragmatist, constantly nudging fellow Americans as far forward as he could, but knowing that others after him must continue the struggle toward guaranteeing to every person the natural rights bannered in the Declaration of Independence. Admittedly, Lincoln was a racist, never advocating racial equality though asserting that all men were created equal. He instead argued for the practical approach, recognizing the obstacles posed by contemporary values and insisting that greater progress toward a moral society took place through compromise rather than by demanding all changes at once. If his motives were not always morally pure, he was still the first major political figure of his generation to denounce slavery as a moral wrong. If he did not call for racial equality, he had the wisdom and the courage to use the war to strike down human bondage. To succeeding generations belonged the sacred trust of leading the nation ever closer to the universal freedom envisioned by the Founding Fathers.

30. Webster’s speech, January 27, 1830, in Charles M. Wiltse, ed., The Papers of Daniel Webster: Speeches and Formal Writings, 2 vols. (Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England, 1986), 1:347–48; Lincoln quoted in McPherson, Drawn with the Sword, 203. 31. Lincoln’s Annual Message to Congress, December 3, 1861, CWL, 5:53; Lincoln to Congress, July 4, 1861, CWL, 4:426; Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, November 19, 1863, CWL, 7:23; Garry Wills, Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words That Remade America (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1992), 90.

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II Early Twentieth Century

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A Tale of Two Kennans American-Russian Relations in the Twentieth Century

You are of course right in pointing out that the cause of Russian freedom was the great and life-long interest of my distinguished relative, the elder George Kennan. You will recall that at the outset of this century Kennan was expelled from Russia as a penalty for this interest, his presence having become onerous to the Russian Government. —George F. Kennan to Gregoire Alexinsky, December 3, 1952

THE POLICIES OF PRESIDENTS from Theodore Roosevelt to Ronald Reagan sus-

tained negative public perceptions of Russia. For example, TR wrote that “no human beings, black, yellow or white, could be quite as untruthful, as insincere, as arrogant—in short as untrustworthy in every way—as the Russians under their present system.” Then there was Reagan’s famous retort: “I urge you to beware of the temptation of pride—the temptation of blithely declaring yourselves above it all and label both sides equally at fault, to ignore the facts of history and the aggressive impulses of an evil empire, to simply call the arms race a giant misunderstanding and thereby remove yourself from the struggle between right and wrong and good and evil.”1 In the first case, tsarist Russia was beneath contempt; in the second, commissarist Russia was evil. An intellectual bridge spanned the gulf between TR’s contempt and Reagan’s demonizing. On opposite ends of that convoluted span were the various works This essay is a revision of a paper presented at Moscow State University in June 2004 at a conference honoring the thirty-year exchange program of U.S. Fulbrighters to their Center for American Studies. It was published as “Povest’ o dvukh kennanakh: amerikanskie predstavlenniia i politika v otnoshenii rossii, 1891–1991,” in Amerikanskii ezhegodnik, 2003, ed. N. N. Bolkhovitinov (Moscow: Nauka, 2005), 9–30. 1. Theodore Roosevelt (hereafter TR) to William Woodville Rockhill, August 29, 1905, series I, item #2278, William Woodville Rockhill Papers, Houghton Library, Harvard University; President Reagan’s Speech before the National Association of Evangelicals, March 8, 1983, http://www.presidentreagan.info/speeches/empire.cfm (italics ours).

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of the “elder” George Kennan and his namesake and distant cousin, the “younger” George F. Kennan. Their ideas bear a striking resemblance. That chasm between TR and Reagan was crowded with anti-Russian perceptions and policies, only temporarily reversed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s recognition of Soviet Russia, lend-lease, and wartime collaboration. Positive postwar perceptions and policies toward Soviet Russia largely ended with FDR’s death but were renewed with the Reagan-Gorbachev summits. 1 The elder George Kennan, preeminent American authority on tsarist Russia, wielded the greatest influence on his contemporaries from the 1880s right through the Russian Revolution of 1917. His ideas represented mainstream American thinking, and policy makers turned to him for information and insight. His negative perceptions of tsarist Russia prevailed in the creation and prosecution of policies concerning Russia. A consideration of his ideas, compared to those of the younger George F. Kennan, is appropriate if we are, at least in part, to understand why Americans held Russia in such low esteem before and after 1917. Most of these negative American perceptions derived from his monumental two-volume study of the Siberian prison system for Russia’s political undesirables and his numerous articles before and after this book’s publication in 1891 and during the Russo-Japanese War. Kennan himself changed from Russophile to Russophobe, viewing tsarism with disdain, while exonerating ordinary Russians—as was to be the case with the younger Kennan. Kennan, the Siberian traveler of the 1880s, became America’s Russian expert. As such, he proclaimed tsarism’s barbarity, for it had, in his opinion, created and maintained an inhumane and unjust penal system, one that poisoned the entire nation. Kennan’s interpretation raised public awareness of America’s Russian diplomacy. The first public policy of consequence traceable to Kennan’s writings came with TR’s anti-Russian position at the Portsmouth Peace Conference, concluding the Russo-Japanese War in 1905.2 Kennan’s journey to Russia became the basis of his influential Siberia and the Exile System. He and Boston artist George Frost, also a namesake to the younger Kennan, left New York for Liverpool in May 1885. Their destination was Siberia, where they were to sojourn for about a year, returning to New York in August 1886. Kennan later said his goal was to give Americans a sense of the 2. Eugene P. Trani, The Treaty of Portsmouth: An Adventure in Rooseveltian Diplomacy (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1969).

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scenery, people, and customs—to render an analysis of the exile system and the attitude of Tsar Alexander III’s government toward its subjects: “I went to Russia to study the working of a penal system, to make the acquaintance of exiles, outcasts, and criminals, and to ascertain how the Government treats its enemies in the prisons and mines of Eastern Siberia.” Kennan claimed to have studied with care and without bias, maintaining that over half of his information came from official sources and less than one-fifth rested on the statements of exiles or on personal observations.3 Kennan’s analysis began in the western Siberian city of Tiumen and ended there a year later. The depressing data and his eyewitness accounts from exploring Tiumen Forwarding Prison and the convicts’ forced march—in their five-pound fetters and half-shaved heads, down the Irtish River and up the Ob to Tomsk—further confirmed for him the cruelty and injustice of it all. Tiumen held four times the number it was designed for, resulting in poor sanitation. The hospital’s conditions were unspeakable: “Never before in my life had I seen faces so white, haggard, and ghastly as those that lay on the gray pillows in these hospital cells.” Even the authorities admitted conditions were “extremely bad.”4 The average death rate then stood at almost 30 percent—so high that Kennan speculated it would not be matched anywhere outside Russia in the civilized world. The convict barges were crowded and unsanitary. Alexander Solzhenitsyn could not have described Stalin’s Gulag as any worse. From Tiumen, Kennan wrote the first of several letters to his editor at Century Magazine, Roswell Smith, concerning Siberian conditions. In one, he described the process of his conversion from an apologist to a critic of the penal system and the Russian government. He began, “I must frankly say, [this is] the worst prison I have ever seen, and if the places where they keep the exiles generally farther on in Siberia, are as bad as this one, I shall have to take back some things that I have said and written about the exile system. The Tiumen forwarding prison comes nearer to an Inferno than anything I have ever yet seen.”5 Kennan’s changed attitude to the penal system and government was clear: I came to Siberia . . . with the impression that the life of the exiles and hardlabor convicts here, was, generally speaking, no worse than the life of criminals in most other countries. . . . That impression has been completely 3. George Kennan (hereafter GK), Siberia and the Exile System, 2 vols. (New York: Century Co., 1891), 1:vi–viii. The Kennan Institute’s Moscow branch has published this as Sibir’I ssylka: putevya zametki (St. Petersburg: Russian-Baltic Information Center BLITs, 1998–1999), 2 vols. 4. See GK, Siberia, 1:91, 97. 5. GK to R. Smith, June 16/28, 1885, box 6, George Kennan Papers, Library of Congress (hereafter LC).

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A Tale of Two Kennans effaced. . . . It is useless to try to defend a system of penal administration which every Russian officer in Siberia condemns as wasteful, bad, ruinous to the criminal, and ruinous to the country.6

Kennan concluded by calling for replacing forced colonization in Siberia with imprisonment in European Russia, along with the elimination of the arbitrariness of the system through adequate trial and appeal. He was not sanguine: “I hope, with all my heart, that the Siberian exile system may be abolished; but I greatly fear, nevertheless, that it will remain, for many years, one of the darkest blots upon the civilization for the nineteenth century.”7 American reaction to his speeches, articles, and book was overwhelming. His lectures everywhere were successful; it was rare to have fewer than a thousand people at each engagement, and in the larger cities the number was twice that.8 By 1900, no one had contributed more to the negative image of Russia in America than the immensely popular Kennan. Dedicated to making Siberia synonymous with deprivation, Kennan was known to hobble onto the lecture stage barefoot, in prison pajamas and irons. A freedom-hating tsar and a freedom-hating oligarchy had so long perpetuated atrocities among the Russian intelligentsia that even Leo Tolstoy could be arrested and sent to Siberia. If Tolstoy had continued to write, he would have been exiled to the mines. According to Kennan, the Russian government had no right to exist. As he put this, “it is the duty of the Russian people to overthrow it.” In one letter he wrote, “The Russian Government is not a sickly infant in need of a guardian, not a sensitive young poet likely to be crushed by a few magazine articles. It is a tolerably robust organism and fully capable of defending itself.”9 The younger Kennan did not advocate revolution, but he did suggest that, given Western determination and patience in containing the spread of communism, it would collapse of its own dead weight as tsarism had eventually done. In one article, he even suggested that revolution in Russia had become inevitable by the early 1870s. It should not be surprising that he would employ the same logic to the Soviet system.10 6. GK to Frank Scott, December 18, Kennan Papers, LC. 7. GK, Siberia, 2:471. The younger Kennan does not make comparisons to the Gulag. 8. GK to [?] Carey, [October 1890], box 53, Century Company Papers, New York Public Library (hereafter CC). 9. GK quoted in Donald E. Davis and Eugene P. Trani, The First Cold War: The Legacy of Woodrow Wilson in U.S.-Soviet Relations (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2002), 8; GK to R. W. Gilder, May 27, 1887, box 53, CC. 10. George F. Kennan (hereafter GFK), “The Breakdown of the Tsarist Autocracy,” in Richard Pipes, ed., Revolutionary Russia: A Symposium (New York: Anchor Books, 1969), 2–19.

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In the elder Kennan’s mind, almost everything about Russian officialdom stood in the way of history’s “inexorable movement toward liberal democracy.” The good souls in the drama were the people, “naturally liberal and tolerant,” Marseillaise-singing champions of democracy. He offered vignettes to promote this view. He told of political prisoners in a St. Petersburg jail passing bits of red flannel under drawers and white-and-blue kerchiefs through toilet pipes that connected the cells, so that inmates could defy authorities on the Fourth of July by waving American flags through their jail bars. Although other travelers discovered ignorance or religious fervor, humor or hospitality, they accepted Kennan’s conclusions, as did the rest of the American public. The Chicago Tribune wrote: “The Century takes on more and more the character of a reviewer. In it, the history of our times is more fairly set forth than in any other magazine. The Century articles on Russia by George Kennan are attracting the attention of the civilized world.” When challenged, Kennan could truthfully reply: “I know more about the exile system than any man in the Russian Prison department . . . and if I could get before a court of justice with power to summon and protect witnesses I would prove a state of affairs that would disgrace the Russian Government in the eyes of the whole civilized world and make Alexander III blush with shame under his clothes!” The younger Kennan never suggested that Stalin would blush, but he did consider that the seeds of Soviet decay were “well advanced.”11 Kennan’s writings on Imperial Russia, in addition to his books Tent Life in Siberia (1870) and Siberia and the Exile System (1891), amounted to some forty articles on Siberia alone, another approximately ninety on various Russian questions, and nearly sixty unsigned items about Russia that were in the form of editorials, that is, a grand total of about 190 pieces. This writing spurred his enormously popular lecture circuit. His biographer notes that he wrote for “hot” publications, meaning high-circulation magazines and journals. “In fact,” that author remarks, “a series written by Kennan might significantly improve the readership numbers of a magazine.”12 His influence on the American popular imagination was incalculable. Due to Kennan’s successful reporting of the

11. Davis and Trani, First Cold War, 7–8; GK quoting the Tribune to R. W. Gilder, December 18, 1887, and GK to R. W. Gilder, November 3, 1888, box 53, CC; GFK, “The Sources of Soviet Conduct,” in his American Diplomacy, 1900–1950 (New York: New American Library, 1951), 104. 12. Frederick F. Travis, George Kennan and the American-Russian Relationship, 1865–1924 (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1990), 388–402. On his enormous popularity as a speaker and his impact on opinion, see 37–40, 177–83, and 263–69. See also Helen Hundley, Kennan Institute, Occasional Papers #277, “George Kennan and the Russian Empire: How America’s Conscience Became an Enemy of Tsarism,” http://www.wilsoncenter.org/topics/pubs/ACF2B0.pdf.

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Russo-Japanese War from Japan and Manchuria, his first book, Tent Life in Siberia, was reprinted in 1910 and went into many translations.13 Among all his Russo-Japanese War articles in Outlook, devoted mainly to military matters, Kennan took time to write two pieces of a more wide-ranging nature: “Which Is the Civilized Power?” (October 29, 1904) and “The Sword of Peace in Japan” (October 14, 1905). In the first, he posed two questions: “If the whole world had to come under either Russian domination or Japanese domination, which would you choose?” He answered by reformulating the question: “if I were shut up to a choice between world-domination by the present Russian Government and world-domination by the existing Japanese Government, I should take the latter without a moment’s hesitation.” But if the governments of each were “free and self-governing,” he “thought he should prefer the former.” Six months later and after he had had a chance to study the Japanese, he cast his vote in favor of Japan. Why? “I should do this for the reason that Japan, as a Power, is civilized and modern, while Russia, as a Power, is semi-barbarous and medieval.” The younger Kennan often made similar points, especially when referring to Stalin and his regime as “ruthless, cynical, cunning, endlessly dangerous” and perpetrating “stupendous brutalities.”14 How did the elder Kennan support and justify such a conclusion? He contrasted the two societies by their mental and moral culture; religious enlightenment and toleration; legal respect and observance of the security of person and property; freedom; personal and national integrity; the virtues of modesty, morality, humanity, and fairness. Japan relied on a diffused education, out of the hands of a narrow-minded church, which in Russia controlled education. The tsar’s bureaucracy substituted legal prescription for individual volition. He cited secret ministerial abrogation of the law for political crimes and the use of an internal passport system. Then there was the defrauding by military officers and bureaucrats of their own government and vast corruption and mendacity. He claimed, “When it comes to a comparison between Russia and Japan in the matter of political truthfulness, sincerity, and honor, the Asiatic Power stands far higher than the European.” But he wanted to make it clear that his was a “comparison of systems and their results, rather than of peoples and their characteristics.” Church and state oppressed and corrupted 13. Hundley, “Kennan and the Russian Empire,” 14, nn. 4, 6, 7: “According to the Advertising Department of The Outlook the announcement that Kennan would cover the Spanish American War in Cuba added 3,852 new subscribers in one week.” 14. GK, “Which Is the Civilized Power?” Outlook 78 (October 29, 1904): 515; GFK, Memoirs, 1925–1950 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1967), 280, for first quotation, and his Russia and the West under Lenin and Stalin (New York: New American Library, 1961), 242, for the second.

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the Russian people, and the newspapers manifested the “bureaucratic spirit of intolerance, bitterness, and cruelty.” Kennan ended by comparing the Tokugawa Shogunate to the Russia of Nicholas II, concluding that the former was the more truly civilized. In this regard, the younger Kennan might have preferred Imperial Russia to Soviet Russia, considering its rich culture, which lay just beneath its autocratic surface. He also condemned the Soviet abrogation of law and the internal passport system.15 Regarding the most cited piece in Kennan’s war series, “The Sword of Peace in Japan,” TR took some pains to refute its assertions. The president, after all, also wrote articles for the widely circulated Outlook of more than a million subscribers and in a few years would become a contributing editor.16 Kennan had recounted the reception in Japan of the terms of the Treaty of Portsmouth. On September 5, 1905, the day of the signing, riots broke out in Tokyo and other Japanese cities. Reasons, he maintained, were diverse, but they arose from a “universal feeling of disappointment and dissatisfaction.” Kennan thought that the Japanese “expected, and perhaps had a right to expect, decisive results.” They had fought “two bloody and victorious campaigns”; they had been encouraged by American and British newspapers to “believe, that they had a right to demand and exact an indemnity.” What especially enraged them was the “surrender of half the island of Saghalien.” It was once theirs and was taken away when they were weak. According to Kennan, Japan had become “greatly exasperated by the attitude of the Russian Government towards it, before, during, and after the peace conference.” Various Japanese newspapers and leaders of public opinion claimed that the “terms of peace were humiliating; that ‘the concessions of Japan amounted to a craven and discreditable surrender;’ that the Government had ‘bowed to Russian dictation;’ and that ‘such a disappointing result of a great national effort was never experienced by any other nation.’” All this aroused a “storm of

15. GK, “Which Is the Civilized Power?” 515–18, 519 (quotations on 520–21). When referring to the Marquis de Custine’s book, Letters from Russia, GFK noted that Western readers “should be reminded of the fact that under the imposing crust of tsarist authority, a vigorous and hopeful fermentation in the intellectual and artistic and political fields, which was largely obscured from Custine’s view and which, had he been aware of it, might have given him a different impression of the latent talents and capacities of the Russian people” (GFK to Philip Vaudrin, January 5, 1950, George F. Kennan Papers, Seeley Mudd Manuscript Library, Princeton University [hereafter GFKP]). 16. H. W. Brands, TR: The Last Romantic (New York: Basic Books, 1997), 681 and esp. 693, where TR is quoted as writing to Cecil Spring Rice on August 22, 1911: “My fellow editors have the same high purpose and sanity that, for instance, the members of the Tennis Cabinet had. . . . I can work with them in complete sympathy.”

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excitement,” and the people “felt as if they had been betrayed by their own plenipotentiaries.” As a result of their “Government’s weakness in not pressing home the advantage it had, they were filled with indignation and wrath.” Hibiya Park in Tokyo became the scene of the worst demonstrations, in which twenty to thirty thousand rioted. Attempts were made on the home minister’s life, his family compound was invaded, and fires were set there. Police boxes and stations were burned all over the city. Nevertheless, the Japanese, so Kennan claimed, were not angry with the United States, though some radicals did attack the carriage of railroad magnate E. H. Harriman, and telegrams from Tokyo may have given that impression. Their government had conceded too much. Particularly, Kennan asserted, the Japanese cabinet “would have been glad, no doubt, if President Roosevelt’s intervention had come two or three months later.” Japanese officials feared financial strain, of course, if the war were to last another year. That might have imposed an “almost intolerable financial burden upon the people.” It was not certain that the government could obtain loans abroad if it declined to negotiate. “It seems to me,” Kennan wrote, “that it would have been much better—for Russia as well as for Japan—if President Roosevelt had waited until the close of this campaign before he suggested a peace conference.”17 Kennan’s commentary elicited TR’s strong rebuke because he regarded Kennan as an influential public spokesman “whose words were weighty instruments that should therefore be wielded carefully.” A furious TR complained: “I think it is wise that a man of your standing who is supposed to speak with knowledge, should for his own information merely, know what the facts are. . . . I do not deem it desirable that an observer whose writings will have weight, as yours will have, should from ignorance of the facts draw totally wrong conclusions.”18 When Kennan returned to America in June 1906, he admitted his mistake of complaining that TR should have waited longer before pressing the Japanese to Portsmouth because he had since learned the truth from Japanese officials. TR thereupon told Kennan just how much influence the journalist had exerted on official policy; indeed, his articles led TR to “withdraw the American legation [from Korea] and give the Japanese a free hand.”19 Japan replaced Russia in Korea and Manchuria. 17. GK, “The Sword of Peace in Japan,” Outlook 81 (October 14, 1905): quotes on 357–60 and 362; information from 360–61, 364. 18. Travis, Kennan, 265, 266, and 307 n. 65, where Travis indicates that the letter was sent via Lyman Abbott, Outlook’s editor, to avoid it ending up in the wrong hands; further criticism of Kennan was made to Abbott. (See TR to GK, October 15, 1905, and TR to Lyman Abbott, October 16, 1905, both in the Roosevelt Papers, LC.) 19. Travis, Kennan, 266, 307 nn. 66–68.

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TR found himself in step with American public opinion, which did not shift during the Portsmouth negotiations. That opinion, negative toward Russia, Kennan had helped to shape. Kennan was critical of Russia: its arrogance, miscalculation, and sloth inevitably led to military disaster. The president’s awareness of Kennan’s importance in defining his own and America’s perception was underscored in that private rebuke. In Kennan’s case, the power of his pen, while not mightier than TR’s “sword of peace,” certainly weighed in TR’s policy of favoring the Japanese at Portsmouth. The elder Kennan, as well as his namesake, taught Americans that Russia was not the exotic land of the Firebird but was rather a place of misery, injustice, and tyranny. Neither man was often challenged or corrected. On those rare occasions, criticism usually came from a wealthy manufacturer, Charles Crane, and his academic protégé Samuel N. Harper. Even they joined in Kennan’s stance about Russian illiberalism. After the Bolshevik Revolution, Russian émigré historians such as Mikhail Karpovich, George Vernadsky, Michael Florinsky, and their many students joined the anti-Russian cohort. Together, they formed the intellectual bridge of negativism toward Russia—Imperial or Soviet.20 Before turning to a consideration of the younger George F. Kennan, it is useful to point out what he had to say about his distinguished and distant cousin, the elder or Siberian Kennan.21 This “very well-known one . . . was actually a cousin of my grandfather.” Both men were born on the same day, devoted their professional lives to Russia, were expelled from Russia, helped Russian émigrés, became members of the National Institute of Arts and Letters, and pleaded for a greater understanding of Japan. The younger Kennan concluded with a moving tribute to his distant cousin: “What I have tried to do in life is, I suspect, just the sort of thing the latter would have liked a son of his to try to do, had he had one.” More particularly, George F. Kennan in 1958 wrote a perceptive introduction to an abridged version of Siberia and the Exile System in which he praised the courage and intellectual honesty of his famous relative: “The impression created by all this [lectures, articles, and books] on the educated public of that day was profound.”22 Once, at the credentials ceremony of 20. Harper, The Russia I Believe In: The Memoirs of Samuel N. Harper, 1902–1941 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1945), 19; see also Richard McKinzie and Eugene P. Trani, “The Influence of Russian Émigrés on American Policy toward Russia and the USSR, 1900–1933, with Observations on Analogous Developments in Great Britain,” Coexistence: A Review of East-West and Development Issues 28:2 (June 1991): 214–51, esp. 232–41. 21. GFK, Memoirs, 1950–1963 (New York: Pantheon Books, 1972), 129. 22. GFK, Memoirs, 1925–1950, 8–9; GFK, “Introduction,” in GK, Siberia and the Exile System (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958), xiii. In connection with the elder Kennan, GFK wrote Henry Suydam, “I naturally appreciate this interest in my famous namesake, whose tastes

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Ambassador William C. Bullitt (December 13, 1933) while speaking with Mikhail Kalinin, Politburo member and chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, the younger Kennan was told, “Kennan’s work had been a veritable ‘Bible’ for the early revolutionists.” The younger Kennan replied: “Both President Wilson and Secretary of State Lansing respected [the elder] Kennan as the soundest and most experienced of American authorities on Russia and sought his guidance in the difficult problems of policy posed for the United States by the Russian Revolution.” Had it not been for the elder Kennan’s advanced age, his cousin speculated that Wilson and Lansing might have given him an “opportunity to carry his ideas into effect in 1918, as head of an American commission to Siberia.”23 Despite the senior Kennan’s warnings, in 1919 Wilson and Lansing attempted at Versailles to reconcile themselves and their allies to the Bolsheviks. They failed. Nevertheless, it had become clear to President Wilson by 1920 that the Bolsheviks were there to stay, even if Americans as a whole remained unconvinced. Wilson and his new secretary of state, Bainbridge Colby, helped lay the foundations for the Cold War and the policy of containment. There was no military confrontation, armed standoff, or arms race. Yet certain basics were already there in the 1920s: suspicion, mutual misunderstandings, dislike, fear, extreme ideological hostility, and diplomatic isolation. Even before the Bolsheviks, Wilson had been anti-tsarist, sought to annul the 1832 commercial treaty, and supported the American-Jewish campaign against Russian anti-Semitism. He found it easy to wear the negativism of the elder Kennan and of his liberal cohorts who had supported America’s Russophobia at the turn of the century, through the Russo-Japanese War, and during the abrogation struggle.24 Each side, the United States and the USSR, was driven by its own ideology, by capitalism versus communism. Each country sought to reconstruct the world in its own image. When the world resisted, pressure could be used. and preoccupations I seem to have inherited in considerable degree” (GFK to Henry Suydam, February 28, 1952, folder 1952, box 29, GFKP). 23. GFK, “Introduction,” xvi, xvii. GFK also recalled the work of the Society of American Friends of Russian Freedom, established by GK; see GFK, “America and the Russian Future,” ms. p. 18 (not included in the version published in Foreign Affairs 29:3 [April 1953]: 351–70), General Correspondence, 1951, East European Fund, Ford Foundation, New York City, as well as various letters to and from him. For instance, Victor M. Chernov wrote, “In this connection, I find myself involuntarily recalling another analogous and unforgettable service performed at one time—in the second half of the last century—to our predecessors, the pioneers of the Russian liberation movement by a man whose blood largely flows in your veins as well.” Kennan replied, “I appreciated your statements about the elder George Kennan, and I hope that I can contribute, as he did, to the understanding in this country of Russia and the Russian people” (Chernov to GFK, January 20, 1950, and GFK to Chernov, January 25, 1950, folder 2-a, 1950, box 29, GFKP). 24. Davis and Trani, First Cold War, chap. 7.

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Washington continued Wilson’s nonrecognition and quarantine of the USSR through the 1920s. This was the very theme to which Wilson’s name and his intellectual respectability, if you will, lent credibility. Republican administrations in the twenties—Harding, Coolidge, Hoover—upheld Wilson’s policy. Recent reassessments of Wilson acknowledge him as the great prophet who articulated the basics of American diplomacy for the twentieth century. Historian Frank Ninkovich asserted that all major American foreign policies since 1939 have been an extension of Wilsonian principles: Atlantic Charter, Declaration on Liberated Europe, Truman Doctrine, and Marshall Plan. Tony Smith declared that America’s winning of the Cold War fulfilled Wilson’s notion of a global order. In a stunning essay, William R. Keylor agreed that the “Truman Doctrine was a Wilsonian pronouncement par excellence.”25 Implicitly, these assessments also pay homage to the elder Kennan. 2 By the time of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s presidency, it had become evident, at least to the new administration, that isolating Soviet Russia served no purpose. Commercially, depression-ridden America needed trade with the Soviet Union; diplomatically, both powers could help each other against an expansionist Japan in 1933. Roosevelt’s hopes for a new and positive relationship with Bolshevism displaced Wilson’s intellectual respectability. America could play an inside game with the exchange of ambassadors and counselors. Soviet Russia appeared likely to remain in place. Formal recognition in 1933 seemed a start. The Russians pledged to refrain from subversive activity, to protect all Americans in Russia (the problem that had led to the abrogation of the 1832 commercial treaty in 1913), and to negotiate a settlement of tsarist debts. Few of these expectations came true. Nevertheless, the slowing of American overseas trade because of the Great Depression led to a rapprochement with the USSR. The Soviets may also have considered that America might help balance Japanese power in Asia.26 Both Washington and Moscow hoped the other might create an Asiatic equilibrium. 25. Ninkovich, The Wilsonian Century: U.S. Foreign Policy since 1900 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999); Smith, America’s Mission: The United States and the Worldwide Struggle for Democracy in the Twentieth Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994); Keylor, “Post-mortems on the American Century,” Diplomatic History 25:2 (Spring 2001): 317–27. 26. Stalin gave Ambassador Bullitt an exceptional reception in Moscow, including the honor of a personal conversation in which he “made it clear that he regarded an attack that spring by Japan as certain. . . . Stalin was gauging the potential of American-Soviet relations” (Beatrice Farnsworth, William C. Bullitt and the Soviet Union [Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1967], 111).

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It was significant that 1932 had seen the election to the presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, a man who had a history of interest in the USSR and in the possibility of improved relations. The election of a pro-recognition president was of primary importance if normalization of relations was to have a real chance of being accomplished, because the initiative lay with the president. Roosevelt had often informally discussed the question of recognition while governor of New York,27 and, as his campaign for the presidency geared up in May 1932, his “Brain Trust” advised him of “trade opportunities that only recognition could guarantee.” Consequently, Roosevelt quietly reviewed the question of Russia in the summer of 1932 in the middle of his election campaign, speaking with Walter Duranty, long-standing New York Times correspondent in Moscow.28 FDR publicly acknowledged his interest in Russia in December 1932 and promised to review the policy of nonrecognition after taking office. Intrigued by the possibilities offered by trade, he seemed drawn to the promise that Russia held for securing world peace and intimidating aggressive states such as Japan. Roosevelt was far more interested in peace and strengthening America’s international security than in trade, but both issues factored in his decision to move toward recognition.29 The president hesitated to act until he detected widespread support for negotiating.30 Roosevelt judged that political support was sufficient to initiate contact with Russia in October 1933. He dispatched a letter to Mikhail Kalinin on October 10 that indicated his desire to receive representatives in order to explore with them personally all questions outstanding between each country. Kalinin responded in kind on October 17, informing Roosevelt that he would gladly accept the president’s proposal to send a representative of the Soviet government to the United States to discuss questions of interest that stood between the two countries.31 Negotiations between Soviet Foreign Minister Maxim Litvinov and the American government commenced shortly thereafter, officially ending the

27. “Roosevelt Confers on Russian Policy,” New York Times, July 8, 1932. 28. Edward Bennett, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the Search for Security (Wilmington, Del.: Scholarly Resources, 1985), 6. See also S. J. Taylor, Stalin’s Apologist: Walter Duranty, the New York Times’s Man in Moscow (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 184. 29. Bennett, Roosevelt, 7, 23. 30. The State Department had been very ginger on this point. For instance, see the President’s Official File, box 2: OF 220: Russia 1933–, Roosevelt Papers, Franklin Delano Roosevelt Presidential Library, Hyde Park, N.Y., which is full of public responses to recognition. Especially interesting is the fifteen-page summary of U.S. newspapers by region as well as letters strongly opposing recognition, for instance, Mrs. Lowell F. Hobart to FDR, December 17, 1932. 31. Roosevelt to Kalinin, October 10, and Kalinin to Roosevelt, October 17, 1933, “The Records of the Department of State,” Record Group 59, roll 1, coll. T1241, 2, 1, National Archives.

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sixteen-year hiatus in Soviet-American relations.32 Whatever warnings FDR may have gotten about recognition, and there were many inside and outside the administration, Ambassador William C. Bullitt “received a reception second to none for foreign ambassadors.” Even the worrisome young diplomat George F. Kennan found the early days in Moscow a “wonderful and exciting time.” But relations quickly soured.33 American influence following recognition did not prevent the domestic evils that befell Russia in the thirties—collectivization and the great purges. Nor could America look for enlightenment to Ambassador Joseph E. Davies, an inexperienced, naive personage who in 1936 succeeded William C. Bullitt, America’s first ambassador to Soviet Russia. Davies’s successor in 1939, Laurence A. Steinhardt, shared the hard line with those who believed that the Soviets only responded to force, as did Adm. William H. Standley, Steinhardt’s successor as ambassador. World War II did bring the two powers closer, especially during the brief ambassadorship of W. Averell Harriman, but, after the war, policies and perceptions again drove them apart.34 They maintained an uneasy relationship throughout the Cold War, but at least a degree of diplomatic normalization allowed attempts at modifying Soviet behavior. Recognition had not seemed an option under Wilson and his immediate Republican successors. It was unnecessary in the 1920s when no one, not even the Bolsheviks, was sure the socialist experiment in Soviet Russia would work. Yet during this time Robert F. Kelley, chief of the Division of East European Affairs in the State Department, cultivated the expertise needed to deal later with the Soviet Union by creating the so-called Riga School. Riga, Latvia’s capital, provided a training ground for a group of bright, young diplomats to learn their ABCs concerning Russia through intensive language training and practical

32. The documentary record of State Department hostility to recognition may be found in Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States: The Soviet Union, 1933–1939 (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1952), esp. 1–62, where the reasons against recognition are laid out; see in particular Robert F. Kelley, “Memorandum by the Chief of the Eastern European Affairs,” July 27, 1933, pp. 6–11 (hereafter FRUS: SU, 1933–1939). 33. Michael Cassella-Blackburn, The Donkey, the Carrot, and the Club: William C. Bullitt and Soviet-American Relations, 1917–1948 (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2004), 107; GFK, Memoirs, 1925–1950, 59. For the warnings, and they were abundant, check most notably Secretary of State Henry L. Stimson to Sen. William E. Borah, September 8, 1932, and Robert F. Kelley, FRUS: SU, 1933–1939, 1–2, 6–11. 34. On Davies and Steinhardt, see David Mayers, The Ambassadors and America’s Soviet Policy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 117–35, 139–49. For the hard line of the Riga School, see Paul Johnson, Modern Times: The World from the Twenties to the Nineties (New York: Harper Perennial, 1992), 432, where he quotes Chip Bohlen. On Harriman, see his Special Envoy to Churchill and Stalin, 1941–1946 (New York: Random House, 1975), esp. chaps. 19–21.

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day-to-day work in the U.S. legation. Under Kelley’s watchful eyes and tutelage, the group, “my boys” as Kelley called them—Loy Henderson, Charles “Chip” Bohlen, George F. Kennan—developed the so-called Riga Axioms of a sophisticated anticommunism, which interpreted Russia as an “international menace,” as “dangerous and untrustworthy,” and as demanding on America’s part “wariness and constant vigilance.”35 Through the twenties and early thirties, a negative amalgam of perception and policy about Russia that had begun with the elder Kennan’s criticisms of tsarism and fanned TR’s Russophobia continued to inform Wilson’s quarantine of Soviet Russia; it extended to Kelley’s Riga boys and, eventually, to various forms of containment stemming from what was first suggested by George F. Kennan. In order to gauge FDR’s own awareness of this countermovement within his administration, it is useful to review some of the steps he took to eradicate its negative influence on his own policy toward the USSR. Two well-known instances of FDR’s countermeasures were the purge of Kelley along with the destruction of the State Department’s Russian Division in 1937 and the 1943 removal of Loy Henderson: “The 1943 purge bore a similarity to the 1937 reorganization. Then FDR and the New Dealers working through [Sumner] Welles had ousted the head of the Russian division, downgraded [Robert] Murphy, and exiled [Ray] Atherton. . . . Henderson was similarly treated in 1943.”36 One draft memo by FDR, intended to be sent in the spring of 1943 to the secretaries of state, war, and the navy, vividly indicates the intensity of this struggle over what would shortly become the Yalta Axioms: I am convinced that sincere and lasting friendship between the Soviet Union and the United States is of vital importance to victory in this war and to the future peace of the world. I am also convinced that such friendship can best be achieved by a general policy of generosity, sympathetic un35. On the term Riga Axioms, see Daniel Yergin, Shattered Peace: The Origins of the Cold War and the National Security State (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1977), 11, 17–41. For the Riga School’s own memories, see Loy Henderson, A Question of Trust: The Origins of U.S.-Soviet Diplomatic Relations: The Memoirs of Loy W. Henderson (Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 1986), esp. part VII; GFK, Memoirs, 1925–1950, 29–31; and Charles E. Bohlen, Witness to History, 1929–1969 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1973), 10–13 and, for Kelley, 39–41. (Kelley’s papers are at Georgetown University.) Another good discussion of the so-called Russian experts is Martin Weil, A Pretty Good Club: The Founding Fathers of the U.S. Foreign Service (New York: W. W. Norton, 1978), 50–63. 36. Weil, A Pretty Good Club, 139; a newer treatment of this subject is Mary E. Glantz, FDR and the Soviet Union: The President’s Battles over Foreign Policy (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2005).

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derstanding of Soviet problems and objectives, frankness and sincerity, and by a spirit of courtesy and democratic equality to all Soviet individuals. In other words, a genuine Good Neighbor Policy should prevail.

After reciting the reasons for this belief, such as Russia’s great contribution to the war effort and the American need to match it, FDR made the following demand: Such policies can only be effective if they are executed by official representatives of this government who accept them fully and give loyal support to them. I desire that the above policies be put into effect at once and that any officials representing this country in Soviet relations who do not accept them fully and give loyal support to them be replaced.37

In the sharpest contrast to FDR’s policy of accommodation, sometimes derisively called “appeasement,” George F. Kennan initially stood with those who wanted to reverse the inside game—the accommodationist policy that had been represented in the Wilson era by Red Cross representative Raymond Robins, military attaché Gen. William Judson, special representative and later ambassador William C. Bullitt, now vice president Henry A. Wallace, Harry Hopkins, and FDR himself. For Kennan, it was useless and naive to try and gain Soviet Russia’s confidence and friendship.38 Kennan, in both his celebrated Long Telegram of February 22, 1946, and his equally famous X-article, “The Sources of Soviet Conduct” in the July 1947 issue of Foreign Affairs, reacted sternly against Rooseveltian notions of accommodation. Such an approach, Kennan thought, could not possibly win over the Soviet dictator and his entourage. Kennan’s recommendations aimed at altogether avoiding trying to be a chum, as FDR and Harry Hopkins had attempted when they assumed a community of aims

37. FDR to the secretaries of state, war, and the navy, [April or May 1943], box 309: Aid to Russia, folder 2, pt. 2, Sherwood Collection, Roosevelt Papers, Roosevelt Library. 38. Kennan’s disdain for the “inside” game, or the so-called Yalta Axioms, is stated in chap. 11, “The Long Telegram,” in his Memoirs, 1925–1950, esp. 283–84, 287–88, 290–97. For contemporary commentary, see Yergin, Shattered Peace, 11, and Johnson, Modern Times, chap. 13, “Peace by Terror,” esp. 432–34. GFK himself traced the origins of the “Yalta Axioms” to Raymond Robins: “This particular episode in American foreign relations [1917–1918] left a legacy of controversy—of myths and questions and allegations—which in turn had a palpable effect of the discussion of Soviet-American relations in the ensuing decades. This early period laid, in fact, the foundations for the two dominant schools of thought—pro-Soviet and anti-Soviet—that were to clash in this discussion down to the days of the Korean War, which finally crushed the intellectual successors to Raymond Robins” (GFK to Herbert Butterfield, December 17, 1956, folder 1955, box 31, GFKP).

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with Soviet Russia. Goodwill, according to George F. Kennan, gained nothing.39 Harry Hopkins, confronting Kennan while he was in Moscow talking over the Polish problem with Stalin, asked the diplomat: “Then you think [Stalin’s offer is] just sin,” he said, “and we should be agin it.” Kennan replied, “That’s just about right.”40 Others quickly took their cue from Kennan. For instance, the “Clifford Report,” submitted to President Harry S. Truman by his special assistant Clark Clifford in September 1946, emphasized the harshest of George F. Kennan’s views, further summarizing Soviet diplomacy as aggrandizement designed to lead to “eventual world domination [by any means] considered . . . to be in the best interests of the Soviet Union in accordance with Soviet policy of increasing their power at the expense of other nations.” Clifford’s report went on to say, “The key to an understanding of current Soviet foreign policy, in summary, is the realization that Soviet leaders adhere to the Marxian theory of ultimate destruction of capitalist states.”41 FDR’s death on April 12, 1945, marked the end of wartime Russian-American cooperation, soon to be displaced by containment. Within five years, and only four years after the Long Telegram, Paul Nitze took a “dark view of Soviet intentions, seeing in the Kremlin a drive for world hegemony.” That “dark view . . . surpassed those of Mr. Kennan and Mr. Bohlen, the nation’s leading experts on the Soviet Union.”42 What Kennan in February 1946 and July 1947 had labeled as modesty, patience, and firmness in dealing with Russia had also been part of the Wilsonian strategy. The approach resembled what Lansing had once termed watch-andwait and what Wilson and Colby had called nonrecognition and quarantine. The Wilsonians had first realized that a Bolshevik minority ruled Russia and that this oligarchy must be distinguished from the masses. There was no idealism in that realization. Kennan said that the Soviet elite did not represent the 39. The literature on Kennan’s Long Telegram and X-article is enormous. Perhaps the best place to start, aside from reading these works directly, is Laurel F. Franklin, comp., George F. Kennan: An Annotated Bibliography (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1997). 40. GFK, Memoirs, 1925–1950, 212. 41. Ibid., 560–65. See also Clark Clifford, “American Relations with the Soviet Union: A Report to the President by the Special Counsel to the President,” September 24, 1946, Harry S. Truman Papers, Naval Aide file, Harry S. Truman Library, Independence, Mo., quotes from iv, 1, 9. Good on the making of the “Clifford Report” is Carol Ann Briley, “George Elsey’s White House Career, 1942–1953” (M.A. thesis, University of Missouri–Kansas City, 1976). The Clifford Report is reprinted in Arthur Krock, Memoirs: Sixty Years on the Firing Line (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1968), 421–82. 42. Marilyn Berger, “Paul Nitze’s Obituary,” New York Times, October 21, 2004. Also see Nitze’s autobiography, From Hiroshima to Glasnost: At the Center of Decision, a Memoir (New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1989), esp. chap. 5, “The H-Bomb Decision and NSC 68.”

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people. Wilson had learned the futility of armed intervention and military confrontation. Kennan now came to the same conclusion. He later noted ruefully: The term “containment” was picked up and elevated, by common agreement of the press, to the status of a “doctrine,” which was then identified with the foreign policy of the [Truman] administration. In this way there was established—before our eyes, so to speak—one of those indestructible myths that are the bane of the historian.43

Containment was not intended to be military, for Kennan, except as a last recourse. He emphasized “political containment of a political threat.” Diplomacy had to be a “long-term, patient but firm and vigilant containment.” The Colby Note of 1920 had also recognized the danger of subversive activities and advocated nonrecognition and quarantine until the Soviets mended their ways or collapsed. Kennan repeatedly drew attention to the subversive actions of the Comintern (the Third or Communist International). He believed that, if the United States had force and made clear its readiness to use it, Washington would rarely, if ever, have to do so.44 Kennan’s X-article further exploited this point of view. He referred to Marxist ideology and Marxists as “nebulous, visionary and impractical,” reminiscent of President Wilson’s remark about the Bolsheviks as “fatuous dreamers” or Lansing’s allusion to them as “dangerous idealists.”45 Lansing and Wilson had also criticized those whom Kennan later pointed out as Marxist ideologues, those who thought they knew what was best and who were willing to be duplicitous in pursuit of it. Wilson noted this tactic in his Atlantic Monthly article of 1923, and Kennan referred to “aggressive intransigence.” Wilson would have needed no reminders in what Kennan characterized as the policy of secretiveness. Of course, there would always be Americans who felt that the Soviets had changed. Kennan had in mind FDR, Harry Hopkins, and Henry Wallace— to name a few leading proponents of the “Yalta Axioms.” The Cold War diplomat had reached almost the same point of view as had been held by the elder Kennan, TR, and Wilson about either the tsarist or communist ruling elite, 43. GFK, Memoirs, 1925–1950, 356. 44. Kennan later agreed with Walter Lippmann that containment was political, not military. He also acknowledged that certain sectors rather than the USSR’s entire periphery had to be defended. See GFK, Memoirs, 1925–1950, 359–61, 547–59. 45. GFK, “The Sources of Soviet Conduct,” in his American Diplomacy, 91; Wilson, “An Address in Buffalo to the American Federation of Labor,” November 12, 1917, in Arthur S. Link et al., eds., The Papers of Woodrow Wilson (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966–1993), 45:14; Lansing, “Private Memo,” December 7, 1917, box 67, Robert Lansing Papers, LC.

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though it was extended to fit an even more powerful Soviet foe. Wilson had concluded that isolating the Soviets and protecting their neighbors by “quarantine” was the right policy, even if that meant encouraging an activist policy by his allies in Poland to prevent a Red Army victory in 1920, when Gen. Maxim Weygand aided Marshal Pilsudski. Kennan sought a more robust program than his predecessors, one of “firm and vigilant containment.” He called for this policy by an “adroit and vigilant application of counter-force at a series of constantly shifting geographical and political points, corresponding to the shifts and maneuvers of Soviet policy.” If this was done, Soviet power “bears the seeds of its own decay, and . . . the sprouting of these seeds is well advanced.”46 Shortly after Kennan’s X-article, Walter Lippmann, the well-known political pundit and journalist, published his own articles in the New York Herald Tribune, later collected as a book, The Cold War: A Study in U.S. Foreign Policy. There, he argued against Kennan’s policy of containment as well as earlier, similar policies. He did so by suggesting a wholly different alternative to fencing in Soviet Russia, what the British had called a “ring fence,” whether it was through TR’s support of Japan’s rise to balance Russia’s Asiatic power, through Wilson’s “cordon sanitaire” and “quarantine,” or through Kennan’s “containment.” He also helped to popularize the term cold war.47 For Lippmann, a militarized containment—what he felt to be the heart of the Truman Doctrine, announced to a Joint Session of the Congress by President Truman on March 12, 1947—meant squandering power around the periphery of the USSR in a kind of trench warfare, instead of focusing on the Atlantic community, including its Mediterranean offshoot. The object of policy should be to negotiate treaties with Germany and Austria that would include evacuation of non-European armies, even if that meant paying a ransom to Soviet 46. Wilson, “Draft for an Essay,” in Link et al., eds., Papers of Woodrow Wilson, 68:323; for the published essay, check 68:393–95. GFK, “Sources,” in his American Diplomacy, 93, 99, 104. This notion is expressed many times in Kennan’s correspondence. For instance, he wrote William Henry Chamberlin, “That the regime itself is one in which there is a profound demoralization and corruption of the spirit, I have never doubted.” He went on to tell Chamberlin that “in the case of many members of the regime itself there is a certain Dostoyevskian quality of awareness of their own wickedness. Theirs is a philosophy of despair, with themselves and with everyone” (GFK to Chamberlin, June 21, 1950, folder 2-A, box 29, GFKP). And in an earlier letter to R. Gordon Wasson, Kennan claimed that “there has been a steady vein of official xenophobia running through Russian history . . . a shrill repudiation of all others, and reflecting a high degree of sensitiveness over the deficiencies of their own work and a love-hate reaction about all that comes to them from the West” (GFK to Wasson, February 4, 1947, folder 1947, box 28, GFKP). Kennan connects with the continuity between tsarist and commissarist Russia. 47. The term cold war was first used by publicist Herbert Bayard Swope and picked up by Lippmann. See Walter Isaacson and Evan Thomas, The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1986), 262n.

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Russia in the form of reparations, concessions, and trade agreements. The Red Army had defeated Germany; its removal could liberate Germany. This arrangement would restore the balance of power, which Lippmann considered the real goal of Soviet diplomacy, an extension of tsarist diplomacy. Withdrawal of the Red Army would be the “acid test,” as he borrowed Wilson’s own words from the famous Fourteen Points speech of January 8, 1918, of American diplomacy. “Our aim,” Lippmann wrote, “will not be to organize an ideological crusade. It will not be to make Jeffersonian democrats out of the peasants of eastern Europe, . . . but to settle the war and restore the independence of the nations of Europe by removing the alien armies—all of them, our own included.”48 This, essentially, was FDR’s accommodation program, his Yalta Axioms. Lansing and Wilson had been cautious toward the Bolsheviks. They understood that Bolshevik geostrategic goals varied little from tsarist ones, that Marxist ideology acted as a smoke screen for communist imperialism. Fanaticism made Lenin and his colleagues opportunistic and gave them what Kennan called aggressive intransigence. Kennan’s analysis had begun with Marxism-Leninism, and he concluded that for Lenin the “victorious proletariat . . . would rise against the remaining capitalist world,” that capitalism was a menace to the socialist homeland and had intervened there, and that, in Kennan’s words, the Soviets cultivated the “semi-myth of implacable foreign hostility,” or what came to be known as the doctrine of the two camps. Because of the “innate antagonism between capitalism and socialism,” the Kremlin developed secretiveness, duplicity, suspiciousness, and unfriendliness. This all sounded very similar to the elder Kennan’s critique of tsarist Russia. Kelley, the Riga School, and the younger Kennan were, in an important sense, heirs and disciples of the elder Kennan. All believed that the tsarist and communist systems would eventually collapse.49 America had the ability, so the two Kennans thought, to influence tsarist and commissarist despotism and help soften or bring them down. The younger Kennan, after putting forward the doctrine of containment, subsequently moved away from its most militant expressions; once the Soviet Union “mellowed,” Kennan later thought, negotiations might follow. But Kennan’s successors at the State Department—for instance, Paul Nitze, Dean Acheson, and John Foster Dulles—implemented a more militant form of containment. “The diplomat who had done so much in 1946 to convince official 48. Lippmann, The Cold War: A Study in U.S. Foreign Policy (New York: Harper and Row, 1972), 36. Kennan thought Lippmann overstated his argument and confused his notion of containment with Truman’s as stated in the Truman Doctrine (GFK to Lippmann, draft of unsent letter, April 6, 1948, item 7, box 17, GFKP). 49. GFK, “Sources,” in his American Diplomacy, 90–95, 104.

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Washington that the Soviets had to be contained—by the threat of force as well as by political and economic pressure—felt by 1948 that he had created a monster.”50 Nevertheless, the younger Kennan had started a reversal of Roosevelt’s wartime collaborationist policy, the one defended by Lippmann.51 Lippmann had attacked Kennan because containment was a defensive posture wherein the United States and its allies were called upon to react to Soviet aggression along the entire perimeter of the USSR and its satellites. Soviet Russia had the advantage of the initiative, whereas the United States and its allies must always be on guard and maintain the edge in armaments in order effectively to counter that advantage. The Kennan argument precluded assessing the USSR in positive terms; it assumed that the Soviet system was only a negative force that would, ultimately, collapse or, in the Reaganite version of the containment doctrine, that the USSR must be overwhelmingly pounded into submission by an outright victory in the arms race, that is, through absolute American military supremacy, what Melvyn P. Leffler termed a “preponderance of power”— though Leffler did not mean this in an absolute sense.52 Of course, this illusion of preponderance in the 1940s, or with the Reaganites in the 1980s, misses a key distinction of Kennan’s approach. Kennan did not support the Reagan “evil empire” rhetoric. Nonetheless, dating from the first Kennan, through TR and the Wilsonians, to the second Kennan, and straight to Reagan, America has had various, almost continuous, versions of Russophobia—with some of its most virulent versions appearing with the Palmer raids during the Wilson adminis50. See Dean Acheson, Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department (New York: W. W. Norton, 1969), particularly chap. 25 and pt. 3. For the quotation, see Isaacson and Thomas, Wise Men, 435. That tougher policy is clearly stated in “NSC-68: United States Objectives and Programs for National Security,” April 14, 1950; for the full text see Naval War College Review 27 (May–June 1975): 51–108. For this document’s theory of rollback as an extension of containment, see Melvyn P. Leffler, The Specter of Communism: The United States and the Origins of the Cold War, 1917–1953 (New York: Hill and Wang, 1994). For Kennan’s disagreements, check GFK to John Lukacs, April 28, 1995, in George F. Kennan and the Origins of Containment, 1944–1946: The Kennan-Lukacs Correspondence (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1997), 70–71. 51. On the Rooseveltian approach to Soviet Russia, GFK wrote revealingly: “As I try to analyze the reasons for the sense of frustration and concern which I feel with respect to our treatment of Russian matters, I come to the conclusion that the fault lies less in any individual personalities than in a lack of understanding of the realities on the part of our public and in certain general deficiencies of our governmental system in the conduct of foreign affairs.” He went on, “I feel that before we can successfully face the problem of dealing with Russia, we will have to have an entirely different approach, perhaps not only to this problem alone but to the wider problems and techniques of our foreign policy in general” (GFK to Elbridge Durbrow [Chief of the East European Division, Department of State], January 21, 1946, box 28, folder 1946, GFKP). 52. Leffler, A Preponderance of Power: National Security, the Truman Administration, and the Cold War (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992).

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tration and McCarthyism—the attitude of “better dead than red”—during Truman’s administration. FDR’s belief, shared by his associates in February 1945—Harry Hopkins, Edward R. Stettinius, James F. Byrnes, W. Averell Harriman, and George C. Marshall—was that the basis of an accommodation had been reached with the USSR. Roosevelt’s middling bureaucracy—George Kennan, Dean Acheson, Chip Bohlen, Robert Lovett, John McCloy—the so-called wise men—dashed this belief, even though challenged by Lippmann. These were the people in the immediate aftermath of Roosevelt’s death who initiated Truman into the wily ways of Soviet Russia. As a result, Truman instigated a new foreign policy, the Truman Doctrine. He would not allow the Soviet Union to “bulldoze” the United States, and he was tired of “babying the Soviets.”53 The hard-and-fast version of the containment doctrine had quickly emerged—that is, giving it a military rather than a political edge—as Kennan had originally postulated. By 1947, America had reverted to the severe negativism toward Russia of the elder George Kennan. FDR’s confidant Harry Hopkins related to Robert E. Sherwood the Rooseveltian hope for the future collaboration of the two Great Powers. It was lost until Reagan reversed himself and sought an accommodation with Gorbachev: We really believed in our hearts that this [Yalta Conference] was the dawn of the new day we had all been praying for and talking about for so many years. We were absolutely certain that we had won the first great victory of the peace—and by “we,” I mean all of us, the whole civilized human race. The Russians had proved that they could be reasonable and farseeing and there wasn’t any doubt in the minds of the President or any of us that we could live with them and get along with them peacefully for as far into the future as any of us could imagine.54

George F. Kennan’s take on Stalin’s Russia, by its very nature, precluded FDR’s hopeful approach, and his take on Rooseveltian policy toward Soviet Russia was 53. Robert H. Ferrell, Harry S. Truman: A Life (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1994), 250, 238. 54. Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins: An Intimate History (New York: Harper Bros., 1948), 832. The very notion that Stalin could be counted on so angered GFK that, in a telephone conversation with W. Averell Harriman in 1968, he stated, “The fact that Uncle Joe was our friend is a myth.” He went on to criticize severely the Soviet stand on the Lublin Poles: “Molotov wanted to make the Government to accept . . . make them the Government and add one or two people to it, instead of a real government reconciling all interests.” For the Cold Warriors, of course, Poland was the core issue or catalyst starting the Cold War. See “Memo of Telecon,” GFK to Harriman, February 7, 1968, Harriman Papers, box 518, LC.

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extremely negative: “I entered upon my work as Averell Harriman’s deputy in Moscow in 1944, in other words, painfully aware that a massive misunderstanding was already establishing itself in the minds of American governmental leaders on the subject of the character of the regime with which they were dealing in Moscow,” he wrote. He went on to remark about FDR: “Until the final days of his life, Franklin Roosevelt seems to have clung to a concept of Stalin’s personality, and of the ways in which the latter might be influenced, that was far below the general quality of the president’s statesmanship and reflected poorly on the information he had been receiving about Soviet affairs.” This effort was, in Kennan’s opinion, “one of the saddest manifestations of the almost childish failure on FDR’s part to understand the personality of Stalin himself and the nature of his regime.” Kennan also condemned the Joint Chiefs of Staff for indulging in this fault, calling this a “misunderstanding on the part of Franklin Roosevelt and much of his entourage” and a “thesis” that “all Moscow really wanted from the postwar Eastern Europe were ‘friendly governments.’” This was a “futile effort” and a “naïve hope” leading to the “cultivation of this essentially fictitious and misleading scenario.” Rather, America should have realized that “it was impossible to collaborate very extensively with Moscow” and that there was a “price to be paid” for the Soviet contribution to the victory over Hitler.55 Once Kennan’s general perception became a specific policy in the Truman administration, the Cold War was inevitable. It is amazing how similar the overall perceptions of the two Kennans were: a despotic state that should be transformed into a liberal democracy. Even Lippmann had realized that it might be impossible to “make Jeffersonian democrats out of the peasants of eastern Europe.”56 As the first Kennan’s perception had led to the Wilsonian policy of quarantine, so the second Kennan’s perception resulted in the Truman Doctrine. Nowhere in either the Long Telegram or the X-article does Kennan suggest that Stalinism will mellow to such an extent that the two systems—capitalism and communism—can coexist. They cannot find sufficient room for large areas of cooperation and collaboration. One or the other must yield. Stalinist mellowing, for Kennan, only leads to its decay, disintegration, and elimination. This is a reversal of the Stalinist doctrine of the two camps, in which one or the other system must completely yield to the other by being destroyed, rather 55. GFK to John Lukacs, March 2, 1995, in Kennan and Lukacs, Kennan and the Origins of Containment, 28, 33, 34–35, 36, 49, 51–52, 56. 56. Lippmann, Cold War, 36. Concerning his confrontation with Lippmann, Kennan wrote the editor of Foreign Affairs: “I have never doubted that in the end the paths of Mr. Lippmann and myself would meet. History will tell which was the more tortuous” (GFK to Hamilton Fish Armstrong, November 7, 1947, folder 1947, box 28, GFKP).

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than by collapsing or imploding, as Kennan would have it. In February 1996, at a luncheon celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the Long Telegram, Kennan commented that American leaders had pretended that great wartime friendliness with the Russians existed. Many, as he said, looked forward to “rosy relations.” Yet, he continued, there was no proof: Stalin had not replied to Western initiatives such as the International Monetary Fund or the World Bank. Moreover, there was no evidence that those closest to Stalin were correctly informing him. Specifically, Kennan alluded to the possibility that such persons as the head of the secret police (NKVD), Lavrenti Beria, whom Kennan called a “savage,” were misinforming Stalin.57 Robert C. Tucker, who helped Kennan with his research for the Long Telegram, asserted at the Kennan Centennial Conference held at Princeton University on February 20, 2004, that Stalin was concurrently insisting that conflict was inevitable and that the USSR must devote its energies to arming in order to meet all contingencies in a hostile world. This meant, as Tucker interpreted it, that Stalin believed in the impotence of diplomacy and looked forward to a military confrontation, a third world war. As Tucker emphasized, citing Stalin’s socalled preelection speech of February 9, 1946, this was the Kremlin’s neurotic view of an evil, hostile, and menacing outside world.58 We could substitute communism for tsarism and come out with virtually the same negative attitudes. George F. Kennan was explicit in telling us that the Russia “we may not look for . . . is easy to describe and envisage, for it would be a capitalistic and liberal-democratic one, with institutions closely resembling those of our own republic.”59 Looking back to tsarism for precedents to Soviet communism was familiar to the younger Kennan. He also wrote of the nineteenth-century writings of the Marquis Astolphe de Custine, “They are important primarily as a brilliant and intuitive picture of the physiognomy of Russian despotism in one of its most extreme phases.” In that vein, a year later he said of Custine, “his writings constitute, in my opinion (and quite seriously) the best book in existence on the Soviet Union. And I think we can take that as an indication that today, again, there is another Russia there, equally obscure to the casual traveller, but equally important for the future.”60 Clearly, he 57. “Luncheon Video of February 22, 1996, Richard H. Ullman, Moderator,” presented at the Kennan Centennial Conference, February 20, 2004, prepared by Richard Olman et al. to be deposited in GFKP. 58. Tucker, “The Long Telegram: An Act of Political Leadership,” Princeton University Library Chronicle 66:2 (Winter 2005): 295–302. 59. GFK, “America and the Russian Future,” in his American Diplomacy, 108 (italics ours). 60. GFK to Philip Vaudrin, January 5, 1950, folder 2-A, 1950; GFK to Phyllis Kohler, January 19, 1951, folder 1951, box 29, GFKP.

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saw the parallels between the governments of nineteenth- and twentiethcentury Russia. And, like his elder namesake, he viewed both negatively. This tale of two Kennans shows that they have had inordinate influence on twentieth-century American perceptions and policies toward Russia. Negative perceptions and their resulting policies—TR’s pro-Japanese stance, Wilsonian quarantine, and Trumanesque to Reaganesque containment—have dominated American thought and action. When Princeton University celebrated the centennial of George F. Kennan’s birth with a gala conference in his honor, the banquet speaker and official biographer of George F. Kennan, the distinguished Yale historian John Lewis Gaddis, noted that, for Kennan, American perceptions and policy toward Soviet Russia would never have been grounded in peaceful coexistence. This state of affairs was not America’s fault. It was because the USSR required a hostile external world in order to justify the dictatorship. The world of 1946 was not a safe world. There was no freedom from the fear of destruction. For Gaddis, Kennan opened “a way out: a path that lay in between the appeasement and isolationism that had led to World War II, on the one hand, and on the other hand the alternative of a third world war, the devastation from which, in an atomic age, could be unimaginable.” Kennan pleaded, as Gaddis suggests, for long-term patience because America offered a more attractive world. He took the moral high ground by placing the United States on the side of peace and historical patterns. Yet even Gaddis had to admit that Kennan himself was a profound pessimist: “What’s most distinctive about Kennan’s philosophy, as expressed here and elsewhere, is the dissatisfaction with modern society that it reflects.” Kennan felt an “alienation” from his own century.61 Lest this portrait of George F. Kennan be too negative, there also was the diplomat who sought accommodation with the Soviets after Stalin’s death, who did dissent from a hard-line orthodoxy, and who often remarked that his Cold War crusade had been misinterpreted. Such a line of thought suggests that the younger Kennan was a very complex scholar-diplomat and makes his legacy somewhat ambiguous.62 Nonetheless, it is that uneasiness with the twentieth 61. Gaddis, “George F. Kennan: The Qualities of Greatness,” Princeton University Library Chronicle 66:2 (Winter 2005): 285–93 (quotations from 287, 291). For Kennan as public philosopher, see GFK, Around the Cragged Hill: A Personal and Political Philosophy (New York: W. W. Norton, 1993). 62. Some of this complexity is nicely brought out by Walter L. Hixson, George F. Kennan: Cold War Iconoclast (New York: Columbia University Press, 1989), chap. 9, “Challenging the Consensus.” Another author who takes this up is David Mayers, George Kennan and the Dilemmas of US Foreign Policy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), pt. III. “On the Sidelines.”

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century that framed Kennan’s perceptions on Soviet Russia—along with what he had gained from the elder Kennan, from Kelley, from the Riga School, from Russia itself. All of these taken together helped to persuade the American public likewise. Kennan the diplomat became Kennan the public philosopher. By comparing the elder and the younger Kennans, we may say that America’s Russian policy throughout most of the twentieth century was, to an important extent, “Kennanized.”

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Our Man in Managua Lawrence Dennis and the 1926 Nicaraguan Crisis

to hell, the path to diplomatic failure is often paved with good intentions. So it was with U.S. policy toward Nicaragua from 1912 to 1933. The actions of Lawrence Dennis, U.S. chargé d’affaires at Managua during 1926, demonstrate that tactical success, in this case the ouster of President Emiliano Chamorro, can lead to strategic failure. An inherently flawed policy, even when brilliantly implemented, could not create the order and stability the State Department desired.1 U.S. difficulties with Nicaragua dated from the 1850s when the filibuster William Walker intervened in a Nicaraguan civil war, became president of the country, and disturbed the peace of Central America. In the early years of the twentieth century Nicaragua’s revolutions attracted Americans in many capacities, including soldiers of fortune. These adventurers descended on Nicaragua and other Central American nations like pirates on the Spanish Main. Their names became familiar through Sunday supplements and books: Machine Gun Molony; Tex O’Reilly; Tracy Richardson, single-handedly bluffing a Nicaraguan general into surrendering a town; Sam Dreben, “the fighting Jew” wounded in a tropic land, announcing, “I can’t die here, they have no Jewish cemetery”; and Gen. Lee Christmas, threatened with death by firing squad, sneering at his captors not to bury him, because he wanted buzzards to eat his body and scatter his remains all over them.2 More important than the mercenaries was U.S. economic penetration, which some critics saw as exploitative on behalf of American financial interests. To LIKE DR. JOHNSON’S ROAD

1. American involvement in Nicaragua is related in Harold Norman Denny, Dollars for Bullets: The Story of American Rule in Nicaragua (New York: Dial Press, 1929). William Kamman, A Search for Stability: United States Diplomacy toward Nicaragua, 1925–1933 (South Bend: Notre Dame University Press, 1968), a model diplomatic study, covers the second intervention. 2. For scholarly analysis of the mercenaries and their ties to business, see Lester D. Langley and Thomas David Schoonover, The Banana Men: American Mercenaries and Entrepreneurs in Central America, 1880–1930 (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1996).

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ensure that revenue flowed to the Nicaraguan government, Americans ran the Nicaraguan Customs House. In 1912 marines began guarding the U.S. legation in Managua. Although the marines were often seen as standing guard to prevent revolutions, their ability to do so was a useful fiction. One consul noted, “They are a sign and symbol of the Department’s disapproval of revolutions.”3 Nevertheless, so long as the marines remained, the country enjoyed stability from 1912 to 1925 under a succession of Conservative Party presidents. The Department of State lent support to Central American efforts at selfpolicing. The Central American republics meeting in conference in Washington in 1922 and 1923 signed a General Treaty of Peace and Amity. Under Article II of the treaty, signatories agreed not to recognize any administration that came to power through a coup d’état or other unconstitutional means. The United States was not a signatory to the treaty but nevertheless decided to adopt the recognition policy. Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes instructed legations in Central America to give the “widest publicity” to the department’s position on recognition. State’s adherence to Article II led to the diplomatic debacle of 1926.4 Nicaragua’s Liberal and Conservative parties carried on the bitterest political strife in Central America. A former North American resident noted, “No where else have I ever seen such rabid political feelings and a man’s political leanings are considered at the teacup and farm yard.” As one journalist reported, “A man of circumstance is a Liberal or Conservative first, a Nicaraguan afterward.” This political passion exploded when Emiliano Chamorro, Conservative president from 1917 to 1921, lost the election of 1924 to a hybrid ticket that elected a moderate Conservative, Carlos Solorzano, as president and a Liberal physician, Juan B. Sacasa, as vice president. Chamorro’s reaction to defeat resembled that of a South Carolina Democrat who, upon learning that his state had cast 1,100 votes for Calvin Coolidge, sputtered that he was “astonished to know that they were cast and shocked to know that they were counted.”5 3. Harold Playter to Dept. of State, January 15, 1925, State Department Papers, 817.00/3272, Record Group 59, National Archives (hereafter SDP followed by file and document numbers). 4. Denny, Dollars for Bullets, 186–88; Dana G. Munro, The United States and the Caribbean Republics, 1921–1933 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974), 123–25. As Richard V. Salisbury shows, “That Costa Rica had earlier encouraged the adoption of this stringent policy was ignored by those who preferred to emphasize what they considered to be simply a renewal of North American interference in Central American affairs” (“Domestic Politics and Foreign Policy: Costa Rica’s Stand on Recognition, 1923–1934,” Hispanic American Historical Review 54 [August 1974]: 459). 5. Denny, Dollars for Bullets, 59; C. B. Graves to executive secretary of the White House, October 29, 1926, SDP 817.00/4009; George Brown Tindall, The Disruption of the Solid South (New York: W. W. Norton, 1972), 47.

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An old hand in Nicaraguan politics, Chamorro identified with a more proU.S. and pro-foreign investment position than did his Liberal rivals. In 1914, while serving as foreign minister, he had signed with William Jennings Bryan the Bryan-Chamorro Treaty giving the United States the right to build an interoceanic canal across Nicaragua. That year Chamorro became president of Nicaragua, in part due to the Liberals’ boycotting of the election. In 1920 American backing insured the election of Chamorro’s uncle. Four years later Emiliano Chamorro believed it was his time to be president again. In Nicaraguan political culture it was inevitable that Chamorro would attempt a coup to right perceived personal wrongs. Withdrawal of the U.S. Marine legation guard on August 3, 1925, reinforced his belief that the United States would not object to such action. In the predawn hours of October 25, Chamorro seized the fortress of La Loma that dominated Managua. That afternoon another former Conservative president, Adolfo Díaz, rumored to be implicated in the coup, carried Chamorro’s demands for surrender to Solorzano and returned with the president’s capitulation. Vice President Sacasa fled the country. Thereafter, although Solorzano continued in office, Chamorro gave the orders. Next, with the advice of Washington lawyer Chandler P. Anderson, Chamorro looked for a way to return to office with some stamp of legitimacy. His supporters in Nicaragua’s Congress declared the post of vice president vacant. Then Chamorro availed himself of Solorzano’s resignation. With both posts theoretically open, the Nicaraguan constitution stated that Congress would designate a president. By January 1926, the caudillo was again officially president of Nicaragua. Then, to his surprise, Secretary of State Frank B. Kellogg informed the Nicaraguan ministry that “the Government of the United States has not recognized and will not recognize as the Government of Nicaragua the regime now headed by General Chamorro.” The department based its decision on the general’s acceptance of Article II of the General Treaty of Peace and Amity.6 The department found itself in an unenviable position. Chamorro remained popular in Nicaragua and was perhaps the man best suited to govern the country. Yet, if the United States extended recognition to Chamorro, it would seem to be turning a blind eye when those it favored violated the treaty. If Chamorro succeeded, that would encourage the type of unconstitutional change the treaty intended to stop. But, the department admitted, first privately, then publicly, that it would not use force to restore Solorzano after his resignation. Nor would it elevate Sacasa to the presidency.7 6. Denny, Dollars for Bullets, 213–16. 7. L. Ethan Ellis, Frank B. Kellogg and American Foreign Relations, 1925–1929 (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1961), 62.

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It became the unhappy duty of the U.S. minister, Charles W. Eberhardt, to deal with Chamorro. When Chamorro returned to power, he did not call at the American legation but let it be known that he hoped Eberhardt would send for him. The new president insisted to Eberhardt that his assumption of power was constitutional. He could maintain order, he argued, and expected other Central American nations to extend recognition. He believed that eventually the United States would be forced to recognize him. When an American businessman advised him unofficially to hold elections and to ask for U.S. supervision, Chamorro told Eberhardt it was a State Department signal for him to call for an election, which he would win. When Washington queried Eberhardt about the advisability of an arms embargo, the minister counseled against it because, since Chamorro was already well armed, such a measure would only be interpreted “by Chamorro to his followers as another sure step toward recognition.”8 Eberhardt urged the department to recall him as soon as Chamorro became president. Only his recall, he told superiors, would show Chamorro that the United States meant business. In any event his continuing presence in Managua was embarrassing. The fact that he remained in the capital was “now being freely referred to as a winking of the departmental eye at present conditions,” thereby helping Chamorro promote the belief that he would be granted recognition. By the end of January 1926, with the closing of the Mexican and Colombian ministries, Eberhardt remained the only diplomatic officer in Managua. Rumor in the capital had it that Chamorro had bought Eberhardt.9 Secretary Kellogg refused Eberhardt’s request, whereupon the envoy bowed to orders. If he could not leave the country, Eberhardt felt no necessity for seeing Chamorro. In April, Washington rebuked him for meeting only once with the president between January 16 and March 8. The department did not want him holding aloof from the caudillo. He was to remain in Nicaragua because only by “close and frequent contact” could he impress the department’s views, convince Chamorro that recognition was out of the question, and get him to resign. Washington recognized that this task would take time and “only by constant persistence and repetition of your arguments could this be accomplished.”10 8. Eberhardt was one of the first consular officers to be appointed minister under the Rogers Act reorganization of the State Department and had little political experience. Munro, United States and the Caribbean Republics, 187. Eberhardt to Dept. of State, January 29 and January 5, 1926, SDP 817.00/3457, 3381. Chamorro interpreted the warnings to his own advantage. He persuaded fellow conservatives that Eberhardt’s threat “to withhold recognition” meant that the United States would eventually accept his government. Eberhardt to Dept. of State, January 6, 29, 21, 1926, SDP 817.00/3382, 3457, 3412. 9. Eberhardt to Dept. of State, January 16, 21, 1926, SDP 817.00/3398, 3412. 10. Joseph C. Grew to Eberhardt, April 14, 1926, SDP 817.00/3511.

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Eberhardt faced an impossible situation. The dictator seemed uninjured by nonrecognition, and his arrogance increased. In late April he reportedly pronounced, “To Hell with the United States, with the State Department, and with its diplomatic representative here.” Eberhardt thereupon warned the department that unless it decided to exert strong economic and moral pressure, “the position of this legation will become untenable.” Washington finally granted Eberhardt his leave in May. His temporary replacement would be Lawrence Dennis.11 Tall, powerfully built, with close-cropped, bristly hair, the new chargé d’affaires arrived in Managua on May 15, 1926, fresh from a tour in Honduras. Dennis had a mysterious past. Born in Atlanta in 1893 of mixed race, he was a boy evangelist in Georgia until his mother took him to Europe, where he lived for several years. He entered Harvard in 1915. In the terminology of the time, Dennis “passed” for white. During the preparedness buildup prior to World War I, he volunteered for the Plattsburg Training Camp Movement. After the declaration of war he enlisted in the army, served in France, and rose to captain in the military police. Following the Armistice he returned to Harvard, graduating in 1920. He joined the State Department and spent the next six years serving at “unpleasant” posts in Romania, Haiti, and Honduras. By the time he arrived in Nicaragua, Dennis had grown ambitious for promotion and better postings. The department considered Dennis a “troubleshooter” and did not make his assignment lightly. Stokley W. Morgan of the department’s Latin America division wrote, “I should be particularly glad to see Mr. Dennis go to Managua because of the very critical political situation there, which requires that the legation be left in charge of a man of considerable experience, and what is more important, a man with a talent for dealing with exactly the sort of a situation existing there, a talent which Mr. Dennis has shown that he possesses in a high-degree.”12 Dennis was to carry out the policy that Eberhardt had failed to press—that of keeping constant pressure on Chamorro in order to convince the dictator to resign. Dennis had seen such a strategy carried out successfully by Stokley W. Morgan in Honduras. He would need all his experience as a “troubleshooter,” for he became ensnared immediately in Chamorro’s strategy of hanging on to 11. Ellis, Kellogg and American Foreign Relations, 65. 12. Stokley W. Morgan to Dolbere, March 23, 1926, in Lawrence Dennis Service Folder, Decimal File 1920–1929, SDP 123D421/52. During his tour of duty in Honduras, Dennis encountered a situation similar to that in Nicaragua, although on that occasion Morgan played the role Dennis would undertake against Chamorro. See Munro, United States and the Caribbean Republics, 141–43. There is an unpublished manuscript by Dennis on Honduras in his service file. Henry R. White turned down publication because, “There is a great deal of dynamite in the article as written” (White to Grew, February 3, 1925, SDP 123D421/41).

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power. The regime hailed Eberhardt’s departure and Dennis’s arrival as proof that Washington would grant recognition. This claim Dennis forcibly denied. At the same time, he began to impress on the Conservative Party that Chamorro had misled it and would bring the country to disaster. The American set out to “enlighten” the Nicaraguan people and push Chamorro from the presidency with what one historian has called “a persistence such as few American diplomats have employed in the twentieth century.” Four days after reaching his new post, Dennis reportedly told a justice of the Nicaraguan Supreme Court that it was “the firm purpose” of the United States to remove Chamorro “if it took 10 revolutions in succession to accomplish that end.” Soon he was handing Chamorro the same message. Uncle Sam wanted him out. The chargé would phone the caudillo and say, “Good morning, General. Now how about that resignation of yours?” When Chamorro protested, Dennis would calmly remind him, “But you know you will have to eventually. Better do it now.” He warned Chamorro that if he did not resign, the United States would see to it that he never again became president. His campaign continued after office hours when Dennis and the president actually socialized together. At poker parties, “Dennis would interrupt the General’s draw with a casual, ‘Now, General, about that resignation I was speaking of.’” No doubt Chamorro grew annoyed by the American’s poker style, but not enough to fold. On the contrary, when Dennis told Chamorro he would have to go, Chamorro replied defiantly that he knew he would, but the United States would have to force him out.13 Dennis faced an uphill struggle to educate the Nicaraguan public. Chamorro controlled the press, and nothing unfavorable to him would be printed. On June 4, the day Eberhardt departed Managua, a reporter from the city’s principal newspaper, El Commercio, called at the legation and interviewed Dennis, who reiterated that there was no connection between Eberhardt leaving and American recognition. He repeated the reasons for denying Chamorro U.S. recognition. The reporter asked if there was any hostility between the two countries. Dennis assured him there was none. The published article, however, said nothing of nonrecognition, concentrating instead on Dennis’s statement that no hostility existed between Nicaragua and the United States, implying that Chamorro’s regime could look forward to renewed diplomatic relations. Dennis immediately wrote a clarification to the editor. At the same time he cabled the department that he expected the Managua government to withhold publication of his letter. If it did, he recommended that the State Department publish it in both 13. Robert H. Ferrell, Frank B. Kellogg and Henry L. Stimson (New York: Cooper Square, 1963), 50. Dennis to Dept. of State, June 10, 1926, SDP 817.00/3617.

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the United States and Central America. “The legation,” he complained, “has been utterly ineffective in giving publicity locally to the facts of the situation.”14 As Dennis expected, Chamorro did not approve publication of his statement. The envoy then urged the State Department to make his letter public, because Chamorro claimed the U.S. obligation to nonrecognition was only a matter of form and the Americans no longer believed in the 1923 treaty. So long as the attitude of the United States remained unpublicized, Dennis warned, “no steps can be taken by members of the Conservative Party looking to a return to constitutional government along peaceful lines.” Then, to Chamorro’s anger, Liberal employees of the newspaper copied Dennis’s letter and distributed it throughout the country.15 In conversations with Liberal leaders, Dennis expressed hope there would be no revolution, because the United States wanted a peaceful settlement. The Liberals in turn agreed to wait if they could be sure of effective steps to rid them of Chamorro. As time passed, Dennis warned his superiors that if the Liberals thought the United States and the Central American republics considered Chamorro’s regime a fait accompli they would see revolution as their only alternative.16 Dennis next took an extraordinary step to correct lies Chamorro spread among Conservatives. On June 15 he invited about one hundred leading Conservatives to the legation and tried to clarify the American position. Chamorro was stubborn, Dennis wrote to the department; “I hope to marshal the opinion and influence of Conservative leaders.” Speaking Spanish in a conversational tone, without notes, Dennis held the floor for half an hour. He assured his audience this was not a political meeting. He had invited them only to explain correctly his government’s position. He read and reread Kellogg’s statement as to why the department would not extend recognition. If Nicaraguans thought the State Department would change its mind, “I give warning that this is not correct and the fact of non-recognition is of vital importance.” He added that, contrary to “wild rumors,” Washington did not favor revolution as a means of changing the present government.17 One of five prominent Conservatives who remained after the meeting to talk with Dennis later reported to Chamorro that the chargé hoped he expressed him14. Dennis to Dept. of State, June 17, 7, 1926, SDP 817.00/3665, 3607. 15. Dennis to Dept. of State, June 7, 17, 1926, SDP 817.00/3609, 3665. 16. Dennis to Dept. of State, June 8, 17, 1926, SDP 817.00/3664, 3665. 17. Thus far, he claimed, his activities had met with “almost universal approval” by leading Conservatives who flocked to the legation to assure him of their wish to return to constitutional government. Dennis to Dept. of State, June 10, 17, 1926, SDP 817.00/3617, 3665.

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self clearly. He “spoke in a diplomatic manner which is soft because if strong speech is necessary there is the navy.” The department intended to enforce the Treaty of 1923, and Chamorro must understand the present situation could not continue.18 Chamorro closed his eyes and ears to anything that he did not choose to see or hear. He continued his stalling tactics, reiterating to party intimates that the Americans really were favorable toward him. Official press reports of Dennis’s legation talk said nothing of his criticism and only mentioned those parts in which he expressed American disapproval of revolution against Chamorro. The chargé worked both sides of the political fence in an effort to clarify the department’s policy and undermine the press. He accepted invitations from both parties to balls and celebrations. First came the Conservatives. A ball was tendered in Grenada for him—an honor, he assured Washington, that he deemed “quite sincere and disinterested.” Conversations about political topics were taboo, something the local press commented upon favorably. The Managua Club, a stronghold of Conservatives, scheduled another ball in his honor.19 Not to be outdone, the Liberals invited Dennis to spend a weekend in Leon. No sooner was the invitation issued than Chamorro’s secretary called Dennis and offered to put the president’s private railroad car at the American’s disposal for the trip. To maintain neutrality the chargé traveled in the company of his British counterpart and carefully avoided making any political statements. At the banquet in his honor he declined to respond to a toast and asked the Briton to speak in his stead. He made no public speeches. Nevertheless, El Indipendiente, the only Conservative journal in Leon, editorialized that the epithet Yanquistas, which Liberals had flung at Conservatives because of their pro-Americanism, would now “have to be shared by both parties in view of the cordial treatment of Mr. Dennis.” Lest he be accused of favoring the Liberals, the chargé dressed as a cowboy and rode in a parade as a guest of Grenada Conservatives. Local newspapers played up Dennis’s activities, his visits to Chamorro, his presence at social gatherings, as though he was a visiting head of state. Dennis had indeed become “the man of the hour” in Managua.20 Dennis kept up a stream of cables urging Washington to adopt a more stringent economic policy toward Chamorro. Nonrecognition did not bother the 18. Translation of telegram from Chamorro to Carlos Caudra Pasos, June 29, 1926, box 53, Chandler P. Anderson Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress (hereafter Anderson Papers). 19. Dennis to Dept. of State, June 26, 1926, SDP 817.00/3682. 20. Dennis to Dept. of State, July 17, August 20, 1926, SDP 817.00/3706, 3771. The phrase “man of the hour” is Kamman’s, Search for Stability, 57.

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general, because Americans in the Nicaraguan customs service turned revenues over to him. As long as Chamorro could count on those funds, Dennis wrote, he and his followers “will be confirmed in the belief that our non-recognition means nothing and that we wish him to continue. He has virtually told me this.” The chargé urged Washington to interpret nonrecognition “as in our relations with Soviet Russia,” and back it up with economic pressure, by cutting off funds to Chamorro. Only such an action, or a successful revolution, would remove him from office.21 Dennis’s efforts to remove Chamorro did not go unchallenged. Chamorro had an influential friend in Washington in the person of Chandler P. Anderson, one of the leading lawyers of the day. Anderson had been one of the first persons to learn of Chamorro’s coup. Later he devised the tricky scheme whereby Chamorro became president. After the department withdrew recognition, Anderson lobbied American business interests willing to put pressure on the State Department in support of Chamorro. In addition he tried to influence William E. Borah, chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. The Senate might be interested in the question, Anderson cleverly wrote Borah, of “why the Department of State should feel under any obligation to adopt the terms of a Treaty which has not been sanctioned by the advice and consent of the Senate.” Anderson soon met with Borah in the senator’s apartment, showing him Chamorro’s cables complaining of Dennis’s tactics. Borah asked many questions and finally said that, if the reports proved correct, he considered Dennis “guilty of a gross violation of international propriety.”22 The publication of Dennis’s letter to El Commercio caused Anderson to take his case directly to Secretary Kellogg. But Kellogg had sharp comments for Anderson. The secretary said he understood that Anderson might be encouraging Chamorro to think the department was bluffing and that Eberhardt had returned to the States to arrange for recognition. Anderson denied it and argued that the Nicaraguan government was fighting for its life. Chamorro must try to make it appear that the question of recognition was still open. This explanation did not satisfy Kellogg. Chamorro, he said, had acted in a very “highhanded” manner when he prevented Dennis’s statements from being printed. Anderson replied that the censorship had occurred because Dennis appealed to the Nicaraguans to overthrow Chamorro. This implied revolution, and Chamorro was within his rights not to give it official endorsement.23 21. Dennis to Dept. of State, June 9, 1926, SDP 817.00/3616. 22. Chamorro to Anderson, October 30, 1925, box 52, Office File Correspondence, 1925; several letters in box 53, Office File Correspondence, January–May 1926; Anderson to Borah, April 10, 1926, box 53; Diary of Chandler P. Anderson, June 13, 1926, box 54, Anderson Papers. 23. Anderson Diary, June 15, 1926, box 54, Anderson Papers.

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Anderson formed an alliance with the influential political journalist William Hard. Supplied by Anderson with Chamorro’s cables, Hard placed in The Nation several articles critical of American policy in general and Dennis in particular. One cable brought serious charges against Dennis. Chamorro claimed the chargé suggested to Liberals that they start a new revolution by taking Bluefields on Nicaragua’s east coast. When asked how, since the port was well guarded, “Dennis replied that $500 would be enough to do it.” Chamorro authorized his Washington agents “to make a convenient use” of the information.24 In mid-July, Chamorro jokingly asked Dennis when the revolution would begin. Any president could maintain himself with diplomatic recognition, he went on, but it took “real merit to carry on successfully as he was doing without recognition.” In spite of his bravado, Dennis believed Chamorro was worried and for the first time found him willing to talk about stepping down. By now, Conservative leaders such as Díaz thought anything would be better than a continuation of Chamorro in office.25 In August 1926, revolution became a reality when Liberals began a revolt on Nicaragua’s east coast. Chamorro’s position was now weaker than it had been three months earlier. His party was split by dissension; a majority of Conservatives no longer believed he could win recognition; and, most important, his treasury was being emptied by the cost of fighting the latest insurrection. Evidence also suggested that Mexico was aiding the rebels. So long as Chamorro remained president, Dennis told the department, peace remained impossible. If the United States would not force Chamorro to see reason, it would have to witness the progressive ruin of the country.26 As Dennis understood the Conservative position in early September, Chamorro’s party members were in a rush to procure his resignation. Then the dictator stiffened his stand. The United States found itself in the midst of diplomatic problems with revolutionary Mexico. Chamorro, with some logic, declared that Mexican interference would oblige the United States to take sides with him against the Liberals.27 But Chamorro had nearly played out his hand. Conservative leaders told Dennis they would break with Chamorro if promised protection. Dennis’s conferences with Conservatives, particularly Díaz, were now showing results, and 24. Copy of cable translation, Chamorro to Cuadra Pasos, June 29, 1926, box 54, Anderson Papers. Soon afterward Chamorro was assuring Dennis that the publication in the United States of his cables concerning Dennis was not authorized by him. Dennis to Dept. of State, July 20, 1926, SDP 817.00/3685. 25. Dennis to Dept. of State, July 16, 1926, SDP 817.00/3708. 26. Dennis to Dept. of State, August 21, 1926, SDP 817.00/3721; Kamman, A Search for Stability, 59–60. 27. Dennis to Dept. of State, September 6, 1926, SDP 817.00/3757.

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Dennis reported the president to be “broken in spirit and apparently about ready to mediate.”28 In a series of meetings with Liberals and Conservatives, Dennis obtained support for a conference between the two parties, and Chamorro agreed to withdraw. The result was an October 16–24 conference with Dennis presiding aboard the USS Denver in Corinto Harbor. Not surprisingly, the delegates failed to agree on a successor to Chamorro. By prior agreement all present understood this to mean that within five days the Nicaraguan Congress would be convened and would probably designate Adolfo Díaz as president.29 At 6:00 p.m. on October 30, just over one year after he struggled up the hill to take La Loma, Chamorro deposited the presidency with Congress. As a final condition to his withdrawal he insisted that three leading Conservatives, including Díaz, agree to support him for the presidency in 1928. None liked the idea, but they agreed in order to gain his resignation. To Dennis it appeared that Chamorro’s fall was brought about not by the United States but by Mexican arms in the hands of the revolutionists. The American consul in Corinto as well as Chamorro himself assigned Dennis the credit, or blame, as the case might be. The consul saw the caudillo’s willingness to compromise as a direct result of Dennis’s action. In his autobiography, the ex-president maintained he would have continued to fight and could have won had it not been for Dennis fomenting opposition within the Conservative Party.30 Díaz assumed the presidency on November 14, and the State Department extended recognition on November 17. Nicaragua’s problems were not over but just beginning. Dissident Liberals refused to accept the results, and the revolution continued and began to spread inland from the east coast. Dennis warned the department that now that Mexico supported them, the Liberals were less willing to compromise.31 The United States had, through Dennis and its strict interpretation of the Treaty of Peace and Amity, succeeded in removing the most energetic and arguably the ablest Nicaraguan leader from political life. Díaz quickly revealed that he lacked the qualities needed to stabilize the nation. In December, Juan B. Sacasa, the Liberal vice president who had fled Chamorro’s coup, returned to Nicaragua and claimed the presidency. The 28. Ibid. 29. Dennis to Dept. of State, September 22, October 24, 1926, SDP 817.00/3816, 3967. 30. Dennis to Dept. of State, October 30, November 1, 1926, SDP 817.00/3992, 3997. Memorandum of a conversation between J. A. Stabler and Harold Playter, American consul in Corinto, September 21, 1926, SDP 817.00/3878. Cited in Kamman, Search for Stability, 65, n. 27. 31. Dennis to Dept. of State, November 5, 1926, SDP 817.00/4016.

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United States did not recognize Sacasa, but Mexico did. This step increased the State Department’s belief that the Liberals were allied to “bolshevik” Mexico. On January 2, 1927, President Calvin Coolidge ordered the marines back into Nicaragua. By the end of February, fifty-four hundred marines occupied the most important Nicaraguan cities. Attempting to limit the American role, President Coolidge in May sent a prominent New York lawyer, Henry L. Stimson, to negotiate with Gen. Jose M. Moncada, the leading Liberal general. In the Conference of Tipitapa, Stimson met with Moncada, beneath an espina negro, a black thorn tree. In exchange for Stimson’s promise that the United States would supervise the presidential election of 1928, Moncada agreed to disband his army. Stimson managed to disarm most of the rebel army but in so doing created another rebellion—that of Augusto Sandino, which would prove more deadly to American goals than a dozen Chamorros. Sandino, one of the ablest rebel leaders, denounced Moncada as a traitor. When the U.S.-supervised election in 1928 resulted in Moncada winning the presidency, Sandino continued his guerrilla war against U.S. intervention.32 Dennis’s service in Nicaragua, however, had already ended. In December 1926, Charles Eberhardt returned to his post; Dennis remained as only an assistant attaché. Later that month, to the department’s and Eberhardt’s surprise, Dennis abruptly resigned.33 Although Dennis later made much of his disillusionment with American policy, he left for reasons beyond personal opposition to American policy. He was angry at not being rewarded for his efforts to remove Chamorro. Explaining his departure to superiors, Dennis minced no words. “As the records show I have done what was wanted and have been attacked by name in the press.” More to the point, “I have had five and a half years of service without a black mark on my record, more than a quarter of time in charge of three legations, two of them being among the most unpleasant and active posts in the service.” For two years he had received “your numerous commendations but no promotions, while other members of my class have been promoted after junior service at agreeable European posts.”34 Later, in a letter to Kellogg elaborating on his resignation, Dennis accused the department of being oriented too much toward European posts. While 32. Neill Macaulay, The Sandino Affair (Chicago: Quadrangle Press, 1967), is particularly good on the military aspects. The intervention’s aftermath is described by Richard Millet, Guardians of the Dynasty (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1978). 33. Eberhardt to Dept. of State, December 30, 1926, SDP 123D421/69. 34. Dennis to Dept. of State, January 14, 1927, SDP 123D421/71.

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“American relations with Hungary are a tenth as important as with Nicaragua,” European legations had a surfeit of staff while the Latin American posts were woefully undermanned. Some men, such as his predecessor in Managua, used flimsy pretexts to avoid unpleasant duty. Nevertheless, the latter officer was promoted, while Dennis, who “never had any greater fondness for service in Central America than those of my colleagues who have successfully avoided it,” had nevertheless served but not been promoted.35 Dennis did not limit his actions to resigning. Rumor spread that he possessed a document showing that Kellogg wanted pressure exerted to elect Adolfo Díaz. While the State Department denied the existence of such a document, the Washington Post reported that officials were dazed and when questioned would only “shrug silently and roll their eyes.” Dennis and Kellogg met in private. Following the meeting Dennis denied having any such document or criticizing the Foreign Service. Shortly thereafter Dennis was appointed to the Paris Embassy, surely a tacit admission that Dennis’s charges were correct. Satisfied that he had made his point, Dennis resigned. In accepting Dennis’s resignation, Kellogg took no public notice of his criticism of the bureaucracy. The secretary said he regretted Dennis’s decision to resign and that “persons of your conspicuous ability should be forced for financial reasons to leave the service of the Department.”36 If finances troubled Dennis, he soon took action to improve them. The exchargé went to work for one of the companies most involved in Nicaragua, J. & W. Seligmann and Co. at 54 Wall Street, where he advised on South American investments. With the advent of the great depression he came to oppose what he regarded as dangerous investments to countries that had little chance of paying off bonds or loans. By 1932 he viewed banking and capitalism as forces that had brought on the catastrophe of worldwide depression and resigned from Seligmann. His experiences in Nicaragua confirmed Dennis’s negative views of American foreign policy. He had always distrusted the Treaty of Peace and Amity and believed his fears justified by what was taking place in Nicaragua. He later wrote to one of his ex-teachers of his meeting with Kellogg on his return to Washington. Kellogg, he noted, “admitted that the policy was a great mistake and considered making a declaration abandoning the policy,” but then he told Dennis, “Damn it, I didn’t make the fool treaty. Hughes did it.” In Dennis’s view the 35. Dennis to Kellogg, April 11, 1927, SDP 123D421/79. 36. The feud with Kellogg is covered in Waldo H. Heinrichs Jr., American Ambassador: Joseph C. Grew and the Development of the United States Diplomatic Tradition (Boston: Little, Brown, 1966), 121–22. Kellogg to Dennis, June 1, 1927, 123D421/81.

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secretary refused to change policy “because to do so would be an admission of error on the part of this Administration.” Ironically, the former consul who called the marines to return to Managua became an open opponent of intervention, writing two articles for Foreign Affairs in which he criticized U.S. Latin American policy.37 While not admitting it publicly, Washington recognized that intervention on behalf of nonrecognition was a mistake. The U.S. campaign using the marines against Sandino’s guerrillas brought a groundswell of domestic opposition. Many Americans agreed with Sen. Burton K. Wheeler, who after visiting Nicaragua declared, “I would not give the life of one marine for the whole damn country down there.” Worse, not only did intervention increase the hostility of other Latin American nations, Nicaraguan opinion of the United States became more unfavorable even among those who opposed Sandino.38 Finally, in the U.S.-supervised election of 1932, Nicaragua elected as president Juan B. Sacasa, who had fled the country during Chamorro’s coup. On January 2, 1933, the last marines left the country. The Nicaraguan affair helped change U.S. foreign policy. After six years of supporting a policy of nonrecognition, the State Department was damned if it did and damned if it didn’t. In the closing days of Herbert Hoover’s administration, Latin American policy veered toward nonintervention. With the arrival of Franklin D. Roosevelt and a Democratic administration, that policy took on the dramatic title of the “Good Neighbor Policy.” Thereafter, the United States not only refused to intervene following coups but also granted quick recognition to questionable figures. The policy suited Lawrence Dennis. By the early thirties he had moved beyond opposing U.S. intervention and investments in Latin America to becoming a leading critic of capitalism and a theorist for fascism. In the late thirties he was an outspoken isolationist toward Europe whose writings many believed were not only a defense of American fascism but also pro-Nazi. His views brought him more attention than he wanted during the Second World War. He was charged with treason and was one of the several defendants in a “sedition” trial

37. Dennis to Frederick J. Libby, Papers of the National Council for the Prevention of War, General Correspondence, 1921–1928, Swarthmore Peace Collection, Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, Pa. See Dennis, “Revolution, Recognition and Intervention,” Foreign Affairs 9 (January 1931): 204– 21; “Nicaragua: In Again, Out Again,” Foreign Affairs 9 (April 1931): 416–500. 38. Michel Gobat’s Confronting the American Dream: Nicaragua under U.S. Imperial Rule (Durham: Duke University Press, 2005) examines how Nicaraguan attitudes toward the United States changed between 1912 and 1933. Elites who had been pro–United States became much less so.

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in 1944. Dennis ably defended himself and his right to free speech, but the affair ended in a mistrial when the presiding judge died.39 During the Cold War, Dennis maintained his odd-man-out position by criticizing U.S. foreign policy and scoffing at the national mania on communism. After the trauma of Vietnam, he was the subject of a few studies by New Left scholars who admired his position on the Cold War. Later, Libertarians found qualities they admired in Dennis. Today, he is mainly remembered as the leading American theorist of fascism.40 Thus the promise of Dennis’s early years was never fulfilled. From the time he left Nicaragua in 1927 until his death in 1977, Lawrence Dennis was never again “the man of the hour.”41

39. Lawrence Dennis and Maximilian St. George, A Trial on Trial: The Great Sedition Trial of 1944 (Chicago: National Civil Rights Committee, 1944). 40. Among historians, see Ronald Radosh, Prophets on the Right: Conservative Critics of American Globalism (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1975); Justus D. Doenecke,“Lawrence Dennis: Revisionist of the Cold War,” Wisconsin Magazine of History 55:4 (Summer 1972): 275–86; and Justus D. Doenecke, “The Isolationist as Collectivist: Lawrence Dennis and the Coming of World War II,” Libertarian Studies 111:2 (Summer 1979): 191–207. A Libertarian study is Justin Raimondi, “Tale of a Seditionist: The Story of Lawrence Dennis,” Chronicle 24 (May 2000): 19–22. 41. In Dennis’s interview for the Columbia University Oral History Collection, Nicaragua is scarcely mentioned. To the interviewer, Dennis seemed “a terribly unhappy man”; “he seemed not to be very interested in that subject, preferring to dwell on his reputation as an American fascist theorist” (William R. Keylor to the author, August 16, 1978).

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William Kamman

A Friendly Problem Washington’s Assessment of Anastasio Somoza García

THE SECOND U.S. INTERVENTION in Nicaragua (1926–1933) had important re-

sults. It ended a revolution, disarmed combatants, brought free elections, and created a military force designed to be nonpartisan. While these outcomes were expected, others were not. These included a guerrilla war, development of an armed force supportive of a dictatorship, and growing anti-Americanism. Best remembered is the dictatorship of Anastasio Somoza García, whom many believed had U.S. backing. Washington’s policies, at times in unintended and unexpected ways, did aid Somoza’s rise to and retention of power, but Washington’s views were not monolithic, and the relationship was occasionally difficult as well as mutually beneficial.1 Somoza, the president of Nicaragua for almost twenty years before he died from an assassin’s bullet in 1956, attracted U.S. attention in 1927 when he met Henry L. Stimson. Sent by President Calvin Coolidge to Nicaragua to stop a revolution by Liberal Party supporters of Juan B. Sacasa against President Adolfo Díaz, a Conservative, Stimson was impressed by Somoza more than by anyone else, finding the young Liberal to be frank, friendly, and likable.2 With his charm and social graces, Somoza impressed other Americans, including the U.S. minister Matthew Hanna and his wife. He considered himself a friend of the United States and came to believe he had a special relationship with Franklin D. Roosevelt, whose picture he had in his office and for whom a street was named in Managua.3 As a young man Somoza attended the Peirce School of Business Administration in Philadelphia, where he studied accounting and met his future wife, the daughter of a distinguished Nicaraguan family, the DeBayles. He worked as an accountant 1. For a brief summary of the view that the United States favored Somoza and his regime, see Paul Coe Clark Jr., The United States and Somoza, 1933–1956: A Revisionist Look (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1992), ix–x. 2. Memorandum of an interview with Anastasio Somoza and Gustavo Argüello Cervantes, Henry L. Stimson diary, May 3, 1927, Stimson Papers, Sterling Library, Yale University. 3. Knut Walter, The Regime of Anastasio Somoza, 1936–1956 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993), 45.

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and traveling auditor for the Page Motor Company and reportedly would have stayed in the United States if his future wife had not insisted that they return to Nicaragua for marriage and residence.4 After his return, his career languished until the outbreak of the Liberal revolution against Emiliano Chamorro and Adolfo Díaz in 1926. There followed steady progress in his fortunes as he served in various governmental capacities and finally reached the most powerful position in Nicaragua. During these years of Somoza’s prominence, the United States recognized his friendly, cooperative attitude but sometimes found his actions contrary to U.S. policy or desires. Washington’s mixed feelings were succinctly, if crudely, expressed by FDR’s reputed statement describing Somoza (and perhaps other Caribbean dictators) as an SOB, but our SOB.5 A newspaper once reported Somoza as saying, “It’s fantastic what luck I have. It’s that way with everything I try—I’m the champ.”6 Although Somoza’s personality and abilities substantially supported his political success, luck did play a role. Important was the creation by diplomatic policies, events, and world conditions of an international environment congenial to his survival and advancement. Among these were: Washington’s decision that free, supervised elections and a nonpartisan national guard would provide opportunity for a stable, peaceful Nicaragua and allow the United States to withdraw marines gracefully from an awkward intervention; development of a Good Neighbor Policy with nonintervention as its theme; State Department acceptance that a nonrecognition policy denying recognition to governments coming to power by other than constitutional means was no longer appropriate for Central America; Washington’s desire for a unified, friendly, and stable Western Hemisphere to confront the Axis threat; and a Cold War in which communism seemed a danger to Washington’s Central American backyard. 1 A history of elections controlled by the party in power led to frequent political instability and revolutions as the only means for an out-party to gain national office in Nicaragua. Mindful of this history, Stimson, during his mis4. Dispatch from Meredith Nicholson to Dept. of State, April 11, 1939, State Department Papers, 817.00/Somoza, A/50, Record Group 59, National Archives (hereafter SDP followed by file and document numbers). 5. David F. Schmitz, Thank God They’re on Our Side: The United States and Right-Wing Dictatorships, 1921–1965 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999), 3–4; Robert A. Pastor, Condemned to Repetition: The United States and Nicaragua (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987), 3, 321. Pastor notes that the source of the quotation has not been found. 6. New York Times, September 23, 1956.

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sion in 1927, offered U.S. supervision of the elections of 1928 and succeeding years. To protect those freely elected presidents and to maintain peace, the American emissary also proposed organization of a nonpartisan Nicaraguan constabulary commanded at first by U.S. officers. With Liberals and Conservatives concurring, U.S. electoral commissions supervised the 1928, 1930, and 1932 Nicaraguan elections bringing Liberal party ascendancy, while the U.S. Marines created a National Guard. As the second intervention neared its end, the marine director of the Guardia believed the officers graduating from the Nicaraguan military academy and those commissioned from the ranks were too young and inexperienced to occupy higher ranks of the new force. To fill those positions and to keep the nonpartisan approach, there followed an arrangement for each of the two presidential candidates in 1932 to select appointees equally divided between Liberals and Conservatives. After the election the outgoing president would appoint the successful candidate’s list. Under this agreement there was no restriction on the victor for appointment of the Guardia director. Following the November elections President José María Moncada appointed Sacasa’s nominees, and on November 15 Somoza began his duties as assistant to Guardia director Col. Calvin B. Matthews, whose position he assumed when the U.S. Marines departed in early January 1933.7 There remains uncertainty about Somoza’s selection and President-elect Sacasa’s acceptance of him. During and after the Liberal revolution Somoza had become a close friend of Moncada and had also impressed the American minister Hanna, who said of him, “I look upon him as the best man in the country for the position. I know no one who will labor as intelligently and conscientiously to maintain the non-partisan character of the Guardia, or will be as efficient in all matters connected with the administration and command of the Force.”8 There is no doubt that Moncada and Hanna were pleased with Somoza’s selection; they, especially Moncada, probably influenced, if not pressured, Sacasa, who had less confidence in Somoza. When the marines withdrew on January 2, 1933, Sacasa and Somoza along with Augusto C. Sandino, the rebel nationalist who had frustrated marine and Nicaraguan government efforts to pacify the country since 1927, emerged as protagonists in the Nicaraguan political drama. The latter had little to do with Americans, besides denouncing the Yanquis, but the other men believed their 7. Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States: 1932, 5 vols. (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1947–1948), 5:857–858, 874–875, 882, 885, 899. Hereafter FRUS with year, volume, and page. Richard Millett, Guardians of the Dynasty (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1977), 127–35. 8. Hanna to Assistant Secretary of State Francis White, October 28, 1932, SDP 817.1051/701 1/2; Millett, Guardians of the Dynasty, 134–35.

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political fortunes were closely tied to Washington’s policies. The State Department tried to impress on all concerned that old attitudes and relations no longer prevailed. Assistant Secretary of State Francis White emphasized to Hanna that the United States must make a clear demarcation before and after the intervention. “Nicaragua must deal henceforth with her problems in her own way and by her own efforts.”9 Nonetheless, there remained a long intervention legacy. Hanna, still the minister in Nicaragua, agreed that the legation should avoid interference, but that did not mean refusing to listen to people or ignoring opportunities to conciliate in a discreet manner. He felt his friendly relations with Somoza permitted him to advise the head of the National Guard to remain cooperative and subordinate to the president. Hanna’s successor in Managua, Arthur Bliss Lane, found that one needed no connection with the intervention to receive entreaties from designing Nicaraguans or be the object of nationalist suspicion. He soon found himself confidant, adviser, and mediator for Sacasa, Somoza, and leaders of the out-of-power Conservatives. They had opinions about changing or not changing the Guardia, all hoping to make it a tool for their own aspirations. Lane, too, thought about the National Guard. It was expensive—consuming, he reported, 60 percent of the Nicaraguan budget. For a nation that had little to fear from neighbors, this was an enormous outlay at the expense of health, education, and roads. Lane saw other dangers; he pondered the creation of a military caste and concluded it was natural for the men who had conceived the plan not to be alarmed, “Being all of more or less military training.”10 Lane’s views, and those of others questioning the guard’s nonpartisanship, troubled the State Department, but there was little the department could do. The Guardia might not be living up to expectations, but there was no certainty that its creation was a mistake. While Sandino remained in rebellion, the National Guard was arguably the protector of the government, but when Sandino made peace a month after the marines left, obtained amnesty and land, and was allowed to retain an armed force of one hundred men, he pledged to protect the government against what he called the “unconstitutional” Guardia. Tension increased between the only two armed bodies of any size and their leaders. Sacasa, suspicious of both Somoza and Sandino, tried to hedge both dangers without a showdown with either. One journalist surmised the president was in no hurry to oppose Sandino because that would leave him defenseless

9. White to Hanna, December 16, 1932, SDP 817.1051/736. 10. Lane to Assistant Secretary of State Sumner Welles, February 10, 1934, SDP 817.1051/812 3/4.

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before the ambitious Somoza.11 At the same time, Somoza was trying to make Sandino’s disarmament attractive to the president and the country by suggesting that such a course would end a state within a state. A year after his original agreement with the government, and in the midst of tension between Sandinistas and the Guardia, Sandino arrived in the capital for another round of talks with Sacasa. Discussions led to presidential concessions on National Guard reforms and lessening Guardia authority over Sandinistaoccupied areas in northern Nicaragua. The concessions angered Somoza, whose bitterness rose to new heights. When the U.S. minister saw him on the morning of February 21, 1934, Somoza was excited and “wanted to proceed immediately against Sandino.” If the minister would only wink an eye, Somoza said, he would lock up Sandino. Lane urged caution, and he later received the general’s promise not to start anything without consulting the minister. That night around ten o’clock, as Sandino and his party left the presidential house after dinner and further discussions, National Guard troops stopped their car, took Sandino and two aides to the airfield, and shot them.12 Angry and a little fearful, the president called these events a revolt and expressed even less trust in the National Guard. A contented Somoza now appeared cooperative and, admitting that the president had grounds for distrusting him, issued a public statement of loyalty. Having removed a major obstacle to achieving the power he wanted, Somoza seemed reluctant to take the next step. Undoubtedly he worried about the State Department, for in earlier days generals who moved too hastily or without proper support confronted the problem of recognition, still an issue in Central American relations. In the months following Sandino’s murder, there were no more dramatic occurrences in Nicaraguan politics. Neither Somoza nor Sacasa seemed in complete control, and Nicaraguans looked toward Washington, particularly the U.S. minister, for guidance. Lane believed he could promote peace and stability “by expressing our views preferably as the personal views of our diplomatic representative.”13 Assistant Secretary of State Sumner Welles agreed. The key to Welles’s position seemed to be whether the minister’s advice was official or unofficial; and Welles’s strictures on “constant hectoring and meddling in a public manner” implied approval if Lane acted privately. Lane worked with representatives of Mexico and El Salvador to reconcile the president and Somoza, but at the same 11. Gregorio Selser, Sandino, General de Hombres Libres (Buenos Aires: Editorial Triángulo, 1959), 2:270, quoting William Krehm. 12. Anastasio Somoza, El Verdadero Sandino o El Calvario de las Segovias (Managua: Tipografia Robelo, 1936), 559–65. 13. FRUS, 1934, 5:554.

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time he informed Sacasa that working with other ministers did not lessen his desire to be of personal assistance. When Sacasa complained that Somoza was not fulfilling presidential orders, Lane offered to attend meetings when orders were issued, suggesting that Somoza might then be more willing to comply. The political maneuvering continued for more than two years following Sandino’s murder. Particularly galling for Lane were the general’s blatant attempts to implicate him and the United States in the assassination. At a political fete in his honor, a slightly inebriated Somoza publicly accepted responsibility for the killing and let it be known that Lane had backed him. He told a group around a bar that his armored tank would annihilate everybody who got in his way and that, although he drove it, Lane had supplied the gasoline.14 Despite Somoza’s clear desire to assume the presidency and his frequent attempts to suggest U.S. support, he held back from open rebellion. A major deterrent was the special recognition policy defined by the Central American Treaty of 1923—not signed but adhered to by the United States: Central American governments coming to power by a coup d’état or by means other than constitutional would not be recognized. Somoza was aware of the policy’s effectiveness in Nicaraguan history, but more recent events in Guatemala and El Salvador indicated a weakening of the U.S. position. The State Department hesitated to clarify its policy, however, because of the Nicaraguan situation. Although clearly determined to be Nicaragua’s next president, Somoza did not necessarily prefer a coup over an election if the results were the same. Nonetheless, Lane fretted that Somoza had gone so far to attain his ambitions that it might be impossible to turn back if obstacles arose. He could not be trusted to keep his promise about not using violence, just as he had not kept his “word of honor” that he would not take violent action against Sandino.15 Facing no clear obstacle from Washington, Somoza continued his campaign, even though Lane discouraged him through informal, unofficial talks. Once when Somoza asked for advice, the minister suggested he withdraw from the presidential race. The general agreed with the understanding that he would remain chief of the Guardia. Lane, nearing the end of his duty in Nicaragua, was delighted, because he thought his efforts would prevent future charges that the United States had put the general into the presidency.16 14. Lane to Dept. of State, June 20, 1934, SDP 817.00/8075. El Diario Nicaraguense (Granada), June 19, 1934, carried a carefully edited account of a speech in which Somoza accepted responsibility for the murder. Lane suggested the indiscretion was a case of “in vino veritas.” See also Lane to Dept. of State, June 26, 1934, SDP 817.00/8078, and FRUS, 1934, 5:556. 15. FRUS, 1935, 4:866. 16. William Kamman, “U.S. Recognition of Anastasio Somoza, 1936,” Historian 54 (Winter 1992): 275–76.

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During the next several weeks, Liberal and Conservative party leaders worked with Somoza and Sacasa to select a candidate satisfactory to all and perhaps accommodate the general’s presidential aspirations two or four years later. Reportedly, the negotiators gave Somoza everything they thought he wanted. Success seemed near, but he changed his mind and was bent on a coup by moving to take over the country’s military strongholds not under his command.17 After a flurry of diplomatic activity during which Washington informed its new minister, Boaz Long, not to sign a statement from the diplomatic corps asking Somoza to discontinue use of force and not to participate in any tender of good offices unless all political factions including Somoza invited them, it seemed clear the United States would not abandon nonintervention.18 Disappointed at Washington’s refusal to act, not wanting to remain in office under Somoza’s control, and reportedly receiving financial incentives, Sacasa promptly resigned along with his vice president and left the country.19 With the Nicaraguan congress to meet shortly thereafter, Somoza asked Long what action he should take. Without any input from Long, the congress chose an interim president, Dr. Carlos Brenes Jarquín, to finish Sacasa’s term. Avoiding public discussion of recognition, the State Department continued formal diplomatic ties with the interim government; when Somoza won the election six months later, Long officially attended his inauguration on January 1, 1937. Somoza had resigned his position as Guardia commander two weeks prior to the election to comply with a constitutional provision prohibiting military men in actual service from obtaining office by popular election. The resignation reflected his concern about recognition and the Central American Treaty of 1923.20 Despite departmental attempts to minimize discussion of previous policies, Nicaraguan ex-presidents and others flocked to Washington asking questions about recognition and responsibility for the National Guard. The State Department continued to emphasize that the special relationship of the interventionist years was over and that, although the U.S. Marines had organized the National Guard, the country’s responsibility was not in perpetuity. On nonrecognition, the department was content to have its actions reveal U.S. policy rather than issue a pronouncement that perhaps would provoke popular debate.21 Even so, debate 17. Boaz Long to Lane, June 5, 1936, Lane papers, Sterling Library, Yale University. 18. FRUS, 1936, 5:828–30. 19. Long to Dept. of State, June 4, 5, 1936, SDP 817.00/8459, 8464. 20. Long to Dept. of State, June 18, 1936, SDP 817.00/8533; memorandum by WLB, June 25, 1936, box 51, vol. 1, Nicaragua, Records of the Office of American Republic Affairs, Record Group 59, National Archives (hereafter cited as ROARA). 21. Memorandum by Laurence Duggan to Welles, July 21, 1936, and memorandum of conversation by Beaulac with Joseph E. Morgan and Duggan, December 19, 1936, box 51, vol. 1,

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occurred. Some Latin American newspapers were relieved that the United States had observed its commitment to nonintervention, but others were critical. One noted that Washington’s creation of militarism in Nicaragua now followed by a noninterventionist or neutral policy was, in effect, intervention supporting Somoza. Genuine neutrality, according to the editorial, would have condemned the treason.22 Latin American commentary and the pleadings of Nicaraguan politicians had little effect on Washington’s noninterventionist policy, reinforced by the December 1936 meeting in Buenos Aires of the Inter-American Conference for the Maintenance of Peace that declared inadmissible the intervention of one party in the internal or external affairs of another. There seemed to be little sympathy for Sacasa or little concern about Somoza and his Guardia allies. The State Department wanted to appear neutral, and it relished an opportunity to repeat the tenets of the Good Neighbor Policy in the context of the once special U.S.-Nicaraguan relationship. Sumner Welles could say with conviction that while the United States was interested in Nicaragua’s welfare, and desirous of assisting it in every appropriate way, political cooperation was out of the question. Twenty years of attempted assistance in the political realm, he asserted, had brought benefits neither to Nicaragua nor to the United States.23 After a troubled beginning when General Moncada reportedly predicted the new president would not remain in office beyond July, the administration gained strength and the country remained quiet. An important source of the nation’s quiescence was Somoza’s decision to continue as director of the National Guard; he remarked laughingly to a legation official “that in view of recent . . . history such would seem to be the safest course.”24 With Guardia support Somoza emerged from a tentative first few months to remain Nicaragua’s president for nearly two decades. Somoza benefited, even if unintentionally, from U.S. policy, and when he expressed gratification for the actions of the United States and belief that the friendship would strengthen he was not being insincere.25 Even before his 1936 election Somoza pressed the U.S. government for Nicaragua, ROARA. Memorandum by Duggan for Moore, December 18, 1936, SDP 817.00/Somoza, A/5. 22. El Tiempo (Bogota), June 5, 1936; La Prensa (Buenos Aires), June 3, 1936; El Universal (Mexico City), June 12, 1936. 23. Lane to Allan Dawson, May 11, 1937, Lane Papers; note from Laurence Duggan to Miss Hanna, Dec. 21, 1936, attached to Francis B. Sayre to Sacasa, December 22, 1936, SDP 817,00/8618; memorandum of conversation between Welles and Sacasa, October 22, 1936, SDP 817.00/8604. 24. Guy W. Ray, third secretary of legation at Managua, to Dept. of State, December 17, 1936, SDP 817.00/8627. 25. Long to Dept. of State, December 28, 1936, SDP 817.001 Somoza, A/12.

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purchase of arms, airplanes, and munitions and for reestablishment of a military school with U.S. instructors. After his inauguration requests continued, but the State Department remained cool, fully aware that Somoza’s presidency resulted from force, not ballots, and the military machine used was a U.S. government creation. U.S. officials also recognized that Somoza was a “strongman” who might continue in power after expiration of his term. Would there not be an unfavorable impression if the U.S. lent military instructors to perfect an army used by a dictator to maintain himself?26 Within a few months attitudes began to change. Somoza’s brother-in-law, Dr. Luis Manuel DeBayle, visited Washington to tell officials that, while his government supported the nonintervention policy of the United States, many Nicaraguans sensed that Washington was “leaning over backwards” in applying it to their country. His government had been deprived of friendly assistance not of an interventionist character. Whether it was the Nicaraguan’s logic or his minimal request, not unlike what the United States was doing elsewhere in Central America, Laurence Duggan, chief of the Division of Latin American Affairs, supported detailing two officers for service with the Nicaraguan military academy, similar to what had been done in Guatemala for several years. He strongly recommended, however, that the appointees be from the army and not the marine corps, whose officers, he said, have “an interventionist point of view and are ever wont to involve themselves in internal politics.”27 Yet there was no rush to fulfill Somoza’s requests, and action would wait until Somoza’s official visit to Washington in 1939. Meanwhile, Somoza completed plans for a constituent assembly to write a new constitution supporting his plans for the Nicaraguan state. Of most interest to the State Department were provisions legalizing the National Guard, regarding treaties for construction of an interoceanic canal, and extending Somoza’s presidency. The first issue had been a goal of Washington’s before marines departed in 1933. The second came from Somoza’s efforts to push the United States toward a decision (hopefully positive) on construction of a canal under terms of the 1916 Bryan-Chamorro Treaty; that goal was the prime reason for his upcoming visit to Washington. Prolonging his presidential term until May 1947 caused little reaction in the State Department. Noting that the constituent assembly was to pass this provision, some persons did believe that Somoza’s visit should not come before or shortly after its adoption to avoid appearance of giving official sanction to the extension. A U.S. military attaché in 26. Memorandum by Duggan to Welles, May 17, 1937, box 51, vol. 1, Nicaragua, ROARA. 27. Memorandum by Duggan of conversations with Dr. Luis Manuel DeBayle, July 6, 1937, and memorandum by Duggan to Welles, July 16, 1937, box 51, vol. 1, Nicaragua, ROARA.

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Central America noted that Nicaragua had now become the fourth out of the five Central American republics to succumb to the temptation of continuismo, bad in principle, he opined, but probably progressive and efficient for most of these small nations in their present state of political infancy.28 Somoza’s May 1939 visit to the United States, widely publicized at home, included a state dinner and an overnight stay in the White House. He hoped, as did many other Nicaraguan politicians who had trekked to Washington over the years, that the journey would impress compatriots back home and burnish his career. The State Department worried that the results might not meet expectations. So much talk about a Nicaraguan canal prompted the American minister’s fear that failure to accomplish something substantial would change a sympathetic relationship to one of friction. During the talks, President Roosevelt on his own volition and despite reluctance from the State and Treasury Departments agreed that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers would make appropriate studies of a canalization and highway project to link the eastern and western regions of Nicaragua. Those reports would then determine further action. Other agreements included assignment of an army officer as director of the Nicaraguan National Guard Military Academy, cooperation on road building, help from the Export-Import Bank in establishing credits for the Nicaraguan National Bank, and help in the study and development of agricultural products.29 Somoza returned home with apparent success and an increasingly touted close relationship with FDR. Despite Somoza’s efforts to impress the Nicaraguan people that the canalization plan was as good as accomplished, the project was indefinitely postponed after the survey because of high cost and small economic benefit. To mollify Somoza and meet what the State Department strongly believed was an implied commitment to establish a transportation route between Nicaragua’s eastern and western regions, the department pushed for construction of a paved road at U.S. expense from San Benito to Rama at the head of navigation on the Escondido River, whence shallow draft vessels could reach the Atlantic Ocean

28. Meredith Nicholson to Welles, April 4, 1939, SDP 817.001 Somoza/81; memorandum by Ellis O. Briggs to Welles, January 18, 1939, SDP 817.00/87071/2; G-2 report by J. B. Pate, April 18, 1939, G-2 Regional File, Nicaragua, box 2954, folder “1936–1938, elections, Nicaragua,” Record Group (hereafter RG) 165, National Archives (hereafter NA). 29. FRUS, 1939, 5:728–30; Millett, Guardians of the Dynasty, 194–97. See memorandum of conversation between State and Treasury Department people, May 4, 1939, Henry Morgenthau diary, book 188, pp. 19–27, and memorandum of conversation between Morgenthau and Warren Pierson, May 11, 1939, Morgenthau diary, book 189, pp. 160–61, Franklin Delano Roosevelt Presidential Library, Hyde Park, N.Y.

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at Bluefields.30 When Somoza emphasized the road’s military importance after the Pearl Harbor attack, Maj. Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, after prompting from State, thought the project would “tend to increase the stability of the country and so minimize the possibility of trouble with disaffected elements.”31 Maintaining a stable and friendly government in Nicaragua became an important reason for support of the Rama road as well as for other aid during the war. Despite scenarios about possible enemy attacks on the Panama Canal, Central America became increasingly less important as the war progressed. Nonetheless, military considerations were significant before and in the early years of the war. More than a year before the Pearl Harbor attack, Somoza indicated his willingness to follow the United States into war and to permit U.S. armed forces use of Nicaraguan ports and other facilities. Also, before the war, the military mission approved by FDR at his meeting with Somoza arrived to direct the newly established military academy and to consult with Somoza on National Guard and defense matters. In 1940 the United States Army made available surplus rifles and machine guns to Nicaragua, and the following year Somoza contracted with Pan American Airways for construction of a new and larger airfield near Managua, later expanded for the U.S. Army Air Corps to service planes flying between Guatemala City and the Canal Zone. Nicaragua became the first of the Central American nations to sign a lend-lease agreement with the United States. In the opinion of the U.S. ambassador, lend-lease equipment reduced the chances of armed uprisings prevailing against the National Guard, which was more mobile as a result of U.S.-supported roadwork.32 From the beginning of the war, Somoza fulfilled his offer of Nicaraguan facilities for U.S. use, including development of the air base at Puerto Cabezas for servicing planes involved in antisubmarine activities and a base on Fonseca Bay for seaplanes and PT boats. Commenting on these arrangements, a military historian later noted the unusual cooperativeness of the Nicaraguan government and cited

30. FRUS, 1939, 5:747; memorandum to the Bureau of the Budget regarding the Rama Road by Philip Bonsal, August 6, 1942, box 52, vol. 2, Nicaragua, ROARA. 31. Naval Intelligence Report from asst. naval attaché in Managua to Intelligence Division, CNO, March 13, 1942, file 14800 C, OSS, RG 226, NA; memorandum by Bonsal to Welles, March 14, 1942, box 52, vol. 2, Nicaragua, ROARA; Maj. Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower to acting secretary of state, April 2, 1942, file WPD 611 (3–17-42), War Plans Div., RG 165, NA; FRUS, 1942, 6:570; J. Fred Rippy, “State Department Operations: The Rama Road,” Inter-American Economic Affairs 9:1 (Summer 1955): 17–32. 32. Wm. W. Dick, A.G., to chief of ordnance, July 9, 1940, file WPD 4335, War Plans Div., RG 165, NA; copy of paraphrase of telegram from Baldwin (U.S. legation in Managua) to Dept. of State, April 5, 1941, found in file WPD 4335–7, War Plans Div., RG 165, NA. Dispatch from James B. Stewart to Dept. of State, February 19, 1943, SDP 817.00/8959.

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Somoza, “who afforded his usually strife-torn nation with a stable government,” as friendly toward the United States.33 Aid came in other ways. Besides the desultory work on the Rama road, there was the Inter-American Highway construction, occasionally routed to benefit a Somoza finca and employing around twenty-five hundred workers otherwise unemployed because of wartime dislocations.34 Sometimes aid requests elicited much debate within U.S. agencies. Gold mining needs could be supplied only at cost to the war effort; when they were considered not vital to Nicaragua’s economy, there were recommendations for denial. Somoza, who had a financial interest in the industry, pressed the issue and received what from the U.S. viewpoint was a relatively large amount of supplies, which were nonetheless considered too small by the Nicaraguan government.35 The United States helped Nicaragua militarily and economically and thereby supported Somoza’s control. Early in World War II, even before U.S. belligerency, there was concern that German sympathizers might use anti-Somoza activity for their own ends. In one case a rumored revolution on Nicaragua’s east coast brought a U.S. destroyer to Bluefields for a short visit.36 Such assistance relieved Washington of worrisome political activity, and it allowed Somoza to tout U.S. support and warn would-be political challengers. This state of equal benefit remained until Somoza began a campaign for reelection at a time when many of the early war uncertainties had passed, when Washington perceived Somoza’s actions as ill-timed historically and locally because continuismo seemed a primary cause of revolution in the Western Hemisphere, when a democratic wind was sweeping the world, and when both personnel and views were changing within the State Department. 2 Somoza’s reelection aspirations aroused opposition reaching crisis proportions in the summer of 1944. The president survived by gaining labor support and ex-

33. Capt. Cecil L. Munden, “Construction and Real Estate Activities in the Caribbean Defense Command,” Historical Manuscript File, Office of the Chief of Military History, 8–2.8, AL, v. 2, c. 1 (November 1946), RG 319, NA. 34. Stewart to Dept. of State, February 5, 1944, SDP 810.154/3265. 35. Memorandum by Bernard Keen, asst. chief, Mining Section, to E. P. Herman, chief, Industrial Projects Division, December 31, 1942, Foreign Economic Administration Records, box 2523, folder “Gold Mining—Nicaragua,” RG 169, NA. 36. Meredith Nicholson to Dept. of State, November 15, 1940, SDP 817.00/8885; Bonsal to Welles, November 30, 1940, SDP FW817.00/8885; Welles to Orme Wilson, Nov. 30, 1940, SDP FW817.00/8885; memorandum from Liaison Office of the Undersecretary of State, December 5, 1940, SDP FW817.00/8885; Morris to Wilson, December 10, 1940, SDP FW817.00/8885.

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ploiting the opposition’s disunity.37 While these events of June and July posed the most serious challenge to Somoza’s power, the next two and half years witnessed heated political activity, many times involving the U.S. embassy and the State Department. The legacy of the interventionist years still intruded. From the beginning the president and his opponents confronted U.S. diplomats, as in earlier times, with requests for opinions or gestures that would indicate favoritism. The U.S. cultural relations program in Nicaragua provided an example of the difficulty. Many of the intellectual, literary, and educational elites joined the opposition and sought indication, even slight, of approval from the embassy, even while the Somoza administration considered their efforts subversive. Early on, some U.S. officials in Nicaragua were supportive of Somoza, at least privately. One remarked that Nicaraguans were perhaps not grateful enough for the peace Somoza had brought; another noted that the six years of the Somoza administration might be considered a golden era of peace for this formerly turbulent nation, even though there had been political blunders, and the hard-working, genial, benevolent dictator might have to use the mailed fist to avoid ouster. Publicly, members of the embassy staff accompanied Somoza on trips around Nicaragua, and Somoza made frequent references to his friendship with FDR.38 As the politicking continued, the State Department could do little about Somoza’s friendly references, but other evidence of support dwindled. Early in 1944, when an anti-Somoza Liberal and former minister of foreign affairs died, Secretary Hull expressed his condolences to the widow primarily as a subtle indication to opposition elements in Nicaragua that the nonintervention policy was not another way of backing the regime “to the last ditch.” In other ways the department revealed a growing sensitivity to Somoza’s attempts to display U.S. support. There was denial of Somoza’s request to speak from the Embassy balcony during a July Fourth celebration. Not long after, the State Department indicated displeasure when Nicaragua’s collector general of customs, a U.S. citizen appointed with approval of the secretary of state in 1928, seemed supportive of Somoza’s political ambitions and when Somoza used the Corn Islands, leased to the United States by the Bryan-Chamorro Treaty of 1916, for detaining political prisoners.39

37. Walter, Regime of Anastasio Somoza, 134; Thomas M. Leonard, The United States and Central America, 1944–1949: Perceptions of Political Dynamics (University: University of Alabama Press, 1984), 130–31. 38. William P. Cochran Jr. to Dept. of State, March 15, 1943, SDP 817.00/8966; memorandum prepared in the Div. of American Republics for John Moors Cabot and Bonsal, June 4, 1943, SDP 817.00/8933; dispatches from Stewart to Dept. of State, June 22, August 5, 1943, SDP 817.00/8991, 8977. 39. Telegram from Hull to U.S. ambassador in Managua, January 14, 1944, SDP 817.00/9019; memorandum from Cabot to Bonsal, January 14, 1944, SDP 817.00/9019; Clark, The United States and Somoza, 112; Stewart to Dept. of State, July 7, 1944, 717.00/7–744; FRUS, 1944, 7:1403.

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For Washington, the long Nicaraguan political campaign consumed too much time amid the greater context of war-ending questions and the future of the grand alliance. Yet dealing with Somoza was not easy. He was an astute and often wily politician. He knew what he wanted; he knew his strengths, the national guard first among them; and he knew how to manipulate the United States despite the disparity of power. At one point Somoza, responding to statements from Nelson Rockefeller, assistant secretary for Latin American affairs, and in conversation with Ambassador Fletcher Warren, referred to his candidacy as a big game in the interest of the Nicaraguan people. He said he didn’t intend to run and didn’t want to run, expressions accepted as promises by Rockefeller and Warren—promises no longer binding, Somoza apparently felt, when shortly thereafter Rockefeller left the department.40 Some officials in the State Department believed that Somoza’s desire to retain power would spark rising opposition, and unrest elsewhere in Central America was bound to affect Nicaragua. Meanwhile, the State Department could avoid overt intervention, curtail new military equipment and training, and increasingly express opposition to continuismo. By mid-1945 the department was considering instructing its ambassador to tell Somoza orally and informally that the United States felt greater friendship and greater sympathy for those governments resting on consent of the governed.41 During subsequent meetings with Somoza, the ambassador spoke frankly, telling him that he would get no more planes, guns, or ammunition until the present crisis was over. Reportedly, Somoza took such news hard and claimed he was being deserted by a friend. When the general said that he planned to attend his son’s graduation at West Point, Ambassador Warren showed him a department telegram noting his visit to the United States would be unofficial and that an extended stay was inconvenient. Such bluntness brought not only tears but, for Warren, the terrifying spectacle of witnessing “the confidence of an egotist disintegrate in himself.” Later, when the two men had a “wonderful” conversation, “no holds barred,” the ambassador reminded Somoza that an address by Ellis O. Briggs, director of the Office of American Republic Affairs, saying that the doctrine of nonintervention did not mean “turning a deaf ear to the voice of liberty raised by any people, anywhere,” applied to him. Somoza rallied quickly, reported Warren, but “it is too early to know whether he’s got religion or not.”42

40. FRUS, 1945, 9:1215, 1222. 41. Memorandum prepared by Cochran for Rockefeller, July 25, 1945, SDP 817.00/7–2545. 42. Warren to Cochran, November 12, 30, 1945, SDP 817.00/11–1245, 11–3045; FRUS, 1945, 9:1220, 1222–23.

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The increasing pressure on Somoza coincided with changes in departmental leadership. In 1945 James F. Byrnes replaced Edward R. Stettinius as secretary of state, and Spruille Braden replaced Nelson Rockefeller as assistant secretary of state for American Republic Affairs. Braden had just finished an ambassadorship to Argentina, where he gained much attention for criticism of the dictatorial practices of the Juan Perón–dominated government. His antiauthoritarian reputation drew Nicaraguan attention. Those in opposition to the government hoped that he would take the same approach to Somoza as he did to Perón, while for supporters he represented a return to the “Big Stick” as opposed to the “Good Neighbor.”43 Braden’s arrival in Washington affirmed the already growing U.S. pressure on Somoza, which was reinforced by the Panamanian Constituent Assembly resolution, influenced by Nicaraguan political refugees, calling for consultation on breaking relations with Nicaragua. Somoza’s announcement on January 6, 1946, that he would not run hardly cleared the air. If some people accepted the president’s statement, many others doubted his sincerity. There were questions about alignment of political parties and their candidates. Would liberals unite behind one candidate? Would Somoza influence that selection? Would the opposition coalesce around a candidate? Would Somoza maneuver to retain control of the national guard? Throughout the year and until the election in early 1947, the Department of State and the embassy received visitors and missives trying to influence decisions or gain support and information. Perón’s presidential victory in Argentina despite the efforts of Braden and the State Department pleased Somoza, prompting suggestions that Somoza might now change his mind about running. The U.S. ambassador concluded that Somoza would try to use the outcome in Argentina to enable his reelection or the election of a man of his choice. Somoza’s proposed visit to the United States suggested another ploy to show U.S. support for whatever course he might take. The collector general of customs confirmed these suspicions when he told Warren that the general would either be reelected or impose a puppet candidate.44 When Conservative Party opposition demanded supervised elections to prevent retention of power through fraud, Somoza rejected such intervention. The Liberal Party convention nominated Dr. Leonardo Argüello for the presidency, a nomination that many considered a master political stroke by Somoza. 43. Dispatches from Warren to Dept. of State, September 5, December 10, 1945, SDP 817.00/9– 545, 12–1045. 44. Telegram from Warren to Dept. of State, March 8, 1946, SDP 817.00/3–846; Cochran to Warren, March 20, 1946, SDP 817.001/Somoza, A/3–2046; telegram from Warren to Dept. of State, April 8, 1946, SDP 817.00/4–846.

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A prominent Liberal likely to attract many votes from the Liberal faction not supportive of Somoza, the aged and feeble Argüello exemplified malleability, thus achieving for Somoza what some observers described as “continuismo under the guise of conciliation.” Nonetheless, Warren judged Argüello to be sincerely interested in preserving his good reputation and having a fair election, amicable agreement with the opposition, and clean administration.45 His opponent was Enoc Aguado, an Independent Liberal supported by the Conservative Party. State Department speculation about Somoza’s candidate mushroomed when Argüello told Ambassador Warren a few weeks before the election that he, if victorious, would not appoint the general to head the national guard. The news provoked expressions of joy at State. “[I]t begins to look as though, if the elections are held as scheduled, Somoza will lose whoever wins.” “Ojalá.”46 After Argüello’s victory, the defeated candidate, crying fraud with probable cause, traveled to Washington. Citing President Harry Truman’s statement in a speech delivered in Mexico that the United States could not remain indifferent to certain situations, Aguado hoped that on those words Washington could find authority to act. There would be no intervention, Braden said, but the U.S. presence at the inauguration would be subdued compared with similar ceremonies elsewhere. Actually, the department was looking beyond the inauguration to the expected conflict over control of the National Guard and how it might support the new president. The ambassador in Managua advised Somoza that the best way for him to ensure his political future was to divorce himself from the Argüello administration. Somoza did not wait for unwanted advice. His sudden coup during the night of May 25–26, following various statements of loyalty and promises not to use force, surprised the embassy. The Nicaraguan congress rapidly declared President Argüello incapacitated and appointed an interim replacement pending new elections. During the next few weeks Somoza sought to mollify the State Department. Somoza supporters repeatedly emphasized that the general was the best friend of the United States in Nicaragua. Somoza displayed U.S. Military Mission equipment and urged a local newspaper to do a feature story on the mission while noting that the United States was still cooperating with him. About the same time, police raided the office of the Nicaraguan Confederation of Labor and arrested alleged communists. An observer said the raid was for foreign consumption, particularly to influence U.S. public opinion. Another informant, a self-described “expert in this 45. Dispatch from Warren to Dept. of State, August 20, 1946, SDP 817.00/8–2046. 46. Telegram from Warren to Dept. of State, January 22, 1947, SDP 817.00/1–2247; office memorandum by chief of the Division of Central America and Panama Affairs (Newbegin), January 29, 1947, SDP (unnumbered).

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game” and onetime confidential assistant to Somoza, said the general had often told him that in order to show the United States the danger of the communist menace he ordered the arrest of the communist leader. By this act, a riot or other trouble “could be made to seem more than a genuine anti-Somoza protest.”47 Nonetheless, the United States maintained nonrecognition and removed its military mission in July. Nonrecognition continued even after the constituent assembly replaced the interim president with Victor Román y Reyes, who was thought to have widespread respect within Nicaragua and would most likely receive international recognition. Although nonrecognition would presumably continue indefinitely, some officials at State judged the regime in Managua as stable and meeting its international obligations. “Without condoning methods by which [the] regime has placed itself in power,” one official said, “it is our view that likelihood of strictly constitutional and more representative Govt in near future is slight.”48 There were also beginnings of additional turmoil in Central America threatening Washington’s desire for stability. A revolution in Costa Rica led by José Figueres prompted Somoza to intervene on behalf of the existing government. Rumors spread of impending revolution in Nicaragua and increasing reports that Guatemalan president Juan José Arévalo was allowing opponents of Somoza to use Guatemala to organize and collect arms and munitions. Facing these events and the weakening of nonrecognition in various American republics before the Ninth International Conference of American States in Bogotá, the State Department decided to follow the views of other American republics at the conference. After the conference declared that continuity of diplomatic relations was desirable and recognition did not imply approval of a government’s domestic policy, Washington’s recognition came on May 5, 1948. Somoza had survived the worst period of his relationship with the United States and was about to embark on arguably the best years. 3 With the death of Román y Reyes in 1950, Somoza returned to the presidency at a time when Washington’s Cold War policies offered the Nicaraguan leader the perfect rationale to display his anticommunism and cooperation with the 47. Telegram from Maruice M. Bernbaum, chargé, to Dept. of State, June 26, 1947, SDP 817.00/6–2647; memorandum of conversation between Gordon S. Reid and Dr. Francisco Aguirre, June 30, 1947, SDP 817.00/6–3047. For other efforts to gain recognition see FRUS, 1947, 8:865. 48. FRUS, 1947, 8:867–68.

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United States in the United Nations and Organization of American States.49 During these years two international issues dominated the relationship. In Costa Rica, José Figueres Ferrer, with support of the Caribbean Legion, attained political prominence and served as president in the late 1940s and middle 1950s. His connection with the Caribbean Legion, an array of several hundred armed exiles from various dictator-run nations of the area, reignited an enmity between him and Somoza. Their early disagreements seem to have been resolved, at least on the surface, with the signing of a Pact of Amity in 1949, but when Figueres returned to the presidency in 1953 the animosity resurfaced. Earlier a revolution in Guatemala ended Jorge Ubico’s longtime dictatorship and brought governments under reformists Juan José Arévalo and Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán, whose administrations came increasingly under leftist influence. Complicating their relationship with Somoza was the presence in Guatemala of many antiSomoza expatriates. Somoza regarded Arbenz and Figueres as similar political problems to be resolved if necessary by military action, while Washington preferred to focus on Guatemala and reconcile differences between Somoza and his southern neighbor. Washington also worried that Somoza might use planned operations against Guatemala to cover similar moves against Costa Rica.50 Reactions to Somoza’s views on Guatemala and to his requests for military aid provide insight to State’s evolving thoughts about events in Guatemala. A briefing paper for David Miller, assistant secretary of state for inter-American affairs, in preparation for his visit to Nicaragua in June and July 1950, discouraged any agreement for return of a military mission or strengthening of the national guard.51 In spring 1951, however, a departmental memorandum reviewed Braden’s policy denying military aid to countries ruled by dictators and found no valid reason to keep Nicaraguans from all phases of the military program. When Somoza visited the United States in 1952, he spoke with various people about Guatemala and what might be done to stop communism. Somoza told Truman aides “that he and Carlos Castillo Armas would be able to take care of the Guatemalan problem if they were furnished with military weapons.”52 The 49. See for example memorandum of conversation among John Ohman, Robert Woodward (both in the State Dept.), and Guillermo Sevilla-Sacasa on June 24, 1953, in Records of the Office of Middle American Affairs (Costa Rica and Nicaragua), lot file 57D15, box 1, in which the ambassador reports a phone call from Somoza to support the United States in the U.N. debate about Red China’s entrance into the U.N, RG 59, NA (hereafter OMAA Records). 50. FRUS, 1952–1954, 4:1383; FRUS, 1952–1954, Guatemala, 273. 51. Briefing paper for Mr. Miller, lot file 57D95, box 3, folder “Trips—Miller, E. G. to C. America,” June 1950, OMAA Records, 1947–1956. 52. FRUS, 1952–1954, Guatemala, 1; also see Piero Gleijeses, Shattered Hope: The Guatemalan Revolution and the United States, 1944–1954 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991), 229– 30; memorandum of conversation between Miller and Luis Francisco Thomen, ambassador of

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State Department did consider the possibility of several Latin American states organizing a military movement, “a kind of Caribbean Legion in reverse,” to overthrow the Guatemalan government but abandoned its plans when it became increasingly evident that such a force might move against Costa Rica as well, at a time when “the word was being passed around” that the United States had given them the green light. Somoza’s loose and broad discussion of military plans and his meetings in Washington contributed to the latter finding. In the end, State officials vetoed a blank check to Somoza supporting any military adventure he might “cook up” against Guatemala but welcomed Latin American awareness of the dangers of communism in Guatemala and explored ways to deal with it responsibly and legally.53 The perceived growing influence of communism in Guatemala and a change of administrations in Washington brought reconsiderations. For Somoza, Washington became a friendlier place.54 Within a few weeks Ambassador Thomas Whelan in Managua, reminding the department of Nicaragua’s strategic importance for American defense and for curtailing the spread of communism from Guatemala, urged favorable consideration for military aid to Nicaragua. The Nicaraguan ambassador followed these urgings with a departmental visit reaffirming the dangers of Guatemalan communism and reminding all that Nicaragua, the logical and strategic place for an anticommunist bulwark, needed arms. Even before the ambassador’s visit, Secretary John Foster Dulles had recommended that Nicaragua be declared eligible for military assistance under the Mutual Security Act of 1951. The formal agreement came on April 23, 1954, almost two years after Somoza’s first aid request; initial arms and equipment arrived by air in May with the balance in July.55 the Dominican Republic, September 11, 1952, lot file 57D15, box 1, folder “Nicaragua, ArmsAmmunition, 1952,” OMAA Records (Costa Rica and Nicaragua); office memo re conversation with Col. Neil Mara by John L. Ohmans to Thomas C. Mann, July 21, 1952, SDP 717.00/7–2152; memorandum of conversation between Col. Anastasio Somoza Jr. and Rolland Welch, U.S. embassy in Managua, March 9, 1953, lot file 57D15, box 2, folder “Nicaragua, General Somoza, 1952,” OMAA Records (Costa Rica and Nicaragua). Castillo Armas had led a failed uprising against the Guatemalan government just before the 1950 election and was later selected to head PBSUCCESS, the CIA-backed operation to oust Arbenz Guzmán. 53. Mann to Thomas E. Whelan, October 13, 1952, lot file 57D15, box 2, OMAA Records (Costa Rica and Nicaragua); Mann to Whelan, October 20, 1952, SDP 717.00/10–2052. Stephen G. Rabe, Eisenhower and Latin America: The Foreign Policy of Anticommunism (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988), 48–49. Memorandum of conversation between Miller and Luis Francisco Thomen, September 11, 1952, lot file 57D15, box 1, folder “Nicaragua, ArmsAmmunition, 1952,” OMAA Records (Costa Rica and Nicaragua). 54. Gleijeses, Shattered Hope, 236. 55. FRUS, 1952–1954, 4:1375, 1377–78; unsigned and undated memorandum, lot file 57D15, box 3, folder “Nicaragua, Military Defense Assistance Program, 1954,” OMAA Records (Costa Rica and Nicaragua).

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Despite the friendly atmosphere, there was concern for public opinion and how the weapons might be used. The arms agreement underscored the alleged communist threat in Central America. The agreement was partly defensive but also served as encouragement for Nicaragua’s supportive role in the CIA operation (PBSUCCESS) to oust Arbenz. Somoza’s readiness to participate in the overthrow of the Guatemalan government became evident in the last year of the Truman administration, was delayed when the State Department objected, and then was reaffirmed with the Eisenhower presidency. Somoza promised Castillo Armas the use of a military base at Puerto Cabezas; he publicized discovery of a large arms cache allegedly of Soviet origin left on Nicaragua’s Pacific coast by an unidentified submarine; he permitted a clandestine radio station supposedly operating from Guatemala to broadcast from Nicaragua; and he provided bases within Nicaragua for training and support of the project in the form of air operations. Somoza believed he was responsible for the Guatemalan revolution and for its success.56 In this cooperation Somoza was satisfying his own objectives as well as those of the United States. The opposition of the Guatemalan government along with its harboring of anti-Somoza Nicaraguans posed a threat to his regime. Somoza’s support helped ensure the victory of Castillo Armas, but the Nicaraguan’s enmity for Figueres during and after the operation became a distraction, at times annoying, for the State Department. The Figueres-Somoza feud went back to the early 1940s when a young Figueres had publicly criticized a corrupt arrangement between President Rafael Angel Calderón Guardia and Somoza allowing the Nicaraguan leader’s cattle into Costa Rica without the payment of import taxes, thus providing larger profits shared by the two men.57 Somoza’s meddling in the Costa Rican election of 1948, followed by the revolution that brought Figueres to the presidency and forced Calderón into exile, deepened the bitterness that continued after Figueres returned to the presidency in 1953. Shortly thereafter, Somoza claimed that Figueres had backed a failed assassination attempt on his life. The ensuing charges and countercharges worried the State Department lest they distract from mutual efforts to rid the area of communism. When the Guatemalan operation ended and the Nicaraguan–Costa Rican crisis persisted, Washington firmly warned Nicaragua 56. FRUS, 1952–1954, Guatemala, 90, 196, 417, 418; Gleijeses, Shattered Hope, 294. Dispatch from Carlos J. Warner, U.S. embassy in Managua, to Dept. of State, June 23, 1955, SDP 617.18/6– 2355. 57. Memorandum by Alex A. Cohen, attaché in Costa Rica, to Dept. of State, Feb. 11, 1955, SDP 617.18/2–1155.

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not to take action against Costa Rica and at the same time pressured San José to comply with Managua’s demands that anti-Somoza exiles living in Costa Rica be expelled.58 Although harsh statements continued from the two Central American capitals, Washington viewed Costa Rica’s subsequent compliance on the exile issue as a constructive step that should elicit similar conciliatory action from Nicaragua. Instead, fighting broke out in late July when anti-Figueres exiles crossed the border from Nicaragua. While Costa Rican forces quickly captured some and forced a retreat into Nicaragua for others, gunfire damaged a Nicaraguan Air Force plane. Somoza responded by sending his own troops to the frontier. The threatened border conflict ended when the United States demonstrated support for Costa Rica in early August. There occurred another outbreak of hostilities in January 1955, leading to an OAS investigation and the United States providing Costa Rica with four P-51 Mustang fighters. This phase of the ongoing conflict ended in February, and a little less than a year later ambassadors of the two countries signed agreements in Washington intended to avoid future hostilities.59 Desire for peace and stability in Central America and desire to keep Latin American affairs under care of the Organization of American States and not the United Nations, as evidenced in the Guatemalan revolution, strained Washington’s relations with Somoza during the Nicaraguan–Costa Rican conflict. The State Department had, with some effort, retained Allied support for keeping the Guatemalan crisis under OAS jurisdiction, but another outbreak in Central America might have different results. Discussing the SomozaFigueres feud, Secretary Dulles informed Ambassador Whelan that the United States might not insist on “public displays of friendship or reconciliation, but we do feel that a return to normalcy is essential.” The United States was finding it necessary, he said, to satisfy requests from Costa Rica for arms, thus building a military force in Nicaragua’s neighbor—a situation prejudicing Somoza’s interests. Dulles also noted that the United States was taking measures to neutralize acts of Somoza; this “would indicate unfriendliness to him and support for Figueres.” He concluded by saying: “Actually, we have no particular predilection for Figueres who has often followed trouble-making policies. On the other

58. FRUS, 1952–1954, 4:1383; memorandum of conversation by Ohmans and including Asst. Sec. Henry F. Holland and Antonio Facio, Costa Rican ambassador, July 19, 1954, SDP 617.18/7– 1954. 59. Dispatch from C. Allan Steward, U.S. embassy in Costa Rica, to Dept. of State, Aug. 6, 1954, SDP 617.18/8–654; John D. Martz, Central America: The Crisis and the Challenge (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1959), 193–95; FRUS, 1955–1957, 6:602, 611; New York Times, January 17, 1955, and January 10, 1956.

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hand, we feel and traditionally have felt that President Somoza and the Government of Nicaragua are very close to us. It, therefore, causes us considerable concern to find ourselves in a position of opposition.” Dulles hoped “that President Somoza would understand the reasons behind our policy and would work with us.”60 Somoza understood, but his extreme enmity for Figueres caused him, usually behind a facade of Costa Rican dissidents, to test the limits and resolve of the United States. 4 In 1953 the desk officer for Nicaragua, John Ohmans, influenced by the death of Stalin, asked Rolland Welch, first secretary of the U.S. embassy in Managua, “What happens when Somoza dies, as he must some day?” After a few stock generalities, the reply noted: “We have been particularly pained because one leader—Somoza—has topped all the rest—has greedily grabbed off wealth for himself and family. We have failed to realize that any other ‘leader’ would do as much, if not more. It might be worse. We can work with Somoza.” There followed a list of possible successors and some conclusions. Without the death scenario, the writer suggested that Somoza might handpick a successor, putting down small opposition or, if it was too strong, kicking out the successor and taking over again. Somoza was smart and might join the opposition or get the opposition to join him. About the possibility of death, Welch noted that the dictator’s health was good, and he was well guarded, although a recent incident “shows he could be assassinated.” But, he concluded, “Nicaraguans have never gone in for assassinations.”61 In February 1956, Somoza accepted the National Liberal Party’s designation as its presidential candidate and seemed on his way to a third term when late in the evening of Friday, September 21, while Somoza was attending a political function in León, Rigoberto López Pérez, a Nicaraguan, shot him four times. Early reports for Somoza’s recovery seemed optimistic, but Ambassador Whelan soon requested specialists from Panama and Washington. A team of doctors from the Canal Zone recommended urgent neurosurgery to remove a bullet 60. Memorandum of conversation including Dulles, Whelan, and Holland, August 18, 1954, Records of the Office of Middle American Affairs, lot file 57D15, box 3, folder “Nicaragua, Relations with U.S. 1954,” OMAA Records (Costa Rica and Nicaragua). Figueres was no friend of Dulles. In an interview he said, “Our main enemy was Mr. John Foster Dulles in his defending corrupt dictatorships” (oral history interview of José Figueres Ferrer in San José, Costa Rica, July 8, 1970, by Donald R. McCoy and Richard D. McKinzie, Harry S. Truman Library, Independence, Mo.). 61. Ohmans to Welch, March 13, 1953, and Welch to Ohmans, March 16, 1953, lot file 57D15, box 2, folder “Nicaragua, Gen. Somoza, 1952,” OMAA Records (Costa Rica and Nicaragua).

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lodged against Somoza’s spine. Meanwhile President Eisenhower had placed in charge his personal physician, who remained in Washington and sent Maj. Gen. Leonard Heaton accompanied by two other specialists from Walter Reed to assist in the general’s care. Because the request for a neurosurgeon came after Heaton’s party had left the United States, the Canal Zone doctors arranged for a surgeon to perform the operation in Panama. The interest shown by the U.S. government, the ambassador, and the medical team from Panama stood in stark contrast to 1946, when State only belatedly approved an ailing Somoza’s request to go to Gorgas Hospital with the comment, “Too bad he can’t ‘crumble’ right there in Managua but I do not see how we can refuse him care if he requests it.”62 Somoza nonetheless died on September 29 at Gorgas. Four U.S. Marines assigned to the embassy in Managua stood honor guard around his casket when he lay in state at the National Palace.63 On the day he died there was no question of recognition of the new government. The department instructed Whelan to call on the new president, Luis Somoza, and continue diplomatic relations. Anastasio Somoza was a product of U.S. interventions, and for the twentythree years that he was prominent in Nicaraguan affairs, evidence of those interventions remained—as did U.S. responsibility despite Washington’s repeated assertions that such responsibility had ended as of January 2, 1933. A goal of U.S. policy during those years of marine occupation was political stability, and creation of a National Guard was the instrument to protect presidents against revolution. Under Somoza’s leadership the approach worked almost perfectly, in a perverted way, except for two short, controlled coups in 1936 and 1947. A second goal of the U.S. intervention was freely elected governments chosen in the manner of those supervised in 1928, 1930, and 1932. Washington thought that political parties knowing there would be periodic free elections would have less reason to revolt. Unfortunately, the first goal became the tool for Somoza to use in undermining the second, allowing his continuismo. The State Department wanted political stability with democratically elected governments; if political stability was achieved undemocratically, that was unfortunate but acceptable under a Good Neighbor Policy of nonintervention. Easing acceptability was Somoza’s oft-expressed friendship and cooperation. 62. Dispatch from Whelan to Dept. of State, September 28, 1956, SDP 717.00(W)/9–2856; FRUS, 1955–1957, 7:219–221; handwritten note attached to Warren to Cochran, July 10, 1946, SDP 817.001/Somoza, A/7–1046. 63. Dispatch from Edward G. Curtis, counselor, U.S. embassy, to Dept. of State, October 5, 1956, SDP 717.00(W)/10–556; telegram from Curtis to Dept. of State, October 5, 1956, SDP 717.11/10–556.

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U.S. diplomats frequently reported that Somoza’s friendship was sincere, that he really liked Americans. The diplomats often reciprocated. U.S. military officers and diplomats enjoyed his company and expressed appreciation for trips and various social occasions. One diplomat, not entirely taken with him and perhaps a bit elitist, once said: “I observed his conduct at numerous social functions and it struck me that should President Somoza locate in any city or town in the United States he would without doubt become a high official of the Elks Lodge within one year after the date of his arrival. His back-slapping, story telling, and general personality ‘sold’ him to the Costa Ricans but failed to ‘sell’ him to most of the members of the diplomatic corps.”64 At another time a Mexican ambassador suggested that Somoza was so charming as to be dangerous. In conversations with diplomats he could become tearful upon hearing unwanted news; at other times he could damn the yankees when he thought they were unappreciative of his support. During a crisis he would ask U.S. diplomats what to do, but he would keep them guessing about his decisions. He was cooperative with the United States during the Second World War and benefited with economic and military support. When in the mid-1940s events threatened his power, he removed the threat despite U.S. pressure and nonrecognition. Through continued control of the National Guard he survived and became one of Washington’s most loyal anticommunist allies. He also knew to retreat when facing strong U.S. opposition in his feud with Figueres. He was astute in domestic and international politics and at the same time fortunate in the circumstances influencing relations with the United States from the intervention to the Cold War. The most criticized aspect of U.S. relations with Somoza has been the undemocratic, dictatorial nature of his regime. While the issue remained throughout the relationship, it appeared more troublesome during the Cold War. By that time realism seemed the governing influence on U.S. policy. Countries have differing geographic, historic, and political conditions: how can one know what kind of government they should have? One should put aside feelings of like and dislike and decide whether governments are maintaining satisfactory relations with the United States. There was also the belief that most Latin American countries were moving in the direction of democracy despite undemocratic governments, and even lip service to democratic ideals was significant.65 Such thinking did not address the closeness of the relationship; it 64. William H. Hornibrook, minister to Costa Rica, to Dept. of State, August 21, 1939, SDP 817.001/Somoza, A/201. 65. Mimeograph record of Regional Conference of United States Chiefs of Mission, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, March 6–9, 1950; office files of the assistant secretary of state for Latin American affairs (Edward G. Miller), 1949–1953, lot file 53D26, box 5, RG 59, NA.

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could be courteous, proper, aloof, and formal, or warm and supportive. Neither choice is an entirely accurate description of U.S. relations with Somoza, for Washington’s views were not monolithic. They varied with time, and there were occasional differences between government departments and between officials, but for those repressed or deprived by the regime or resentful of U.S. influence in Nicaragua the relationship seemed too intimate.66 The Somoza family dictatorship and the Guardia Nacional continued for more than two decades after Somoza García’s death. Their end came in nice historical symmetry through a movement exemplifying the man whose assassination opened the way for Somoza rule. The Sandinista revolution—fed by the Somoza regime’s longevity, the increasing brutality and political ineptness of the heirs, corruption and greed, and an anti-Americanism born during the early interventions and nourished by Washington’s perceived support of the Somozas—destroyed the last obvious vestiges of the interventionist years.67 There remained, in time, the opportunity for democracy in Nicaragua that Washington had originally desired but in effect abandoned in the face of changing diplomatic realities.

66. Clark, United States and Somoza, 199–200. 67. Walter, Regime of Anastasio Somoza, 248; Michel Gobat, Confronting the American Dream: Nicaragua under U.S. Imperial Rule (Durham: Duke University Press, 2005), 267, 278.

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III FDR: The Sphinx

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an event been so misunderstood as the passage by the House of Representatives on August 12, 1941, of the Selective Service Extension Act by a margin of 203 to 202. “But for a single vote,” William L. Langer and S. Everett Gleason later wrote, “the nation might have been left with an army in dissolution.” Congressman Lyndon B. Johnson, who had lost a primary bid for a vacant Senate seat two months earlier, was present to vote in favor of extension and always claimed thereafter that “God Almighty had arranged his defeat” so he could remain in the House and “personally save the military draft.” The razor-thin vote has prompted most scholars to accept Robert Dallek’s judgment that it “demonstrated how divided and resistant the Congress and the country remained about entering the war.” Many (including some participants) have claimed—erroneously—that the draft itself was renewed by one vote, when in fact Congress extended by eighteen months the service of trainees, reservists, and National Guardsmen under the Selective Service and Training Act of 1940, which was not due to expire until 1945.1 Blithely extracting the vote for draft extension from the circumstances determining its outcome, politicians at the time and historians over the intervening decades have utilized the 203–202 margin to condemn isolationists and for other purposes not germane to what transpired. The point is clear. If the 203–202 vote had gone against the Roosevelt administration, the United States would not have been “armed only with the tongues of its Congressmen,” as Time facetiously commented. At least sixty Representatives who voted against the eighteen-month extension would have accepted a compromise of twelve months.2 Contrary to legend, not even the RARELY HAS SO MEMORABLE

1. Langer and Gleason, The Undeclared War, 1940–1941 (New York: Harper and Row, 1953), 574; Alfred Steinberg, Sam Johnson’s Boy (New York: Macmillan, 1968), 196; Dallek, Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, 1932–1945 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979), 277–78; John O’Sullivan, “From Voluntarism to Conscription: Congress and Selective Service, 1940–1945” (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1971), 343–47. 2. Time, August 18, 1941, p. 12; O’Sullivan, “Voluntarism,” 219.

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isolationists wanted to terminate the draft or disband the U.S. Army in 1941. What the narrow vote does reveal is the absence of effective leadership and the lack of cohesive policy making in Washington at a critical juncture on the eve of war. Coming less than two months after the German attack on the Soviet Union, the debate on service extension proceeded without close supervision from Franklin D. Roosevelt.3 When Chief of Staff Gen. George C. Marshall publicized the need to retain the draftees in the army, FDR remained aloof while the army tried to make the case on national security grounds. Emotionally distracted, recovering from the flu, and preoccupied with his forthcoming secret meeting with British Prime Minister Churchill, Roosevelt treated service extension as a sideshow. The outcome of this inadvertent, botched initiative electrified foreign observers who viewed the episode through the prism of parliamentary politics and mistakenly read the result as a virtual vote of no confidence.4 Such a capsule assessment leads to the hypothesis that the workings of bureaucratic, palace, and partisan politics compose the principal reason for the 203–202 vote. The bid to modify the Selective Service Act of 1940 reflected the U.S. Army General Staff ’s desire to compel acceptance of a particular approach to military mobilization. Handling of the issue by both the House and the Senate was marked by “shadow boxing,” inept leadership, and partisan maneuvers to score points off the other side rather than a meaningful challenge to the administration’s defense and foreign policy programs.5 Finally, the president from the outset was unenthusiastic about the proposal and considered the matter so unimportant that he absented himself (and took along to Argentia several of his closest advisers) during the most critical period of the congressional debate. It is hardly news that the Roosevelt administration’s efforts to fashion a workable consensus were hampered by individuals and groups hostile to the president’s foreign policy goals, by internal rivalries and disagreements, and to some extent by FDR’s penchant for indirection and procrastination. We offer a different and, arguably, a subtly iconoclastic approach, an examination of the 203– 202 vote insofar as possible as those chiefly involved perceived it, without regard to retrospective rationalizations. In doing so, we confront three questions. To what degree was the 203–202 vote a trial of differing conceptions of America’s strategic priorities? Was the vote in any sense a test of public and congressional 3. The president “goes haphazard and scatters his responsibility among a lot of uncoordinated men and consequently things are never done”; Henry L. Stimson diary, August 1, 1941, Stimson Papers, Yale University Library (hereafter Stimson diary). 4. Theodore A. Wilson, The First Summit: Roosevelt and Churchill at Placentia Bay, 1941, rev. ed. (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1991), 183–84. 5. J. Callan O’Laughlin, memorandum of conversation with Ambassador Nomura, August 6, 1941, box 99, O’Laughlin Papers, Manuscripts Division, Library of Congress.

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opinion regarding U.S. entry into World War II? And, last, how should we evaluate FDR’s performance in forging a popular consensus and offering political leadership as the country hovered on the brink of war? 1 The U.S. Army in 1941 confronted a divided nation, an edgy Congress, and a president who mistrusted the officer corps and doubted the necessity for a large military establishment. President Roosevelt had little appreciation of the complex, time-consuming process of mobilization required to raise, equip, and deploy mass ground forces; during the summer of 1941, he embraced a strategic vision that projected eventual victory through the unconditional transfer of American munitions to Hitler’s opponents and through a selective application of U.S. air and sea power. A group determined to assert War Department needs coalesced around Chief of Staff George C. Marshall.6 Irritated by the president’s jigsaw-puzzle administration and tired of explaining (as he told the newly arrived head of the Soviet Military Mission) that “the United States just did not have fleets of planes and tanks, stacks of guns and bombs, and great reserve stocks of machinery and raw materials to send to Russia,” Marshall stipulated that any strategic estimates must include total munitions requirements for American forces and for those nations likely to qualify for lend-lease.7 An obscure staffer, Maj. Albert C. Wedemeyer, had already drafted a conventional strategic estimate “to determine the capabilities and probable lines of action of Axis powers and friendly powers.” War Plans head Gen. Leonard Gerow further charged Wedemeyer with the “stupendous task” of calculating the total production needed for America to defeat its “potential enemies.” This assignment involved explicating the strategic assumptions that would undergird the organization and deployment of American forces and presumably the forces of likely allies, describing the composition of these forces, and seeking to “estimate the type, quantity, and priority of that production in consonance with agreed strategy.” Wedemeyer was given a private office cum secretary near the chief of staff and carte blanche to call for assistance.8 6. Wilson, First Summit, 40–42. 7. Edward L. Stettinius, Lend-Lease: Weapon for Victory (New York: Macmillan, 1944), 123; Mark S. Watson, Chief of Staff: Prewar Plans and Preparations (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1950), 339. 8. Memorandum, Gen. Harry Maloney to chief of staff, June 2, 1941, WPD 4510, Record Group (hereafter RG) 165, National Archives (hereafter NA). As reasons for Gerow’s dissatisfaction, Watson cited the conventional estimate’s failure to deal with joint planning and the fact that it was “based upon a more or less nebulous national policy, in that the extent to which the Govern-

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The traditional approach in such exercises was to determine a strategic objective (for example, destruction of German forces) and then total up the men and equipment required to accomplish that aim. Nonetheless, as Col. Henry Aurand of G-4, who fed Wedemeyer vital logistical data, later noted: the “conventional steps” for military planners were: (1) a strategic plan; (2) a special plan (providing troops needed for the strategic plan); (3) a determination of material requirements for troop units; and (4) a plan for obtaining material requirements (usually termed the industrial mobilization plan). “Isn’t this backwards? Isn’t strategy the art of putting together available manpower and material in order to accomplish an objective?”9 Wedemeyer’s mobilization model thus began with the nation’s economic capacity—how much could be produced for necessary civilian needs and for military purposes. That estimate then yielded production figures that could be allocated among various types of military forces. It was these figures that dictated strategy. The key element, again, was the Troop Basis—how many units of specified types could be raised, trained, equipped, and dispatched to the expected battle zones. Later events showed Wedemeyer’s calculations were at best “educated guesses” and often wildly unrealistic. Irrespective of reality, the effort eventually culminated in the Victory Program of August–September 1941 with its projected army of 215 divisions and some 14 million men, massively equipped with the latest munitions, anticipating a full-scale invasion of Festung Europa.10 Building such forces required manpower in unprecedented numbers, much more than the army had originally estimated. The campaign to modify the terms of service of draftees was thus undertaken because the War Department had neither anticipated nor satisfactorily assimilated the circumstances of “quasiwar” that afflicted the United States after the fall of France. While the train of events triggered by Adm. Harold R. Stark’s “Plan Dog” memorandum of November 1940 forced both services to contemplate a two-ocean war, the army was still struggling to field forces sufficient to counter German landings at Mobile

ment intends to commit itself with reference to the defeat of the Axis powers has not yet been clearly defined” (Chief of Staff, 341). See also the superb monograph by Charles Kirkpatrick, An Unknown Future and a Doubtful Present: Writing the Victory Program of 1941 (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1991). 9. Henry Aurand Oral History, Senior Officer Debriefing Program, Military History Institute, Carlisle Barracks, Pa. 10. Theodore A. Wilson, “Squaring Circles and Chasing Rainbows: The Struggle over America’s Mobilization, 1941,” Siena Conference on World War II, Loudonville, N.Y., June 1991, 8–10. Even though President Roosevelt had not yet approved any national strategy (except on a contingency basis) that assumed U.S. intervention in the war, the Victory Program flatly rested on the premise of all-out participation against the Axis powers to achieve complete victory.

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or Charleston. One result was the clash in the summer of 1941 between a theoretical model of mobilization and the immediate demands of unforeseen circumstances. General Marshall showed himself to be a consummate political operator by putting together the coalition that produced the Victory Program and an eventual wartime army ground force of more than eight million men. Nonetheless, success in warding off external raids upon the army’s resource base and maneuvering some semblance of its priorities past apathetic politicians was familiar stuff to the “military diplomats” in the War Plans Division and the supply officers of G-4. But in G-1 and G-3, responsible respectively for procurement and for training of military personnel, awareness of life “beyond the gate” was in short supply. In common with craft unions and monastic orders, most army officers inherited an exclusionary outlook anchored in shared values and antediluvian customs. The prewar General Staff “was dead and didn’t know it,” one officer later recalled. “It had no conception of the demands of the war we were about to wage.”11 Such parochialism led to an effort to make the circumstances of 1940–1941 fit the preexisting Protective Mobilization Plan. When inconvenient realities did not mesh with the timetables in those well-thumbed binders, such realities were usually ignored. In setting up its “production line,” the army was guided by the concept of building troop units to a standard design and then adding or subtracting the gewgaws (such as the capability to fight in special terrain or climactic conditions) on demand. This scheme treated individual soldiers as components, totally interchangeable parts to be plugged in or discarded at will. But it posed severe practical problems in an environment of constantly evolving strategic and political requirements. Since the military professionals held as a basic tenet that the performance of troops was a function of command, the army’s chief task was to ensure that leaders at corps, division, and lower echelons were carefully selected, indoctrinated with the principles of the Leavenworth-trained “New Model Army,” and given opportunities to test their grasp of doctrine by commanding large bodies of troops. The number of qualified officers procurable served as the principal determinant of how many and what kind of units would be authorized. The General Staff concluded that officers at the division level and below were insufficient in number and inadequate in the level of professionalism required. 11. Memorandum of conversation with Maj. Gen. Harry J. Maloney, January 10, 1944, Green Book Files, box 123, RG 319, NA. A veteran diplomat noted in 1941 that there was “no union tighter than the officer corps,” and that “appalling . . . dry rot” afflicted the entire War Department (J. Pierrepont Moffat diary, April 5, 1941, Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.).

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The task of building a modern army prompted Marshall and the General Staff to stress four concerns. First came resisting the external pressures to give away the army’s birthright—modern arms in sufficient quantities to train an enormous ground force—to the British and the Soviets. A second priority dealt with the challenge of purging the incompetent and “eliminating the dead wood before the shooting starts”—especially those political dunderheads in the National Guard.12 Application of the “weeding out reg” to one’s former roommate or wife’s uncle became a painfully slow process.13 All too aware that “inadequately trained officers cannot train troops effectively,” the army saw its third challenge in locating a sufficient supply of officers to replace reclassified National Guard and Organized Reserve officers and to staff the rapidly proliferating units projected under the 1942 Troop Basis.14 The fourth task focused on protection of the unit-training pipeline from stoppages caused by the sudden dispatch of troops to various hemispheric hot spots. Marshall and his planners complained bitterly about FDR’s strategic enthusiasms, thereby compelling the creation of “task forces” from partly trained Regular Army units. In fact, nothing more demonstrated the army’s lack of preparedness in early summer 1941 than the travails of putting together a regimental-size force to take part in Operation Indigo, the occupation of Iceland. The army’s effort to get extension of service for those previously inducted and those to be taken in as U.S. forces swelled to Victory Program dimensions came almost as an afterthought. Everyone realized that the “civilian components” had been called into federal service for only one year. When asked by a congressman in early March whether the National Guard would be retained for more than a year, General Marshall had opaquely replied, “It depends entirely on the situation. If the Lord is good to us, they’ll be returned to their homes.”15 A rational approach would have maintained the distinction between short-term inductees and the army’s three-year volunteers. To the contrary, scarcity of facilities, equipment, and training cadres resulted in National Guard formations and most inductees being integrated into the overall mobilization program. Not until Marshall and Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson talked with FDR in mid-June about sending troops to Iceland did they formally approach the White House about eliminating the hemispheric and time limits 12. Maj. Gen. George V. Strong to chief of staff, May 26, 1941, box 66, AG 1940–1942 files, RG 407, NA. 13. Gen. Wade H. Haislip to George C. Marshall, re memorandum: “Reclassification procedure,” October 14, 1941, AG 1940–1942, box 66, RG 407, NA. 14. Gen. Leslie McNair quoted in Robert R. Palmer et al., The Procurement and Training of Ground Combat Troops (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1948), 92. 15. Quoted in Watson, Chief of Staff, 215.

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from the Selective Service Act of 1940.16 The president did agree that the various restrictions “should be removed by Congress at the earliest possible moment,” but since he was leaving Washington “to try to get some strength back at Hyde Park,” he asked that the War Department take the lead “to get something started [with the congressional leadership] as soon as you can.”17 As a result, the push for extension of service carried all the emotional and intellectual baggage associated with the General Staff ’s jurisdictional struggles and philosophical disputes over the previous eighteen months. The chief of staff ’s biennial report, usually a dry document “replete with dreary details of statistics,” was employed to get across the message. In a ten-day blitz Marshall’s aides churned out a forty-page chronicle of the army’s accomplishments of the past two years. Much of this comparatively slick document, released on July 3 so as to attract maximum coverage in connection with Independence Day, dealt with the threatened disintegration of America’s defense forces should the terms of service of those currently in uniform not be extended. To end “the confusion of restrictive details,” the chief of staff called for an indefinite extension of service for the civilian components and removal of the ban against sending draftees and National Guardsmen outside the Western Hemisphere.18 Unfortunately, the War Department’s public relations and congressional liaison personnel were not up to the task. No press releases summarizing the “juicy parts” for editors and columnists were prepared. Because he assumed that the White House was in close touch, Marshall neglected to brief key Democrats in the House and Senate. Marshall and Stimson also misjudged the president’s determination. When pressed to accept a larger role, FDR insisted that Marshall take “the laboring oar.”19 Aside from what Stimson called a “humdinger” message to Congress on July 21, Roosevelt remained only an interested bystander.20 Recovering from a protracted respiratory illness in May and June and focusing on his forthcoming summit meeting with Winston Churchill, the president may also have been distracted by secret meetings in June and early August with Lucy Mercer Rutherfurd, the woman who had nearly broken up his marriage more than twenty years earlier.21 16. Forrest C. Pogue, George C. Marshall: Ordeal and Hope, 1939–1942 (New York: Viking, 1966), 146. 17. FDR to Henry L. Stimson, June 26, 1941, OF 25, Roosevelt Papers, Franklin Delano Roosevelt Presidential Library, Hyde Park, N.Y. 18. U.S. Department of War, Biennial Report of the Secretary of War (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1941), 57–58. 19. Pogue, Ordeal and Hope, 149; O’Sullivan, “Voluntarism,” 111–12. 20. Stimson diary, July 21, 1941. 21. Doris Kearns Goodwin, No Ordinary Time (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1994), 435. FDR’s daily appointment sheets, including the White House usher’s diaries, indicate that the

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Lending a sense of urgency to the General Staff’s efforts was the perception of plummeting morale in the training camps. Indeed, no matter occupied more of Marshall’s time during the summer and fall of 1941 than that of troop morale and its presumed impact on congressional support for the army’s needs. The apparent malaise stemmed from many factors: objections to the draft itself; the army’s unreadiness to deal with the sudden influx of selectees; well-documented insufficiencies in weapons and facilities; college graduates being trained by high school dropouts; and that triad of demons—envy of those getting the high-paying civilian jobs, skepticism about the so-called national emergency, and boredom with the never-ending, mind-numbing routine of the drill field and barracks. That emerging problem fueled two recurring themes in the congressional debates: the “ineffectiveness of the work being done” in the training camps, and the idea of an actual or implied contract between the government and individual draftees broken by the army’s push for extending the terms of service.22 During the first two weeks of July, the War Department discovered just how chaotic was the political situation it confronted. Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn “blew up over what he regarded as a crude attempt by the Army to force his hand on a draft extension measure that had little chance of passing.”23 At a White House conference on July 14, despite General Marshall’s “most masterly effort at advocacy,” House leaders declared that “even those Democrats who had previously supported all measures for National Defense were now frightened, and had been coming to them secretly and telling them that they could not vote for an emergency or for an extension of time; that their constituents considered that a contract had been made—or at least implied—that selectees should be released and permitted to go home at the end of their twelve months of training.” The upshot was a decision to forgo any attempt to remove the Western Hemisphere ban and to have the Senate debate service extension first so that “the public could learn . . . [of] the absolute necessity of preventing the fading out of the army of the United States,” as one senator put it in hyperbolic terms.24 Frustration with civilians of all ranks reinforced the determination to push ahead with the Victory Program, sort out the National Guard’s defects, and president met with “Mrs. Paul Johnson” on June 5, August 1, and August 2, 1941, with the meetings lasting an average of two hours each. Mrs. Paul Johnson was a pseudonym for Lucy Mercer Rutherfurd. We thank Frank Costigliola for this information. 22. See in particular Stephen D. Westbrook, “The Railey Report and Army Morale, 1941: Anatomy of a Crisis,” Military Review 60 (June 1980): 14–26. 23. Quoted in Pogue, Ordeal and Hope, 148. 24. Henry L. Stimson to Grenville Clark, September 2, 1941, Grenville Clark Papers, Baker Library, Dartmouth College, Hanover, N.H.; Stimson diary, July 14, 1941; memorandum of White House Conference, July 14, 1941, Warren R. Austin Papers, University of Vermont, Burlington.

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deal with the issues of officer selection and morale. The beleaguered chief of staff appeared to be making headway when, suddenly, on July 30, he disappeared from Washington, allegedly to undertake an extended “inspection trip” somewhere out west. In his absence, second-stringers conducted the army’s lobbying efforts. By all accounts, their performance was abysmal.25 Even had General Marshall remained at his command post throughout the Senate and House debates, his articulate advocacy could not have dispelled suspicions of an administration plot. For many, the dilemma should never have arisen. The conclusion seems inescapable. In a period of rapidly changing conditions, the U.S. Army’s leaders opted to protect their institution’s autonomy and well-being. That this decision led them to espouse a strategic vision at odds with the goals of their commander in chief may have wrinkled some brows but brought no wavering from their campaign plan. That their undertaking might trigger a political earthquake caused not a flicker in George C. Marshall’s flinty concentration on the army’s main chance. 2 With respect to the national debate engendered by the extension bill, the combination of White House neglect and military mismanagement produced a confused and embittered struggle in which both sides talked past one another and distorted the final outcome. For one thing, none of the internationalist/interventionist pressure groups that had assisted the Roosevelt administration during the previous two years were called into the fray. Roger Greene, the principal representative of the Committee to Defend America by Aiding the Allies (CDAAA), did remain at the Capitol without salary until the extension bill passed.26 As debate commenced, he reported “total confusion at War Department and over phone. . . . They gave me some very confused and inaccurate information about the line-up for the draft extension bill.” The fortuitous arrival of another CDAAA representative from Massachusetts gave Greene two more arms to use in buttonholing Congressmen. When the bill squeaked through, Greene gave “much credit” to “Mr. [Fred] Cullen of Boston,” who bought him a pound of bacon to celebrate victory. It was hardly a professional lobbying effort.27 25. The task fell mainly to Brig. Gen. Wade H. Haislip, assistant chief of staff (G-1), and his assistants. An extended critique of the army’s performance is in the Grenville Clark Papers. 26. See Warren I. Cohen, The Chinese Connection: Roger S. Greene, Thomas H. Lamont, George E. Sokolsky, and American East-Asian Relations (New York: Columbia University Press, 1978). 27. Roger Greene to Kate Greene, August 8, 1941, and August 11, 1941, Roger Greene Papers, Houghton Library, Harvard University.

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The results might have been more impressive had the army utilized the organization that had masterminded passage of the original Selective Service Act the previous year. Unfortunately, the General Staff and veterans of the Plattsburg training camp movement of World War I were then feuding over a proposal to train thousands of new officers in a series of civilian training camps. Plattsburg spokesman Grenville Clark testified before committees but did not lobby. After the 203–202 debacle, however, Clark sent a series of memorandums to Stimson bemoaning “the lack of any real management on the Extension of Service Bill.” Important votes “ought to be treated just like the conduct of a great military campaign with the very best planning and staff work. These votes are watched all over the world,” he noted.28 Stimson thereupon appointed Clark as a special assistant in charge of War Department relations with Congress, but such remedial action proved too little and too late. The meager activities of the interventionist organizations left the field open to the opposition. In fact, the draft extension battle revived a moribund peace movement, since the foremost isolationist group, the America First Committee, decided not to oppose the bill after the bid to remove hemispheric restrictions was dropped.29 Frederick J. Libby, head of the National Council for the Prevention of War, rallied peace activists. He vowed to go “all-out.”30 Notwithstanding its official neutrality, the America First Committee lent effective support to the opposition. Staffers on its Washington Research Bureau kept a closer and more effective vigil on Congress than did the White House. Perhaps the greatest irony of the 203–202 vote was that most opponents regarded their defeat as a triumph in disguise. Because only twenty-one Republicans voted for extension, it was all too easy to charge the GOP with playing politics. Former presidential nominee Alf Landon, who opposed intervention in the war but supported service extension, warned the Kansas House delegation: “If you vote to modify this draft act, pray to God that we don’t get into the war now, because every man that has voted that way is going to be close to a traitor, in the minds of a good many excitable folks.” The Kansas Republicans nonetheless voted no, telling Landon: “We made a contract with these boys and . . . we should keep it . . . Roosevelt intends to be president as long as he lives . . . so it is a hell of an outlook for these boys.”31 GOP Minority 28. Clark to Stimson, August 22, 1941, Stimson Papers. 29. Wayne S. Cole, America First: The Battle against Intervention, 1940–1941 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1953), 100–103. 30. Frederick J. Libby Diary, July 15–August 15, 1941, Library of Congress; Frederick J. Libby to executive board and branch offices, August 13, 1941, National Council for the Prevention of War Papers, Swarthmore Peace Collection, Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, Pa. 31. Alfred M. Landon to Rep. Frank Carlson, July 28, 1941, and Rep. William P. Lamberton to Landon, July 21, 1941, Alfred M. Landon Papers, Kansas Historical Society, Topeka.

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Leader Joseph Martin explained his own dilemma in his memoirs. He did not want to obstruct extension, but most of his colleagues, “frantic over the drift toward war, were violently opposed and put a great deal of heat on me.” In the end, Martin regarded service extension as “one of those fights in which one comes out stronger if one loses than if one wins.” He told Republicans to vote their conscience. The close vote surprised him. “If I had wished, I could have gotten that one vote,” he wrote. “We lost, but won. Selective Service had been extended, but the Republicans had a record of keeping faith with the men who had been drafted for one year.”32 In view of the widespread unpopularity of service extension, vigorous backing from New York congressman James W. Wadsworth, cosponsor of the 1940 Selective Service Act, along with fifteen fellow GOP representatives from the northeast, may well have tipped the scales in the end. Carter Manasco, a freshman Democrat from Alabama who was wavering because of the implied oneyear contract, praised Wadsworth for making “one of the few speeches that I think changed enough votes to change the vote to a victory.” Nearly forty years later he remembered how Wadsworth “sat on the table down in the Well dangling his legs. . . telling how [General] Marshall had told them that the Germans had asked the Japs to come in in March.” Until Wadsworth stepped forward, Manasco “thought it was going to lose by ten or fifteen votes. . . . The only speech I ever heard that swayed votes.”33 In actuality, it was the defection of some forty Democrats who usually voted with the administration that accounted for the narrow margin. To be sure, the House Democratic leadership performed erratically. Not only did Speaker Rayburn and Majority Leader John McCormack “shoot off their mouths prematurely” against extension when it was first proposed, they also failed to keep an accurate head count as the bill advanced. Not until August 6, after FDR, Marshall, and company had left for the Argentia meeting with Churchill, did McCormack inform the White House that “45 Democrats were against it and 35 were undecided and that he’d lost control of his own people.”34 Interior Secretary Harold Ickes was one of those summoned to make phone calls on 32. Joe Martin, My First Fifty Years in Politics (New York: Doubleday, 1960), 96–98; “There was no one in Washington half as terrified as the Republicans when . . . it became apparent that the bill might be licked. . . . Many of them voted against it in the hope that it would pass and still put them on record against it” (letter of August 22, 1941, in Glen C. H. Perry, ed., “Dear Bart”: Washington Views of World War II [Westport, Conn.: Westview Press, 1982], 16). 33. Carter Manasco Oral History Interview, January 11, 1979, box 10, Former Members of Congress Project, Library of Congress. 34. Stimson diary, July 11, August 6, 7, 1941; Assistant Democratic Whip Lawrence Lewis of Colorado also noted that McCormack and Rayburn were “no more than lukewarm” on extension (Lawrence Lewis Diary, August 8, 1941, Colorado Historical Society, Denver).

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the eve of the vote. The “Old Curmudgeon” tried hard, but one Illinois Democrat told him “he would do anything if the country were really in danger,” but the “administration is always sounding a fire alarm and when the burghers turn out they are not directed to any fire.” Sam Rayburn told Ickes afterward that the 203–202 vote “was a defeat more than a victory” for the Democratic leadership.35 White House aide James Rowe similarly counted “at least ten men who never vote against the Administration.” When he checked, he found “irritation in practically every case.” Rowe then recommended that fellow staffer Marvin McIntyre be designated the “man in the White House that Senators and Congressmen can talk to,” a suggestion that FDR belatedly accepted when he returned from Argentia.36 One key Democrat who voted against service extension was Rep. Thomas H. Eliot of Massachusetts. Only a freshman member, the thirty-six-year-old Eliot nonetheless assumed prominence among progressive Democrats for having been, as a Labor Department official, a principal author of the Social Security Act of 1935.37 Because his congressional district included Cambridge and its famous universities (his grandfather had been president of Harvard), Eliot’s scholarly views usually carried extra weight. Along with a dozen or so New Deal liberals, including Clinton P. Anderson of New Mexico and Jerry Voorhis of California, Eliot opposed the bill. He believed that General Marshall and the administration had “made a big mistake by overstating their case.”38 He wrote to Marshall on August 2, noting that “the picture of early ‘disintegration’ seems exaggerated. No drafted men are due to go home until November, and only 19,000 before January. . . . An indefinite extension without war being declared makes people fear that drafted men are going to become part of a great conscript standing army.” Since draftees went to camp thinking they would become reservists after a year, “are they instead to become permanent professional soldiers, whether they want to or not?”39 A perfunctory reply from Gen. Joseph McNarney failed to persuade.40

35. Entry of August 27, 1941, Harold Ickes Diary, Harold Ickes Papers, Library of Congress. 36. James Rowe memorandum for Grace Tully, August 26, 1941, and “Memo for Mac,” September 5, 1941, box 16, James Rowe Papers, Roosevelt Library; FDR memo for “Mac,” September 6, 1941, box 142, PSF files, Roosevelt Papers. 37. See Thomas H. Eliot, Reflections of the New Deal: When People Mattered (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1992). 38. Eliot quoted in Roger Greene to Kate Greene, July 25, 1941, Greene Papers. 39. Eliot to Marshall, August 2, 1941, copy in Alfred M. Bingham Papers, Sterling Library, Yale University. An excerpt from Eliot’s letter is in “203–202—Why?” Common Sense 10 (September 1941): 275. 40. Eliot to J. Garry Clifford, February 25, 1983, in author’s possession.

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Once debate commenced in the House on August 8, Eliot and his cohorts came under intense pressure to vote yes. John McCormack, who had not given his Massachusetts colleague preferred committee assignments, threatened political retaliation if Eliot voted incorrectly. As the final roll call began on August 12, Clinton Anderson (voting alphabetically) disappointed his liberal friends by supporting extension. Le Roy D. Downs of Connecticut, another liberal, voted no, then scowled angrily at Eliot, saying: “Don’t you dare switch now!” Eliot thereupon voted no, and he later recalled another progressive “Sammy Weiss of Pa. saying ‘no’ and then running from the chamber with sweat pouring down his face.” After the final tally McCormack cornered Eliot and snarled: “I’ll get you for this.”41 The Brahmin congressman was gerrymandered out of his district the following year. In fact, Eliot never regretted his negative vote. To angry constituents he explained that “we were asked to vote ‘yes’ or ‘no’ on a bill that was both unsatisfactory and unnecessary. If the bill had been defeated it would have been a simple matter to pass very promptly a bill extending the time of the National Guard . . . and other reserve components. There would have been hardly any opposition . . . in either house.”42 When the army announced in late August that it would send some two hundred thousand draftees, guardsmen, and reservists home that autumn, Eliot became even more convinced of that scenario. “‘Dangerous Disintegration’ on the Army’s own volition,” he could now argue. If it was “dangerous to send men home in the present crisis,” how come “the Army is releasing them anyway?”43 Eliot, in truth, never knew whether President Roosevelt considered the service extension bill vital, but during a weekend visit to Hyde Park that same autumn, his buoyant and cordial host said nothing critical about the negative vote. FDR, Eliot observed years later, was “hardly a Ronald Reagan who called you on the phone and publicly asked for your vote on all sorts of measures. He was sometimes so subtle that we were not sure what he wanted.”44 In a postcongressional academic career, highlighted by his becoming a political science professor and then chancellor of Washington University in St. Louis, Eliot always insisted that his negative vote in 1941 was not wrongheaded, nor would it have led to the disintegration of the army in 1941.45 41. Ibid.; Clifford interview with Eliot, Harvard Faculty Club, Cambridge, Mass., February 1983. 42. Eliot to James A. McLaughlin, August 13, 1941, James A. McLaughlin Papers, Harvard University Law School Library. 43. Eliot memorandum, n.d. (ca. August 1941), Thomas H. Eliot Papers, Washington University Archives, St. Louis, Mo. 44. Eliot interview, February 1983. 45. See Eliot letters in American Historical Review 96 (February 1983): 271–72 and New York Times, August 12, 1991.

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The 203–202 vote did, however, worsen an already difficult situation with morale in the U.S. Army. A Life magazine article on August 18 introduced the acronym OHIO (“Over the Hill in October”) into the public vernacular, suggesting that as many as 50 percent of draftees, unconvinced that any national emergency required their service for more than one year, might desert when their terms were up. Although the army’s inspectors general initially reported “no serious morale situation,” subsequent press and magazine accounts about “our sitting standing army,” including a thorough investigation by the New York Times reporter Hilton Railey that went directly to General Marshall and was not published, indicated that the morale problem had become so serious that “more than 90% [of the draftees] have lost faith in the government’s word,” as Railey reported. Even the FBI reported a widespread “I don’t give a damn” attitude in the training camps.46 When the suddenly alarmed chief of staff appealed to the president to do something to bring about greater “understanding of the national emergency and the necessity of a highly trained Army,” he received flippant advice. “In effect you say: a. The boys in camp are OK,” FDR replied, “b. The parental influence hurts the morale of many of them; c. Please, Mr. President, do something about this weakness on the part of the civilian population. Got any ideas?”47 Fortunately, Marshall and his staff took the complaints seriously and ordered the War Department Bureau of Public Relations to prepare a series of orientation courses on the international situation, an effort that eventually produced such other educational items as the pocketbook War in Outline and Frank Capra’s famous “Why We Fight” films. Of course, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor helped to dispel all morale problems, civilian and military, exacerbated by the volatile politics of a country blundering into war. 3 What can we make of this memorable if misunderstood episode some sixtysix years after the fact? Clearly, the 203–202 vote did not constitute a test case for public and congressional opinion regarding American entry into World War II. It was extraordinary how many of the so-called isolationist opponents of FDR’s foreign policy expressed satisfaction that they actually lost by such a small margin.48 “A defeat by one vote is better for us psychologically than a 46. Westbrook, “The Railey Report”; FBI report on training camps, September 3, 1941, OF 10B, Roosevelt Papers. 47. Marshall to FDR, September 6, 1941; FDR to Marshall, September 8, 1941, PSF files, box 83, Roosevelt Papers. 48. See the following explanations for negative congressional votes: Rep. Roy O. Woodruff to George Peek, August 13, 1941, George Peek Papers, University of Missouri–Columbia; Rep. Robert

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close victory,” observed the head of the National Council for the Prevention of War.49 This “stop-look-listen sign” put opponents “in a better position now to slow up the war crowd than if we had won by one vote,” as Congressman Karl Mundt (Republican of South Dakota) put it.50 It would be “absurdly oversimplified and distorted” to interpret the vote “for or against Hitler, or even as a vote for or against other phases of the administration’s foreign policy,” a midwestern editor noted, because Germany’s invasion of Russia had produced a “vague let down” that made it “easier for Congressmen to play the game the way they did” wherein “the vehement minority might vote solidly against an action that they disapprove, while the unvehement majority may not take it that seriously.”51 In short, the isolationists hoped to slow down what they saw as a rush to war; they did not vote to strip the nation of its defenses. As for the president himself, when news of the 203–202 vote reached Argentia, it “dropped like enemy bombs on the decks of the Augusta and the Prince of Wales” with a “decidedly chilling effect on all present.”52 The British especially equated the House of Representatives with the House of Commons and viewed the narrow margin as a near vote of no confidence. Notwithstanding that the “psycological [sic] effect” was “not wholly happy up there in the North Atlantic,” both General Marshall and FDR were secretly relieved because the close vote lowered British expectations about what the United States could do in the near term.53 For Marshall, it allowed more time to train and equip his growing army for the large-scale war he knew was coming. For Roosevelt, it meant further opportunity to juggle the competing demands of aiding allies short of war and building up the armed forces in anticipation of a war he still hoped to avoid. From a British perspective, the Americans resembled “a reluctant bather . . . W. Kean to Walter Lippmann, December 9, 1941, Walter Lippmann Papers, Yale University; Rep. Clifford Hope to W. A. Long, August 26, 1941, Clifford Hope Papers, Kansas Historical Society; Rep. George H. Tinkham to William Emerson, August 16, 1941, copy in Sinclair Weeks Papers, Dartmouth College; Rep. Ben Jensen to F. A. Williams, August 17, 1941, Ben Jensen Papers, University of Iowa; Rep. Sterling Cole to Walter Wilcox, August 21, 1941, Sterling Cole Papers, Cornell University; Rep. David Reed to A. H. McMillan, August 18, 1941, David Reed Papers, Cornell University; Rep. Frances Bolton, constituent newsletter, August 14, 1941, Frances Bolton Papers, Western Reserve Historical Society, Cleveland; Rep. Merlin Hull to Herbert Beecroft, August 16, 1941, Merlin Hull Papers, Wisconsin Historical Society; and Rep. Jeanette Rankin to Helene Kelly, August 15, 1941, Jeanette Rankin Papers, Schlesinger Library, Harvard University. 49. Frederick J. Libby to R. Douglas Stuart, August 12, 1941, box 5, America First Committee Papers, Hoover Institution, Stanford University. 50. Samuel B. Pettengill to R. D. Stuart, August 13, 1941, and Mundt quoted in Fred Burdick letter, August 12, 1941, box 65, America First Committee Papers. 51. W. W. Waymack of the Des Moines Register to Francis P. Miller, August 18, 1941, box 25, Francis P. Miller Papers, Alderman Library, University of Virginia, Charlottesville. 52. Quoted in Wilson, First Summit, 183, 186. 53. Harry Hopkins draft article, box 303, Harry Hopkins Papers, Roosevelt Library.

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forced to dip a toe at a time into shark-infested waters,” but without giving much thought “on how to get rid of the shark.”54 The best way to analyze this bizarre episode is to treat the foreign policy process not as a zero-sum game but as a system characterized by ongoing, dynamic political transactions. This perspective posits that for a time in the late summer and fall of 1941 at least two approaches to strategic decision making were up and running, and the president was only one player (albeit an extremely skilled and powerful one) in a complex game. Not surprisingly, in a predominantly male policy environment, football metaphors cropped up regularly in communications between American officials—and in the later writings of scholars. Seeing the U.S. government as a football team traditionally has emphasized the role of the quarterback, claiming that poor play selection or too much chatter in the huddle resulted in inept performance—missed blocks, pass routes run incorrectly, fumbles, Pearl Harbor. A third possibility (familiar to anyone who has played in an intense game) is that individuals and groups of players ignored the quarterback or coach and improvised their own strategies for such diverse reasons as self-preservation, padding personal statistics, lack of confidence in the play caller, or sheer panic. This was what probably occurred in 1941. In the case of the Victory Program, for example, the president’s signal calling was heard and understood by other players, including the U.S. Army, cast as a lumbering tackle and expected to block (determine projected military production) so that there could be a flashy triple handoff (allocation of lend-lease) to the star players—the British, the Soviets, and advocates of strategic bombing. But the second stringer seized the opportunity, grabbed the ball, reversed field, and rumbled hell-for-leather toward the goal line. FDR wondered at first whether he should have the play called back. But then came Pearl Harbor, and the capacity to score points by whatever means became imperative. Ever resilient, the president accepted the army’s end run and claimed that some such stratagem as the Victory Program had always been intended as a follow-on to the Arsenal of Democracy in the Rooseveltian playbook. Consideration of the 203–202 vote calls forth an alternative version of the football metaphor. In this scenario, the contest over draft extension was initially treated as little more than a scrimmage, a warm-up for more important matches later in the season. The home team was heavily favored. When the game (the effort to win congressional approval of service extension) began, the army was assigned (or claimed) the position of halfback and accorded star 54. Ian Jacob quoted in Wilson, First Summit, 219.

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billing. The Democratic leadership in Congress were the linemen and blocking backs. A weary FDR, feeling “so mean” and without “pep,” distracted by other engagements, dubious about the wisdom of scheduling a game so early, and fearful of boos from disenchanted rooters, reluctantly donned his uniform to perform as quarterback.55 Unfortunately, however, there had been almost no communication prior to the game about play selection, blocking assignments, or even the timing of snap counts. Worse yet, the president disappeared just before halftime; the army’s best player, George C. Marshall, was suddenly pulled from the game because of a phantom injury; and ill-prepared substitutes had to carry the ball in his stead. FDR watched from the sidelines as the home team struggled to a one-point win. Indeed, the wily quarterback was secretly pleased by the close score, for he could disavow responsibility for the outcome while pointing to the need to postpone further tests until the team was far better trained and enjoyed overwhelming support from the fans. That next big test came after December 7.

55. FDR quoted in Stimson diary, June 30, 1941. It should be noted that FDR lost two women very close to him in the summer of 1941—his personal secretary and confidante Marguerite (Missy) LeHand, who suffered a debilitating stroke in early June, and his mother, Sara Delano Roosevelt, who died in September. Scholars of Roosevelt’s foreign policy have only reluctantly sought to gauge the effects of physical and emotional turmoil on the president’s decision making. For the best study to date connecting FDR’s health and personal relations to his foreign policies, see Irwin F. Gellman, Secret Affairs: Franklin Roosevelt, Cordell Hull, and Sumner Welles (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995).

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America and Saudi Arabia, Act I The Conference of Franklin D. Roosevelt and King Ibn Saud in February 1945

for an American, let alone the president, even during the Second World War when one found people from the United States over all the globe. Few Americans had heard of Great Bitter Lake, and only those grounded in geography knew that this body of water lay almost hidden on the lower reaches of the Suez Canal, near where the waterway ran into the Red Sea—so small and closely related to the Suez system that few realized it had a separate name. The date was Valentine’s Day 1945, in the last months of the long war with Germany and Japan. The lake served as host this February morning to warships placed at carefully specified stations. In the center of the formation, clearly the focus of attention, lay an American man-of-war, the nearly new cruiser Quincy, fit and menacing except for one spot where the steel deck sported gaily colored Persian rugs. There, not far from a five-inch-gun turret, sat President Franklin D. Roosevelt in a wheelchair. With a large navy cape hanging loosely over his drooping shoulders, he prepared to welcome a guest. Roosevelt had initiated the encounter a few days earlier when almost casually and with no explanation he had asked his representatives to set up conferences with the monarchs of Egypt, Ethiopia, and Saudi Arabia.1 Farouk of Egypt and Haile Selassie, the much acclaimed “lion” of Ethiopia, had made an appearance— more or less dropped by—the previous day, and now the president awaited King Ibn Saud, easily the most important member of this royal triumvirate and the major reason for Roosevelt’s presence at this obscure location. Such a meeting would have been remarkable in any circumstances, but it was especially so during this time in 1945 when the president surely had more important matters on his mind than a casual conference with an Arab king. The war with Germany was going well, but the regime of Adolf Hitler fought on stubbornly, and much combat remained before the European war would IT WAS A STRANGE PLACE

1. February 3, 1945, State Department Papers, 890F.001 Abdul Aziz/2–345, Record Group 59, National Archives (hereafter SDP followed by file and document numbers).

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grind to a halt. American forces had reached the Philippine Islands on the way to Japan and were preparing to assault a tiny island called Iwo Jima. Even so, the Japanese continued to offer strong resistance, and military officials still reckoned an end to war in Asia in terms of years. Wartime diplomacy had begun a new stage. The president had entered into critical negotiations with Prime Minister Winston Churchill of Great Britain and Premier Joseph Stalin of the Soviet Union about terms of peace and arrangement of the world to follow the war. Indeed, Roosevelt had arranged to meet the Saudi monarch on the way home from the Yalta Conference of February 1945. Why would the president impose an additional burden on himself? Negotiations with Churchill and Stalin had been grueling, and anyone could tell at a glance that Roosevelt was not well. He looked old, tired, and thin; unknown to anyone, he only had a few weeks to live. The area represented by the eastern monarchs might have seemed hardly worth the attention Roosevelt was giving it. The Middle East—or Near East, as it was more commonly, and correctly, called in that day—had carried little weight in American diplomacy as compared with such places as Germany, Japan, and Russia. As recently as 1941 Roosevelt had decided that a proposed loan to the Saudi government was “a little far afield.” The United States had had no Middle Eastern policy beyond making sure the Germans did not capture the territory, and the president’s recommendation that Britain “take care” of the matter indicated the traditional American approach to the area.2 It was the war itself that had prompted a different attitude, causing the United States to begin to take notice of the land of the Arabs. Americans had become somewhat acquainted with North Africa, a battlefield in early stages of the war, and Casablanca became familiar as a place where Roosevelt had conferred with Churchill in 1943 and as the setting for a popular wartime movie. The war had required an enormous consumption of energy, much of it in the form of oil drained from local fields. The United States in 1943 for the first time used petroleum more rapidly than oilmen could discover new sources. Harold Ickes, secretary of the interior, doubted that the nation would be able to meet its needs for many more years. Informed people had begun to speculate about when the country would run out. Attention had turned to Saudi Arabia, the kingdom that had oil. How much, no one knew, but conservative estimates suggested that Saudi reserves were considerable, possibly massive. Moreover, they were available to the United 2. Roosevelt note to Jesse Jones, federal loan administrator, July 18, 1941, in Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, Diplomatic Papers, 1941, Volume III: The British Commonwealth, The Near East, Africa (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1959), 643.

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States, or so it appeared. Americans had discovered Saudi oil in the 1930s, and to handle production they had formed a private corporation known for several years as Casoc (California-Arabian Standard Oil Company), broadened in 1944 to Aramco, the Arabian-American Oil Company. In 1943 the government had established a special committee on petroleum, with representatives from the Departments of State, War, and the Navy as well as other specialists in the production of petroleum. The committee began a long series of discussions about how to assure continued American access to oil in Saudi Arabia. Negotiations had produced proposals that included building a pipeline to the Mediterranean Sea and a remarkable scheme for the government to acquire stock, up to 100 percent, in Aramco. These projects, and an additional plan to act in concert with the British government, had run aground amid opposition from private American oil companies.3 Nevertheless, the basic American objective did not change. Only two months before Roosevelt would undertake his journey, James Forrestal, secretary of the navy, reminded the secretary of state that because domestic supply could not meet both civil and military demand “over any considerable number of years,” it was “vital to the United States and to the Navy to maintain use of . . . oil reserves of the Saudi region.”4 Americans already had begun to court the Saudi nation. Agents of Aramco— once called the “Hundred Men”—remained in the country pumping oil, looking for more. The government had opened a legation in Jidda in 1942. The minister in 1945 was William A. Eddy, a retired marine colonel, an Arabist of sorts who could speak the language. The United States also had sent specialists on exploration for water, and later a small military mission had begun negotiation for construction of an airfield at Dhahran. Declared eligible for lend-lease financial assistance in 1943, the Saudi government began to receive sums that probably seemed substantial to a royal family accustomed to smaller amounts from the British.5 Another way of impressing the Saudis, as one well knew, was to court their king. His name was Abdul Aziz ibn Saud, and Americans, applying their practice with names, began to call him Ibn Saud, which meant “son of Saud.” He was 3. See, for example, a memorandum from a meeting of the special committee, January 8, 1945, SDP 890F.51/1–845; a summary of Saudi-American relations, August 25, 1945, SDP 711.90F/2545; and “oil in United States–Saudi Arabia relations,” April 11, 1947, SDP 711.90F/4–1147. A good discussion of the issue is in Irvine H. Anderson, The United States and Saudi Arabia: A Study of the Dynamics of Foreign Oil Policy, 1933–1950 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981). 4. December 11, 1944, SDP (unnumbered); for a similar statement see Henry L. Stimson to secretary of state, October 27, 1944, SDP 890F.00/1–2745. 5. See summaries of American policy, August 24, 1945, SDP 711.90F/8–2545, and April 11, 1947, SDP 711.90F/4–1147.

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an old man now, as one could tell from pictures that appeared in the American press. A huge mole under the right eye looked more conspicuous on a face that had become drawn and wrinkled; he frequently wore little round spectacles and moved about slowly. Said to be sixty-five, he probably was closer to seventy. A devout follower of a conservative (Wahhabi) sect of the Muslim faith, he claimed to be first of all a warrior, prepared to take the battlefield again for the right cause. The king’s marital affairs, Life magazine informed American readers, were “complex,” said to have included one hundred to two hundred wives and a “capacious harem” of concubines during a long and lusty life. Estimates that the king had thirty-one legitimate sons still living were, in the judgment of Life,“wildly conservative.”6 Whatever his age or physical state, however remarkable—from a Western view—his style of life, Ibn Saud was in charge, and to deal with Arabia one dealt with him. There remained, even so, some puzzle as to why the president picked this time to act. Critical as they were, Saudi petroleum resources did not seem in jeopardy. The German threat had vanished long ago, and Aramco seemed fully in charge of discovery and production. Roosevelt did not offer much explanation; aware that the area was sort of “on the way” to and from the conference at the Crimean coast of the Soviet Union, he remarked that he “may not get over here again.” People in the Department of State liked the idea, evidently hoping the president would get a good dose of Arab opinion. Churchill heard the news shortly before the Yalta Conference and decided that the Americans had set out to undermine British influence in the Middle East; he hurriedly arranged a separate meeting with the three sovereigns. Harry Hopkins, Roosevelt’s close friend and adviser, called the venture “a lot of horseplay,” for the amusement of a curious and confident president. “I did know,” added Hopkins, that Roosevelt “intended to talk to Ibn Saud about the Palestine situation.”7 That probably was it. To the extent that there existed a most important reason for such a meeting it had to do with the status of Palestine in emerging issues of the postwar era. The president, who believed in personal diplomacy, doubtless wished to establish contact with a leader he had not met; he surely expected to discuss oil and other matters significant to a blossoming Saudi-American relationship. The issue most in need of careful and immediate attention was the

6. Noel F. Busch, “Life Visits Arabia,” Life, May 31, 1943, pp. 80, 82. 7. Robert E. Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins: An Intimate Story (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1948), 871; for similar statements of presidential intent see James F. Byrnes, Speaking Frankly (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1947), 22, and Elliott Roosevelt and James Brough, A Rendezvous with Destiny: The Roosevelts of the White House (New York: G. P. Putnam, 1975), 404.

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disposition of Palestine, for already in the 1940s that tiny territory had become the most delicate and dangerous spot in the Middle East. Palestine attracted the attention, and now the intervention, of the American president because of its intimate connection to the twentieth-century status of Jews. To the chagrin of the Arabs who formed much of the local population, Jewish immigration had descended upon this land—this original homeland of Jews many centuries earlier—during the previous twenty or so years. Starting with sixty to eighty thousand in 1920, the number by 1945 had swelled to more than five hundred thousand. The same area contained roughly 1.2 million Arabs, still more than a two-to-one majority, but the Arabs were increasingly threatened by an aggressive and skillful minority and by the prospect of many new outsiders coming in. The ultimate issue of Palestine thus would be who should control it. Should there be a Jewish state in part or all of this tiny land that stretched from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River? The immediate question—a matter intimately related to the issue of control—had to do with immigration: how many, if any, Jews should be allowed to enter Palestine in the last months of the Second World War and the period immediately to follow? Spokesmen for Jewish nationalism—the Zionists—knew that their cause had reached a critical stage. Palestine again was in flux. While Britain still formally exercised authority through a mandate awarded in 1920 by the League of Nations, observers safely could predict that the British would not wish to remain long in an area that offered such little prospect for gain and such large opportunity for harm to the weakening British empire. Palestine in the near future would have to have a new political entity. Zionists had a new and powerful reason for action. As the war in Europe drew to a close, the world had come to learn more grisly details of the slaughter of much of Europe’s Jews by the regime of Adolf Hitler. The holocaust, which still was going on in Central Europe, dramatized the fate of a Jewry scattered for centuries, the dire consequences of not having a national home. It sharpened a special identity among all the world’s Jews and created the immediate problem of thousands of homeless people who had managed to survive or avoid Hitler’s camps and cremation ovens, people with good reason for putting their European experiences behind them. The clearest Zionist statement had come in the Biltmore Program, proclaimed in the United States in May 1942, which insisted that immigration to Palestine must be unlimited, and Palestine must be allowed to become an independent state for Jews. They wished to call it Israel.8 8. See Richard Stevens, American Zionism and U.S. Foreign Policy, 1942–1947 (Beirut: Institute of Palestinian Studies, 1970), 1–16.

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Arab views were no less emphatic. Palestine was Arab territory, as it had been for hundreds of years, as they saw it, and the Middle East made up the world of the Arabs. Jews were foreigners, invaders, seeking nothing short of conquest of Arab land. A problem existed because of Western policy. The British had fostered Jewish immigration, and, once in Palestine, Jews had received money from other Western countries that had promoted development and expansion and encouraged more Jews to come. The persecution that the Jews had known in European countries, however brutal and undeserved, was not the fault of the Arabs and not their responsibility to make reparation for. Arabs might disagree on details of the issue of Palestine, but on two points they could reach fairly broad consensus: Jewish immigration must stop; Palestine must become an Arab state. At a time when American influence—or the opportunity for influence— seemed to be growing in leaps and bounds, when the United States seemed destined to displace Britain as the dominant outside force in the Middle East, the Americans found it impossible to establish a consistent policy on Palestine. Public opinion, such as it was, probably favored the Zionist position. Americans as a whole paid little attention to the trouble between Arabs and Jews; the world war easily came first. They identified the disputed area as the Holy Land, and the interest of religious people, which was not insignificant, mostly centered on shrines of the Christian faith, such places as Bethlehem, Jerusalem, and the Sea of Galilee. Information about Nazi persecution of Jews played no small part in the thinking of Americans who had an opinion; indeed it might have been the most powerful consideration. Why not let these pitiful people have the Holy Land? They had been there when Jesus walked on earth; their return was deemed inevitable by the Bible. The Arabs had plenty of land elsewhere, and besides it was not worth much. Even for American anti-Semites the proposition had something to offer; encouraging Jews to live over there was a way of discouraging them from living over here. Popular support for a Jewish Palestine seemed the cheapest, safest, most morally correct approach to a problem that had existed for ages.9 Congress shared these sentiments, and some congressmen had special reason for being pro-Zionist. Approximately five million Jews in the United States 9. As expected, opinion polls showed vastly differing attitudes, including ignorance, about Palestine. In December 1944, only 32 percent of those questioned could identify Britain as the nation in charge of Palestine. In the same month 45 percent believed that Jews should have a special chance to settle in the area, while 44 percent believed that all people should have equal opportunity. A year later, however, 80 percent of Americans questioned favored a Jewish state in Palestine. Hadley Cantril, ed., Public Opinion, 1935–1946 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1951), 385–86.

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constituted an impressive group of voters in certain states, notably New York, the most populous state, with the largest number of electoral votes, where more than half lived. Acting through pressure groups, Jewish Americans sought to influence opinion. The Zionist movement was more vigorous and better financed in the United States than anywhere else, save possibly Palestine itself. Supporting the Jewish cause in Palestine enabled members of Congress to strike a blow for moralism at no risk to themselves and evidently none to the United States. The legislators had nothing to legislate with respect to the problem, however: foreign policy remained the domain of the executive branch, so congressmen had to confine themselves to making speeches and passing pro-Zionist resolutions.10 In the executive branch one found much more confusion and divergent opinion. The president knew where he wished to stand. Long identified as pro-Jewish, he felt special sympathy for the plight of the Jews in wartime Europe. Roosevelt could not have been satisfied with his position during the holocaust—neither in his nation’s failure to loosen immigration rules in the early phases nor in his preoccupation with placing war needs first, which allowed the slaughter of European Jewry to follow its gruesome course. Roosevelt of course did not lose sight of the power of Jews in his native state. He met occasionally with agents of Jewish pressure groups, after which the president made, or allowed his guests to make, pro-Jewish statements. Roosevelt, however, had encountered another side of the argument. Cables from officials in Arab capitals, and advice from the Departments of State and War, had for months carried essentially the same message: efforts to create a Jewish state in Palestine would have devastating effect on the Middle East, possibly provoking a war; support of Zionism would seriously weaken policy with the Arabs, even jeopardizing American servicemen on duty in the area. The president consequently had shifted all over the place. He thought in terms of a trusteeship for Palestine, then about a confederation with the Arab states. In October 1944, in the atmosphere of a presidential campaign, he had sent a letter to Sen. Robert Wagner of New York, a statement intended to be made public. “I know how long and ardently the Jewish people have worked and prayed for . . . a free and independent Jewish commonwealth,” he wrote. “I am convinced that the American people give their support to this aim and if reelected I shall help to bring about its realization.”11 The president’s remark, noted a State Department official, dealt American policy in the Near East a “severe blow.” Faced with protest in Arab nations, 10. See Stevens, American Zionism, 37–61, and Phillip J. Baram, The Department of State in the Middle East, 1919–1945 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1978), 294–95. 11. Cited in Stevens, American Zionism, 84.

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Roosevelt then quietly allowed State to instruct Arab governments that the United States had no policy on Palestine. He permitted officials to go to the Hill to help suppress the latest round of Zionist resolutions in Congress.12 Roosevelt much preferred to support the Jews if he could do so without injuring relations with other states. Might it not be possible to meet personally with someone having power and influence in the Arab world, give Rooseveltian charm a chance to work, and convince this leader that his people had blown the problem out of proportion? Would Ibn Saud qualify as such a person? While the old king exercised no political authority beyond his native Saudis, his control of the holy places Mecca and Medina afforded him special position in the world of Islam. He seemed to be the most typically Arab, the most conspicuous, and possibly the most influential of all Arab leaders. The State Department busied itself in preparations that normally would be routine, even unnecessary, but the uniqueness of these contacts and cultural differences in the Arab kingdom created potential for false moves or diplomatic blunders. The invitation that had gone out added a suggestion that the Americans send an airplane to bring Ibn Saud to the conference. Eddy replied that religious and political factors might discourage travel by plane; he knew that Arabs as a rule distrusted the pagan invention. The next day the minister reported that the king would fly after all, although he asked that no alcohol or tobacco be used in his presence and wanted assurance of a private meeting with the president. The official Arab party at first was set at five, with two guards and some servants. By the next day the number had jumped to at least twentyfive, and now the Arabs were asking for two aircraft. Please do not question the size of the party, Eddy urged; it would be insulting. Deciding that the number of planes would grow in proportion to the continuing enlargement of the Arab party, the Americans finessed the matter by deciding to send a ship.13 Next came the question of a gift. What could the president offer in the exchange of presents customary between heads of government and apparently a special feature of Arab behavior? Cautious officials rejected a bronzed figure of a horse out of fear that the king might view it as a “graven image” and offensive to his faith. Would an airplane be suitable, a C-47, the gift being planned for King Farouk? Eddy cabled that the king perhaps would accept a plane, but 12. Review of American policy toward Palestine, April 6, 1945, by Paul H. Alling, deputy director of the Office of Near Eastern and African Affairs, Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, Diplomatic Papers, 1945, Volume III, The Near East and Africa (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1969), 698–703. 13. These dispatches, dated February 3–9, 1945, appear in SDP 890F.001 Abdul Aziz/2–445, 545, 645, 745, 945, along with a summary by Eddy, March 3, 1945, 3–345.

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he had no pilot and probably would not use it. The minister suggested a fleet of ten limousines because the king’s “ancient cars” were “falling apart.” Explaining that cars would not be “feasible,” the State Department decided—probably without consulting Roosevelt, who had gone on to Yalta—that Ibn Saud would get a C-47 and temporary use of an American crew.14 The president had no shortage of information about what he might encounter. A State Department briefing paper gave personal information about the king, explaining, for example, that while his “three admitted delights in life are said to be women, prayer, and perfume,” the Arabs had curious attitudes about females and it was best not to talk about them in public. The paper noted that religion carried over to Ibn Saud’s view of politics and Zionism, and it ended with a reminder that “the possibility that the King can be persuaded to alter his position with regard to Palestine is . . . so remote as to be negligible.”15 From James Landis, director of economic relations in the Near East, came a similar suggestion. Replying to a request for advice, Landis recommended that unless Roosevelt had something new to propose, it would be best to avoid the subject of Palestine altogether. Any workable proposal, he added, had to start with the proposition that the idea of a Jewish state “must be given up.”16 The president need not have looked far to learn how Ibn Saud stood on the issue of Palestine and the Jewish people in general. The two governments had maintained fairly steady communication in recent years, especially beginning in 1943, when the United States had come to recognize potential deficiencies of energy and Palestine increasingly became an issue. Ibn Saud had given the most vigorous statement of the Arab position on Palestine; his comments had been direct, always hostile when speaking of Zionism, some to the point of being bloodthirsty. Eddy, an enthusiastic Arabphile, seemingly had delighted in sending the crudest and most threatening remarks. “We know the Jews well,” the minister as recently as February 4, 1945, had quoted the king as saying. “Our holy book says this of them, ‘they are against you in the present day and they will be so until the end of the world.’ It is a struggle for life and death for the Arabs against the accursed Jews.”17 14. Memorandum by Gordon P. Merriam, January 12, 1945, dispatches exchanged between Jidda and Washington, February 7–9, 1945, SDP 890F.001 Abdul Aziz/2–745, 845, 945. 15. Memorandum for the president, January 9, 1945, SDP 890F.001/1–1945, published in Ibrahim al-Rashid, ed., Saudi Arabia Enters the Modern World, Part I, 2 vols. (Salisbury, N.C.: Documentary Publications, 1980), 1:213–16. 16. Roosevelt to Landis, January 11, 1945, in Elliott Roosevelt, ed., F.D.R.: His Personal Letters, 1928–1945, 2 vols. (New York: Duell, Sloan, and Pearce, 1950), 2:1564; Landis to Roosevelt, January 17, 1945, FRUS, 1945, 8:680–82. 17. SDP 890F.001 Abdul Aziz/2445.

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It is impossible to know how much time Roosevelt spent in preparation for the meeting. He never had liked to study details, and his poor health and preparations for the Yalta Conference did not leave much time for the Middle East. Much of the advice was contrary to what Roosevelt wanted to hear, what he hoped to accomplish. There is reason to believe that he thought of the Arab king as brave, forceful, opinionated, a noble savage who nonetheless was out of his element dealing with the white man’s words, contemporary technology, wealth, and knowledge, especially when it came to the master persuader, Franklin Roosevelt. He hoped to bring the old Arab to his point of view. Hopkins remarked that “the President was going to thoroughly enjoy the colorful panoply of the Sovereigns of this part of the world who thought that President Roosevelt of the United States could probably cure all their troubles.”18 The journey proceeded on schedule. Roosevelt wound up the momentous and grueling Yalta Conference and flew to Egypt on February 12. There a weary president boarded the Quincy, which cruised south and took up station in Great Bitter Lake to allow Roosevelt to rest and await the royal guests. Meetings with Farouk and Haile Selassie the next day were short, almost perfunctory, with no political substance. Farouk seemed puzzled as to why he had been asked to come; he left without learning.19 The session with Ibn Saud would be different, as Roosevelt wished it to be, and for that purpose he rolled his wheelchair on deck in the warm sun of February 14 to await a man who thought of himself as a true leader of Arabs. Meanwhile the meeting between East and West already had begun. The navy had sent a destroyer, the Murphy, to pick up the king at Jidda, the Saudi port. The commander of the mission, Commodore John S. Keating, went ashore to arrange bringing the king aboard. Eddy reminded him of the need to proceed carefully and secretly. The king never had left the country, and it was best that as few people as possible learn of his departure. The question of numbers came up again. Eddy had been instructed to admit “four notables” and eight guards and servants; Keating expected to take about ten. Both were astonished to hear that the king could not depart without the normal retinue of two hundred, to include sons and advisers, coffee servers, food tasters, doctors, an astrologer, many guards, servants and slaves, and what one might call the traveling squad of the royal harem. Eddy delicately explained the ship’s shortage of space and that it 18. Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins, 871. 19. For accounts of these meetings see William M. Rigdon, White House Sailor (Garden City: Doubleday, 1962), 160–64, by the president’s stenographer; Michael F. Reilly, Reilly of the White House (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1947), 217–19, by a secret service agent (both men were aboard the Quincy); and FRUS, 1945, 8:4–7.

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was best not to bring females—what with the crowded conditions, seamen all about, a lurching vessel that might cause a lady to unveil “at least” her face. The two sides compromised on a party of forty-eight, to include no women.20 The voyage to Suez would take more than one day, making it necessary to spend two nights aboard ship. The officers had planned on giving their cabins to the king and his relatives, rooms that were, even for the commander, little more than cubicles. Asserting that the king “couldn’t possibly live in quarters like this,” Arab officials moved to improvise. They produced handsome rugs to cushion the steps of a monarch crippled by age, arthritis, and wounds from earlier days of combat. They stretched a huge brown tent from bow to bridge, entirely covering gun mount number one, which now pointed to the sky as a sort of center pole. The Murphy’s refurnishing was topped off by the arrival of an enormous throne with plush red upholstery, gilded arms, and a frame large enough for this king who stood six-foot-four-inches and weighed 230 pounds. Keating and other officers grimaced at seeing the Murphy take on the appearance of a circus but realized that, since it was in service of the nation and president, it might be necessary to stretch a few of the navy’s rules.21 The worst was yet to come. In preparation for departure, barge after barge came alongside the destroyer, bringing supplies for the Arab party. One could see rugs, huge parcels with unknown contents, a mysterious supply of hay. The next barge removed the mystery. It carried sheep, a whole flock of them— the men counted eighty-six—baaing and already starting to smell, apparently the next cargo to come aboard. Now this was too damn much, decided Commodore Keating, who struggled to preserve one last measure of dignity and naval decorum. “No sheep can come aboard this ship,” he proclaimed. “Why of course they must,” replied a Saudi official, who explained that the king, not to mention Muslims in general, ate only fresh meat, and that it was Arab custom to supply food for everyone. Eddy explained to the king that the Murphy carried provisions in frozen lockers, that sailors could not depart from a special naval 20. William A. Eddy, FDR Meets Ibn Saud (New York: American Friends of the Middle East, 1954), 20–22; John S. Keating, “Cruise of the U.S.S. Flying Carpet,” True, December 1953, pp. 108–9. Americans who smiled at the size and character of the king’s entourage (and all of them did) failed to note that the president scarcely traveled alone. The party that went to Yalta included the president’s daughter, three doctors, three men from the White House Map Room, eight cooks from the presidential yacht Potomac, a secret service detail of twenty, a valet, a fishing guide: a party of sixty, not to mention the thousands of men who manned the ships that carried the president abroad. For a list of people in the presidential party see Rigdon, White House Sailor, 286–87. Eddy listed the king’s party in a memorandum dated February 21, 1945, SDP 890F.001 Abdul Aziz/2–2144. 21. Keating, “Cruise of the Flying Carpet,” 108; Barry W. McCarthy (an officer aboard the Murphy), “Ibn Saud’s Voyage,” Life, March 19, 1945, pp. 60–62.

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diet. Ibn Saud, shaking his head over the strange ways of the unbeliever, agreed to a bargain. The Americans could eat their food if they must, and the Arabs could have theirs. Enough sheep would be taken—a half dozen or so—to keep the Muslims supplied with freshly slaughtered meat. The crew created a little pen by stringing a rope from one depth charge to another on the stern, where the animals could browse while awaiting the butcher’s knife. Arrangements complete, the aged monarch was hoisted, boat and all, onto the Murphy.22 The journey proved to be interesting and instructive, a remarkable exercise in cultural exchange. The sailors showed the Arabs how they ran the ship, offering a demonstration of weaponry: firing machine guns and anti-aircraft pieces, exploding depth charges at targets towed behind the ship. The king’s guards, these “very lean and dark” men, “with murderous black eyes . . . armed to the teeth,” showed how they fought with their curved daggers. Three times a day the ship communicated with Mecca by radio, and five times daily the ship’s navigator identified the approximate direction of Mecca to aid the Arabs in their prayers. The Americans served evening meal for the king and his party, and Ibn Saud hosted a dinner for the ship’s officers the next day, each group exposing the other to differences in menu and especially in dining etiquette.23 Evening entertainment consisted of movies. Sensitive to—or uncertain about—the Arab view of women, the Americans showed their guests only innocent films: newsreels and The Fighting Lady, a patriotic movie about an aircraft carrier. The king watched for a while then fell asleep. Word leaked out that later, after the king had retired, the Americans showed different films below deck. The king’s son Muhammed asked about the rumor; he wanted to see real “Hollywood” movies. With much reluctance Eddy confessed that it was true, adding that these might not be films a Muslim would want to view. Before evening was out more than twenty Arabs, including Muhammed and his brother Mansur, had crowded into the wardroom to join members of the crew watching Best Foot Forward, what evidently passed as an “adult” movie in that day. The highlight of the evening, a scene that caused crewmen to whistle and the Arabs to smile and nudge each other, came when the gown of starlet Lucille Ball was nearly torn off. Keating was surprised to learn that the king planned to supply presents for everyone, and Eddy recommended that the Americans by all means should reciprocate. The king had brought money for the men, Arab clothing for the officers, golden daggers for the commodore and captain. Hastily improvising, 22. Keating, “Cruise of the Flying Carpet,” 109; Eddy, FDR Meets Ibn Saud, 19–20. 23. McCarthy, “Ibn Saud’s Voyage,” 62.

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the Americans produced a fine pair of binoculars and two of the navy’s submachine guns and ammunition. Ibn Saud seemed pleased; he turned the weapons over to his guards, who wanted to try them out immediately. The sailors ended the celebration with a rousing “three cheers for the king.” As the Murphy neared its destination, the crew prepared for his majesty’s dignified and comfortable departure. The navy wished to make it possible for the crippled old man to walk directly across to the forecastle of the Quincy, where Roosevelt awaited. Unfortunately a destroyer was much lower than a cruiser, and the king would never make it up a ramp. Obtaining the king’s permission, men on the Murphy used a block and tackle to gingerly hoist the king to the superstructure, the highest part of the destroyer, save the mast. A level walkway then could connect one ship with the other. From that lofty perch the Arab leader looked like a king indeed, perhaps of the entire sea. There he sat as the cruiser came into view.24 The men on the Quincy were waiting, and they could see their guests coming. What they observed was, in words of a man from the cruiser, “the most fantastic pageant—a spectacle out of the ancient past. . . . High on the destroyer’s superstructure sat a huge man, an Arabian King on a large gilded chair, with gorgeous oriental rugs all about, and dozens of retainers, guards, and members of the royal family in native dress. . . . ‘For God’s sake, look at those sheep,’ a sailor on the Quincy remarked and there they were, live sheep on the stern, nibbling food, unsuspecting that a slaughter scaffold on the flagstaff was meant for them.”25 “Mr. President you must see this, it’s sensational,” said a secret service agent. Roosevelt wheeled across deck, hid behind a stanchion, and peeked “like a small boy sneaking a look at a ball game through a knot-hole.” “This is fascinating,” the president murmured, “absolutely fascinating.”26 The king came aboard at approximately ten in the morning. He and Roosevelt chatted an hour or so, getting acquainted, exchanging pleasantries. According to Eddy, who acted as interpreter, the two men “got along famously.” Ibn Saud remarked that the two of them almost were twins: they were the same age, were heads of state, and both had a disability. “You are luckier than I,” said Roosevelt, “because you can still walk on your legs.” “No, my friend, you are the most fortunate,” remarked the king. “Your chair will take you wherever you want to go. . . . My legs are less reliable and are getting weaker every day.” At that point Roosevelt offered his spare wheelchair, which Ibn Saud gratefully accepted. 24. For accounts of events aboard ship see Keating, “Cruise of the Flying Carpet,” 110–12; Eddy, FDR Meets Ibn Saud, 24–28; McCarthy, “Ibn Saud’s Voyage,” 62, 64. 25. Rigdon, White House Sailor, 167. 26. Reilly, Reilly of the White House, 221–22.

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Although the exchange took place immediately, it would develop that the chair would not come close to fitting this very large monarch. Later that year Mrs. Roosevelt would arrange for a larger chair to be sent.27 At approximately half past eleven, the men went to lunch. Eddy took the king down one elevator to the president’s private mess; Roosevelt went to a different elevator with Admiral William D. Leahy. Leahy later revealed that Roosevelt, who had refrained from smoking in presence of the king, had pushed the red button on his elevator, paused long enough to smoke two cigarettes, then rolled cheerfully into the room where the monarch awaited. After lunch the two leaders got down to serious matters. They touched on many items: the war, oil, water, British as opposed to American influence in Saudi Arabia. This king, one easily could see, knew his business, was remarkably informed, had an opinion on everything. According to Eddy, the president “was in top form as a charming host, witty conversationalist, with the spark and light in his eyes and that gracious smile. . . . However, every now and then I would catch him off guard and see his face in repose. It was ashen in color; the lines were deep; the eyes would fade in helpless fatigue. He was living on nerve.”28 The president eased into the issue he most wished to treat. He had a serious problem, he said, and would welcome his majesty’s help and advice: it was the status of the Jews from Central Europe who had suffered “indescribable horrors . . . eviction, destruction of their homes, torture and mass murder.” Roosevelt felt a personal responsibility to help them; did the king have any ideas? Indeed he did: “give them and their descendants the choicest lands and homes of the Germans who oppressed them.” That idea might not work, Roosevelt said; the Jews might be afraid to go back to Germany, the land of their oppressors, and besides they had a substantial attachment to Palestine. What did Germans have to say about the status of the Jews? the king replied. Will the allies not determine policy for Germany? If not, why fight this long war? He then went into an extensive review of the issue of Palestine, finding the problem of course in Jewish immigration and purchase of land. It cannot continue, he said. Jews and Arabs will never cooperate—in Palestine or anywhere else. Arabs would rather die than give up their land to the Jews. Roosevelt tried again. The king had not helped him with his problem, he said. There were not many Jews, and they would cause the Arabs no trouble. 27. Remarks recorded by Eddy in memorandum dated March 3, 1945, SDP 890F.001 Abdul Aziz/3–345; published in al-Rashid, ed., Saudi Arabia Enters the Modern World, 1:217–19. 28. Eddy, FDR Meets Ibn Saud, 31–32. A chronology of events prepared by Eddy, February 21, 1945, is in SDP 890F.001 Abdul Aziz/2–2145, published in al-Rasid, ed., Saudi Arabia Enters the Modern World, 1:217–19.

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He truly had counted on Arab hospitality and Ibn Saud’s influence among his people. It was not an Arab problem, answered the king, showing some sign of impatience. “What injury have Arabs done to the Jews of Europe? It is the ‘Christian’ Germans who stole their homes and lives. Let the Germans pay.” The Arabs knew of the respect for justice, the love of the Four Freedoms and all freedom, in the United states, and now they expected the Americans to support them. The Arabs especially wanted the friendship of President Roosevelt.29 The discussion about Palestine having lasted several minutes, it now seemed best to turn to something else. Ibn Saud was most interested in help with his woeful financial condition, but out of concern for his position as a guest he did not introduce the subject; at least, Eddy’s recollections did not include a mention of money. Even so, American aid did continue. Roosevelt said that he was a farmer at heart, that he would like to see irrigation and other methods that would expand Arab land suitable for cultivation. That idea probably was good, replied the king, but he could not support an expansion of agriculture if the benefits “would be inherited by the Jews.” Ibn Saud spoke of sending a mission to Britain and the United States to discuss the Arab view of Palestine. Roosevelt approved, adding that many people in these countries were misinformed. The president, who had come hoping to receive a commitment, ended up giving one. He would do nothing to assist the Jews against the Arabs, he promised, and the United States would make no policy toward Palestine without first consulting with both Arabs and Jews.30 At 3:30 the captain of the Quincy announced that it was time to leave. Ibn Saud protested, saying that he had not been able to host an Arab meal; could he at least serve the president coffee? Roosevelt agreed and drank two cups from the beautiful tiny utensils the Arabs had brought along. He later confided to aides that it tasted “godawful.”31 In the exchange of gifts, Roosevelt gave a medallion from his fourth inauguration and promised that an aircraft would come later. Ibn Saud brought Roosevelt Arab clothing and a jeweled sword; for Mrs. Roosevelt and the president’s daughter, there was fine perfume, dazzling jewelry, and beautiful “harem attire.” The king gathered up his men, who had scattered over the huge warship, and shuffled across the gangplank to the Murphy, which would transport the party to a British cruiser, where waited the wary 29. Direct quotations come from Eddy’s memoir, FDR Meets Ibn Saud, 34, which is a slightly changed version of a memorandum written on February 14, 1945. The memorandum is in SDP 711.90F/2–1445, FRUS, 1945, 8:2–3. 30. This part appears only in Eddy’s official memorandum, SDP 711.90F/2–1445, FRUS, 1945, 8:3. 31. Rigdon, White House Sailor, 168.

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Churchill, prepared to undo any damage the president might have done to British standing in the Middle East. The two leaders parted on excellent terms, each feeling encouraged and rewarded in a new relationship, or so it appeared to Eddy. The minister in days to come reported the most flattering remarks from the king, who referred to the meeting—with some exaggeration, one suspects, or perhaps it was Eddy’s exaggeration—as the “high point of my entire life.” The Saudi monarch had not budged from his position on Palestine, however, as Eddy with no small satisfaction also reported. On one occasion the king remarked that compromise with Zionism would be “an act of treachery to the Prophet and all believing Muslims which would wipe out my honor and destroy my soul.”32 Roosevelt surely had found the meeting as sobering as it had been instructive. This was no frontier savage, no illiterate barbarian he had faced on the Quincy. “I gained the impression that the president was overly impressed by what Ibn Saud said,” Hopkins later would remark. The president’s son Elliott reported Roosevelt’s confession “that of all the men he had talked to in his life, he had got least satisfaction from this iron-willed Arab monarch.”33 The talkative, persuasive president had met his match, and Hopkins concluded that the discussion about Palestine “developed into a monologue” by the king. Roosevelt in March volunteered the information that “of the . . . Muslim problem, the Jewish problem,” he “learned more by talking with Ibn Saud for five minutes than I could have learned in exchange of two or three dozen letters,” a remark that, even allowing for the president’s flair for frivolity, said a great deal.34 Roosevelt remained a political animal, however, who much preferred to please rather than challenge; he often yielded where pressure was greatest. In the two months of life that remained he functioned in an atmosphere much different from the rug-cushioned deck of the Quincy, and there are hints that he remained—or still preferred to be—as much of a Zionist as when he sailed down to Bitter Lake. In mid-March he met with a leading American Zionist, Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, following which the rabbi remarked that Roosevelt still favored unrestricted immigration and a Jewish state in Palestine. “I made my position clear in October” (in the letter to Senator Wagner), the president’s authorized statement read. “That position I have not changed, and shall continue to seek to bring about its earliest realization.”35 32. Eddy to secretary of state, March 3, February 22, 1945, FRUS, 1945, 8:8, 690. 33. Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins, 872; Elliott Roosevelt, As He Saw It (New York: Duell, Sloan, and Pearce, 1946), 245. See also Eleanor Roosevelt, The Autobiography of Eleanor Roosevelt (New York: Harper, 1958), 274–75. 34. New York Times, March 2, 1945. 35. New York Times, March 17, 1945.

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Ensuing protest from the Arab world caused people in the State Department to worry that Roosevelt had undone his good work at Suez. One official added a new dimension in a remark that “the continued endorsement of the President of Zionist objectives may well result in throwing the entire Arab world into the arms of Soviet Russia.”36 Prodded no doubt by worried advisers, Roosevelt shifted again and sent on April 5—one week before his death—a message to his “Great and Good Friend” King Ibn Saud. Here the president reaffirmed pledges made in the recent meeting: that the United States would do nothing about Palestine without consulting Arabs and Jews, that Roosevelt “would take no action . . . which might prove hostile to the Arab people.”37 At the time of his death the president’s position remained unsettled enough to cause one aide to remark: “There are serious doubts in my mind that Israel would have come into being if Roosevelt had lived.”38 Obviously, one never can know what Roosevelt might have done had he lived beyond April 12, 1945. Arab influence in the United States remained minute compared with the pressure from Zionist groups and sympathetic individuals; Roosevelt’s connection to the concept of a Jewish Palestine was much more pronounced than was that of his successors, who nonetheless would come to endorse a state of Israel. The meeting at Great Bitter Lake passed at the time as a colorful exercise in cultural exchange, a new peek into remarkable Arab ways, a footnote to a larger history fashioned by war and international calamity. It was, however, much more. It exposed American ignorance about the Middle East and suggested that the situation in Palestine was much more complex than most people had assumed. It confirmed that Arab sensitivity about the issue was not idle chatter and that whatever Americans might wish to do about a Jewish state they had better tread lightly. The conference also produced markings of long-range American policies for the Middle East. Roosevelt’s appeals to Ibn Saud expressed sympathy for a Jewish entity in Palestine, a position that—adopted by the president’s successors—soon thereafter would take the form of American support for, if not protection of, a state of Israel. Ibn Saud’s response warned of a second, soon to be recurring, theme: any American move on behalf of Jews would make dealing with the Arabs enormously difficult. In 1945 the problem entailed the Saudis and their king; in short order it would apply to the entire Arab world. Hoping 36. Wallace Murray, Director of the Office of Near Eastern and African Affairs, to secretary of state, March 20, 1945, FRUS, 1945, 8:694–95. 37. President Roosevelt to king of Saudi Arabia, April 5, 1945, FRUS, 1945, 8:698. 38. Cited in Howard M. Sachar, A History of Israel: From the Rise of Zionism to Our Time (New York: Knopf, 1985), 255. The aide was David Niles.

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at the time of his death to have it both ways, Roosevelt had laid the foundation for a duality of policy still in force more than fifty years later, when the twentieth century ended. Beyond the problem of Palestine, in taking this bold, original, and creative foray into the remote and mysterious world of sheiks, camels, and sand dunes, Roosevelt identified a specific new aspect of American interests and promoted the larger principle that postwar American policy, heretofore concerned mostly with Europe and East Asia, would have to be truly global.

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IV From Eisenhower to Reagan

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Eisenhower, Khrushchev, and the U-2 Affair A Forty-Six-Year Retrospective

of May 1, 1960—8:53 a.m. Moscow time but only 1:53 a.m. in Washington—CIA pilot Francis Gary Powers found himself in a desperate predicament. Powers, who had taken off that morning from a secret base near Peshawar, Pakistan, now was trapped in the wreckage of his longwinged, short-fuselage, gliderlike black plane code-named U-2. Both the plane and its pilot were falling from an altitude of some 65,000 feet toward the Ural Mountains in Soviet Russia. Powers had been running his high-resolution camera at full capacity as he crossed over Soviet air bases, missile ranges, and suspected nuclear installations at Tyura-Tam and Chelyabinsk-40 near Sverdlovsk, formerly Ekaterinburg, where the last Russian tsar and his family had been murdered during the revolution.1 His mission was to provide his superiors with any information he could find about Soviet missile tests and deployment. When presented with the latest aerial photography, President Dwight Eisenhower might be able to assess whether, in the absence of on-site verification (which the Soviets always had refused), the Soviet first secretary’s boastful statements of recent weeks about the USSR’s military capabilities reflected the missile power that he actually possessed. The information the CIA hoped to obtain was especially important considering the fact that in just two weeks Eisenhower planned to meet with his Soviet counterpart, Nikita Khrushchev, for their third summit meeting, this one in Paris to sign a nuclear-test-ban treaty. If this signing occurred, it would be the first step the superpowers had taken since the advent of the nuclear age in 1945 to slow the escalation of weapons construction and, it was hoped, to restrain the costs and danger of their deployment. It would lessen the fear of each that the other would try something foolish, like a preemptive surprise missile attack—a nuclear Pearl Harbor or Barbarossa (the German invasion EARLY ON THE MORNING

1. Sergei N. Khrushchev, Nikita Khrushchev and the Creation of a Superpower (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2001), 368.

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of the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941). After the meeting in Paris, Eisenhower planned to visit the USSR. It would be the first state visit by an American president to the Soviet Union.2 The atmosphere engendered by such a conciliatory turn of events, Eisenhower hoped, would ease Cold War hostility. (One can only speculate about the hundreds of billions of dollars spent on armaments and the millions of lives that might have been saved in such places as Vietnam and Cambodia had these plans come to fruition.) The actions that caused Powers’s predicament and the events that followed dashed all those hopes. On that fateful morning high above the Urals, a Soviet surface-to-air missile exploded so close to the tail of Powers’s U-2 that the shock wave caused its wings to fold and then to separate from the fuselage. What remained of the plane then tumbled downward. Powers was trapped, his legs jammed under the control panel.3 Fortunately for him, just at that moment another missile exploded against the falling fuselage. The resulting jar enabled him to free himself, and soon he was peacefully descending to earth beneath his open parachute.4 As a CIA employee, Powers had received briefings on how to keep from being caught, something that would compromise a mission’s secrecy and possibly cause a diplomatic incident. His flight suit contained a needle dipped in poison so he could commit suicide. Powers opted to live. The choice, it later was revealed, according to agency instructions, was his to make.5 To Eisenhower critics and many historians in the years that followed, the U-2 incident offered evidence at the very least of the president’s failure to control the national security apparatus, including the Central Intelligence Agency. It revealed also a failure to reverse a Cold War mentality that fed the coffers of the high-tech research institutions and corporations and their supporters in Congress that Eisenhower later labeled the military-industrial complex.6 It was not surprising, say these dissenters, that the Cold War had become more frigid by the end of the Eisenhower years. Eisenhower’s efforts at conciliation had included three summit meetings and extensive correspondence between himself and the Soviet leaders, not to mention his “Chance for Peace” speech after the 2. William Taubman, Khrushchev: The Man and His Era (New York: W. W. Norton, 2003), 441. 3. Michael Beschloss, Mayday: Eisenhower, Khrushchev, and the U-2 Affair (New York: Harper and Row, 1986), 26. 4. Soviet air defense artillery fired fourteen missiles that afternoon, shooting down not only Powers but also a Soviet MIG-19 interceptor, killing its pilot (Khrushchev, Nikita, 374, 378). 5. Allen Dulles to Gen. Andrew Goodpaster, comments on True Magazine account of the U-2 Incident, September 22, 1960, White House Office (hereafter WHO), Office of the Staff Secretary (hereafter OSS), Subject Alphabetical, box 15, file: Intelligence Matters (19), Eisenhower Library, Abilene, Kans. 6. Philip Taubman, Secret Empire (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2003), 312.

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death of Joseph Stalin in 1953; his offer of an “open skies” agreement with Soviet Communist Party First Secretary Nikita Khrushchev at the Geneva summit in 1955; and his personal assurance there that the United States was not going to attack the Soviet Union with nuclear weapons because such an act would be suicidal to both regimes and bring death to millions on both sides.7 Following a Soviet ultimatum over the status of Berlin in 1958, Eisenhower had invited Khrushchev to the United States. Nevertheless, to the critics, Eisenhower did not, in his heart of hearts, try to move beyond deterrence and containment. Indeed, other historians have suggested that Eisenhower and his defense establishment were actually attempting to provoke a military response from the Soviet Union, enabling them to stage a preemptive first strike before the waning of U.S. nuclear superiority—a belligerent scenario that supported the claims of Soviet propaganda. Gen. Curtis LeMay, then commander of the Strategic Air Command, these historians point out, prepared his forces to carry out such a mission, preparations that continued into the Kennedy presidency. The U-2 flights provided his forces with their penetration routes and targets.8 Eisenhower’s decision to authorize U-2 spy flights so close to the Paris summit as well as false cover stories revealed the incongruity of his approach: “In the end he could not bring his provocative actions into accord with his conciliatory aspirations,” Chester J. Pach Jr. and Elmo Richardson have observed.9 According to another skeptic, Eisenhower and Dulles “more often resorted to negotiations as a means of facilitating . . . approaches to containment, rather than as a way of attempting to move beyond containment.”10 7. Taubman, Khrushchev, 352. 8. Richard Rhodes, Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb (New York: Touchstone, 1995), 567–68. 9. Pach and Richardson, The Presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1991), 231. 10. John Lewis Gaddis, Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of American National Security Policy during the Cold War, rev. ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 188. Eisenhower revisionist literature, starting with the availability of national security documents at the Eisenhower Library in the early 1980s, revealed an Eisenhower who both shaped and fully controlled his national security policy. Postrevisionist literature, beginning in the early 1990s, faulted Eisenhower for lack of imagination in his diplomacy and asserted that he allowed his national security establishment, including the CIA, too much leeway. The conventional or orthodox school included such books as Emmett John Hughes, The Ordeal of Power: A Political Memoir of the Eisenhower Years (New York: Atheneum, 1963), and Richard Neustadt, Presidential Power (New York: John Wiley, 1960). For the revisionists, see Robert H. Ferrell, The Eisenhower Diaries (New York: W. W. Norton, 1981), and Fred I. Greenstein, The Hidden Hand Presidency (New York: Basic Books, 1982). Postrevisionist writings include Pach and Richardson, Presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower, and Gaddis, Strategies of Containment. See also Aleksandr Fursenko and Timothy Naftali, Khrushchev’s Cold War: The Inside Story of an American Adversary (New York: W. W. Norton, 2006), based on newly available Russian sources.

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To counter these critics, it is important to note that the actions taken by General LeMay to prepare for his mission of deterrence were only one component of Eisenhower’s national security strategy. He expected the SAC commander to have adequate forces ready to attack on a moment’s notice to deter war—to provide an American capability, if necessary and possible, even for a preemptive response should the enemy take unmistakable steps to launch a general attack.11 As well, evidence refuting the critics of Eisenhower’s approach has also become available from declassified top-secret transcripts of the conversations in which Eisenhower, meeting with a handful of trusted advisers, authorized or, in many instances, refused to authorize the U-2 flights over the Soviet Union. These transcripts reveal a president who near the end of his tenure in office was doing his very best to move beyond Truman’s strategy of containment, a version of which he adopted as his own soon after taking office.12 He knew the U-2 flights were provocative and might cause conciliation to fail, but he also gambled that they might help bring better relations. U-2 intelligence had enabled him, at least until late 1959—despite Khrushchev’s blustering threats and periodic outbursts—to reduce troop levels, decrease tension over Berlin, and make progress in nuclear-test-ban negotiations. Khrushchev, for his part, ordered reductions as well.13 Both sides, in 1958, had also instituted unilateral nuclear test moratoriums. In the spring of 1960, however, Eisenhower still did not have a clear answer to his most pressing questions: the numbers and whereabouts of Soviet intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), intelligence he considered essential both to national security and to meaningful negotiations. (Not until the following year through Corona satellite photography and espionage information from the turncoat Soviet Col. Oleg Penkovsky did the United States discover that the Soviet Union had only five or six operational ICBMs.)14 Eisenhower’s decision to authorize Powers’s flight was thus risky but, everything considered, hardly a stubborn opposition to finding a way out of Cold War. It seems clear in hindsight that if Eisenhower is to be faulted in the U-2 affair, it is because the shooting down of Powers’s flight made it possible, as Eisenhower suspected, for Khrushchev, with the help of his air defense forces, 11. Rhodes, Dark Sun, 568. 12. William B. Pickett, ed., George F. Kennan and the Origins of Eisenhower’s New Look: An Oral History of Project Solarium (Princeton: Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies, 2004), 5. 13. Campbell Craig, Destroying the Village: Eisenhower and Thermonuclear War (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998), 106; Taubman, Khrushchev, 354–55. 14. Taubman, Khrushchev, 536.

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to put the onus on the United States for doing something he already had decided to do; interestingly, the reaction of other countries to the affair—a collective yawn—reinforces such a conclusion. Indeed, it seems evident that, had the U-2 affair not occurred, Khrushchev would have sought some other way to cause the Paris summit to fail. Khrushchev, a former coal miner with little formal education, was, among other things, an opportunist and risk taker—a tendency he would display again two years later when he decided to install offensive missiles in Cuba. The first secretary was enormously pleased when Powers floated to earth and curious Russian tourists offered him a ride to the nearest state farm. There, security officials arrived, arrested him, and took him to a secret location. Khrushchev was well aware that American U-2 flights had been making deep incursions into Soviet territory with impunity for four years. Indeed, just three weeks earlier, on April 9, Soviet air defense forces, despite their new high-altitude fighter plane, the T-3, equipped with an air-to-air missile, had been unable to reach an American U-2 photographing the nuclear test site at Semipalatinsk and the missile test site near Sary-Shagan. After reaching seventeen and a half thousand meters, the Russian pilot realized he could not ascend the additional three kilometers necessary to attack the intruder. According to Khrushchev’s son, Sergei, his father was “eager to teach the insolent Americans a lesson,” but “Air Defense had botched it.” Now, in addition to being elated, Khrushchev claimed puzzlement as to why the Americans had sent these missions after what he believed was a successful visit to the United States and so soon before the planned summit. He speculated that CIA director Allen Dulles had done so without consulting Eisenhower.15 These ruminations were quickly overtaken by other thoughts. Following the launching of Sputnik, the first earth-orbiting satellite, three years earlier, the first secretary had taken comfort from his nation’s string of triumphs, including the first dog in space and then the first man in space, Yuri Gagarin. Now, with their new anti-aircraft missile, the S-75, the Soviets scored a triumph in a realm in which the United States always had led. Misjudging the situation, Khrushchev decided he had a diplomatic advantage.16 First, he announced only that Soviet defense forces had shot down a spy plane. Then, when the U.S. State Department, as he expected, released its prepared cover story that an American weather reconnaissance flight had strayed off 15. Khrushchev, Nikita, 376, 367. 16. Ibid., 380.

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course, Khrushchev sprang his trap.17 At a meeting of the Supreme Soviet (and to the international press corps) he announced that he had the wreckage of the U-2, including its camera and film. He condemned the flights, telling the gathered deputies triumphantly that the Americans had tried to “play on our nerves and weaken our resolve” and “to bend our knees and back.” Eisenhower, he said, must condemn the flights, which “must have occurred without his knowledge.” Then, on May 7, with Washington still refusing to acknowledge the nature of the flight, he revealed that the Soviet Union had in its possession the pilot, Francis Gary Powers, along with the “poison pin” he “was supposed to have used to kill himself,” seventy-five hundred rubles, his watch, two gold watches, and seven women’s rings.18 The flight was, Khrushchev said, a blatant violation of Soviet territorial sovereignty and therefore of international law. Someone must pay. The next day, against the advice of his secretary of state, Christian Herter, Eisenhower justified the flights as “necessary to prevent surprise attack.” Later that day he authorized a State Department press release, the fourth correction in five days, saying that he had personally authorized the U-2 program. Khrushchev replied, “We have no choice” (other than to protest). “The U-2 flights are not only a flagrant violation of international law they are a gross insult to the Soviet Union.” He said he would go ahead with the meeting in Paris.19 This, he now hoped, would be a forum in which Eisenhower, in his opening remarks, would apologize. Eisenhower refused to apologize; and Khrushchev, after a tirade, with his delegation in tow, bolted. To the dismay of both Prime Minister Harold Macmillan of Great Britain and the conference host, French president Charles de Gaulle—both of whom supported Eisenhower and the flights—the summit was over. Eisenhower later recalled, “Khrushchev looked at me once as he was making the statement. He saw I was grinning so he put his face down behind his papers. He knew I knew he had his orders.”20 Any analysis of Eisenhower’s purposes must begin with the historical context. The U-2 flights coincided with the start of an era heretofore unknown to man—one in which nations possessed the power physically to destroy not just 17. Ibid. 18. Taubman, Khrushchev, 455–57. 19. Ibid., 457–58, 460, 459. 20. Memorandum of conversation, Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower and Robert E. Matteson, November 24, 1964, Gettysburg, Pa., DDE Post-Presidential Papers, 1965 Principal File, box 38, file: MAT, Eisenhower Library; see also William B. Pickett, “Dwight D. Eisenhower: His Legacy in World Affairs,” in John Brown to Bob Dole: Movers and Shakers in Kansas History, ed. Virgil Dean (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2006), 290.

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each other’s armies or cities but each other’s way of life. Both sides had acquired transcontinental bombers with one megaton thermonuclear bombs (fifty times more powerful than the bomb that leveled Nagasaki in 1945). Both had then gone on to produce missiles that, with similar warheads, could attack each other’s heartlands in a matter of minutes.21 To policy makers who had been adults at the time of Pearl Harbor and Hitler’s surprise invasion in June 1941, nothing was more important than preventing another such event. Both sides pondered the dilemma and sought ways to reduce the danger while at the same time pursuing separate policies, policies that brought confrontations over Suez, Berlin, and the Formosa Straits along with Soviet suppression of the Hungarian revolt and U.S. intervention in Lebanon. Meanwhile, the two sides, with their allies, competed as well in the technology of interceptor aircraft, anti-aircraft missiles, espionage, and radar. Both sides listened to the other’s radio transmissions whether at sea or in each other’s embassies. Each tested the other’s radar defenses with reconnaissance flights near or over the other’s territory using electronic listening devices and high-resolution aerial photography. It was a secret to no one that Soviet spies operated for years in various U.S. agencies. During World War II, they had infiltrated the Manhattan Project, where they obtained information that sped their own nuclear weapons development program. Depending on the American communist party for recruits, they also infiltrated both the State Department and the CIA. And between 1950 and 1970 thousands of U.S. and NATO reconnaissance flights occurred, often bringing protests by the Soviets. The latter, according to official records, shot down 250 American and British airmen, killing at least 24 and probably many of the 162 reported missing.22 From their inception in July 1956 through May 1, 1960, Eisenhower authorized fifty-one U-2 flights over the Soviet bloc—twenty-six of them over the Soviet Union itself. Of those, seven occurred in 1956, thirteen in 1957, one in 1958, two in 1959, and three in 1960. (Nineteen of the fifty-one flights traveled through the airspace of the People’s Republic of China.)23 The president considered the U-2 flights necessary not only for preventing a surprise attack but also for informing his decisions about military 21. Derek Leebaert, The Fifty-Year Wound: The True Price of America’s Cold War Victory (Boston: Little, Brown, 2002), 217. 22. Christopher Andrew, The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB (New York: Basic Books, 1999), 146–49, 164–65, 172, 177–78; Leebaert, Fifty-Year Wound, 192; William B. Pickett, Dwight David Eisenhower and American Power (Chicago: HarlanDavidson, 1995), 131; U.S. News and World Report, March 15, 1993, pp. 30–36. 23. McConnell Program 19, J. S. D. Eisenhower memorandum of conference with the president July 1, 1960, James Leyerzapf files, Eisenhower Library, Abilene, Kans. (hereafter Leyerzapf files).

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appropriations (limiting them to the minimum amount possible) and as a prerequisite for meaningful negotiations with this secretive, blustering, and erratic adversary. And by 1960, each side knew the other was in the process of replacing manned reconnaissance planes with newer, more advanced aircraft as well as with satellites that orbited the earth and could photograph vast stretches of the other’s territory.24 Finally, Eisenhower’s several-tiered strategy—involving simultaneous intelligence gathering, strengthening of deterrence, and negotiation—was grounded in historical precedent. During World War II, protecting the nation from Hitler’s Germany required espionage and a willingness to talk with any enemy who was willing (in North Africa and Italy, for example). Now, in an age in which virtually instantaneous mass destruction was possible, protecting the nation meant somehow preventing a Soviet attack for an unknown number of decades while at the same time avoiding the debilitating costs and the sacrifices of constant preparations for war. He had reason to think that Khrushchev—since he was engaged in similar acts, had only protested earlier flights, and seemed to need a successful summit—would not let the U-2 affair stop the momentum toward conciliation developed after his visit to the United States.25 In an effort to make conciliation succeed, Eisenhower pursued a strategy that one might call calibrated equilibrium. On March 7, 1958, for example, the president decided to cancel a series of planned overflights. Five days earlier he had received reports that Soviet radar had tracked an American U-2 into the Soviet Far East from the direction of the Sea of Japan. Six weeks later, on April 24, after receipt of a note of official protest—“The USSR expects the U.S. government to undertake further investigation of this act of violation of the airspace of the USSR by an American aircraft and will punish severely those guilty of this violation”—Eisenhower ordered cessation of all flights over the Soviet bloc.26 On December 22 of that year, notwithstanding that photography from earlier flights had alleviated fears that the Soviet Union was ahead in bomber aircraft (the so-called bomber gap), Eisenhower pointedly asked his Board of Consultants on Foreign Intelligence Activities “whether the intelligence which we receive from this source is worth the exacerbation of international tension 24. Geoffrey Perret, Eisenhower (New York: Random House, 1999), 584. 25. Pickett, ed., George F. Kennan, 5. 26. Fisher Howe to Brig. Gen. Goodpaster, April 2, 1958, and transmitted translation of Soviet note of April 21 on overflights, WHO, OSS, Subj. Alpha, box 14, file: Intell. Matters (5), Eisenhower Library. Also see, in the same file, memo, Goodpaster to MIR, April 24, 1958, and Goodpaster memorandum for the record, March 7, 1958.

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which results.” Soviet air-defense radar had tracked “almost every mission flown west of the Urals.” Surveillance had located adequate targets, he said. “The detection of the surprise attack,” noted Eisenhower, “is the important thing. The U-2 does not solve the problem of detection of surprise attack.” He suggested reevaluation. The board nonetheless responded that the activities were worthwhile and recommended that they continue. Eisenhower still refused to authorize them.27 The aforementioned March flight was the only one that penetrated Soviet airspace in 1958. By February 1959, however, Eisenhower faced a crisis. On November 10, 1958, Khrushchev had laid down an ultimatum demanding that the United States and its allies either join with him in negotiating a treaty with East Germany ending four-power occupation and making Berlin part of the Eastern Zone or else the Soviet Union would do so by itself. Eisenhower faced the conflicting demands of the Kremlin (and Pentagon hawks) on the one hand and the advocates of a negotiated resolution on the other, all the while needing to avoid an escalation of rhetoric and preparations for war. In Eisenhower’s discussions with his special committee on overflights, Secretary of Defense Neil McElroy stressed the value of aerial surveillance and how it helped him blunt “much of the attack [in Congress] on the U.S. posture relative to the ICBMs.” But he urged more flights because “we know the location of no launching platforms within the USSR.” Eisenhower, in reply, “cited the tendency of US intelligence officials to overestimate” the capability of the USSR but conceded “the great advantage held by Mr. Khrushchev over himself, accruing from the dictatorial methods which Mr. Khrushchev is able to follow.” Eisenhower “reserved judgment” on the request to continue reconnaissance flights on the basis that it was undue provocation. Nothing “would make him request authority to declare war more quickly than violation of our [American] air space by Soviet aircraft.” Eisenhower might permit “one or two flights,” but he opposed “an extensive program.”28 In the months that followed, he authorized two—the first on July 9 and the second on December 6, 1959. Clearly, at that moment, in addition to the Soviet Union, Eisenhower worried about the influence of what he would soon label the “military-industrial complex.” The transcript reads: “The President . . . commented on the way irresponsible officials and demagogues are leaking security information and presenting 27. Goodpaster memorandum for the record, May 29, 1958, and John S. D. Eisenhower memorandum of conference with the president on December 16, 1958, WHO, OSS Subj. Alpha, box 14, file: Intell. Matters (5), Eisenhower Library. 28. McConnell Program 04, John S. D. Eisenhower, memorandum for the record, February 12, 1959, Leyerzapf files.

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a misleading picture of our security situation to our people. Some of our senators in particular seem to be doing this. In turn, the munitions makers,” he said, “are making tremendous efforts toward getting more contracts and in fact seem to be exerting undue influence over the Senators.” He condemned the propensity of Congress, pandering to constituents, to make demands having nothing to do with military strategy or readiness. “Nothing,” he said, is “as expensive as shuttling between haste and complacency.” The key was “whether we have [missile and bomber] sufficiency, whether it is efficient, and whether it is properly deployed; if so, he is ready to beat off the self-proclaimed experts calling for sudden changes.”29 Just eleven days later, Eisenhower’s main concern shifted to Khrushchev. On February 24, his press secretary, James Hagerty, recorded in his diary the president’s intense frustration after Khrushchev made another incendiary speech. Eisenhower responded in exasperation, saying that the speech “all but shattered any hopes to reach some decent negotiation with the Soviets over Berlin. What this fellow is doing is saying to me as President of the United States, to Macmillan as Prime Minister of Great Britain, and to de Gaulle as President of France, you come to my meeting on my terms, accept my provisions—I will not accept yours—I will not negotiate with you over your proposals. If you do not accept my proposals, then you face the threat of war. Well, that is something I cannot accept and do not intend to accept.” For the first time in his presidency, he was considering calling up the National Guard and reserves so that the regular forces could move to forward bases.30 Eisenhower’s intelligence advisers pressed him to find out what Khrushchev was doing. With new evidence proffered to him that “at least for the next few months” chances of a U-2 being intercepted by Soviet fighters was unlikely, the president on March 31 listened as they spoke of their critical ignorance of the Soviet missile threat. The intelligence community did not know “whether or not any are now deployed or are soon to be deployed; we know nothing of the pattern, method or location of deployment. Neither do we have good evidence as to [the] nature and location of production facilities. Thus we are unable to give adequate judgments as to magnitude and timing of the threat, or to give data to the Strategic Air Command for its use in attempting neutralization. The Soviets claim that the power balance vis-à-vis the United States is changing. We believe that if this is true, the missile factor is the key.” These officials 29. McConnell Program 05, Goodpaster memo of conference with president, February 13, 1959, Leyerzapf files. 30. Memorandum of conversation with the President, February 24, 1959, James Hagerty Papers, box 3, file: Memos of conversations JCH 1959, Eisenhower Library.

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cited Khrushchev’s “claims that the USSR is in series production of ICBM’s, that the Soviets already have a mobile capability with IRBM and will shortly have it with ICBM. We have no information to confirm or deny this.” The analysts claimed that “Sverdlovsk in the Urals is the best bet on the location of a major ICBM factory. We might well obtain key information from photography that would lead us to a sound appraisal of production.”31 Eisenhower listened but still balked. In response to requests by the director of central intelligence, Allen Dulles, on April 3 for another U-2 flight to discover whether Soviet ICBMs were mobile or fixed, hardened or soft, and their locations, the president replied: “The psychological impact on Khrushchev of our flying such a mission at this time would be very serious. We are currently in a state of negotiations over the Berlin crisis which threatens to be one of the most serious of our crises to date. . . . Since our U-2 flights have been detected consistently for the past two years, we will inevitably be needling Khrushchev by conducting such an action. This could have serious repercussions on the negotiating atmosphere we are trying to foster.”32 The president briefly relented, giving approval for more flights on April 6, but the very next day he changed his mind. “First,” he said correctly, “we now have the power to destroy the Soviets without need for detailed targeting. Second, as the world is going now, there seems no hope for the future unless we can make some progress in negotiation (it is already four years since the Geneva meeting). Third, we cannot in present circumstances afford the revulsion of world opinion against the United States that might occur—the U.S. being the only nation that could conduct this activity. Fourth, we are putting several hundred million dollars into programs for more advanced capabilities.” He saw “some evidence that the Soviets really want a Summit meeting.” The transcript continued: “the president himself feels that there is a need to make some kind of progress at the summit, even though we cannot be sure that this is possible. There are, however, some straws in the wind indicating the prospect is not wholly hopeless.”33 Eisenhower’s decision was not popular with his advisers. McElroy mentioned that when the Soviet long-range bomber arsenal increased in number, without solid information the United States would have to keep its forces on air alert. And without the best possible information on the Soviet missile program, the United States would have difficulty determining the size of its own.34 After 31. McConnell Program 06, case file of sanitized top-secret documents, most dated March 31, 1959, Leyerzapf files. 32. McConnell Program 07, Memorandum of April 3, 1959, Leyerzapf files. 33. McConnell Program 08, April 11, 1959, Goodpaster Memorandum of conference with the president of April 7, 1959, Leyerzapf files. 34. Ibid.

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giving one of his strongest protests to the committee, Eisenhower on July 8 nevertheless authorized another flight, this despite his awareness that the Soviets now had a jet fighter that probably could go to 70,000 feet. “It was agreed that, in case of protests, we would defend ourselves with an absolute disavowal and denial on the matter.” “Khrushchev,” Eisenhower said, would nevertheless have the propaganda advantage and “seems almost to be looking for excuses to be belligerent.” The minutes of the meeting contain a stark and prophetic appraisal by the commander in chief. “Holding the cards he does, he [Khrushchev] could very readily say that such an event as this marks the end of serious negotiations. There remains . . . the question whether we are getting to the point where we must decide if we are trying to prepare to fight a war, or to prevent one.”35 The overflight of July 9, although detected by the Soviets, occurred without incident. The flights (the series code-named Talent), according to a CIA analyst, “were the only reliable means for locating Soviet missile sites” and “showed the continuing existence of a single launch pad at TYURA TAM” and provided important telemetry data on Soviet ICBM characteristics.36 The flight angered Khrushchev but did not cause him, despite Eisenhower’s rejection of his Berlin ultimatum, to cancel his trip to the United States in September, the first such visit by a Soviet head of state. Eisenhower later denied Khrushchev’s claim that there was a “Spirit of Camp David,” that is, a relaxation of tensions, following the first secretary’s visit and summit. The president, in the weeks following the summit, nevertheless emphatically rejected Allen Dulles’s request for more U-2 flights. He asked his adviser what grounds Khrushchev would have for interpreting the flights as defensive behavior on the part of a peace-loving country. Why would the Soviets not begin thinking that “we are seriously preparing plans to knock out their installations.” The negotiations were not a game. Only if “we became convinced that we were going to get nowhere on our disarmament efforts” would Eisenhower “be inclined to give approval and do what we can to learn the location of their missile sites.” The committee’s recommendation for another flight, he said, showed that “we are trying to do two incompatible things at once.”37 By early 1960 President Eisenhower had become even more convinced that abstention was the best policy. Reflecting again on the Camp David summit 35. McConnell Program 10, Goodpaster memorandum of July 8, 1959, Leyerzapf files. 36. L. A. Hyland memorandum of August 25, 1959, to the director of central intelligence, WHO, OSS, Subj. Alpha, box 15, Eisenhower Library. 37. Goodpaster memorandum of October 26 conference with the president, October 30, 1959, WHO, OSS, Subj. Alpha, box 15, File: Intelligence Matters (13), Eisenhower Library.

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(and on the diminishing value of the overflights), Eisenhower on February 8 responded negatively to another request. His tone was upbeat; his knowledge accurate. “Every bit of information,” he said, “corroborates what Khrushchev told him at Camp David—for example regarding the Soviet cutback in surface ships, aircraft, atomic power production, etc. Khrushchev added that he was not too much interested in short-range missiles. The President said he recognizes that intelligence has value, but in today’s circumstances the ICBM is taking on central importance. If the Soviets concentrate on big missiles they have only one mode of action—to attempt a knock-out blow and to receive such a blow in return.” The president had accurately summarized what would become known as the MAD doctrine—deterrence by mutual assured destruction.38 In what proved a fateful decision, however, Eisenhower on April 25 approved one more flight, carefully designed not to occur any later than two weeks prior to the planned Paris summit. A previous flight on April 8 had been successful but had not found everything it was seeking. “After checking with the President,” Gen. Andrew Goodpaster, Eisenhower’s staff secretary, wrote, “I informed Mr. Bissell [Richard Bissell, U-2 program director] that one additional operation may be undertaken, provided it is carried out prior to May 1. No operation is to be carried out after May 1.”39 The flight, on May Day 1960, the very last day of this “window,” was intended to go from Pakistan to Norway, across Tyuratam and Sverdlovsk. Instead, it took Francis Gary Powers onto Soviet soil and into the history books. The availability of Soviet documents following the collapse of the Soviet Union has provided new information about why Khrushchev walked out of the Paris summit. By the spring of 1960, the first secretary’s position had become untenable. He had reversed himself too many times, having moved from reaction to reform and then back to reaction, and had stepped on many toes. In the process of maneuvering, from 1954 through 1958, to supreme power in the Politburo, he had made enemies. And while he thought test firings and space spectaculars demonstrated the technological prowess of Soviet rocket and missile forces to the world, by the spring of 1960 he had discovered that these had brought no diplomatic leverage with the West and little approval from his allies in either East Germany or the People’s Republic of China.40 38. McConnell Program 12, Goodpaster memorandum for the record, February 8, 1960, Leyerzapf files. 39. McConnell Program 13, Goodpaster memorandum for record, April 25, 1960, Leyerzapf files. 40. Taubman, Khrushchev, 454.

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His first concern had been to bring an end to the outflow of refugees and economic resources from East Germany to the West via West Berlin and thereby to reduce the demands of his ally, Walter Ulbrecht, the East German communist leader, that had been the main cause of Khrushchev’s ultimatum of November 1958. But Eisenhower had not budged on Berlin.41 Meanwhile, the first secretary’s relationship with the People’s Republic of China was faring poorly. Mao had pressured Khrushchev to authorize increased assistance to a Chinese atomic-bomb program and was displeased by the lack of Soviet support for his efforts in both 1955 and 1959 to dislodge Chiang Kai-shek’s nationalist troops from the offshore islands of Quemoy and Matsu. Finally, frustrated with Mao’s criticism of his negotiations with Eisenhower (what Mao called Khrushchev’s “peace policy” toward the capitalist West), the first secretary decided to withdraw all assistance from China. This act formalized the Sino-Soviet split and, although it was not widely recognized at the time, effectively splintered the so-called communist monolith.42 Khrushchev also felt political pressure within the Politburo. By reducing military spending and manpower to provide improved housing and living standards for the Soviet people, his efforts had antagonized the generals, the industrialists, and the “hawks,” the denizens of the military-industrial complex of the Soviet Union. In 1956 at the Twentieth Party Congress, Khrushchev had attempted to disassociate the party from the use by Stalin of denunciations, incarceration, and murder as political instruments. But the first secretary remained a creature of that system, as did his compatriots in the party central committee, who dared not denounce it either.43 Most of all, Khrushchev was not ready for a relaxation of tensions because he knew that the Soviet Union remained inferior economically and technologically to the West, including in nuclear weapons. Only when it possessed more missiles and at least three hundred warheads did he believe the Soviet Union could negotiate from sufficient strength.44 In the U-2 shoot-down, however, Khrushchev espied an opportunity. The general secretary hoped that by going to Paris he would be able to obtain, if not public recognition as an equal and a nuclear-test-ban treaty, at least an agreement on Berlin. The Camp David meeting had raised his spirits: Khrushchev after he departed “considered a summit agreement on Berlin almost a sure thing 41. Pickett, Dwight David Eisenhower, 119–20; Khrushchev, Nikita, 302–5. 42. Taubman, Khrushchev, 454. 43. Ibid.; Khrushchev, Nikita, 91–92. 44. Sergei Khrushchev, conversation with the author, January 29, 2005, National Defense University, Washington, D.C.

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and a test-ban accord also likely.” Afterward he had become doubtful because of the opposition of the West German chancellor, Konrad Adenauer, and the French president, Charles de Gaulle. The Kremlin critics had been especially harsh after the April 9 U-2 flight and statements the same month by Eisenhower administration officials that “Khrushchev was skating on thin ice” with regard to West Berlin. By the end of April, the Chinese had publicly “denounced Khrushchev’s courtship of Eisenhower as a betrayal of communism.”45 Now, however, with the fortunate turn of events over Sverdlovsk, Khrushchev thought matters had swung in his favor.46 Unfortunately, the euphoria once again did not last. Indeed, the U-2 affair, instead of strengthening Khrushchev’s hand, appeared to have weakened it. Having discovered that the Powers affair had done nothing to alter either de Gaulle’s or Adenauer’s opposition to concessions on Berlin, Khrushchev realized that he could bring back nothing that would justify his loss of political capital with the East Germans, the Chinese, and the Kremlin hardliners. He opted to stay with his plans to attend the summit only on the chance that during the preliminaries he might receive an indication of his hoped-for advantage.47 This possibility dwindled steadily each day until just before his scheduled departure for Paris on May 14. He thus had no choice, he told the official party at the airport in Moscow, except to walk out of the summit. He called the U-2 flights “sheer impudence.” They reminded him of “criminals who had preyed on defenseless passersby. . . . But we are not a defenseless passer-by. Our country is strong and powerful.” He had hoped to show Eisenhower his “dacha” and “crops growing at neighboring collective farms” and “to take him for a motorboat ride on the Moscow River.” But now, he was convinced “that our pride and dignity would be damaged if we went ahead with the conference as if nothing had happened.” Shortly before takeoff from the airport, he told his aides he would “demand that Eisenhower apologize, punish those directly responsible, and promise never to do it again.” He considered it virtually impossible that the president would agree, so the summit, as biographer William Taubman wrote, “would almost certainly collapse.”48 Insisting on making the first statement of the official meeting, Khrushchev read a forty-five-minute (including translation) prepared statement, growing increasingly “combative and exhilarated” during his tirade and the pauses for translation. An angry Eisenhower, for his part, responded in cool, measured 45. Ibid. 46. Taubman, Khrushchev, 448. 47. Ibid., 448, 452, 454, 455. 48. Ibid., 459–60.

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tones. Upon arriving in Paris, he still hoped “to save” the summit. “The United States,” he forthrightly replied to Khrushchev’s demands, “would not shirk its responsibility to safeguard against surprise attack,” but “the U-2 flights were suspended after the recent incident and are not to be resumed.” The American delegation, he said, was prepared to continue with the conference and also “to undertake bi-lateral conversations between the United States and the USSR while the main conference proceeds.” Prime Minister Macmillan attempted to draw all parties back into the conference, but de Gaulle criticized Khrushchev for bringing them together for no useful purpose and “chided him for making so much of airplane overflights when ‘yesterday that satellite you launched just before you left Moscow to impress us over flew the sky of France eighteen times without my permission. How do I know that you do not have cameras aboard which are taking pictures of my country?’”49 Khrushchev replied briefly to de Gaulle’s effort to downplay the overflights but, deeming further remarks useless, brought the proceedings, and with them Eisenhower’s hopes for a warming of the Cold War, to an end. With hindsight and the opening of archives, the U-2 affair takes on an aura of high tragedy. Despite contrasting political philosophies and systems of government, both Eisenhower and Khrushchev, principal actors on the world stage, seemed to be seeking the same thing—a relaxation of tensions to undercut the influence in each country of the military and its supporters in the aerospace industry and government bureaucracies. Each men desired more resources for domestic priorities and a continuation of his government (or party) in power. These impulses toward conciliation, however, had generated opposition from those forces with a vested interest in a continuation of hostility. For Eisenhower, this meant he had to fend off military planners and the intelligence community while at the same time making certain that he had sufficient military power and knowledge of the enemy to protect his nation from attack or intimidation. For Khrushchev, it meant insisting—supported by public awareness of Sputnik, pioneering Soviet ICBM tests, and the recent success of his air-defense forces but suspicious that Eisenhower knew better—that his country was superior in missile strength and thus could devote resources to housing while at the same time taking no action that would interfere with missile construction. The failure of conciliation by both parties—Eisenhower unable to resist one more U-2 flight before the Paris summit, and Khrushchev unable to resist exploiting another technological breakthrough—thus seems to contain elements of 49. Ibid., 461, 463.

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Greek drama. Each sought something circumstances would not allow; neither was able to overcome fate. However, when one looks closely, the drama is less vivid. One sees instead that despite a movement toward thaw, despite Eisenhower’s hopes and readiness to move beyond confrontation and Khrushchev’s effort to seek accommodation, neither—especially Khrushchev—was prepared for détente. Eisenhower was willing to negotiate while hoping for Soviet softening or internal change. Time, he believed, was on his side. As for Khrushchev, as he told his son, he did not yet have the three hundred nuclear warheads he needed before he felt he could negotiate with any hope of success. Indeed, at the time, he had less than four, none of them operational.50 The failure of the Paris summit, one must therefore conclude, was more melodrama than tragedy.

50. Khrushchev, Nikita, 283; Taubman, Khrushchev, 379.

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faced a complex “China question.” By November 1963, relations with the People’s Republic of China were caught up in larger triangles involving great-power relations with the Soviet Union and also Chinese relations with Taiwan. Some fifteen years of harsh Sino-American rhetoric helped shape America’s views of Mao Zedong and his communist regime and placed significant constraints on Johnson’s freedom to maneuver. SinoAmerican relations also complicated the equally important issue of working with the Soviet Union to limit nuclear proliferation and ease a nuclear arms race. At home, government analysts and academic experts accepted the so-called domino theory. They viewed the People’s Republic of China as an aggressive regime, dedicated to upending the existing order in eastern Asia. They agreed that America had to contain China at least until the region’s relatively new governments were able to expand their economies, strengthen their hold on the allegiance of their populations, and add to their capacity to resist the pressure of China and/or the lure of communism. The experts did not all agree on the continuing isolation of the PRC, but they felt China needed to conform to a largely U.S.-defined code of behavior before such isolation should end. Despite these significant challenges, Johnson and Rusk tried several times to reach out to Beijing. While the steps they took were relatively small, in the world of diplomacy, they were also potentially very significant. In general, they wanted to move from isolating to containing the People’s Republic, and they were willing to expand Sino-American contacts as a building block to improved relations much as they worked to increase Soviet-American exchanges in academia, the arts, science, and air transport. Unfortunately, given the internal dynamics of the People’s Republic, especially the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, and the deepening U.S. involvement in Vietnam, these efforts to begin a Sino-American rapprochement for many years accomplished little. The United States intervened in Vietnam in part to prevent China from toppling the dominoes of Southeast Asia, and

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Beijing refused to discuss relations until Washington quit Taiwan and left Vietnam. But, as the Sino-Soviet schism widened throughout the 1960s, as Moscow moved more and more military forces to its long border with Beijing, and then after the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968, Beijing began to tone down its especially harsh anti-American rhetoric. Nonetheless, it would take the Sino-Soviet clash along the Ussuri River in March 1969 to change the Chinese government from emphasizing ideology to stressing military security, once again turning to traditional Chinese measures of befriending the distant barbarian for help against the closer one. China certainly seemed an enigma in 1964. In its first fifteen years, the People’s Republic of China had terrorized its population, threatened its neighbors, and become a nuclear power. The communists used violence, especially peasant anger, to seize control. After the repression following the so-called Hundred Flowers Movement, Beijing engaged in “The Great Leap Forward,” a drive to increase industrial and agricultural production following suspension of Soviet aid. The government wasted resources—for example, promoting backyard furnaces that produced relatively useless low-quality steel—and helped cause the great famines of 1960 and 1961 in which countless millions died.1 Mao’s vision threatened China’s domestic tranquillity. Millions of Chinese landlords and “rich” peasants suffered in the early years of the People’s Republic; hundreds of thousands of Chinese soldiers became casualties in Korea; millions died from famine resulting from bad government policy. Many outside China, including Dean Rusk, at the Ford Foundation in much of the 1950s, found Mao’s policies repulsive and the regime nearly criminal in its disregard for human life. It was Rusk who had said in 1951, as assistant secretary of state for far east affairs, that the People’s Republic of China had not passed the first test; “it wasn’t Chinese.” China had difficult relations with its neighbors. In early 1950, Chinese troops moved into Tibet to restore Chinese control. The 1951 Seventeen Point Agreement stipulated that China would guarantee Tibet’s political, cultural, and religious systems and institutions, but after a Tibetan revolt in March 1959 Beijing cracked down. The resulting “invasion” brought the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Tibetans, the forced exile of at least that many, and destruction of thousands of sacred religious sites. Meanwhile, from 1950 on, the People’s Liberation Army was preparing for an invasion of Taiwan. PLA troops were massing on the mainland making preparations to cross the Taiwan Straits; 1. Lucien Bianco, Origins of the Chinese Revolution (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1971); Alfred A Chan, Mao’s Crusade: Politics and Policy Implementation in China’s Great Leap Forward (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001).

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after President Harry S. Truman ordered the U.S. Seventh Fleet into the Straits in the first days of the North Korean invasion of the south, Beijing made ending U.S. support for and defense of Jiang Jieshi’s regime in Taipei a sine qua non to any improvement in Sino-American relations. China’s counterinvasion of Korea in November 1950 and the subsequent clash of Chinese and American troops hardened positions for more than a decade. In October 1962, after months of failed negotiation, China attacked Indian army units situated at either end of their mutual two-thousand-mile border. Within days, Chinese troops had seized disputed territories, halting the military advance by November 21.2 All the while, Sino-Soviet relations steadily worsened. After Joseph Stalin’s death in March 1953, Mao apparently considered himself the senior communist and expected Soviet leaders to take his direction. Nikita Khrushchev believed Moscow remained the center of the international communist movement and disagreed. By 1960, the USSR had removed its remaining technicians from China and halted technical aid, and the two communist parties hurled long and detailed invectives at the other. Mao bitterly criticized Khrushchev for backing down in the Cuban Missile Crisis at the same time that China fought its brief war with India. He wanted a more aggressive posture vis-à-vis the United States and the West.3 Sino-American relations were, at best, poor. In the 1950s, the U.S. government referred to the mainland regime as “Red China,” and John Foster Dulles rather famously refused to shake Zhou Enlai’s outstretched hand at the Geneva Conference on Indochina in 1954. While many in the Eisenhower administration believed Beijing had aggressive intentions toward its neighbors, Mao’s regime could and likely did also view American power in the Pacific as an imperialist containment of China. The China Lobby reached its peak in American politics, with zealots demanding that the U.S. government “unleash” Jiang Jieshi’s Nationalist forces to retake the mainland.4 John F. Kennedy told key advisers that he would postpone efforts to improve relations with the People’s Republic until a second term. His razor-thin pop-

2. Chen Jian, China’s Road to the Korean War: The Making of the Sino-American Confrontation (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994); Dawa Norbu, China’s Tibet Policy (Richmond, Eng.: Curzon Press, 2001). 3. Odd Arne Westad, ed., Brothers in Arms: The Rise and Fall of the Sino-Soviet Alliance, 1945– 1963 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998); David Floyd, Mao against Khrushchev: A Short History of the Sino-Soviet Conflict (New York: Praeger, 1964). 4. Foster Rhea Dulles, American Policy toward Communist China, 1949–1969 (New York: Crowell, 1972); Qiang Zhai, The Dragon, the Lion, and the Eagle: Chinese-British-American Relations, 1949– 1958 (Kent: Kent State University Press, 1994).

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ular-vote margin over Richard Nixon gave him little political capital to expend. His predecessor, Dwight Eisenhower, told him at a meeting on January 19, 1961, the day prior to inauguration, that he, Eisenhower, would support his successor in foreign policy save for a change in policy toward China. Given these constraints, Kennedy met with his new secretary of state, Dean Rusk, and warned, “I don’t want to read in the Washington Post or the New York Times that the State Department is thinking about a change in our China policy!” Rusk, ever the loyal subordinate, took the blame from many State Department diplomats for intransigence and stubbornness when he was only following the orders of the president. Rusk also believed that reaching out to China might please the Democratic Party’s liberal constituency but do little to affect Beijing’s policy toward Washington, and it would dishearten America’s allies in the region. Or, as Rusk concluded in his memoirs, “the Chinese Communists didn’t seem interested in improving U.S.-Chinese relations.” Walt W. Rostow, as head of the Policy Planning Staff in the State Department in 1962, and later Johnson’s national security adviser, urged that the United States should retain “a capability for directly harassing Communist China,” for he “saw little chance that [Beijing’s] belligerence toward the West would soon diminish.”5 During this time, the Sino-Soviet schism devolved into a harsh ideological confrontation. Increasing tension along the long Sino-Soviet border and Chinese complaints about unequal treaties that Russia forced the Qing Dynasty to concede more than a century earlier added to the ideological challenge. The Sino-Soviet dispute became public in June 1960 at the Congress of the Romanian Communist Party. In June, Khrushchev and Peng Zhen, the mayor of Beijing and a member of the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee, openly clashed. Khrushchev attacked Mao as a “nationalist,” an “adventurist,” and a “deviationist,” while Peng responded with calling Khrushchev a “revisionist” and criticized his “patriarchal, arbitrary, and tyrannical” behavior. The antagonism continued, even more strongly, at a meeting of communist parties in Moscow in November 1960. Relations remained at best frosty for the remainder of the decade. China adopted an anti-imperialist and antirevisionist strategy known as “fighting with two fists” (or the “two united fronts”) that expressed Beijing’s fears that Washington and Moscow might reach accommodation on the basis of mutual antagonism and racism toward the People’s Republic. Even

5. See Rusk, As I Saw It (New York: W. W. Norton, 1990), 283–84; Thomas J. Schoenbaum, Waging Peace and War: Dean Rusk in the Truman, Kennedy, and Johnson Years (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1988), 387–88; Rostow, “Basic National Security Policy,” March 26, 1962, as quoted in Gordon Chang, Friends and Enemies (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990), 258–59.

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after Khrushchev’s ouster in October 1964, the two communist parties still hurled long, detailed polemics at one another.6 When Johnson became president, the great-power triangle was nearly complete. Movement along any leg of the triangle affected the other two legs as well as associated triangles; that is, a U.S. approach to China would necessarily affect both Soviet-American and Sino-Soviet relations. The Soviet Union had the advantage in this power structure of the 1960s. Given the competing interests of Soviet-American and Soviet-Chinese relations, the USSR decided it needed first to deal with the PRC and reunify the world communist movement under Moscow’s banner. The United States and the People’s Republic had secondary positions because they had no easy mechanisms for interacting with one another, despite the intermittent and ongoing Sino-American ambassadorial talks in Warsaw.7 Twin events in October 1964 complicated Sino-American relations. On October 15, the Soviet leadership overthrew Nikita Khrushchev, while the next day China announced it had successfully exploded a nuclear device. Khrushchev reportedly relinquished all of his posts, fading into obscurity. This amazing end to a tumultuous career surprised foreign observers. U.S. ambassador Foy Kohler reported from Moscow that “we find it difficult [to] believe that Khrushchev was removed from all party posts and government responsibilities ‘for reasons of age and health.’” In mid-October 1964 China joined the United States, the Soviet Union, Great Britain, and France as a nuclear nation. While China lacked delivery systems—long-range bombers or medium- or long-range missiles—and it would take years for Beijing to stockpile sufficient bombs and delivery vehicles to achieve a credible threat, the detonation at Lop Nor in western China greatly complicated discussions limiting the spread of nuclear weapons. The blast had many ramifications, especially for governments in the region. As the People’s Daily boasted: “how can we be expected to walk into the trap now that we possess the means to break the nuclear monopoly of the United States? Fantastic, isn’t it?”8 6. Frederick C. Teiwes with Warren Sun, China’s Road to Disaste (Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1999); Floyd, Mao against Khrushchev; NIE 100–3-60, “Sino-Soviet Relations,” August 9, 1960, pp. 164–65, http://www.dni.gov/nic/foia_china_content.html; Donald S. Zagoria, The SinoSoviet Conflict, 1956–1961 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1962), 288–341; Harold C. Hinton, China’s Turbulent Quest: An Analysis of China’s Foreign Relations since 1941 (New York: Macmillan, 1972), esp. chap. 5, “The Struggle against Khrushchev.” 7. On triangles, see Gerald Segal, The Great Power Triangle (London: Macmillan, 1982); John Gittings, “The Great-Power Triangle and Chinese Foreign Policy,” China Quarterly 39 (July/September 1969): 41–54. 8. Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964–1968, Volume XIV, The Soviet Union (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 2001), docs. 51–53; Moscow to SecState 1176, October

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Beijing’s fears of Moscow’s and Washington’s intentions soon worsened. Zhou Enlai’s visit to Moscow in late 1964 failed to heal the breach. Meanwhile, along China’s southern border, the American involvement in Vietnam escalated. Between the Battle of Ap Bac in early January 1963 and the Battle of the Ia Drang Valley in October–November 1965, the United States moved from advising South Vietnamese armed forces to largely taking over the fighting in the south. Along with the presence of more and more American ground forces, the air war over North Vietnam increased the likelihood of an “incident” over south China. At the same time, several hundred thousand Chinese troops served in North Vietnam along with Chinese technical experts—perhaps fifty thousand at a time—operating anti-aircraft batteries, repairing transportation and communication networks, and training North Vietnamese army units.9 Both Washington and Beijing feared the possibility that the conflict would force China to intervene in Vietnam as it had in Korea fifteen years earlier. Rusk later noted that “if anyone had asked me in 1963 whether we could have a half a million men in South Viet Nam and bomb everything in the North right up to the Chinese border without bringing in Red China, I would have been hard put to say that you could.” He later claimed that the “policy of gradual response . . . helped to limit the war to Viet Nam.”10 In addition to international events, Johnson and Rusk inherited further constraints, both foreign and domestic. Governments in the region remained fragile; economies were developing, and few in the middle 1960s could foresee the Asian powerhouses of today. Rusk was willing to rethink U.S. policy toward China but, in the end, came back to maintaining the status quo. He noted that,

17, 1964, and Moscow to SecState 1183, October 18, 1964, box 2887, POL 15, Govt USSR, 10– 15-64, Central Foreign Policy Files, Record Group 59, National Archives (hereafter CFPF); “China Marks Anniversary of Atomic Bomb,” China Daily, October 16, 2004; Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964–1968, Volume XXX, China (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1998), docs. 57, 58, 60 (hereafter FRUS: China). 9. Harold G. Moore and Joseph L. Galloway, We Were Soldiers Once—and Young: Ia Drang, the Battled That Changed the War in Vietnam (New York: Random House, 1992); America, November 21, 1964, pp. 651–52; “The Era of Many Romes,” Time, November 13, 1964, pp. 44– 49; “Why Russia and China Now Fear U.S.,” U.S. News and World Report, November 30, 1964, pp. 66–70; New York Times, December 20, 1964; NIE 11–12-66, “The Outlook for Sino-Soviet Relations,” http://www.dni.gov/nic/foia_china_content.html; see also USSR Memos, vol. VI, 10– 11/64, November 5, 1964, NSF Country File, box 219, Lyndon Baines Johnson Library, Austin, Tex. (hereafter LBJL); “Communist China Joint Weeka No. 46,” November 13, 1964, and “Communist China Joint Weeka No. 51,” December 18, 1964, box 2008, POL 2–1, Joint Weekas CHICOM, 10/1/64, CFPF. 10. Rusk, As I Saw It, 282; Dean Rusk Oral History Interview II, by Paige E. Mulhollan, September 26, 1969, pp. 22–23, LBJL.

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in 1961, he “did lean toward a two-Chinas approach, even though both Chinas probably would have rejected it.” In 1965, he asked for a revised China study, to consider “what happens if China continues to be militant?” and “what happens if China moves toward peaceful coexistence?” That is, Rusk made clear that the study group participants “should not tie a review of policy to one assumption.” The veteran diplomat Llewellyn Thompson outlined the study for Rusk; it included a discussion of “Critical Policy Problems,” including “Degree of Soviet Involvement” in Southeast Asia, “The Nature of the Communist Chinese Threat,” “the Use of Nuclear Weapons,” and “the escalation of political objectives.” At a meeting in late August on the final draft, the issues had changed little. In turn, this grim view helped Rusk justify U.S. intervention in Vietnam: “behind the cover of our resistance in Vietnam has been a steady strengthening of the forces of free Asia.” In March 1966, he told the House Foreign Affairs Committee that “the United States did not intend to attack China, sought expanded unofficial contacts with China, intended to continue the Warsaw talks, and was ready to negotiate arms control and nonproliferation issues” (China was a notable “no-show” in the nuclear nonproliferation talks).11 Some dissenters urged a fundamental change in policy; they included the State Department’s James C. Thomson Jr. and Alfred Jenkins. Thomson sent a series of memorandums to his superiors and later wrote several highly critical articles on U.S. China policy and U.S. Vietnam policy. He blamed the aftereffects of McCarthyism for forcing experienced China experts out of the State Department, he decried the more numerous and more highly placed Soviet experts inappropriately exerting greater influence on policy, and he found Dean Rusk to be immovable on easing strictures on relations with China. Still, Thomson complained without taking into account the situation in China or the position of the Chinese government. Alfred Jenkins on Rostow’s National Security Council staff castigated Dean Rusk for being rigidly overcautious. “On the one issue of China, his style scares me,” Jenkins wrote Rostow.12 Editorial and news writers in major magazines were among those who viewed the People’s Republic as a threat, applauded the administration’s commitment to containment including in Vietnam, and helped create a constraint 11. FRUS: China, doc. 92, memorandum for the record, July 6, 1965; doc. 94, Thompson to Rusk, July 15, 1965; doc. 99, Memorandum of Conversation, August 27, 1965. Dean Rusk Oral History Interview II, 58–59; Rusk, As I Saw It, 289. 12. See Thomson, “How Could Vietnam Happen? An Autopsy,” in G. John Ikenberry, ed., American Foreign Policy: Theoretical Essays, Third Edition (New York: Longman, 1999), 471–80, and Thomson, “On the Making of U.S. China Policy, 1961–9: A Study in Bureaucratic Politics,” China Quarterly 50 (April/June 1972): 243; Jenkins to Rostow, August 3, 1966, NSF Country File, China, box 239, Memos (6), 3/66–9/66, LBJL.

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against change. An article by Minister of Defense Lin Biao in early September 1965 entitled “Long Live the Victory of People’s War” prompted the New York Times to headline, “Peking’s Declaration Urging World ‘People’s War’ to Destroy U.S.” The Times further noted that “Red China urges a ‘People’s War’” and that “Vietnamese Communists and other leftist revolutionaries [should] strike at United States forces without fear of nuclear retaliation.” Time magazine also noted that “Peking recently reaffirmed this view in perhaps its most bellicose language yet” and quoted Lin Biao that “the war of annihilation is the fundamental guiding principle of our operations” and “the sacrifice of a small number of people in revolutionary wars” is necessary. Time rebuked Americans who wanted to view the Beijing government in a more favorable light, calling attention to the article’s “singular bloodthirstiness.” It urged the U.S. government to extend to Asia “the hard and fast guarantees of collective security that made NATO so potent a deterrent.”13 Senate hearings in 1966 gave China scholars an opportunity to voice opinions on China and administration foreign policy. Professor A. Doak Barnett judged that Chinese leaders aimed to “strengthen China’s security; they also hope to recover what they consider to be ‘lost territories’; and they are determined to play the role of a major power on the world stage.” Barnett added that “the Sino-Soviet dispute has weakened Peking’s international position,” which “imposes increased restraints on the Chinese Communist regime.” John Lindbeck contended that “China’s leaders are preoccupied with China’s domestic issues and the country’s internal problems and development.” Alexander Eckstein stood between Barnett and Lindbeck, telling the assembled senators that “the Chinese are very expansionist at the verbal level, but very cautious at the action level.” Benjamin Schwartz warned that “the Chinese at this point are dreaming of a new Communist order centered on Peiping.” Donald Zagoria was even less sanguine: “The Chinese Communist regime today faces the most serious and far-reaching foreign policy crisis it has ever confronted,” “of such magnitude as to have seriously weakened Peking’s influence in underdeveloped countries, cast doubt on the legitimacy and viability of even the regime’s reasonable international aspirations, and greatly sharpened existing divergencies among Communist movements all over the world.” David Rowe asserted: “there is not doubt about this. Communist China is expansionistic.” Returning to the contrast between words and deeds, Hans Morgenthau noted: “the first 13. New York Times, September 4, 8, October 8, 1965; “Encirclement in Asia,” Time, September 17, 1965. For Lin Biao’s address, see The Selected Works of Lin Biao (Hong Kong: China Problems Research Center, 1970), 315–16.

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observation one must make is the impressive contrast between the extreme and almost mad statements Chinese leaders have made with regard to the outside world, and the extreme caution with which China has actually acted with regard to the outside world.” Robert Scalapino disagreed: “What are the Chinese goals?” “To remove all Western influence from Asia,” he answered. Some of the most qualified American China experts did not agree, and thus could provide little real guidance to the senators on the Foreign Relations Committee, President Johnson, Secretary Rusk, and the nation’s diplomatic establishment.14 The academic experts also found little agreement on future U.S. policy. Barnett wanted “to encourage nonofficial contacts” along with continued containment and defense of Taiwan. John King Fairbank urged more emphasis on the “non-Communist model of nation-building” to “compete more effectively with the Chinese Communist model of nation-building.” Mao might never change, but “it is high time we got ourselves ready to deal with his successors and their successors in the years ahead.” John Lindbeck supported the containment policy but believed that European allies and Japan should share the burden. Morton Halperin deemed it “important for the United States to remain in Vietnam and to prevent a military victory by the Vietcong employing what the Chinese believe to be their model of revolutionary violence.” Eckstein lamented the ineffectiveness of “U.S. policy on trade,” for few allies had followed it and the People’s Republic, save for credits, could obtain whatever it needed abroad. Zagoria endorsed Barnett’s proposal for containment without isolation, hoping that China would evolve as the Soviet Union moderated in the 1950s. David Rowe also endorsed containment and isolation because the alternative “is the handing over of Taiwan to them.” While divided on the issue of Chinese representation in the United Nations, the scholars also agreed it was a “low priority” issue to Beijing.15 The domino theory helped determine U.S. policy toward China and the conflict in Vietnam. In June 1964, the director of the CIA released an analysis headed “Would the Loss of South Vietnam and Laos Precipitate a ‘Domino Effect’ in the Far East?” The analysis stated, “Instead of a shock wave passing from one nation to the next, there would be a simultaneous, direct effect on all Far Eastern countries.” It further stated, “The loss of South Vietnam and Laos to the Communists would be profoundly damaging to the US position in the Far East.” Such loss “would severely debase the credibility of US will and capability to contain the spread of communism elsewhere in the areas.” The noted jour14. Akira Iriye, ed., U.S. Policy toward China (Boston: Little, Brown, 1966), 80–202. 15. Ibid.

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nalist Robert S. Elegant agreed. He wrote that “containment is the first essential. The Chinese are greatly buoyed by Communist successes in Laos. Further territorial conquests in Southeast Asia might well make them impossible to deal with.” He noted the “row of dominoes” theory and that once “the Chinese drive into Southeast Asia is checked, it would be possible to offer limited accommodation to Beijing.”16 The lack of consensus among so-called experts did not prevent President Johnson from reaching out to Beijing. He hinted at little steps. On July 12, 1966, the president addressed the American Alumni Council about U.S. policy for Asia. He offered a hand toward Beijing, assuming Beijing, in turn, would agree to act “appropriately.” He invoked the need for “a peaceful mainland China” for “a peaceful Asia,” saying that “a misguided China must be encouraged toward understanding of the outside world and toward policies of peaceful cooperation,” and that “lasting peace can never come to Asia as long as the 700 million people of mainland China are isolated by their rulers from the outside world.” Beijing very quickly rejected the underlying assumption—that it was at fault—for Johnson’s outstretched hand. The New York Times reported on the front page Johnson’s “signal to the leaders of Communist China [of] his revived interest in reducing tension between Washington and Peking.” Notably, neither Time nor Newsweek reported the speech, and U.S. News and World Report mentioned it in a larger report, informing readers that “the Johnson Administration is looking beyond the war in Vietnam to the time of a U.S.-financed ‘Marshall Plan’ for all of free Asia,” and that “the U.S. is now making a cautious attempt at a more flexible approach to the Chinese Reds.”17 The trial balloon fizzled. As the China experts addressed the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and as LBJ felt out Chinese leaders, if only to divide Hanoi’s benefactors in the Vietnam War, the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution built up steam, and more than ever Mao insisted that adherence to his ideology mattered more than practical issues of domestic or foreign policy. That is, while the Johnson administration might have been ready to change, China was plunging into an ideological maelstrom of its own making. Wang Guoquan, Beijing’s ambassador to the Sino-American ambassadorial talks in 1966, noted 16. CIA, “Would the Loss of South Vietnam and Laos Precipitate a ‘Domino Effect’ in the Far East,” June 9, 1964, http://www.foia.cia.gov; Elegant, “A New U.S. Approach to China?” Current (December 1964): 22–23. Rhoads Murphey tried and admitted failure to destroy the foundation of the domino theory: “China and the Dominoes,” Asian Survey 6:9 (September 1966): 510–15. 17. FRUS: China, doc. 168; Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Lyndon B. Johnson, 1966 (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1969), book II, pp. 718–22; New York Times, July 11, 1967; see Time and Newsweek for July 18 and 25, 1966; see also “Next: A ‘Marshall Plan’ for Asia?” U.S. News and World Report, July 25, 1966, p. 29.

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in his memoirs, “We lost a favorable opportunity to give Sino-American relations a timely push. It must be a regretful thing in the history of diplomacy.”18 Washington also worried about China expanding beyond its immediate neighbors. A special national intelligence estimate in September 1965 reported, “Sukarno’s Indonesia already acts in important respects like a Communist state and is more openly hostile to the U.S. than most Communist nations.” Soon thereafter, a coup d’état, apparently communist inspired, nearly seized control of that resource-rich country. The Indonesian Communist Party, the PKI, wanted “a ‘fifth force’ of armed peasants and workers equal to the four branches of the armed forces—army, navy, air force, and police.” On September 30, 1965, pro-communist military officers (calling themselves the September 30 Movement) launched an unsuccessful coup, thus triggering a violent anticommunist reaction; by December 1965 mobs were engaged in mass killings, especially in Jawa Timur Province, on Bali, and in Sumatra. Chinese-Indonesians became particular targets of mob violence, with estimates of the dead ranging from as low as seventy-eight thousand to as high as two million.19 Against this violent backdrop, Johnson and Rusk maneuvered as best they could within the constraints they faced. They believed in the “domino theory,” judging that regimes in the region needed some time and distance to develop their economies, strengthen their societies, and build support for their polities; hence they believed in the containment of China and the need for defending Vietnam. Johnson wrote in his memoirs that Beijing “was urging ‘wars of national liberation’ as the solution to all the problems of non-Communist underdeveloped nations.” Rusk, in turn, was, as some scholars have noted, a Wilsonian Democrat, who believed that there was within limits an international code of behavior, that the People’s Republic of China acted outside those boundaries, and that until it accepted the constraints that other nations accepted, it stood ostracized from the family of nations. Neither Johnson nor

18. Chang, Friends and Enemies, 251; Arnold Xiangze Jiang, The United States and China (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), 156, 158; Chen Jian, Mao’s China and the Cold War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001), 217, 232–33; Zhang Baijia and Jia Qingguo, “Steering Wheel, Shock Absorber, and Diplomatic Probe in Confrontation,” in U.S.-China Diplomacy, 1954–1973, ed. Robert S. Ross and Jiang Changbin (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001), 193. 19. Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964–1968, Volume XXVI, Indonesia, Malaysia-Singapore, Philippines (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 2001), doc. 137; see also doc. 126; New York Times October 2, 4, 6, 1965; Library of Congress Country Studies, “Indonesia: The Coup and Its Aftermath,” http://lcweb2.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?frd/cstdy:@field(DOCID +id0035).

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Rusk would abandon the Nationalist Chinese on Taiwan. Rusk wrote, “Peking never accepted that China had been divided by civil war and that Taiwan had a right to its own existence.” One of the few carrots Johnson could offer to modify Chinese behavior, foreign aid and technical assistance, Beijing rejected because it implied Chinese need for such assistance, and the PRC was far too proud to accept such handouts.20 The Sino-American ambassadorial talks nonetheless continued in Warsaw. Johnson and Rusk hoped those talks, begun during the Korean War to facilitate prisoner-of-war exchanges, might provide a quiet mechanism to improve relations. “We proposed the exchange of scientists, scholars, of professional men—doctors,” Rusk later recalled. “We proposed the exchange of weather information. We proposed the exchange of basic plant materials in the basic food crops,” but “we got nowhere with it because Peking always came back with the answer that there was nothing to discuss until we are ready to surrender Taiwan.” Despite 134 bilateral negotiating meetings at Warsaw, Rusk noted, “not once did the Chinese propose an initiative to improve relations.”21 Johnson also considered a negotiated peace in Vietnam, guaranteeing South Vietnam’s independence, to lower tensions within the superpower triangle and to lessen Hanoi’s role as a symbol to Beijing and Moscow. A subsequent withdrawal of U.S. military forces would ease the apparent American military containment of China. Soviet leaders likely believed North Vietnamese predictions of easy victory after the Viet Cong victory at Ap Bac in early January 1963. But the Ia Drang Valley campaign in the fall of 1965 demonstrated Washington’s commitment and ability to intervene in strength. The Vietnam War played too strongly into China’s hand, and the USSR favored a negotiated peace that the North Vietnamese would accept. Hanoi used itself as a symbol of communist commitment to wars of national liberation, played up the Sino-Soviet schism, and maneuvered its two major benefactors into competing for support. Johnson and Rusk kept Taiwan at a distance, to avoid turning the Vietnam War into an expanding military confrontation with the People’s Republic. Ironically, while Beijing feared that Moscow and Washington might collude against it, Taipei offered to send troops to Vietnam, in part to avoid a BeijingWashington deal to trade peace in Indochina for a Chinese takeover of Taiwan. No matter how hard Jiang Jieshi and his leadership clique tried to tie the war

20. Johnson, The Vantage Point (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971), 134; Rusk, As I Saw It, 286. 21. Dean Rusk Oral History Interview III, by Paige E. Mulhollan, January 2, 1970, pp. 10–14, LBJL, 10–14; Rusk, As I Saw It, 287.

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in Vietnam into a Taiwan-centered containment of the People’s Republic, Washington sidestepped, recognizing all the flaws in this scheme.22 Johnson and Rusk stated clear and not unreasonable conditions for improving Sino-American relations. Roger Hilsman announced them first in a rather famous speech in December 1963. He wanted to move from diatribe and invective to a policy based on firmness, flexibility, and dispassion. As he put it, “we are flexible in our readiness to respond to a significant change in the behavior of the Peiping regime. We are dispassionate in our refusal to substitute clichés and polemical rhetoric for cool, objective analysis.” While Hilsman’s speech, calling for China policy to be more like policy toward the Soviet Union, caused a stir in the domestic political environment of December 1963, Beijing viewed it as Washington “rewarding” China for good behavior and thus rejected it.23 Events within China soon overwhelmed opportunities to strengthen the SinoAmerican dialogue. The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution seemingly erupted in 1966, although its antecedents were much earlier. Mao called on students to demonstrate, to correct the errors of their elders; schools closed, and millions of young people marched about China, terrorizing parents, teachers, officials, and others. Mao deployed so-called Red Guards as a “shock force” to “bombard” party headquarters, and thousands died and millions suffered in the resulting violence. Red Guards threatened government, including the Foreign Ministry, and they demanded that China’s ambassadors return home. As U.S. intervention in Vietnam escalated, the military restrained the Red Guards in places and organized Red Worker Guards to attack them. There ensued eighteen months of massive civil disorder orchestrated by the smiling, somewhat grandfatherly visage of an airbrushed Mao Zedong.24 By 1967, the resulting violence and destruction in China both fascinated and horrified international observers. Revolutionary Red Guards and counterrevolutionary Red Worker Guards clashed in cities across China. Newsreels showed young people berating terrified old people, destroying priceless artifacts and 22. On Jiang’s efforts to involve Taiwan in the Vietnam conflict, see FRUS: China, docs. 86, 95, 104, 106, 110. Jiang tried to force a connection between securing modern U.S. fighter planes to protect the Taiwan Strait and the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. See State Outgoing Telegram to Taipei, #228356, August 27, and Amembassy Taipei to SecState, #4374, September 5, 1968, 1968CFPF, box 1986, POL 17, CHINAT-US; Memorandum of Conversation, September 3, 1968, box 1985, POLAFF&REL, CHINAT-US; Amembassy Taipei to Dept. of State, A-917, September 13, 1968, box 1984, POL 15–1, CHINAT, 1/1/68; State Outgoing Telegram, #242120, September 20, 1968, box 1985, POLAFF&REL, CHINAT-US, CFPF. 23. Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961–1963, Volume XXII, China, Korea, Japan (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1996), doc. 196, December 19, 1963. 24. Kam-yee Law, ed., The Chinese Cultural Revolution Reconsidered: Beyond Purge and Holocaust (New York: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2003); Stanley Rosen, Red Guard Factionalism and the Cultural Revolution in Guangzhou (Boulder: Westview Press, 1982).

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historical sites, and blindly chanting slogans from Chairman Mao’s Little Red Book. With the public transfixed by the melodrama, foreign ministries around the world wondered who was in charge and where they were leading China. For a while, the situation appeared to worsen. China recalled its ambassadors and in many ways turned its back on international relations. It was not clear who controlled China and how to communicate effectively with them. While Zhou Enlai still ran the Foreign Ministry, there seemed no opportunities for Johnson and Rusk to improve Sino-American relations, if only to put pressure on the Soviet Union.25 January 1968 marked the high tide of American power in East Asia. It soon ebbed. On January 23, 1968, North Korean gunboats seized a U.S. Navy intelligence ship, the Pueblo, in international waters off North Korea’s east coast. Once the ship moved clearly into North Korean waters, high-ranking North Korean officials boarded the ship. They moved the Pueblo to the port of Wonsan, and North Korean troops transported the crew to two different POW camps. U.S. armed forces seemed unable to protect or rescue the ship. The Pueblo had the dubious honor of becoming the first navy vessel to surrender in peacetime since Commodore James Barron and the Chesapeake surrendered to the British in 1807. The Johnson administration, however, worried about escalating the situation. South Korea spoke of attacking the North, in part to secure rescue of the crew, and in part to retaliate for a failed North Korean attempt to assassinate South Korean president Park Chunghee several days earlier. Of course, the government in Washington sought return of the crew and the ship, all the while condemning the government in Pyongyang. It had few effective levers with Kim Il-sung.26 Predictably, people in the United States and elsewhere speculated about a connection between this incident and the conflict in Vietnam. The New York Times headlined “Hanoi Sees ‘Fitting’ Lesson” and noted, “North Vietnam denounced the United States over the Pueblo incident.” Another report noted, “Hanoi backs Korean Reds,” which suggested perhaps there was a linkage. The real linkage seemed to arise in the relatively similar positions that Hanoi and Pyongyang occupied in their respective triangles with Moscow and Beijing.27 25. Barbara Barnouin and Yu Changgen, Chinese Foreign Policy during the Cultural Revolution (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998); Ma Jisen, The Cultural Revolution in the Foreign Ministry of China (Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 2004). 26. The best recent account is Mitchell B. Lerner, The Pueblo Incident: A Spy Ship and the Failure of American Foreign Policy (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2002); see also Daniel V. Gallery, The Pueblo Incident (Garden City: Doubleday, 1970); and Lloyd M. Bucher with Mark Rascovich, Bucher: My Story (Garden City: Doubleday, 1970). See “North Korea Seizes Navy Ship,” New York Times, January 24, 1968; Newsweek, February 5, 1968, p. 17; U.S. News and World Report, February 5, 1968, pp. 23–24; Time, February 2, 1968, p. 12. 27. New York Times, January 26, 30, 1968.

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Before the Johnson administration could fully digest the Pueblo matter, beginning on January 30, 1968, Viet Cong and North Vietnamese troops launched surprise attacks across South Vietnam. This communist assault attacked thirtysix of forty-four provincial capitals, five of six autonomous cities, 58 of 245 major towns, and more than fifty hamlets. A Viet Cong suicide squad attacked the U.S. Embassy compound as well as Tan Son Nhut Air Base, the South Vietnamese presidential palace, and the South Vietnamese general staff headquarters, all in Saigon.28 While the Tet offensive proved a tactical disaster for the Viet Cong, negative media reporting, the seeming lack of progress in the war, and President Johnson’s March 31 decision to announce that he would seek peace in Vietnam and would not seek reelection changed international politics. The Vietnam War had humiliated a president and exposed the fault lines in U.S. policy toward Asia and the Cold War. Johnson had expanded the Vietnam War with general agreement in America and among its Pacific and Asian allies on the need to resist Chinese aggression and to allow time for area regimes to strengthen their economies and earn the support of their people. Many academics and so-called experts in the United States agreed with Johnson’s reasons for fighting in Vietnam, even if they did not agree with Gen. William Westmoreland’s particular strategy for victory. The Cultural Revolution, however, seemed to diminish the likelihood of China posing a risk to its neighbors, thus diluting the original strategic rationale for U.S. policy in Vietnam. The Tet offensive took away another prop buttressing U.S. policy by suggesting rather graphically that the progress the U.S. military had claimed was merely illusory. The press turned negative, led by CBS news anchor Walter Cronkite.29 Chinese leaders found opportunities and threats in this humbling of American power in East Asia. The weakening of the great enemy eased fears of an Americancreated isolation of the People’s Republic. But Washington’s retreat coincided with increasing power for the Soviets and their apparent willingness to use it.

28. See Peter Braestrup, Big Story: How the American Press and Television Reported and Interpreted the Crisis of Tet 1968 in Vietnam and Washington (Boulder: Westview Press, 1977); Don Oberdorfer, Tet! The Turning Point in the Vietnam War (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001). See also “The War: Double Trouble” (which links the Pueblo incident and Tet) and “The War: The General’s Gamble,” Time, February 9, 1968, pp. 15–16, 22–24; “As Climax Mounts—In Vietnam,” U.S. News and World Report, February 12, 1968, pp. 23–25; “Hanoi Attacks and Scores a Major Psychological Blow” and “The VC’s Week of Terror,” Newsweek, February 12, 1968, pp. 23–24 and 24–28. 29. Many governments in Asia worried about a precipitous American withdrawal from Vietnam that might encourage other Communist or Communist-inspired trouble; see “Fear in Asia: a ‘Bad’ Peace by U.S.,” U.S. News and World Report, May 6, 1968, pp. 41–42.

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The Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia that summer slowly altered SinoAmerican relations as it affected international relations more generally. On August 20, 1968, five hundred thousand Warsaw Pact troops invaded the tiny nation, quickly arresting Czech leader Alexander Dubˇcek and his reform-minded colleagues. Several months later, Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev pronounced the so-called Brezhnev Doctrine that once a government went communist, that nation lost the right to leave the communist fold. The actions of the Soviets reflected at the same time defensiveness over their Eastern European satellite empire and an aggressiveness reflecting their military buildup following the Cuban missile crisis. Observers noted the restiveness among Soviet youth and the weak hold that several Eastern European regimes, notably East Germany and Poland, had over their respective peoples. Other analysts in government and in the media concentrated on the Soviet buildup in both strategic and conventional weapons. The Soviet Union by 1968 had achieved a rough “equivalency” in nuclear arms, raising the prospect of a new and extremely expensive arms race: a new generation of offensive nuclear weapons with multiple, independently targeted warheads and the unpredictable impact of a limited antiballistic missile shield. The Soviet invasion also accentuated a perception of U.S. weakness after the USS Pueblo incident and the Tet offensive. Along with the Cultural Revolution, these developments seemed to weaken the United States and China, and then came the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. This display of Soviet power changed the great-power triangle. Chinese and American leaders took initially tentative steps to reach an accommodation that would occur several years later. Finally, the invasion threatened to transform the Sino-Soviet confrontation from ideology to clash of arms. The Soviet military reinforced its army divisions along the Asian front, eventually maintaining more than thirty, a large number for a border between two fraternal allies. This sudden threat brought an end to the worst excesses of the Cultural Revolution. Regardless of the internal need to restore stability, the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia heightened Chinese fears of a Soviet military buildup along the long, contentious Soviet-Chinese border. Beijing began transferring troops and supplies from its southwest border adjacent to Indochina to its northwest and northeast borders in order to deter or repulse a Soviet attack. In the fall of 1968, Johnson tried again to coax Chinese leaders in Beijing, as he had in the summer of 1966. In part, Johnson wanted to reverse his reputation as a “war” president and establish a legacy of being a “peace” president; he also wanted a counterweight to complicate Soviet calculations should Moscow decide to continue into Romania or Yugoslavia after Czechoslovakia. Nonetheless, the previous May, Beijing had postponed the Sino-American ambassadorial talks until after the November presidential election, stating that

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“there was nothing to discuss at present.” By October, it seemed Beijing was reorienting its foreign policy and military strategy. In early October, whereas Beijing previously had “sought to minimize border conflicts as an irritant to Sino-Soviet relations,” noted one U.S. official, the current decision to play up a crisis seemed “a component of Peking’s effort to reap maximum advantage from newly aroused fears in Eastern Europe and elsewhere by Soviet military intervention in Czechoslovakia.” By month’s end, another expert wrote Rusk that while Beijing was moving “toward a less provocative foreign propaganda line, there is no sign of a marked change in the substance of Peking’s foreign policy positions.”30 Seeking to reach out, the U.S. government proposed rescheduling the ambassadorial meeting for November 20, 1968, in Warsaw. Alfred Jenkins opined to Walt Rostow that “Chinese Communist foreign policy tactics are shifting away from emphasis upon Maoist theories” but indicated no “change in basic Chinese Communist foreign policy.” Unable to predict how Beijing would reenter the world of international relations, Jenkins subsequently wrote a long analysis for Rostow about Sino-American relations and concluded that “our policy toward Communist China in recent years has accomplished in good measure about all that could be expected, short of bilateral accommodations which are just not yet in the cards.” He suggested that “the best policy toward communist Asia, beyond containment, is concentration on strengthening non-communist Asia, with a view to ultimate reduction of the U.S. component in the balance of power in the region.”31 Perhaps it was too soon for Beijing to reassess its long-standing hostility. It soon backed away from talks with the Johnson administration, proposing to delay such talks until February 20, 1969, after the new Nixon administration took office. At this point the PRC offered “peaceful coexistence,” which it previously had denounced as a Soviet-U.S. “fraud,” in return for U.S. withdrawal of all forces from Taiwan and the Taiwan Strait. The New York Times quoted 30. “China Postpones Talks in Warsaw,” New York Times, May 29, 1968; Hughes to the secretary, June 13, 1968, box 1966, POL 16, CHICOM, 1–1-67, CFPF; Jenkins to Rostow, August 21, 1968, NSF Country File, box 243, China (c), Vol. XIII, 7–12/68, LBJL; “China: The World Over,” Newsweek, August 26, 1968, p. 41; New York Times, August 25, 1968; and R. L. Garwin and Hans Bethe, “Anti-ballistic Missile Systems,” Scientific American 218 (March 1968): 19, 21–31. Hughes to acting secretary, October 2, 1968, box 1975, POL 32–1, CHICOM-USSR, 1–1-67; Hughes to acting secretary, October 4, 1968, box 1968, POL 17, CHICOM, 1–1-67; Denney to the secretary, October 22, 1968, box 1963, POL 1, CHICOM, 1–1-67, CFPF. 31. Memorandum for Mr. Rostow, September 23, 1968, NSF Files of Alfred Jenkins, box 3, CHICOM-Cultural Revolution, 7–12/68; Jenkins to Rostow, October 9, 1968, NSF Country File, box 243, China (A) (2 of 2), Vol. XIII, 7–12/68, LBJL. “China Postpones Talks in Warsaw,” New York Times, May 29, 1968.

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“observers” claiming that “Peking [was] showing new flexibility” despite no major policy changes.32 How should the U.S. government interpret the rescheduling of the longdelayed Warsaw talks? Jenkins warned Rostow that “I can find no indication that a change in substance is in the offing” and expressed surprise that American newspapers were commenting favorably on Beijing’s “flexibility.” A week later, Jenkins forwarded a State Department analysis that Beijing’s comments in favor of an ambassadorial meeting on February 20 did not “constitute much of an invitation for rapprochement.”33 As the change from Johnson to Nixon neared, Beijing’s foreign policy remained unclear. Thomas Hughes reported some senior Chinese officials as “bitterly opposed to attempts to improve relations toward non-Communist states or to soft-pedal support for violent revolutionary struggle.” William Bundy told Japanese Ambassador Takeso Shimoda that Beijing’s demands about Taiwan and peaceful coexistence were hardly new, but “the great cultural revolution had calmed down and the pragmatists within the Chinese Communist leadership are in a stronger position.” According to the Pakistani government, Beijing was saying nothing that “would indicate any shift in ChiCom attitudes towards relations with the United States.”34 Beijing then canceled the ambassadorial talks scheduled for Warsaw on February 20, 1969, blaming the defection of a Chinese diplomat. Liao Hoshu, the PRC’s chargé in the Netherlands, sought asylum in America, and Beijing condemned the “anti-China incident deliberately engineered by [the] U.S. government in collusion with [the] Netherlands.” The press statement further claimed that the “event proves that Nixon [is] as hostile to China as Johnson.” To Walter Stoessel, the U.S. ambassador to Poland and thus the U.S. representative at the Warsaw ambassadorial talks, Beijing labeled Nixon and Johnson 32. Jenkins to Rostow, November 16, 1968, NSF Country File, box 243, China (A) (2 of 2), Vol. XIII, 7–12/68, LBJL; “U.S. Aides Doubt China Wants Talks in Warsaw until 1969,” New York Times, November 16; “Peking Asks Talks with U.S. Feb. 20; Proposes a Pact,” New York Times, November 27, 1968; New York Times, November 29, 1968. See Owen Harries, “Should the U.S. Withdraw from Asia?” Foreign Affairs 47 (October 1968): 15–25. 33. “And Frank Talks with the Red Chinese, Too,” U.S. News and World Report, December 16, 1968, p. 104; AmConGen Hong Kong to Dept. of State, #A-880, December 6, 1968, box 1964, POL 2, CHICOM, 11/1/68, CFPF. Jenkins to Rostow, December 2, 1968, NSF Country File, box 243, China (A) (1 of 2), Vol. XIII, 7–12/68; NSF Files of Alfred Jenkins, box 1, China-General, LBJL. 34. Hughes to the secretary, December 23, 1968, and Memorandum of Conversation, December 27, 1968, box 1962, POL, POLAFF&REL, CHICOM, 9–1-68; State Outgoing Telegram to AmConsul Hong Kong, January 8, 1969, box 1973, POL 2, CHICOM-US, CFPF. On preparations for the change in U.S. presidential administrations, see “U.S. Policy toward Communist China,” December 1968, China, 1968, box 302, PPS Subject & Country File, 1965–1968, RG 59, NA.

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as “jackals from the same den.” Such vitriol prompted Thomas Hughes to warn Secretary of State William Rogers about “Peking’s anti-Nixon campaign and the prospects for Warsaw.” “During the two weeks following the Presidential inauguration,” he noted, “Peking central media churned out more than 20 articles, including NCNA and People’s Daily commentaries, attacking President Nixon’s inaugural address, the inaugural proceedings, and both Nixon press conferences.” The government in Beijing complained that “where the U.S. is concerned, ‘peace is a fraud. Aggression is truth.’” According to Hughes, Taiwan was “the major issue that bars closer relations between Peking and Washington.”35 The clash along the Ussuri River in March 1969 soon exposed the perilous alterations in Sino-Soviet relations, and China began the long, slow approach to its longtime American adversary. With that clash, the government in Beijing concluded that what had been an intellectual and ideological dispute with another communist government had changed instead to a potential military conflict between near neighbors of unequal strength, and it looked to the “far barbarian” for support against the “near barbarian,” as traditional Chinese diplomacy would suggest. And, of course, it was easier for a renowned anticommunist such as Richard M. Nixon to take advantage of such an opportunity. Given the situation they inherited and the events that unfolded from November 1963 through January 1969, Lyndon Johnson and Dean Rusk were limited in what they could achieve to improve Sino-American relations. They continued the Warsaw ambassadorial meetings; they reached out to Beijing; they “contained” Jiang Jieshi and kept him out of the Vietnam War. Mao’s violent effort to remake Chinese society and the Chinese people in the 1950s, culminating in the awesome spectacle of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, shocked and dismayed many Americans. China’s internal policies and its continuing call for violent and radical revolution to overthrow the existing world order added to the sense that the United States had nothing to gain from approaching the government in Beijing. Moreover, Johnson and Rusk accepted the belief that the People’s Republic represented a real threat to the political and economic order of eastern Asia, which was the justification for the so-called domino theory and the tragic and flawed involvement in Vietnam. That is, although they worried less about Chinese military aggression, since Beijing had yet to send forces outside China’s traditional sphere of influence, they were concerned that newly in-

35. Outgoing State Telegram to Amembassy The Hague, February 7, 1969, and AmConsul HongKong to SecState, #742, February 7, 1969, box 1968, POL 30, CHICOM, 1–1-67; Brown to Johnson, February 12, 1969, box 1975, POL 17, CHICOM-USSR, CFPF.

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dependent governments with weak economies in the regime could submit to Chinese pressure or indigenous movements allied with Beijing. They also noted, as Rusk wrote, that “we tried to base our Asian policies on the fundamental reality of China’s presence during both the Kennedy and Johnson administrations.” Alfred Jenkins may have offered the most compelling defense of Johnson and Rusk’s approach to the People’s Republic. Ironically, Jenkins changed his views in a memo to his superior, Walt W. Rostow, in the closing days of the Johnson administration: “I, myself, favored more attempted movement in our China policy up to the summer of 1966.” But, as Jenkins wrote, that was before “the Cultural Revolution reversed [emphasis in original] the earlier trend in China toward more rationality,” “before Mao began to destroy Maoism,” and “before Czechoslovakia; and the simple reaction of homespun wisdom: ‘You can’t trust those communists!’ That sentiment reaches China in today’s climate, and must be heeded by policy makers.”36 Johnson and Rusk did not make China policy in a vacuum. Mao Zedong was a committed ideologue, and he needed an image of a threatening, capitalist United States to justify his internal efforts to remake the Chinese people and his external conflict with the Soviet Union. As Chen Jian has written, “China’s foreign policy was always an integral part of Mao’s continuous revolution, which aimed to promote the revolutionary transformation of China’s ‘old’ state and society and to pursue new China’s central (but not dominant) position in the international community.” Evelyn Goh agreed, noting that the lack of progress toward a Sino-American accommodation reflected “Beijing’s continuing intransigence toward the United States, which rendered the American conduct of the Vietnam War and ‘occupation’ of Taiwan insurmountable obstacles to the improvement of relations.” While many scholars portray Zhou Enlai as being more moderate and more pragmatic than Mao, that Zhou survived so many twists and turns since the 1920s indicates the likelihood of his philosophical agreement with Mao’s goals despite a greater commitment to the regular processes in politics and economics. The time simply was not right, but as the Sino-Soviet schism continued to escalate and as American military power began to withdraw from East Asia, the time soon would be right for a Sino-American accommodation, the roots of which began taking hold in the Johnson years.37

36. Jenkins memorandum for Mr. Rostow, September 23, 1968, NSF files of Alfred Jenkins, box 3, CHICOM-Cultural Revolution, 7–12/68, LBJL. 37. Jian, China’s Road to the Korean War, 236; Goh, Constructing the U.S. Rapprochement with China, 1961–1974: From “Red Menace” to “Tacit Ally” (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 263.

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Scenes of Disaster Johnson, Nixon, and the Dramatic Uses of Famine

PERFORMANCE WAS CENTRAL TO Lyndon Johnson’s political method. “Kennedy

could make a decision . . . and be convincing about it,” an aide explained to Philip Geyelin. “It was enough for him that he was Kennedy and he was president. With Johnson, he seems to feel a necessity for circuses, sideshows, Roman candles, klieg lights, to get his point across.” The Indian food crisis of the mid1960s accentuated this trait. Critics and the press accused Johnson of theatrics, of holding the world in suspense by interrupting food shipments to faminestricken India just before Christmas 1966. Johnson acknowledged in his memoirs that he had staged the “short-tether” policy to “educate and persuade” India, European governments, Congress, and his own advisers of the necessity for sharing in future humanitarian crises.1 Indira Gandhi was no less adept at dramatization. The Bihar famine was the first crisis of her administration, and she placed herself at the center of it, touring the parched region and reminding victims that “the eyes of the nation are turned toward you.”2 By carefully cultivating a persona as mother of the nation, she also drew the gaze of the world toward India. Gandhi’s charisma, James Reston observed, gave her the capacity to break through Americans’ “screen of unconsciousness and make the plight of the Indian people alive and vivid.”3 The central feature of the drama, in historical accounts, was Johnson’s coercive diplomacy, his use of urgently needed Public Law (P.L.) 480 aid (also known as “Food for Peace”), during a famine, as leverage to induce India to increase its food production through “self-help” measures. India had already 1. Geyelin, Lyndon B. Johnson and the World (New York: Praeger, 1966), 157; Johnson, The Vantage Point (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971), 230. 2. K. Suresh Singh, The Indian Famine 1967: A Study in Crisis and Change (New Delhi: People’s Publishing House, 1975), 41. This is one of several studies of the famine by officials and eyewitnesses. Others include Government of Bihar, Bihar Famine Report, 1966–1967 (Patna: Secretariat Press, 1978), and Wendy and Allan Scarfe, Tiger on a Rein: Report on the Bihar Famine (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1969). 3. Reston, “The Lady from New Delhi,” New York Times, March 30, 1966.

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undertaken reforms that produced a “green revolution” in 1968, and scholarly debate has focused on whether Johnson’s coercion produced any gains worth the damage and mistrust the policy caused.4 These studies focus on the theatrics and gamesmanship surrounding the Bihar famine rather than on the event itself or its presumed causes—a two-year drought and overpopulation— drawing an implicit ontological distinction between the subjective political interchange and the neutral circumstances that framed it. This is a point on which historical scholarship and theories of famine have come to diverge. Since the famine studies movement of the 1980s, a scholarly consensus has discounted demographic and meteorological causes and established that famine is invariably “man-made” in two senses: episodes of starvation are intensified by political circumstances and decisions (such as wars, market controls, dictatorships, and ineptitude), and “famine” (in contrast with drought) is less an objective statement of conditions than a political indictment.5 As one of India’s two major postindependence famines, Bihar has been intensively examined in light of the new understanding. In a widely cited 1986 study, political scientist Paul R. Brass explained how conflict between the central and provincial governments provided the context in which “normal” scarcity and food deprivation were identified as famine. A food crisis, he argued, is “an inherently subjective situation,” and the Bihar famine was self-consciously constituted as a “political drama.” Economist Jean Drèze took the argument further, suggesting that government actions to suppress famine—particularly the practice of restricting market functioning between famine zones—accounted for 4. James Warner Bjorkman, “Public Law 480 and the Policies of Self-Help and Short-Tether: Indo-American Relations, 1965–1968,” in The Regional Imperative: The Administration of U.S. Foreign Policy towards South Asian States under Presidents Johnson and Nixon, ed. by Lloyd I. Rudolph and Susanne H. Rudolph (Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press, 1980), 201–62; Ashutosh Varshney, Democracy, Development, and the Countryside: Urban-Rural Struggles in India (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 48–80; Carolyn Castore, “The United States and India: The Use of Food to Apply Economic Pressure, 1965–1967,” in Economic Coercion and U.S. Foreign Policy: Implications of Case Studies from the Johnson Administration, ed. Sidney Weintraub (Boulder: Westview, 1972), 129–53; Robert J. McMahon, “Disillusionment and Disengagement in South Asia,” in Lyndon Johnson Confronts the World, ed. by Warren I. Cohen and Nancy Bernkopf Tucker (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 135–71; Kristin Leigh Ahlberg, “‘Food Is a Powerful Tool in the Hands of the Government’: The Johnson Administration and PL 480, 1963–1969” (Ph.D. diss., University of Nebraska, 2003). 5. For an overview of the famine studies literature see Michael Watts, “Heart of Darkness: Reflections on Famine and Starvation in Africa,” in The Political Economy of African Famine, ed. R. E. Downs et al. (Philadelphia: Gordon and Breach, 1991), 23–68; Amartya Sen, “Famines,” World Development 8:9 (September 1980): 613–21; Jean Drèze and Amartya Sen, The Political Economy of Hunger, vol. 2, Famine Prevention (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990); Rolando V. Garcia, Drought and Man, vol. 1, Nature Pleads Not Guilty (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1981); G. A. Harrison, Famine (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988).

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much of the suffering in Bihar.6 This scholarship has been directed at reassessing the causes and prevention of mass starvation, but its implications for diplomatic history are also clear: in addition to examining the Indo-American conflict over the response to the famine, we must also consider how Johnson and Gandhi collaborated in constructing the famine. Famine carried rhetorical connotations in the contexts both of the Cold War and of postcolonial Indian politics. From the Ukrainian Holdomor of 1921 to the Great Leap Forward, the United States had held up famine as evidence of the catastrophic failure of the communist system. Likewise, major famines in 1899 and 1943 framed the Indian nationalist movement, graphically disproving British claims to imperial benevolence.7 Famine is not simply a neutral designation for food shortage; it is an accusation of societal failure at the most basic level, a failure to provide sustenance. But even given that the subject of famine is, by necessity, surrounded by counterclaims and hyperbole, in what ways can a mass disaster of this kind be said to be rhetorically constructed, and how would that assertion alter historical understanding? In 1956, a young scholar of realist theory, Henry Kissinger, observed that, in the modern age, diplomacy had ceased to deal in tangible interests and risks and had become “a struggle to capture the symbols that move humanity.”8 The Bihar famine provides an example of how hunger was constituted as a symbol and the lengths to which U.S. leaders went to use that symbol for their own ends. Between the war-induced Bengal famine of 1943 and the crisis of 1966–1967, India enjoyed a reprieve from major food crises during which the colonial order dissolved, India—along with much of Asia and Africa—gained independence, and the United States struggled to reconstruct an international order. Dean Acheson referred to this as “a period of great obscurity” in which “the significance of events was shrouded in ambiguity. We groped after interpretations of them, sometimes reversed actions based on earlier views, and hesitated long before grasping what now seems obvious.”9 Words that had one meaning at the opening of that period (such as race, Cold War, or summit) had altered meanings at the end of it, and famine was no different. Unlike the Bengal famine, the Bihar famine was defined through statistics. It existed initially as a forecast based 6. Brass, “The Political Uses of Crisis: The Bihar Famine of 1966–1967,” Journal of Asian Studies 45:2 (February 1986): 245–67; Drèze, “Famine Prevention in India,” in Drèze and Sen, Political Economy, 2:13–122. 7. Romesh C. Dutt, Open Letters to Lord Curzon on Famines and Land Assessments in India (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner and Co., 1900), 17–18. 8. Kissinger, “Reflections on American Diplomacy,” Foreign Affairs 35 (October 1956): 46. 9. Acheson, Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department (New York: W. W. Norton, 1969), 4–5.

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on calculations of food needs and expected harvests. The policy response and the terms of success were defined statistically as well: as an effort to “rescue” India by closing a numerical gap eventually defined at 11 million tons of grain. This represented a significant change in the terms by which famine was traditionally understood, predicted, and alleviated. The imperial famine codes, which independent India inherited, contained elaborate early warning systems for famine based on surveillance of markets and hospitals for the appearance of signs associated with its onset—crop failures, migrations, sales of assets, diseases—but these codes relied principally on “self-acting tests” that required famine victims to demonstrate their level of desperation by making choices, such as to do hard labor or share food with members of other castes.10 The emphasis in the procedure was on cost limitation, and accordingly on reducing the discretion of reporting officials in defining the gravity and geographic extent of the emergency. Brutal in their effects, these imperial methods nonetheless allow us to identify four distinctive features of a postimperial, American heuristic of famine. First, the method of forecasting based on aggregate national data reversed the direction of intelligence about famine. Under the Famine Codes, the awareness of a crisis moved from a locality to the center, as in the Bengal famine when local officials appealed to New Delhi for weeks before the crisis was recognized, and only when photographs of skeletonized bodies appeared in British newspapers did the highest authorities become aware. By contrast, the Bihar famine originated with forecasts made by the U.S. Department of Agriculture in early December 1965, whereupon Johnson attempted to persuade Indian officials that a crisis existed. Later, after Gandhi finally accepted the premise, she confronted the denials of local officials. This tidal shift in information flow significantly affected the course of the crisis and its outcome. Second, the British method did not require a theory of causation. The statistical approach assumed causal relationships among drought, crop failure, population, and food availability—precisely the assumptions that famine experts have discredited—while implicitly discounting causes such as land tenure, wages, conflict, trade patterns, and food-zone policies. Moreover, these assumptions were then built into the policy response; the administration defined “self-help” as steps to improve the statistical indicators—population limitation, productivity, transport, and storage—rather than steps to ameliorate specific effects. The immediate task of saving lives was subordinated to the longterm goal of addressing the supposed sources of the problem. 10. Drèze, “Famine Prevention in India,” 19–40; Mike Davis, Late Victorian Holocausts (London: Verso, 2001), 165–67.

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Third, statistical projections afforded American forecasters substantially more latitude than imperial officials had in estimating the gravity of a famine. Forecasts prepared by the CIA and the departments of Agriculture and State were based on triangulations among figures denoting harvests, population, and port capacity, but in all three columns the numbers corresponded doubtfully with the realities they supposedly represented. In 1968, Ivan Bennett, Johnson’s science adviser, explained to a Senate subcommittee the uncertainty principle that precluded the gathering of reliable figures on how much of any crop had been planted, harvested, or stored: the greater the state interest, the more motivation peasants, merchants, and local officials had to mislead central authorities about the food inventory. Population figures were no better.11 Port capacity estimates varied widely, and although Johnson dispatched agriculture secretary Orville Freeman, national security adviser Robert Komer, and Sen. Bob Dole on missions to inspect the ports, he remained unsatisfied. The National Security Council estimated port capacity at six hundred thousand tons monthly, while Freeman put the figure at one million tons. As with other indexes, there were no authoritative Indian estimates; the United States was in the position of both determining and interpreting the numbers.12 Adding further play to the analysis, estimators could multiply their approximations by a caloric requirement ranging from 3,200 calories (generally accepted as the U.S. daily requirement) to 1,600 calories (an arbitrarily chosen “Indian” standard) per capita, throwing in an extra margin of error of up to 100 percent.13 The Economist observed that “estimates of [India’s] food gap represent, in these circumstances, a piece of political rather than economic arithmetic.”14 Assessments came in from Agriculture, State, AID, and CIA, giving Johnson a wide range of statistics to choose among, none more credible than the others. Finally, and most interesting, a statistical famine was ambiguous as to time and place. U.S. figures forecast a shortfall for the whole of India in annualized terms. Nonetheless, famine was still declared in particular times and places, as 11. Senate Subcommittee on Foreign Aid, Population Crisis, 90th Congress, 2nd sess., pt. 2, 1968, 312. 12. Harold H. Saunders to McGeorge Bundy, “Indian Food Crisis,” December 2, 1965, National Security Files (NSF), Robert W. Komer Papers, box 24; Freeman to LBJ, “Talks with the Indian Minister of Food and Agriculture,” December 23, 1965, NSF, NSC History, Indian Famine, Vol. 1, box 25, Lyndon Baines Johnson Library, Austin, Tex. (hereafter LBJL). 13. Barbara Tufty, “Analysis of Famine,” Science News, July 30, 1966, pp. 74–75. 14. “Food Is Politics,” Economist, February 5, 1966, p. 503. The problem was not, of course, confined to India. In 1968, Freeman faced a media firestorm when he challenged estimates by CBS News and civil rights activist Ralph Abernathy of the number of starving people in the United States. “Poor vs. Freeman—How Many Hungry?” U.S. News and World Report, June 3, 1968, pp. 22–24.

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it was in Bihar in April 1967. As Brass demonstrates, assignment of that particular setting and timing was part of the famine’s political script; state authorities used the disaster to level accusations of neglect against the central government, while New Delhi singled out Bihar to demonstrate the incompetence of its state administration. Famine could not have been declared before the Indian election, but it could not be avoided afterward, as the Congress Party candidates had run on promises to issue a declaration. Brass’s investigation does not extend to international politics, but since the United States orchestrated famine relief, as Johnson put it, from the ship “to the stomach,” it is at least possible the United States collaborated in staging the famine.15 Rereading the famine as politically constituted draws out aspects of the timing, rationale, and negotiation of the short-tether approach submerged in other narratives. There is no doubt that the drought occurred at a convenient moment for Johnson. The president’s stated rationale for short-tether was India’s chronic food shortage, but the policy was first applied to Egypt, as a check on Nasser’s radicalism, and extended to India and Pakistan in May 1965 as a reaction to the border war, and later to Ghana, Brazil, and other countries. On June 9, Johnson requested an interdepartmental review of aid to South Asia with an emphasis on “how to achieve more leverage for our money.”16 The review, which Komer dubbed the “quiet new look,” grew during the summer to encompass the total foreign aid budget and to focus on the problem of adapting aid strategy to changes in domestic policy, particularly to the loss of influence of the farm bloc states owing to Supreme Court decisions on electoral reapportionment. Johnson was keenly aware that the farm policies that had operated so successfully since the New Deal were about to undergo a massive and unavoidable change. Beginning with the Supreme Court decision in Baker v. Carr (1962), lower courts systematically overturned congressional districting schemes that disproportionately privileged rural voters.17 The suburban voters at the receiving end of the shift in electoral power were expected to re-

15. Freeman, “Memorandum for Files,” December 14, 1965, Orville Freeman Papers, Chron File, box 3, LBJL. 16. Bundy to Rusk and McNamara, “Presidential Decisions on Aid to India/Pakistan,” June 9, 1965, Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964–1968 (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 2000), 25:274. Hereafter FRUS with year, volume, and page. 17. The pivotal case was Baker v. Carr (1962), after which lower courts moved swiftly to impose a one-man-one-vote standard within states. The primary beneficiaries were suburban voters at the expense of rural and “inner-city” constituencies. In 1966, the Republican Party estimated it would gain twenty-five House seats as a result of reapportionment. Robert B. McKay, “Reapportionment: Success Story of the Warren Court,” Michigan Law Review 67:2 (December 1968): 230.

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inforce a trend in Congress toward supporting lower consumer prices rather than higher farm incomes. With the Democratic Party’s base shifting from the country to the city, the era of big subsidies and big surpluses was coming to an end, and Johnson was adapting policy to the new conditions. Freeman, a former governor of Minnesota, emerged as a major figure in these discussions, producing studies showing that the policies of crop limitation and subsidy that undergirded P.L. 480 were no longer economically or politically sustainable. His economists investigated the effects on the U.S. farm economy under the optimistic assumption that Asian countries could become self-sufficient in grain. P.L. 480 had been designed to encourage dependencies that would permanently expand the world market for U.S. grain, but these studies suggested that reducing dependency might actually increase the demand for U.S. food exports.18 Higher standards of living and consumption would “spill out” into demand for imported food, including fats, oils, and processed foods that would be paid for in dollars.19 Freeman suggested that a strategy based on increasing food output in underdeveloped countries would invigorate the U.S. economy, strengthen the dollar, lower consumer prices, appeal to rural and suburban voters, and win over some congressional opponents of foreign aid. Johnson was sold. But P.L. 480 constituted the bulk of U.S. development aid, and reconfiguring it on this scale could be justified only by international conditions. In the autumn of 1965, Johnson developed the theme of a world food crisis brought on by runaway population growth. At a televised cabinet meeting on November 19, he declared a “world war against hunger” requiring a reorientation of global and domestic food policy. “Our strategy,” he explained, “is to encourage rapid increase in food production in the underdeveloped countries themselves.” Two weeks later, as Johnson prepared to present the new policy to Congress, the Department of Agriculture produced its first famine forecasts. On December 17, before the extent (or even the existence) of a crop failure could be confirmed, Johnson declared the onset of “near famine conditions . . . which may require a dramatic rescue operation.” A Washington Post article the previous week explained the domestic link: “A series of famines, such as that threatening India, may speed the evolutionary movement of U.S. farm policy . . . but barring a succession of such worldwide shortages . . . the transition from restriction to expansion of U.S. farm production is still several years away.”20 18. Vernon W. Ruttan, ed., Why Food Aid? (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993), 88. 19. “Johnson May Revise Food Aid Policy,” New York Times, November 8, 1965. 20. “Cabinet Agenda,” November 19, 1965, Cabinet Papers, Meeting 11/19/65, box 4, LBJL; LBJ to Freeman, “Critical Indian Food Situation,” NSAM 339, December 17, 1965, FRUS, 1964–

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In preempting famine, as in a preemptive war, it is impossible to separate the assessment of the situation from the choice of responses. At this stage, Johnson chose the most dire assessments from among those available to him. The December 1965 prediction by Agriculture Department economist Lester Brown that India would need 18 million tons of grain above its standard P.L. 480 allotment in calendar 1966 was countered by CIA estimates of a “minimal” requirement of only 3.5 million additional tons.21 CIA and State characterized India’s food problem as a chronic dependency, while Agriculture predicted a disaster larger than “the Bengal famine of 1943 by several fold.”22 Johnson’s decision to continue short-tether provoked resistance from his advisers, and the battle within the administration was fought over the wording of presidential statements and control of the statistics going to the president.23 Johnson’s first and most difficult objective was to win acceptance of his claims from the Indian government, the press, Congress, and European governments. The reality of the famine was persistently questioned by Indian officials and the Indian press. In February 1966, after Johnson referred again in a press conference to “the drought and the famine that exists there,” Food Minister Chidambara Subramaniam issued a denial and accused the press, and indirectly the United States, of “scaremongering.” The Planning Commission insisted, sensibly, that “the problem is not one of food supplies, but of providing adequate purchasing power.” Editorials described the American and even the lower Indian estimates as “grossly exaggerated.”24 The international press, too,

1968, 25:513–14; Thomas J. Foley, “Famines May Alter Farm Policy,” Washington Post, December 12, 1965. The article went on to observe that “the actual turnaround in U.S. output is still some years away and that only a series of ‘India’ crises could bring it closer.” 21. Brown memorandum of December 6, 1965, quoted in Castore, “United States and India,” 137; CIA, “India’s New Prime Minister,” January 20, 1966, Declassified Documents Reference System, 1977, 270A; at a February 5 press conference, LBJ cited the figure of 19 million tons (“Transcript of President’s Press Conference on Indian Famine,” New York Times, February 5, 1966). The Indian food ministry estimated the shortfall at between three and eight million tons, while adding up state estimates produced a figure of fourteen million tons (“With Only P.L. 480,” Economic Weekly, December 11, 1965, p. 1807). 22. Thomas L. Hughes to Rusk, “Some Political Implications of the Indian Food Shortage,” December 21, 1965, NSF, Files of Robert Komer, India—Food 1964–1965, box 24, LBJL; CIA, “Indo-Pakistani Reactions to Certain US Courses of Action,” December 7, 1965, SNIE 31–3265, FRUS, 1964–1968, 25:489–90; Castore, “United States and India,” 137. 23. Chester Bowles, who considered his embassy’s estimates “remarkably accurate,” fiercely resisted the Department of Agriculture’s claims to expertise. Bowles, Promises to Keep: My Years in Public Life (New York: Harper and Row, 1971), 526–27. 24. “Transcript of President’s Press Conference on Indian Famine,” New York Times, February 5, 1966; “Food Ships Streaming into Famine-Free India,” Times (London), February 22, 1966; February Planning Commission report quoted in “Shortage Not of Food but of Money,” Yojana,

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had doubts. Ambassador Chester Bowles grew frustrated at reporters’ requests to see actual starving Indians, which he could not produce, and one British reporter noted that much of the foreign press corps wondered “if the Indian government hadn’t been bleating unnecessarily.” American newspapers swallowed the official version for stereotypical reasons succinctly captured by the official National Security Council history of the crisis: “It was an old story; Indians were always starving.”25 For New Delhi, the drought exacerbated a complex of problems that could not be explained as a simple matter of food deficiency. The design of the third five-year plan had been premised on the availability of U.S. agricultural products on concessional terms, and P.L. 480 had assumed even greater importance as the plan unfolded. In 1957, Food Ministry experts had concluded that U.S. subsidies were likely to produce chronic surpluses over the next decade, and that India could count on receiving aid in the form of food and other agricultural products (such as cotton). Officials initially considered building a grain stockpile, but policy soon shifted to using P.L. 480 for current consumption in order to accelerate the drive for industrialization. Cheap agricultural imports aided industrial expansion in a number of ways. Some shipments, of corn for instance, went straight to factories to be converted into industrial products like starch and alcohol. Under P.L. 480, imported products were sold for local currency, building up a “counterpart” fund used for developmental purposes; this method also conserved India’s thin foreign exchange balance, which could also be employed for industry’s benefit. Officials had hoped that cheap food and cotton would reduce wage demands, but they quickly discovered that price affected consumption in unpredictable ways. As government investments raised incomes, economists noted “a shift of the demand from course grains to superior grains like rice and wheat,” leading to a cycle of increasing dependency as India imported still more rice and wheat to meet the demand.26 Indian food production increased markedly during the second plan, but P.L. 480 shipments increased just as fast. While American observers tended to attribute this inMay 29, 1966, p. 2; “Food Deficit in Southern States,” Eastern Economist, March 4, 1966, p. 366. Yojana observed, “The Prime Minister is very correct in saying there is no famine in the country” (“Food, 1966,” Yojana, March 20, 1966, p. 1). 25. Bowles, Promises to Keep, 530; Kingsley Martin, “A Famine in India?” New Statesman, March 4, 1966, p. 286; Chanchal Sarkar, “Below the Wheatline,” Spectator, March 4, 1966, pp. 255–56; NSC, “India’s Food Crisis, 1965–67,” NSF, NSC History, Vol. 5, LBJL. 26. B. K. Nehru, “P.L. 480—Aid to India,” July 10, 1957; Ministry of Food and Agriculture, “Imports of Wheat and Rice from the USA Under Fresh P.L. 480,” 1957; and B. B. Ghosh, “Further P.L. 480 Agreement for Import of Wheat and Rice from USA,” April 30, 1957, Food and Agriculture Ministry Records, FIMP-110 (61) I, National Archives of India, New Delhi.

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crease to the single variable of population growth, Indian officials saw interlinked problems of incomes, exchange, industrial growth, and aid from which they could find no easy escape.27 Johnson’s klieg lights obscured these nuances, illuminating a single, simplified crisis that soon gained a semblance of reality. In February, Pope Paul VI, asserting that “people are literally dying of starvation,” appealed for aid to India. Dutch schoolchildren skipped dessert to raise money. Subramaniam applied to the U.S. for additional “emergency” food aid. States imposed preemptive rationing, and in Kerala, Calcutta, and Punjab deadly food riots erupted. The moderate weekly Eastern Economist blamed American policy for requiring the food minister to exaggerate the food deficit, fostering the “psychology of scarcity” that touched off the riots. The same thought had occurred to William Gaud, director of AID, and Freeman, who worried that Johnson’s “loud international alarm about famine . . . could set off hoarding and price speculation, and make it even easier for the leftists to stir up food riots.”28 Ambassador B. K. Nehru brought this point up directly with the president, urging a public reassurance to prevent hoarding and agitation. “Of course,” he explained, “the Kerala crisis was partly food and partly politics.” Ultimately, the administration, while shouting fire in a crowded theater, blamed the Indians for stampeding to the exits. Freeman explained to Congress that, while the famine was an objective fact, the food riots were “politically agitated” and “not related to food shortages.”29 The riots’ separatist overtones set off alarms in Washington. Since 1960, when Selig Harrison’s influential India: The Most Dangerous Decades predicted “proCommunist defections” of linguistic states, national security officials had warned that state separatism would be the vehicle for communist penetration of the subcontinent.30 The powerful personal leadership of Jawaharlal Nehru had offset the structural weakness of the central government, but Washington regarded both Lal Bahaur Shastri and his successor as prime minister, Indira

27. C. Subramaniam, Hand of Destiny: Memoirs, vol. 2, The Green Revolution (Bombay: Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, 1995), 190–91. 28. “Pope Asks World Give Famine Aid,” New York Times, February 10, 1966; “Riceless in Kerala,” Eastern Economist, February 11, 1966, p. 211; Gaud quoted in Ahlberg, “Food Is a Powerful Tool,” 230–31; Gaud to Califano, “Proposed Message on India’s Food Needs,” March 25, 1966, White House Aides, Bob Hardesty file, box 10, LBJL. 29. R. W. Komer, “President’s Meeting with Indian Ambassador Nehru,” February 3, 1966, NSF, NSC History, vol. 1, box 25, LBJL; House Committee on Agriculture, Emergency Food for India, 89th Cong., 2nd sess., March 31, 1966, 21. 30. Harrison, India: The Most Dangerous Decades (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1960), 177.

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Gandhi, as relatively weak placeholders struggling to appease powerful state political chiefs and the dominant figures in their own cabinets.31 U.S. officials also recognized that food policy was a flash point for separatist politics. The constitution gave the states full authority over agriculture, grain reserves, and prices, and in times of shortage the gap in rations between states provided (literally) a visceral reminder of India’s disunity. U.S. designs for India’s internal politics have not been a theme of historical accounts of the food crisis, but the thread runs through the documents.32 As Kennedy and Johnson administration officials saw it, the threat to central authority in India arose from two quarters: renegade cabinet departments, whose powerful ministers often defied direction from the prime minister; and the states, whose retention of constitutional authority over internal economic policy fostered, as in Kerala, a distinctive local politics ripe for secessionism and Soviet influence. CIA and State Department analysts identified a split between “jealous senior ministers” and a “policy group” of younger cabinet officers—including Subramaniam, Ashok Mehta, the minister for plans, and defense minister Yashwantrao Chavan—distinguished by their cooperation with the United States, support for economic centralization, and opposition to linguistic and communalist legislation. Subramaniam’s rival was T. T. Krishnamachari— “TTK” in American cables—the venerable finance minister who superintended India’s industrialization drive under the second five-year plan. In November 1965, with U.S. support, Subramaniam had put forward proposals that diverted a significant share of foreign exchange from industrial development into fertilizer production, agricultural research, and farm price supports. Played correctly, the State Department suggested, the food crisis could hand Subramaniam a victory while insulating him from the politically fatal implication of being an American patsy. “Subramaniam triumphant,” officials hoped, “could be of great value to Indo-US relations.”33 The Subramaniam-Krishnamachari rivalry had deep implications for the direction of India’s modernization as well as for the future of the Congress Party. The New Agricultural Strategy would shift exchange and investment, slowing 31. See CIA, “The People around Prime Minister Shastri,” June 26, 1964, Declassified Documents Reference System, CK3100352924; CIA, “Central Intelligence Bulletin,” February 12, 1965, document CIA-RDP79T00975A008100400001–7, and “Central Intelligence Bulletin,” March 25, 1966, document CIA-RDP79T00975A00880380001–3, CIA Research Tool, National Archives. 32. Through press accounts, too. Joseph Lelyveld wrote that “the crux of the food problem is in the difficult negotiations between New Delhi and the state governments” (“India,” Atlantic, February 1968, p. 14). See also “Why Hunger Still Stalks India,” Newsweek, April 4, 1966, p. 44. 33. Thomas L. Hughes, “Some Political Implications of the Indian Food Shortage,” December 21, 1965, NSF, Files of Robert Komer, India-Food 1964–1965, box 24, LBJL.

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industrial growth and elevating food prices, thus antagonizing the constituents of urban political kingpins, such as Kumaraswami Kamaraj, Krishnamachari’s patron. All parties agreed on the direction of modernization, toward a massconsumption economy; the dispute focused on where consumption—and correspondingly the base of the Congress Party—should be situated: in urban centers or the countryside.34 “Food grains hold the key to the problem of internal resources,” Krishnamachari explained, since “the savings potential of fixed income earners [such as industrial laborers] depends largely on food prices.” The trend within the party toward urban machine politics and regionalism alarmed U.S. officials, partly because of parallels to Latin America. Walt W. Rostow, director of the Policy Planning Staff, remarked on a “disorderly factional tendency” in modernization whereby “multiple, shallowly rooted, but highly assertive parties” organized by language or caste challenged “an inherently overburdened and fragile central government.” A strong Congress Party, like Mexico’s PRI, offered the only chance for “a relatively hopeful evolution.”35 The double pressure of the food crisis and short-tether brought a momentary settlement to the feud within the cabinet and promised to promote a further consolidation of authority. Krishnamachari, defeated on the food policy, resigned in January 1966. Gandhi, installed as prime minister the same month, placed Subramaniam in her inner circle of advisers. U.S. officials noted that his food initiative, coupled with the self-help requirements of short-tether, radically shifted power toward the center, establishing a national food budget and national grain reserves and extending central authority into every rural village. “A successful national food policy,” Freeman explained, “would further one of our political objectives for India—binding together the states with new ties of interdependence and strengthening the national government.” “The real threat to India is not invasion through the Himalayas,” Secretary of State Dean Rusk observed, “but possible disintegration and fragmentation of the as yet fragile Indian state.” The “adversity” caused by short-tether, he argued, would “provide new impulse toward unity.”36 In this objective, of consolidating power at the top, Indira Gandhi and Lyndon Johnson found common ground.

34. Krishnamachari to Shastri, November 23, December 1, 14, 1965, correspondence file, Krishnamachari papers, Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi. 35. Krishnamachari quoted in Norman K. Nicholson, “Political Aspects of Indian Food Policy,” Pacific Affairs 41:1 (Spring 1968): 48; Rostow, “The Sharing of the Good Life,” Department of State Bulletin 54:1404 (May 23, 1966): 809–10. 36. Freeman and Gaud to LBJ, “Food Aid for India in 1968,” October 10, 1967, NSF, NSC Meeting 1/11/67, box 2; Rusk, “A United States Assistance Strategy for India,” November 8, 1965, NSF, NSC History, Indian Famine, vol. 2, box 25, LBJL.

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The administration shed its doubts about Gandhi as she captivated Washington and New York in March 1966. After she broke the glass ceiling at the National Press Club (women reporters were admitted for the first time to cover her speech) and stood up to hard questioning on Meet the Press, reporters praised her toughness and pragmatism. As the youthful head of a rising democratic nation, and especially as a woman, she represented to Betty Friedan and an enthralled national media, not tradition-bound India, but the future of global statecraft. James Reston described her as “cool, precise, and unemotional in her gleaming saris.” “She’s lovely,” Gov. Nelson Rockefeller effused, “She’s unique. She’s dedicated.”37 For a solid week she lent her charisma to the more troubled aspects of Johnson’s foreign policy, denouncing Chinese expansionism and describing Johnson as “one of the restraining influences” in Southeast Asia. The president seized every opportunity to place himself at her side. At a reception at Ambassador B. K. Nehru’s house he invited himself to stay for dinner and declared that he would see to it that “no harm comes to this girl.”38 Toward the end of her state visit, Gandhi and U.S. officials jointly drafted a script for the famine. At a meeting on March 29, Rusk began by noting “the dilemma concerning the public presentation on food. It shouldn’t be such as to frighten people in India, but on the other hand the need must be seen to be real in the United States.” Nehru agreed that “to get a response, the need must be somewhat overplayed.” L. K. Jha, the prime minister’s secretary, stressed that it should appear to be “a natural calamity” that was “averted.” Gandhi, who had denied the existence of a famine up to this point, “suggested that the subject might be treated as a localized matter.”39 The famine that unfolded in Bihar later that year closely followed this sketch. Although drought affected large areas of the country, Bihar alone was isolated, subjected to stringent rationing, and fed with supplies directly from the United States. Official statements claimed that no one died, but half of the 2,353 “alleged starvation deaths” in India occurred in this one province.40 These facts on the ground, however, were a result rather than the cause of the decision to acknowledge the crisis. The day after the Washington meeting, Gandhi referred to the situation as a “famine” for the first time; simultane37. James Reston, “Lady from New Delhi,” New York Times, March 20, 1966; “Quotation of the Day,” New York Times, April 1, 1966; Betty Freidan, “How Mrs. Gandhi Shattered the Feminine Mystique,” Ladies’ Home Journal, May 1966, pp. 100–103. 38. Homer Bigart, “Mrs. Gandhi Sees Visit as Triumph,” New York Times, April 2, 1966. 39. “Indo-U.S. Talks: Food, Disarmament and Nuclear Policy,” FRUS, 1964–1968, 25:599. This was the only substantive meeting during the summit. The food crisis was the first item on the agenda and, significantly, public presentation of the crisis was the only aspect discussed. 40. Drèze and Sen, Political Economy, 2:59.

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ously, New Delhi officially announced that nine children in Orissa had died of starvation. The Indian press noted the rhetorical shift, but this admission brought no closure. The state government in Orissa promptly issued a denial, and Congress Party and opposition legislators, as well as central and local officials, traded accusations for the remainder of the year in what became known as the “starvation controversy.”41 Natural disasters are a type of international relations. Volcanoes, hurricanes, tsunamis, and epidemics of bird flu are inseparable from the interpretive frameworks in which they are predicted, defined, and remembered, frameworks embedded in international politics. During the last half of the twentieth century, the United States wielded its authority to forecast and alleviate disaster as an instrument of influence, partway between soft power and hard power. Recently released documents on the Bangladesh crisis of 1971 reveal another such instance. When the Pakistani military government of Yahya Khan cracked down on the Bengali autonomy movement, triggering a civil war, Nixon administration officials recognized that a typhoon and a potential famine supplied their one chance for leverage. They referred to famine relief as a “political weapon” and “the best way to thwart the Indians.”42 Characteristically, Nixon and Kissinger’s use of disaster was almost the opposite of Johnson’s; they employed it to conceal political responsibility rather than to sensationalize an agenda. In his memoirs, Kissinger trains his own klieg lights away from the White House and its Pakistani allies, identifying the “cyclone” that struck Bengal in November 1970 as the event that “crystallized opposition” to the Pakistani regime and accusing India of exploiting the ensuing famine to accelerate the breakup of Pakistan. Historians have conceded the point. Jussi Hanhimaki, in a recent biography of Kissinger, notes that “bloodshed . . . was ultimately not a result of any particular American policy decision but . . . a series of developments—both man-made and natural.” Kissinger, however, was never one to be swept along by developments. Writing in the midst of the crisis in August 1971, he described the famine not as a natural occurrence but as “an umbrella . . . to deprive India of an excuse for intervention” against the Pakistani crackdown. The “famine” had been forecast as an inevitable outcome of the typhoon. When U.S. and UN aid officials fanning out into the region could find no food shortage, only a refugee 41. “Death in Orissa,” Himmat, April 8, 1966, p. 3; G. S. Bhargava, “Starvation vs. Malnutrition,” Yojana, May 15, 1966, p. 27. 42. “Minutes of Senior Review Group Meeting,” July 30, 1971, doc. 111, FRUS, 1969–1976, 11:292–302. Nixon used the potential famine to thwart congressional moves to cut aid to Pakistan. “Transcript of the President’s News Conference,” New York Times, August 5, 1971.

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crisis caused by the Pakistani army’s terror tactics, Kissinger recognized that the absence of a famine could also have political uses. He urged Nixon to take credit for averting a disaster and saving “many millions” of Bengalis from starvation. The point was “hard to prove,” he admitted, but it would nonetheless show that the United States had “contributed to peace.”43 Kissinger revealed his realism through his impulse to attach a number, however vague, to his historical revisionism. He shared a faith in the authority of putatively hard data that was a hallmark of late-twentieth-century statecraft. Johnson, too, according to Waldo Heinrichs, “liked numbers and relied too heavily on box-score answers.” As Charles Beard noted in 1935, statistics constructed a limited, distorted reality, but they were nonetheless among the few tools officials could use to reduce the world to the “accurate superficial description” required for policy making.44 For historians seeking a richer, or simply an alternate, description, an inquiry into whether policy makers got the numbers right—about natural or human events—can be a dead end, for it assumes a distinction between objective, countable realities and subjective politics, a line that policy makers frequently traversed. By concentrating on biography, documents, and ideas, the methods Robert Ferrell taught, historians can instead examine the calculative worldview that conjured into existence the “real” problems of modern diplomacy.

43. Kissinger, White House Years (Boston: Little, Brown, 1979), 850–56; Hanhimaki, The Flawed Architect: Henry Kissinger and American Foreign Policy (New York: Oxford, 2004), 156; Kissinger to Nixon, August 18, 1971, doc. 127, and briefing prepared for President Nixon, October 27, 1971, doc. 172, FRUS, 1969–1976, 11:345–47, 478–79. 44. Heinrichs, “Lyndon B. Johnson: Change and Continuity,” in Lyndon Johnson Confronts the World, ed. Cohen and Tucker, 26; Beard, The Open Door at Home (New York: Macmillan, 1935), 28–29.

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announced plans to withdraw from the Persian/Arab Gulf. As a result, the sheikhdom of Qatar, one of nine British-protected sheikhdoms, attempted to unite with its neighbors, Bahrain and the seven Trucial States. The attempt failed. Hence, in 1971, Qatar became an independent state, but one hugely vulnerable to any external threat. Occupying an area of six thousand square miles, Qatar had a population of approximately eighty thousand, mostly Sunni Muslims, who like their Saudi Arabian neighbors followed Wahhabi Islam. Americans had little knowledge about Qatar. During a White House meeting in October 1971, presidential aide H. R. Haldeman twice asked where Qatar was, apparently not having known the country existed.1 After the British decision to leave the Gulf, Qatar’s location garnered considerable attention. Washington recognized the strategic importance of the area’s vast oil reserves and was determined to prevent Soviet intervention. A State Department memorandum suggested that the Soviets might consider Britain’s departure an opportunity “to ‘leapfrog’ over Iran and establish bases or clients for the first time in the Gulf itself.”2 At this juncture, however, the United States remained deeply involved in Vietnam. From Washington’s perspective, it seemed that Britain had decided to retire as guardian of the Gulf “at the worst possible moment.” President Richard M. Nixon and his national security adviser, Henry Kissinger, responded to this dilemma by applying the Nixon Doctrine. According to the Nixon Doctrine, Washington would supply equipment and training to friendly regional powers, but these countries had to assume responsibility for their own security. Extended to the Gulf region, the Nixon Doctrine became known as the “twin pillars” policy, relying on both a friendly IN 1968, GREAT BRITAIN

1. Nixon Tapes 604–9, October 27, 1971, Nixon Papers, National Archives (hereafter NA). I am grateful to Nixon archivist Sam Rushay for his assistance. 2. Memorandum, Battle to Rusk, February 22, 1968, in Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964–1968 (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 2000). Hereafter FRUS with year, volume, and page.

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Iran and a friendly Saudi Arabia to protect Qatar and its Gulf neighbors.3 Ironically, at the beginning of the twentieth century it had appeared that, without British deterrence, the Saudis would have incorporated the small sheikhdom into their own kingdom.4 In addition, although Washington considered Iran the strongest, most reliable state in the Gulf region, Persians and Arabs shared a long history of mutual antagonism, and Iran had only recently agreed to relinquish its claim to Bahrain.5 Cushioned initially by its sizable oil resources, Qatar had moved slowly toward independence. In 1935, a seventy-five-year oil concession had been granted to the Iraq Petroleum Company, which in 1953 changed its name to the Qatar Petroleum Company (QPC). American, British, and French oil companies held shares in QPC. After World War II, oil income gradually increased. Economic growth stimulated interest in the outside world. In 1964, Qatar joined several international organizations, including the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). In addition, the al-Thani ruling family decided to establish a Qatari airline and secure traffic rights from neighboring countries. At the same time, without consulting the resident British Political Agency, members of Qatar’s ruling family pursued direct negotiations with oil companies and began to invest oil revenue outside the sterling area.6 Nonetheless, the al-Thani rulers did not seek independence from Britain, which in 1916 had concluded a treaty of protection with Qatar, a treaty similar to those London had earlier concluded with other Gulf sheikhdoms. Hence, in 1968, when London announced that Her Majesty’s Government (HMG) would end its treaties of protection and withdraw from the region in 1971, the al-Thani sheikhs considered asking for American protection. Together with their brother Gulf Arab rulers, the traditional al-Thani shared Washington’s goals for their region. They opposed both communist infiltration and radical Arab nationalism. A representative of Qatar’s deputy ruler, Sheikh Khalifah bin Hamad al-Thani, visited the American Embassy in Beirut to try to arrange for Sheikh Khalifah to travel to Washington, where he hoped to obtain American support. The State Department was not ready officially to receive Sheikh

3. Gary G. Sick, “US Policy in the Gulf: Objectives and Prospects,” in Managing New Developments in the Gulf, ed. Rosemary Hollis (London: Royal Institute of International Affairs, 2000), 34–35. 4. Diplomatic Report 357/74, Henderson to secretary of state for foreign and commonwealth affairs, Doha, September 26, 1974, Public Record Office, Kew, England (hereafter PRO). 5. Miriam Joyce, Ruling Shaikhs and Her Majesty’s Government, 1960–1969 (London: Frank Cass, 2003), 145. 6. Ibid., 43.

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Khalifah. Washington’s message was clear: the United States was unwilling to replace Britain as guardian of the Gulf.7 More than a decade before the British decision to leave the Gulf, however, President Dwight David Eisenhower had emphasized the importance of Arab oil. In March 1956, he wrote in his diary that if European countries did not have access to Gulf oil their economies would collapse. The resulting problems for Washington “could scarcely be exaggerated.”8 Insuring an uninterrupted flow of oil remained a priority. In March 1968, a State Department official referred to the nine British-protected sheikhdoms as “shabby sheikdoms with a few square miles of territory and a few thousand inhabitants.” Nonetheless, the memorandum acknowledged that the Gulf region contained approximately 67 percent of the earth’s known oil reserves. While grudgingly accepting the necessity of British economic retrenchment, Washington did not want Britain’s departure from the Gulf to leave a vacuum for either the Soviet Union or radical Arab states to fill. Yet the United States remained unwilling to become directly involved. Clearly, Washington’s continued involvement in Vietnam restricted options. A State Department official explained that at the outset it was wise to avoid the temptation of replacing Britain in the region because later on it might be difficult “to extricate ourselves.”9 At the same time, the U.S. ambassador in Saudi Arabia, Herman Eilts, explained to the Saudi king, Faisal, that it was the responsibility of both Iran and Saudi Arabia to arrange security for the region.10 Unable to convince HMG to stay or to coax Washington to intervene, together with the other British protected Gulf states Qatar had continued on toward independence. On April 2, 1970, the Qatari government enacted a provisional constitution. The constitution confirmed the position of the alThani family. Although it did not specify primogeniture, the constitution stated that the head of state was to be a family member.11 In August 1970, the U.S. consul general in Dhahran, Lee Dinsmore, visited Qatar during the absence of the ruler, Sheikh Ahmad bin Ali al-Thani, who was traveling abroad. Dinsmore reported to Washington that he was favorably impressed with the ruler’s cousin, the “hard-working” acting ruler, Sheikh Khalifah

7. Ibid., 114–15. 8. Robert H. Ferrell, ed., The Eisenhower Diaries (New York: W. W. Norton, 1981), 319. 9. Memorandum 139, Intelligence Report, February 22, 1968, and Memorandum 146, Warnke to McNamara, June 12, 1968, FRUS, 1964–1968, 21:284, 297. 10. Simon C. Smith, Britain’s Revival and Fall in the Gulf (London: Routledge Curzon, 2004), 139. 11. Rosemarie Said Zahlan, The Creation of Qatar (London: Croom Helm, 1979), 106, 108.

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bin Hamad al-Thani.12 The following July, Kissinger’s deputy, Gen. Alexander Haig Jr., wrote to President Nixon advising him that Secretary of State William Rogers recommended extending formal recognition to both Qatar and its neighbor Bahrain after they declared their independence, which appeared likely that summer. According to Haig: “Early diplomatic recognition of Bahrain and Qatar is in our interest and should not cause any significant problems with the other Persian Gulf States.” Haig explained that the British had labored to establish a federation of Gulf sheikhdoms prior to their scheduled departure from the region at the end of 1971, and HMG remained engaged in that effort. It appeared, however, that the outcome would be a federation of seven with the emergence of two independent states. The president approved Rogers’s recommendation that when both Bahrain and Qatar became “fully independent” the United States would recognize the two states and establish diplomatic relations, thus accrediting the American ambassador to Kuwait as the nonresident ambassador to Bahrain and Qatar.13 Here was the first step in what gradually developed into a close relationship between the small Gulf states and the United States. Soon after, Dinsmore noted that the Qatari ruler, Sheikh Ahmad, remained out of the country “sulking in Geneva,” that he was avoiding responsibility, leaving difficult decisions to his cousin, the “decisive and dynamic” Sheikh Khalifah bin Hamad. On September 3, 1971, from his Swiss villa, Sheikh Ahmad issued Qatar’s declaration of independence. Although urged by his family and by British officials to return to Doha for the ceremony terminating the special relationship between Britain and Qatar, Sheikh Ahmad had refused to do so. The State Department informed the British embassy in Washington that Secretary Rogers would announce recognition of Qatar’s independence as soon as he had verification that the necessary documents had been signed in Geneva.14 Clearly, Washington wanted to establish good relations with Qatar and its newly independent neighbors, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates. The State Department was concerned about recent Soviet shipments of arms to Iraq and Syria, as well as the continuing presence of Soviet troops in Egypt. Kissinger worried that those Arab states friendly toward the United States, namely Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and the Gulf states, were becoming encircled.15

12. Telegram 084430, American consul, Dhahran, to Dept. of State, August 1970, POL 17, Qatar, Record Group (hereafter RG) 59, NA. 13. Haig, memorandum for the president, July 14, 1971, and memorandum, National Security Council, Davis to Eliot Jr., July 20, 1971, Nixon Papers, NA. 14. Telegram 1088, Dinsmore to Dept. of State, August 24, 1971, POL Qatar, RG 59, NA; telegram, Hillard to Doha, September 1, 1971, FCO 811723, PRO. 15. Kissinger White House Years (Boston: Little Brown, 1979), 1263.

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President Nixon decided to express American support for the Qatari government. After the British/Qatari signing ceremony in Geneva, he wrote to Doha congratulating the absent ruler on the occasion of his country’s sovereignty. “I anticipate a continuation of the friendly and cooperative relations between our two governments which have long characterized the relationship between our two peoples,” Nixon stated emphatically.16 In early September, after returning from a meeting with Saudi King Faisal, Sheikh Khalifah met with Dinsmore. Qatar’s deputy ruler told the visiting American consul general that prior to his trip to Saudi Arabia he had been very worried about how the king would react to Qatar’s declaration of independence. Sheikh Khalifah had explained to King Faisal that Qatar had seriously worked to accomplish a union of the nine British-protected sheikhdoms. These efforts had failed. Hence, Qatar had no choice but to declare independence. At the same time, Qatar remained committed to close relations among all the Gulf states. King Faisal still advocated a federation of the nine states but told his Qatari visitor that Saudi Arabia would not interfere, that the decision was Qatar’s. Sheikh Khalifah was relieved. Nonetheless, Qatar was located in a volatile region and had to rely on its stronger neighbors, Washington’s “twin pillars,” Saudi Arabia and Iran. Sheikh Khalifah considered it a priority to respect Iran’s position in the Gulf. Ten years earlier when Kuwait had obtained its independence from Britain, Iraq had attempted to invade the newly independent emirate. Qatar’s ruler remained suspicious of Iraq. So too did the rulers of the neighboring Gulf states, including Iran. The Baathist regime, which controlled Iraq, continued to promote socialist rhetoric and had developed ties with the Soviet Union.17 Sheikh Khalifah seemed displeased that his cousin Emir Ahmad continued to remain out of the country. According to the British ambassador, Edward Henderson, the ruler was scheduled to return to Doha by October 17, and “it is generally to be expected that there will be some fairly traumatic moments after his arrival, and some kind of power struggle within the family this winter seems inevitable.”18 Washington’s deputy consul general in Dhahran, Philip Griffin, visited Qatar on October 21, 1971. Griffin noted that only a few days earlier Sheikh Ahmad had returned to Doha, his first visit since Qatar declared independence. Griffin learned that Sheikh Ahmad was already preparing for a trip to Dubai and Pakistan. A British official predicted that Qatar’s ruler might soon find himself 16. Nixon to Ahmad, September 5, 1971, Nixon Papers, NA. 17. Telegram 1147, Dinsmore to Dept. of State, September 7, 1971, POL 16 Qatar, NA; Charles Tripp, A History of Iraq (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 201. 18. Henderson to Beaven, October 12, 1971, FCO 8/1722, PRO.

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unemployed. During his visit to Doha, Griffin confirmed that Britain, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Kuwait would accredit resident ambassadors to Qatar, but that both the United States and Japan would likely accredit their ambassadors in Kuwait to also represent them in Doha. The Qatari government now had to consider training suitable candidates for its new Ministry of Foreign Affairs. According to Griffin, it was clear that Qatar planned to reduce its dependence on foreign Arabs, “particularly Palestinians.”19 Qatar employed a large number of Palestinian workers in many fields, including education, health, and government. Together with the rest of the Arab world, Qatar opposed Israel and wished to recover the Arab lands lost during the June 1967 Six-Day War. After that war, banners praising the Palestine Liberation Organization had been posted in Doha’s major squares, and uniformed Palestinian commandos brandished machine guns in the streets. The Qatari government officially remained committed to the liberation of Palestine.20 Nevertheless, although steadfastly opposed to the Jewish State, conservative Qataris feared a worse evil: that their Palestinian employees might undermine traditional rule and promote radical Arab nationalism in the Gulf. Hence, the al-Thani sheikhs had to denounce Israel and praise its opponents but, at the same time, keep Arab radicals in check. President Nixon was pleased that, soon after Qatar proclaimed its independence, it was admitted to the United Nations, adding another member to the noncommunist camp, an additional Cold War ally. At the end of October 1971, members of the UN General Assembly voted on Resolution 2758, which withdrew recognition from one of the organization’s founding members, the Republic of China, and recognized the People’s Republic of China in its place. As a result, Nationalist China was expelled from the United Nations. Qatar abstained. Prior to the UN vote, the U.S. embassy in Taipei had informed Washington that President Chiang Kai-shek had received a cable from Qatar thanking him for his warm congratulations on the announcement of Qatar’s independence. Therefore, the State Department had assumed that Doha would support Taipei at the United Nations. Nixon personally expressed his annoyance that Doha had not acted as he had wished.21 Deputy Emir Sheikh Khalifah also regretted the Qatari abstention. According to Sheikh Khalifah, he had instructed Qatar’s delegate to the United Nations, Dr. Hassan Kamil, to support 19. Telegram A-125, American consul, Dhahran, to Dept. of State, October 26, 1971, POL 2 Qatar, NA. 20. Diplomatic Report 357/74, Henderson to secretary of state for foreign and commonwealth affairs, September 26, 1974, PRO. 21. Telegram A-228, McConaughy to Dept. of State, September 15, 1971, POL 16 Qatar; Nixon Tapes, 604–9, October 27, 1971, Nixon Papers, NA.

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Washington. Sheikh Khalifah told British ambassador Henderson that he was embarrassed by Qatar’s abstention. Sheikh Khalifah insisted that Hassan Kamil had not followed instructions. For years Sheikh Ahmad had allowed his Egyptian adviser, Dr. Kamil, to lead rather than to follow. Thus, Kamil was accustomed to taking the initiative.22 On December 9, 1971, Washington appointed its first ambassador to Qatar, William A. Stoltzfus Jr., who already served as ambassador to Kuwait and was also accredited to Bahrain, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates. The son of Presbyterian missionaries, Stoltzfus was born in Beirut in 1924. Fluent in Arabic, Stoltzfus continued to serve as nonresident ambassador until August 1974. In September 1971, prior to Stoltzfus’s appointment as ambassador to Kuwait, a member of Henry Kissinger’s National Security Council staff, Harold H. Saunders, noted that the emerging Gulf states represented a mixture of traditional Arab culture and “the winds of change.” According to Saunders, change in the region was made possible by a new generation of educated Gulf Arabs. Saunders was confident that Stoltzfus was the proper diplomat for the position because he understood and respected traditional Arab society but at the same time could easily relate to the first generation of educated young men.23 Ambassador Stoltzfus frequently traveled from his Kuwaiti base to visit his other posts. Because he did not like to fly, sometimes accompanied by his sons he drove through Saudi Arabia to Qatar, even though “you were in pretty deserted country there.” At the same time, income from oil was now changing the landscape of the region. In 1949, when Qatar first exported oil, Doha was a fishing town without a local water supply, electricity, or even one paved road.24 In 1971, Stoltzfus entered a developing city enjoying the benefits of twentieth-century technology and infrastructure. During Stoltzfus’s tenure an American embassy opened in Doha, and John T. Wheelock was appointed chargé d’affaires. It was quickly apparent to the diplomats serving in the region that Sheikh Ahmad al-Thani was ill suited to the task of ruling the rapidly modernizing state. Taking advantage of his absence from the country, the al-Thani family held a meeting and decided to replace him.25 On February 22, 1972, Radio Qatar announced that Sheikh Khalifah 22. Henderson to Acland, November 30, 1971, FCO 8/1722, PRO. 23. National Security Council memorandum, Saunders to Davis, September 8, 1971, Nixon Papers, NA. 24. Lillian P. Mullin, interview with Ambassador William A. Stoltzfus Jr., May 18, 1994, Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training, Washington, D.C.; Alvin J. Cottrell, ed., The Persian Gulf States: A General Survey (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980), 260. 25. Rosemarie Said Zahlan, The Making of the Modern Gulf States: Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and Oman (Reading: Ithaca, 1998), 104.

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bin Hamad al-Thani was now the emir of Qatar. Although there is no indication that Washington encouraged the coup, the State Department recognized the new ruler’s ability. The new ruler was eager to insure the loyalty of his people and the fidelity of his army. Hence, Radio Qatar broadcast three additional decrees. The first provided a 20 percent salary increase for members of the military. The second abolished payments due on state-built low-income housing, and the third provided a 20 percent salary increase for all those employed by the government. From Dhahran, Consul General Dinsmore reported that the ousted emir had been a figurehead who had delegated the affairs of state to Sheikh Khalifah. Now as ruler, Emir Khalifah would likely continue his previous policies. Dinsmore warned of possible tribal warfare, however, noting that the new ruler had to ensure the support of Qatar’s military, which was commanded by a British convert to Islam, Muhammad Mahdi (formerly Ronald Cochrane), an officer with close personal ties to the deposed Sheikh Ahmad.26 Sheikh Khalifah claimed that he had seized power because Sheikh Ahmad’s “only concern was to realize personal benefits at the expense of the homeland.” As an indication of his intentions, the new ruler transferred Sheikh Ahmad’s income, totaling one-fourth of the country’s revenue, to the general budget. According to Dinsmore, the Qatari ruling family had become notorious for “its ostentatious and wasteful living standard.”27 Shortly after taking power, Emir Khalifah sent a message to President Nixon informing him that he had assumed control of his country “in response to the unanimous wish of our people, Govt and armed forces.” The coup had been well organized. Moving rapidly, Sheikh Khalifah’s men took over the army headquarters, the radio station, and major roads. The Qatari military was now commanded by Sheikh Khalifah’s twenty-year-old son, Brig. Gen. Hamad bin Khalifa bin Hamad al-Thani. The British ambassador in Doha, Edward Henderson, reported to London that the deposed ruler had personally taken a quarter of the country’s revenue and that his son, Abdul Aziz bin Ahmad, had wasted millions of pounds of government funds. According to Henderson, father and son had frustrated Sheikh Khalifah’s efforts to develop Qatar. Henderson assured his superiors that the new ruler would serve his country well: “No objective observer here could do anything but applaud.”28 26. Telegram 358, Dinsmore to Dept. of State, February 22, 1972, POL 15–1 Qatar, NA. 27. Telegram 368, Dinsmore to Dept. of State, February 23, 1972, POL 23–9 Qatar, NA. 28. Telegram 034594, Rogers to Dhahran, February 29, 1972, Nixon Papers, NA; telegram 445, American consul, Dhahran, to Dept. of State, March 6, 1972, POL 23–9, Qatar, NA; telegram, Henderson to Foreign Office, February 23, 1972, FCO 8/1891, PRO.

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In Manama, Bahrain’s foreign minister, Mohammed bin Mubarak, said that the deposed ruler had long been a de facto ruler. Hence, the coup was not a surprise. Sheikh Mubarak al-Khalifah worried that a countercoup was possible and that such an event might cause instability in the region. Commenting about the coup in Doha, an adviser to the Saudi king told the U.S. ambassador in Jidda that, although the new ruler was a member of the established ruling family, such events were unsettling.29 According to the British consul general in Dubai, Julian Walker, the ousted Sheikh Ahmad and his son Abdul Aziz, now residing in Dubai, were embarrassments to Dubai’s ruler, Sheikh Rashid. Since Sheikh Ahmad was Sheikh Rashid’s son-in-law, however, the ruler of Dubai was obligated to serve as his host. Meanwhile, the new ruler of Qatar was intent on seizing Ahmad’s assets. At this juncture Sheikh Khalifah firmly opposed any financial settlement with his predecessor. Emphasizing his government’s concern for stability in the region, Dinsmore asked if there was anything that Washington could do to help. The British consul suggested that the Saudis could be helpful, that since they had considerable influence in the Gulf they might be willing to press Sheikh Khalifah to offer the ousted Ahmad a satisfactory pension. The British diplomat told Dinsmore not to attribute the suggestion to him. Of course, Dinsmore agreed. Soon thereafter, he met with Sheikh Rashid, who expressed concern that his guests might attempt to return to Doha, telling Dinsmore: “Anything anyone can do would be helpful.” He also asked that his request remain confidential. Dinsmore was now certain that Emir Khalifah would listen to Saudi advice.30 In March a Beirut magazine, Al-Hawadith, published an entire issue praising the new regime in Qatar, an issue that Stoltzfus assumed had been financed by Doha. The magazine praised Emir Khalifah and underlined the virtues of his son, Hamad, who had been the first Gulf Arab to graduate from the British military academy at Sandhurst and now served as minister of defense and commander of the armed forces. Sheikh Hamad discussed his plans to build a large military establishment: “We believe that our prime responsibility is to protect this [Gulf] Arab front so that the principal Arab forces would be free to confront our number one enemy—the Zionist invader.” Ambassador Stoltzfus told Washington that Sheikh Hamad’s reference to Palestine indicated the importance of the ArabIsraeli conflict, which had inflamed the entire Arab world, even reaching “this remote corner.”31 The Arab states were united in their opposition to Israel and 29. Telegram 159, Gatch, Manama, to Dept. of State, February 23, 1972, POL Qatar; Telegram 667, American embassy, Jidda, to Dept. of State, February 29, 1972, NA. 30. Telegram 435, Dinsmore to Dept. of State, March 5 1972, POL 23–9 Qatar, NA. 31. Airgram, Stoltzfus, Kuwait, to State Department, April 29, 1972, POL 15–1 Qatar, NA.

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in their desire to regain the territory lost during the 1967 Six-Day War, including Arab East Jerusalem. Since the United States was steadfast in its support for Israel at this juncture, it appeared that the Arab-Israeli conflict had the potential to cast its shadow on relations between Washington and Doha. Meanwhile, Washington remained worried about Sheikh Ahmad’s capacity for mischief and asked its officials stationed in the Gulf to express concern both to the Saudis and to Gulf leaders. Again, the State Department carefully framed the issue of the ousted sheikh as a local matter so that any appeal to Sheikh Khalifah by the Saudis “must appear as their own initiative and in no way bear [the] stamp of US instigation.”32 U.S. officials continued to suggest that it might be prudent for the new Qatari ruler to provide a suitable financial settlement for the old ruler. London agreed that the absence of such a settlement would encourage Sheikh Ahmad to try to regain his former position. Emphasizing the importance of stability in the region, State Department officials continued to worry and instructed American diplomats serving in the Gulf to express that concern to their host governments. At the same time, diplomats were reminded not to give Qatar the impression that Washington was meddling in what was clearly a local issue.33 Fortunately for the course of diplomacy, Sheikh Ahmad faded into a quiet retirement. In April, Sheikh Khalifah announced the formation of a Consultative Council of twenty members, the first to be established in Qatar. According to Ambassador Stoltzfus, the council’s creation constituted a move by “the shrewd” Sheikh Khalifah to increase his popularity. Under article 43 of the Qatari Constitution the role of the council was to assist the ruler, “through the expression of its opinions.” Emir Khalifah also announced the establishment of two new ministries, a Ministry of Information and a Ministry of Municipal Affairs. The new ruler wanted to coax residents of Doha to move into the empty countryside. Therefore, it was essential to improve living conditions in these areas.34 As Sheikh Khalifah consolidated his rule, the Nixon administration focused on the implementation of the Nixon Doctrine. At the end of May 1972, National Security Adviser Kissinger visited Tehran and told the shah that Washington was willing to sell him any conventional weapon in the American inventory. Iran’s weapon purchases were now officially exempt from either State Department or Defense Department review. According to Kissinger, insofar as

32. Telegram 39642, Dept. of State to Jidda, March 8, 1972, POL 23–9 Qatar, NA. 33. Telegram 39642, Dept. of Sate to Gulf States, March 8, 1972, POL 23–9 Qatar, NA. 34. Telegram 725, Stoltzfus, Kuwait, to Dept. of State, April 25, 1972, POL 15 Qatar, NA.

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international issues were concerned the United States and Iran were in complete agreement.35 Meanwhile, the new Qatari ruler remained concerned not only about the security of his region but also about his personal safety. Sheikh Khalifah’s insecurity provided an opportunity for American business. In June, the president of Research Management Corporation, Robert Ladd, and the director of Advanced Systems Development, Fairchild Space, Albert Roltsch, met with Assistant Secretary of State Joseph Sisco and Director of Near East Affairs Francois Dickman. Both businessmen were working on a security package for Sheikh Khalifah, a bundle of measures that would initially cost Qatar six million dollars. According to Ladd, who had served as administrative assistant to Vice President Nixon from 1953 to 1954, the new ruler faced possible threats from radical Arabs, from the recently deposed Sheikh Ahmad, and from communist countries attempting to obtain a foothold in the Gulf region. Roltsch suggested that the State Department could facilitate its plan for the ruler’s security if one of the four bulletproof Cadillacs previously used by the late FBI director J. Edgar Hoover was offered to Sheikh Khalifah. At the end of the meeting Dickman stated that Doha had not approached Washington about its internal security concerns and had not asked for any sort of equipment. Hence, it would be improper for the State Department to support “the promotional gambit of a private firm.” Dickman suggested that Roltsch find another source of bulletproof Cadillacs.36 In July, Qatar’s first ambassador to the United States, Abdullah Saleh Al-Mana, presented his credentials to President Nixon. A memorandum for the president suggested that he might express delight that Qatar had achieved complete independence and note that Washington would be as helpful as possible. The memorandum also cautioned the president to avoid the term Persian Gulf, which offended Arabs, who preferred the expression the Gulf.37 During the summer of 1972, Secretary of State William Rogers traveled to the Gulf states, but he did not visit Qatar. In September, Qatar’s ambassador in Washington, Abdullah Saleh Al-Mana, called on Secretary Rogers to deliver a letter from Sheikh Khalifah. Qatar’s ruler expressed the hope that on a future trip Secretary Rogers would stop in Doha. Sheikh Khalifah assured the secretary of state that he was committed to the unity of the Gulf states and emphasized his desire to maintain close relations with Washington. After delivering 35. James A. Bill, The Eagle and the Lion: The Tragedy of American-Iranian Relations (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988), 200, 203. 36. Memorandum of conversation, June 13, 1972, Nixon Papers, NA. 37. Memorandum, July 21, 1972, Nixon Papers, NA.

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the letter, Ambassador Al-Mana told Rogers that Qatar’s foreign minister, Sheikh Suhaim bin Hamid al-Thani, would soon travel to New York to attend the UN General Assembly meeting. While in New York the Qatari foreign minister wished to arrange a meeting with Secretary Rogers in Washington. Rogers did not commit himself.38 Washington wanted good relations with Doha, but in 1972 Qatar remained a minor player in the region. Ambassador Al-Mana next turned to the subject of the recent Olympic Games held in Munich, where Arab guerrillas had attacked the Israeli team, taking hostages. Later, at the airport in a showdown with German police, members of Fatah’s Black September group murdered eleven of those hostages. In a message to German Chancellor Willy Brandt, Jordan’s King Hussein had declared that the attack on the Israeli team was a terrible crime perpetrated by “sick minds who are opposed to humanity, the Palestinian people, and Jordan and opposed to Arabism, its traditions and its cause.” Arab leaders did not join King Hussein’s public condemnation of the Munich massacre. Expressions of sympathy for Israel or any indication of cooperation with what the Arab states called the “Zionist Entity” was discouraged. Although no Qatari diplomat made a public statement supporting King Hussein, Qatar’s ambassador privately assured Secretary Rogers “that King Hussein spoke for every responsible Arab.”39 When Qatari foreign minister Sheikh Suhaim arrived in New York at the end of September, he met with Rogers and Assistant Secretary Joseph Sisco. Sheikh Suhaim reiterated Qatar’s support for American policy in the Gulf region. He emphasized his country’s desire to thwart any communist attempt to gain influence in the region and expressed pleasure at Secretary Rogers’s assurance that Washington would soon open an embassy in Doha and appoint a resident ambassador. Qatar’s foreign minister told Rogers that Sheikh Khalifah wanted the United States to be active in the Gulf region, to provide guidance to Qatar and to the other Gulf states. Rogers again carefully explained that Washington was happy to offer advice but did not want its advice to be considered interference.40 Two days after his meeting with Secretary of State Rogers, Foreign Minister Suhaim called on Acting Secretary of State U. Alexis Johnson in Washington. During his visit Sheikh Suhaim asked that the American government encourage firms to become involved in the industrialization of his country and assist Qatar to utilize its gas resources. Secretary Johnson explained that American officials would be happy to assist; however, the final decisions would be made 38. Memorandum of conversation, September 7, 1972, POL Qatar-US, NA. 39. New York Times, September 6, 1972; memorandum of conversation, September 7, 1972, POL Qatar-US, NA. 40. Memorandum of conversation, September 29, 1972, POL 7, Qatar-US, NA.

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not by the government but by individual companies. Doha’s interest in closer ties with Washington continued. In March 1973, Ambassador Stoltzfus conveyed a message from President Nixon announcing that Washington would soon establish a permanent mission in Doha.41 Nonetheless, months passed without the presence of that permanent mission. Washington remained concerned about its own economic and security interests in the Gulf. North Yemen was engaged in a struggle with communistsupported South Yemen, and in Dhofar a communist-supported insurrection attempted to defeat the sultan of Oman. In March, Iraqi and Kuwaiti troops clashed on the Kuwaiti border and a South Yemeni aircraft attacked a Saudi border post. In support of the Nixon Doctrine, the government decided to sell F-4 Phantom jets to Qatar’s neighbors Saudi Arabia and Kuwait—despite objections from members of Congress and Israeli government officials who feared that the weapons provided to Arab states might be used against Israel.42 In July a State Department memorandum stated the obvious— that in the Gulf region Washington had deferred to London for too long. According to the memorandum, the withdrawal of the British military from the Gulf made it essential for the United States to maintain its naval presence, continuing the MIDEASTFOR Command, based in Bahrain, which had been created in 1949 with British cooperation. At the same time the memorandum cautioned against increasing that presence because “an increase in U.S. presence, would likely bring increased Soviet presence, while losing the propaganda value of the current Soviet activities at the Iraqi port of Umm Qasr.”43 From the beginning of his second term, with the Vietnam War over, President Nixon recognized the need for his administration to concentrate on the Middle East. Hence, he wished to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict. Nixon explained that, as a result of Washington’s support for Israel, millions of Arabs hated the United States, thus providing “a fishing ground” for both the Soviet Union and radical Arab regimes. He wrote: “I think actually the radicals are our greater danger.”44 Therefore, the conservative Gulf rulers were viewed as likely additional pillars of support for American policy. Washington’s concern about how the United States was perceived in the Gulf region substantially increased in October 1973 after the start of the Ramadan/ 41. Memorandum of conversation, September 29, 1972, POL 7 Qatar; telegram 106229, Dept. of State to Kuwait, March 20, 1973, Nixon Papers, NA. 42. Wright to Yates, June 22, 1973, DEF 12–5 KUW, XR DEF 12–5 SAUD; memorandum for Henry Kissinger, June 7, 1973, DEF 12–5, Kuwait, NA. 43. Memorandum, “The U.S. Naval Presence in Bahrain,” July 15, 1973, Nixon Papers, NA. 44. Nixon, RN: The Memoirs of Richard M. Nixon (New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1978), 787.

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Yom Kippur War. Following its 1967 victory, Israel had become overconfident about its position. So, too, had Washington. Despite numerous clues from both Saudi king Faisal and Egyptian president Anwar Sadat, foreshadowing the approach of war, all such indicators were ignored.45 As a result, the October 6 Egyptian/Syrian invasion caught both Israel and the United States by surprise. Responding to Israel’s dire need for supplies, Congress appropriated $2.2 billion for emergency assistance, and Washington airlifted equipment to the embattled Jewish state.46 State Department officials expressed concern that together with other Arab states Qatar would angrily react to Washington’s efforts to supply the Israeli military, and to “alleged reports of direct US participation in fighting.” While Washington did not consider it necessary to evacuate American citizens from any of the Arab Gulf states, including Qatar, in the event such action appeared prudent the British agreed to take charge of the evacuation of both Her Majesty’s subjects and American citizens. American officials in the Lower Gulf were satisfied that the British retained the ability to carry out such an evacuation successfully.47 From the beginning of the 1973 war the Gulf became more closely involved in the Arab-Israeli conflict. The oil-producing states came together to discuss using their most potent weapon, oil, against those countries deemed friendly toward Israel. Meeting in Kuwait on October 17, eleven members of OPEC, including Qatar, agreed to reduce their oil production until Israel withdrew to its 1967 borders. The following day one of the Nixon Doctrine’s “twin pillars,” Saudi Arabia, announced a complete embargo on oil to the United States. Other OPEC members quickly agreed to participate in the embargo, which did not end until March 1974. Iran, however, declined to cooperate with the oil embargo. According to Kissinger, “Iran under the Shah, in short, was one of America’s best, most important and most loyal friends in the world.”48 But, of course, after the fall of the shah in 1979, Iran became a radical Islamic state whose leaders referred to Washington as the “Great Satan.” In November 1973, as the oil embargo continued, during a luncheon with Deputy Assistant Secretary Rodger P. Davies, Qatari ambassador Abdullah Saleh Al-Mana complained that it was difficult for Qatar to keep its embassy

45. Richard B. Parker, ed., The October War: A Retrospective (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2001), 153. 46. George Lenczowski, American Presidents and the Middle East (Durham: Duke University Press, 1990), 130. 47. Telegram 01424, Griffin, Abu Dhabi, to Dept. of State, October 17, 1973, Nixon Papers, NA. 48. Parker, ed., October War, 187–88; Kissinger, White House Years, 1262.

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in Washington when the United States had not yet opened an embassy in Doha. Davies insisted that the absence of an American embassy in the small Gulf state had to be viewed “in terms of budget and personnel ceilings.” He assured Ambassador Al-Mana that Washington considered relations with Qatar important. The Qatari ambassador then turned to the oil embargo, a subject guaranteed to stimulate American interest. Al-Mana proffered the intriguing observation that both Qatar and Saudi Arabia “were soft on the oil embargo and would be the first to move to release restrictions once a little progress was made toward a settlement.”49 Oil prices, of course, remained a vital concern. Americans at home experienced Arab displeasure as cars waited in long lines at gas stations and the price of gas quadrupled. On July 22, 1974, Ambassador Stoltzfus called on British ambassador Henderson, whereupon they discussed the Qatari government’s reaction to the refusal of QPC to continue to pay 93 percent of the posted price for crude. Henderson said that Qatar’s director of planning listened, “dead-pan,” and did not comment. Henderson suggested that the oil companies underestimated the government of Qatar and the solidarity of the oil-rich states. According to Henderson, “any attempt to use GOQ as guinea pig in price issue could create a nasty situation here.” During a call on Qatar’s minister of oil and finance, Sheikh Abdul Aziz bin Khalifah al-Thani, one of the sheikh’s sons, Ambassador Stoltzfus mentioned the disagreement between Qatar and QPC over the buyback price for oil. The Qatari was surprised that Stoltzfus had any information at all about this “highly confidential” issue. Although unwilling to discuss the matter, Sheikh Abdul Aziz assured the U.S. ambassador that negotiations were in progress and that the results would favor Qatar, which was ready “to be tough with QPC.” Sheikh Abdul Aziz was certain that oil prices would continue to rise. Ambassador Stoltzfus referred to the serious economic dislocations from “skyrocketing oil prices” in all countries that depended on Middle East oil. Sheikh Abdul Aziz listened carefully but made absolutely clear that Qatar would demand as much oil revenue as it could get. Following his conversation with the Qatari minister, Stoltzfus met with British ambassador Henderson, who informed him that QPC “had caved.” The oil company agreed to continue paying the Qatari government 93 percent of the posted price.50 Speaking to Stoltzfus privately, QPC’s general manager stated that the Qatari government had required both QPC and Shell “to produce at less than

49. Memorandum of a Conversation, November 21, 1973, POL Qatar-US, NA. 50. Telegrams 311, 3135, Stoltzfus, Doha, to Dept. of State, July 22, 24, 1974, Nixon Papers, NA.

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full capacity.” From his perspective Qatar’s motive was hardly an attempt to raise prices but rather an effort to conserve oil. Indeed, he speculated that Qatar wished to make a ringing statement. Americans assumed that “Qataris will blindly follow Saudis’ lead on oil as well as almost everything else.” Now it appeared that Qatar was exercising its independence. Some Qatari officials were even pressing the oil companies to bank locally and also to hire their Qatari relatives, regardless of their qualifications. According to QPC’s general manager, the director of petroleum affairs, Ali Jaidah, was the sole Qatari official who understood oil economics, but Jaidah had lost influence in Doha. Many Qataris were convinced that he had bungled a previous oil auction and had displeased the ruler when he spoke out against “feudal rule.” The general manager also explained that although Sheikh Khalifah made all final decisions on oil affairs, he lacked “in-depth understanding of complexities of total petroleum picture.”51 In August 1974, the Shell Company manager in Qatar received a message from his headquarters about possible Palestinian threats to sabotage Shell’s offshore oil platforms. Ambassador Stoltzfus explained that the warning was intended not only for Qatar but for all Shell installations in the Gulf. The Qataris suggested stationing security men on the oil platforms as well as in helicopters. Who would cover the cost of these new security measures now became an issue. The Qatari government considered security the responsibility of the oil company, and Shell considered security a Qatari task.52 Meanwhile, the minister of oil and finance, Sheikh Abdul Aziz, announced plans to travel to Washington to attend an International Monetary Fund/World Bank meeting. According to Ambassador Stoltzfus, although Abdul Aziz had no expertise on either oil or finance, he was a responsible minister and “has the ear of his father, the Emir, who makes all the decisions here.” Stoltzfus recommended that while Abdul Aziz was in Washington the State Department arrange a meeting with treasury officials and oil experts.53 During a meeting with Ambassador Stoltzfus on October 23, Khalifah emphasized that negotiating a solution to the Middle East crisis was the “key to reduction in oil prices.” With a solution, the Saudi king would quickly lower prices, and Qatar would surely follow. Emir Khalifah noted that radical governments, including Algeria and Iraq, would immediately attack oil producers who reduced their prices. Hence, without a resolution of the conflict, conservative Arab governments remained “too politically vulnerable to reduce prices.”54 51. Telegram 3529, Stoltzfus to Dept. of State, August 20, 1974, NA. 52. Telegram 3554, Stoltzfus to Dept. of State, August 24, 1974, NA. 53. Telegram 3737, Stoltzfus to Dept. of State, August 25, 1974, NA. 54. Telegram 4661, Stoltzfus to Dept. of State, October 23, 1974, NA.

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The question of oil remained a constant American concern. The first American ambassador to reside in Doha, Robert R. Paganelli was appointed in June 1974 and arrived in Doha the following October. Soon after his arrival, Paganelli assured Washington that the Qataris understood the need to compromise on the price of oil, “and genuinely wish to avoid producer/consumer confrontation.” On October 9, Abdul Aziz openly deplored a possible global inflationary spiral that would pose a threat to economic and political stability. Therefore, he opposed additional increases in the price of oil. He emphasized Qatar’s excellent relations with the United States and “did not wish to damage these relations over the price of oil.”55 Indeed, the volume of Qatari oil exported to the United States had increased from 1.9 percent of Doha’s total exports in 1972 to 15.2 percent in both 1973 and 1974.56 Despite Washington’s focus on oil, Americans in Qatar did not limit their activity to economic or political issues. In 1973, British officials in Doha had expressed concern about growing French influence in Qatar. In July, Ambassador Henderson told London that if Sheikh Khalifah visited France, “we stand to lose commercially and politically.” The French might pressure the Qatari ruler to purchase French armored cars and airplanes. Later, in November 1974, the new British ambassador in Doha, David Crawford, complained about an even greater threat to Britain’s position in Qatar, American influence. Sheikh Khalifah did not speak English and earlier had confided to British officials that this was a disadvantage. He wanted members of his family and of his government to learn the language.57 Crawford reported to London that several Americans connected with Washington’s embassy, including Ambassador Paganelli’s wife, were now employed teaching English in the recently opened Qatari university, which was directed by an Egyptian staff. Crawford predicted that “it will not be long before there will be a stream of Qataris going to the United States for higher education.”58 Hence, despite disagreement about the price of oil, Doha and Washington continued to move their relationship forward. Qatar and the United States wished to maintain stability in the Gulf, keep Soviet influence out, and insure the supply of oil to the West. As the years passed, the relationship strengthened. Following the fall of the shah in 1979, and after the collapse of the Soviet Union a decade later, cooperation on security issues expanded. As Richard Nixon 55. Telegrams 4280, 4454, Paganelli to Dept. of State, October 1, 14, 1974, NA. 56. Ragaei El Mallakh, Qatar: Development of an Oil Economy (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1979), 43. 57. Telegram 237, Henderson to Foreign Office, July 8, 1973, FCO 8/2088; Crawford to Wright, November 12, 1974, FCO 8/2291; personality notes, London, 1972, PREM 15/1757, PRO. 58. Crawford to Wright, November 12, 1974, FCO 8/2291, PRO.

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had predicted in 1973, radicals appeared to represent the most serious potential danger. In May 1981, Qatar joined Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Oman, and Bahrain to form the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). Together with the other members of the GCC, Qatar supported American efforts in both Gulf wars. Qatar hosted CENTCOM, United States Central Command, Forward Headquarters, at Al Udeid Air Base. Discussing Qatari-American relations in 2006, the Qatar embassy’s Washington Web site explained that the relationship between the two states began to “bloom” in 1991.59 Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait distressed Qatar and its neighbors. As a result of Palestinian support for Saddam Hussein during that invasion, in Doha the “Zionist Entity” appeared to be less a danger and, perhaps, even a potential friend. Although as yet normal diplomatic relations have not been established between the two states, in 1996 Qatar hosted an Israeli delegation, and in 2005 Doha asked Tel Aviv to support its efforts to obtain a seat on the UN Security Council. An Israeli Foreign Ministry spokeswoman noted that Qatar was the only Arab country in the Gulf to forge serious contacts with Israel.60 As British ambassador Henderson had earlier predicted, education provided a strong link between Washington and Doha. Hundreds of Qatari students now study in the United States every year, and several American universities have opened branches in Qatar’s “Education City” complex. By the twentyfirst century numerous Qataris regularly participated in some aspects of American popular culture. At home, they turned on their television sets to view American shows, including Friends and Sex and the City.61 In 1995, the present Qatari ruler, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifah al-Thani, seized power while his father traveled abroad. The new emir followed an independent foreign policy and sponsored the often controversial Al-Jazeera Satellite Channel. In addition, he pleased Washington by expressing a willingness to forge a relationship with Israel. In recognition of the strong friendship that had developed between Washington and Doha since 1971, after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Sheikh Hamad traveled to the United States. In New York he paid his respects at the World Trade Center site.62 59. Department of State, “Background Note: Qatar,” at http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/ 5437.htm; Embassy of Qatar-Foreign Policy, U.S.-Qatari Relations, http://www.qatarembassy .net/foreign_policy.asp. 60. Qatar seeks Israeli help for UN seat, http://english.aljazeera.net/news/archive/archive? ArchiveID=12307. 61. Education in Qatar, http://www.answers.com/topic/education-city-Qatar. Heather Havrilesky, “Besieged by ‘Friends,’” July 14, 2003, Global Policy Forum, http://www.globalpolicy.org/globaliz/cultural/2003/0715friends.htm. 62. Zahlan, The Making of the Gulf States, 104–5; Gulf States Newsletter 26:683 (April 3, 2002): 8.

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After the U.S. invasion of Iraq in June 2003, President George W. Bush visited Qatar. Speaking to American troops stationed in the emirate he called Qatar “a great friend” and praised Sheikh Hamad’s government for maintaining a steady flow of oil. The president also thanked the other member states of the GCC for their cooperation.63 Addressing journalists in Doha in January 2006, the American ambassador to Qatar, Chase Untermeyer, reviewed the history of the relationship between Washington and Doha. He called Qatar a steadfast ally in the war against terrorism and praised Qatari efforts to enhance the security of the Gulf region, “as demonstrated by Qatar’s generous hosting of U.S. and Coalition forces here at Camp As-Sayliya and Al-Udeid airbase.”64 The challenges of the last decade of the twentieth century had resulted in a major American commitment to the Gulf. In 1971, the Nixon administration had sought to avoid replacing the departing British in the region. By the beginning of the twenty-first century, with the blessing of Qatar and its GCC neighbors, the U.S. had assumed the mantle of guardian of the Gulf.

63. President Talks to Troops in Qatar, June 5, 2003, http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/ releases/2003/06/20030605–1.html. 64. Embassy News, January 26, 2006, http://doha.usembassy.gov/press_rt_20060127.html.

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Cinema and National Defense Another Look at Ronald Reagan and Hollywood

WHAT ROLE DID RONALD REAGAN’S film career play in the formulation of some

of the most important goals of his presidency? More specifically, did the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) and other important objectives of the Reagan presidency, such as the revival of patriotism, American military strength, and capitalism, have their roots in Reagan’s early years in Hollywood? The fact that for each of these goals there are clear parallels in Reagan’s Hollywood career suggests that he considered the film industry a potentially important means to further his agenda. One of the most commented upon parallels between Reagan’s presidential policies and his film career is the similarity between SDI and the fictional weapon in Reagan’s 1940 movie Murder in the Air. In the movie, Reagan plays a Secret Service agent whose mission is to defend a new super weapon called the “Inertia Projector,” a “death ray projector” described as a “device for throwing electrical waves capable of paralyzing alternate and direct current at their source.” It can destroy enemy aircraft and promises to make the United States “invincible in war,” thus making it “the greatest force for peace ever discovered.” Given the striking similarities between the proposed defensive shield of SDI and the Inertia Projector, it is not surprising that many of those who have written about the Reagan administration have acknowledged that Murder in the Air may have been a factor in inspiring the president to adopt SDI (or Star Wars, as it came to be known popularly). Many have assumed that the movie and the Inertia Projector had their origins in the worlds of fantasy and science fiction, but the most likely sources for this super weapon were news stories that had appeared in the mainstream press in the years leading up to the film. At least two Nobel Prize winners were thought to have been working on such a weapon, and several governments were reported to have possessed such a deThe author wishes to thank Beverly Vaughn, Garry Clifford, and Ted Wilson for their thoughtful comments on this essay.

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vice. While there was much speculation surrounding these accounts, some wellknown scientists claimed outright that they had already invented a death ray that could destroy attacking armies. Several writers have speculated about the connection between the 1940 movie and SDI. In 1987, Michael Paul Rogin argued that movies played an important role in Reagan’s sense of identity, and that Reagan sometimes confused what he had seen on film with real world events. Rogin linked Murder in the Air with SDI, a policy that Reagan announced in a March 1983 speech, and asked, “Are we now being ruled by the fantasies of a 1940s countersubversive B movie?” Rogin’s interpretation influenced other writers, including Frances Fitzgerald, who commented in 2000 that “a number of journalists and academics” theorized “that Reagan took his missile-defense idea from a science-fiction film.”1 Reagan’s two most prominent biographers, Lou Cannon and Edmund Morris, acknowledge that Murder in the Air and the Inertia Projector may have helped to inspire SDI, but both link the film to science fiction rather than to the world of reality. The “guiding star” of Reagan’s “vision of a world safe from the threat of nuclear Armageddon” was SDI, Cannon claims, and Reagan “uncharacteristically” took “full credit for the idea.” “The dream was the product of Reagan’s imagination,” and Reagan’s fascination with building an air-defense shield traced back to “the days when he was a science-fiction enthusiast.”2 When I first watched this movie at the Wisconsin Historical Society in 1984, the similarities between the Inertia Projector and the proposal for SDI seemed striking.3 Yet the sources for this movie death ray were unclear. One possibility, of course, was that the idea did owe something to science fiction stories. 1. Rogin, “Ronald Reagan” the Movie: And Other Episodes in Political Demonology (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), 3 (also 2–3); Fitzgerald, Way Out There in the Blue: Reagan, Star Wars, and the End of the Cold War (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2000), 22 (also 22–23). See also Philip M. Boffey, William J. Broad, Leslie H. Gelb, Charles Mohr, Holcomb B. Noble, Claiming the Heavens: The New York Times Complete Guide to the Star Wars Debate (New York: Times Books, 1988), 3–6. Strobe Talbott, the deputy secretary of state (1993–2000) under Bill Clinton, also linked Murder in the Air to SDI and noted that “Reagan’s approach to big issues often invited comparison to movies.” Talbott also believed that Reagan’s thinking about SDI may have been influenced by Alfred Hitchcock’s 1966 film Torn Curtain, an espionage story that starred Paul Newman (Talbott, The Master of the Game: Paul Nitze and the Nuclear Peace [New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1988], 188). 2. Cannon, President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1991), 319, 320, 718 (also 292). Cannon argues that, in addition to Murder in the Air, Reagan’s inspiration for SDI came from another science fiction movie, 20th Century Fox’s The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), starring Michael Rennie. See also Morris’s Dutch: A Memoir of Ronald Reagan (New York: Random House, 1999), 169, 470. 3. This was the approach of my first research paper on the subject, “Spies, International Terrorists, and the Inertia Projector,” presented at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, May 10, 1985. See coverage in Wisconsin State Journal, May 11, 1985; two television interviews,

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Prior to 1940, when the Reagan movie appeared, death rays were well known to science fiction and popular entertainment devotees and were featured in a number of novels, radio programs, and movies. In 1932, The Z-Ray, a novel about the British Secret Service written by Edmund Snell, investigated the possibility that a death ray had been built on the English coast. In October 1932, the radio serial Chandu the Magician presented actor Bela Lugosi playing “a madman who wants to possess himself of a death ray and destroy the world.” Later that same month, radio station WJZ broadcast the drama The Death Ray Mystery.4 In 1936, Lugosi and Boris Karloff appeared in the Universal Studios film Invisible Ray. Less than a year before Reagan began working on Murder in the Air, the sensational Orson Welles radio broadcast based on H. G. Wells’s novel War of the Worlds (1898) caused panic among listeners who mistook the program for a real newscast. The Martians in this story used a “heat ray” to destroy the New Jersey countryside. It is unclear whether Reagan was one of the estimated nine million people who listened to Welles’s broadcast in late October 1938, but he surely read about it, or at least heard about the program and the panic that followed.5 It is more likely, though, that the Inertia Projector was based on actual news accounts. As early as 1915, and more persistently throughout the 1920s and 1930s, there were reports indicating that a weapon of this nature either existed or was in the process of being perfected. The New York Times, for example, carried stories that the Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi was working on a ray weapon. When I found these stories during the 1980s, my initial suspicion was that they were a source for the Inertia Projector. There were good reasons for drawing this conclusion. Warner Bros., the studio where Reagan worked, often used newspaper items as the basis for its movies, hoping to give the films social relevance and the illusion of reality. This was especially true for the “B” movies that were usually paired with more expensive “A” films in double features. The Warners, Jack and Harry, members of a Jewish family that had emigrated from Poland earlier in the century, were deeply worried about the growing power of Adolf WMTV (Channel 15, Madison) on Ronald Reagan and Warner Bros., aired January and early February 1986 (tapes available); and my “Spies, National Security, and the ‘Inertia Projector’: The Secret Service Films of Ronald Reagan,” American Quarterly 39:3 (Autumn 1987): 355–80. 4. Edmund Snell, The Z-Ray (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1932); “New Mystery Stories,” New York Times (hereafter NYT), April 24, 1932; “A Radio Marvel,” NYT, October 1, 1932; “The Microphone Will Present,” NYT, October 30, 1932. 5. In his 1940 study of public reaction to this program, Hadley Cantril noted that the “panic was clearly a nationwide reaction” and that a high proportion of listeners who thought the program was a news broadcast were frightened (Invasion from Mars: A Study in the Psychology of Panic [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1940], 58).

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Hitler in Germany and about the rise of anti-Semitism in Europe and the United States. They were also obsessed with the potential threat from domestic spies. They cultivated contacts with many officials in the federal government, from the War Department to the White House. During the 1930s, they used their movies in an effort to bring about a patriotic revival in America, and, as world events became more ominous, they made films that promoted military preparedness and warned citizens about internal subversion. During these years, Reagan appeared in several films, in addition to Murder in the Air, that promoted patriotism and preparedness: Submarine D-1 (1937; his part was dropped in the final cut), Sergeant Murphy (1938), Brother Rat (1938), Brother Rat and a Baby (1940), Knute Rockne—All American (1940), Santa Fe Trail (1940), International Squadron (1941), and Desperate Journey (1942).6 Although the evidence that I found in the 1980s to link the Inertia Projector to contemporary news accounts was only suggestive, in recent years I have found considerably stronger evidence to show that the weapon described in the movie had a basis in reality: press accounts about scientific and military research being conducted during the 1920s and 1930s. Part of this evidence has come to light thanks to new technology that makes it possible to search digitally such newspapers as the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and Chicago Daily Tribune. Stories that in the 1980s did not appear in such finding aids as the New York Times Index and thus were buried and essentially lost in reels of microfilm are now easily recovered. In the new stories that I found recently, Marconi figures prominently, as does the work of other inventors such as Nikola Tesla and Ernest O. Lawrence from the United States, Harry GrindellMatthews and Harry May from Great Britain, Antonio Longoria from Spain, and other scientists, engineers, and inventors who worked in the United States, France, the Soviet Union, Germany, and Japan. All of these men claimed to have built, or were close to building, devices that would project energy— variously described as particle beams, electrical currents, or microwaves—that could destroy attacking enemy aircraft and armies, thus making the nation that possessed the weapon invulnerable. One of the earliest stories to foreshadow with striking similarities the Inertia Projector and SDI is about a ray weapon reportedly developed by the wellknown inventor Nikola Tesla. Born in Croatia in 1856, Tesla studied at the Polytechnic Institute in Graz, Austria, and at the University of Prague before 6. See my Ronald Reagan in Hollywood: Movies and Politics (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 78–79 and, generally, 67–103. See also my “Spies, National Security, and the ‘Inertia Projector.’”

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coming to the United States in 1884. Fascinated with electricity and with the possibilities for wireless transmission of electrical power, he went to work for Thomas Edison constructing generators and motors. In 1885, George Westinghouse purchased the patent rights to Tesla’s alternating current system, and in 1893 Westinghouse used the system to light the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. In late 1915, the New York Times reported that Tesla had filed a patent for a machine that called to mind “Thor’s shooting thunderbolts from the sky to punish those who had angered the gods.” The invention promised to make any nation that possessed it invulnerable to enemy attack because it could deliver an electrical charge precisely on target, “ten miles or a thousand miles” away, “on land or on sea,” that would “paralyze or kill, as is desired.” If Tesla’s proposed invention could be realized, the Times reported, “A man in a tower on Long Island could shield New York against ships or army by working a lever.” The weapon could be used for either aggression or defense, but the inventor hoped that it would be employed for peaceful purposes. “The art is already so far developed that great destructive effects can be produced beforehand and with great accuracy,” Tesla said. He predicted that future wars would “not be waged with explosives but with electrical means.” Some scientists and engineers were willing to go much further than Tesla in 1915, speculating that it might be possible to defend a country by surrounding it “with an electrical wall of fire.”7 Another inventor who captured the public imagination was Harry GrindellMatthews. A veteran of the British army who had fought and been wounded in the Boer War, Grindell-Matthews was awarded 25,000 pounds sterling by the British government during World War I to build a weapon that could defend against zeppelins and other unmanned craft. Grindell-Matthews was also interested in the potential of wireless telephony, and in 1921 he claimed to have invented the first sound motion pictures. (During 1926 and 1927, Warner Bros. Pictures used him as a consultant as it developed talking films.) In 1923, he reportedly demonstrated to journalists an electrical ray that stopped a motorcycle engine and claimed that with enough energy he could use it to bring down aircraft.8 Grindell-Matthews, who injured an eye while testing his ray, continued to promote the defensive applications of the weapon. When he came to the 7. “Tesla’s New Device Like Bolts of Thor,” NYT, December 8, 1915. 8. Marc J. Seifer, Wizard: The Life and Times of Nikola Tesla: Biography of a Genius (Secaucus, N.J.: Birch Lane Press, 1996), 426–27; “British Army Experts See ‘Death Ray’ Test: Ask Matthews to Submit It to a Further Simple and Conclusive Experiment,” NYT, May 27, 1924; “Paris Movements Kept Secret,” NYT, May 28, 1924.

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United States in July 1924 to seek treatment for his eye, he talked about the possibilities. “My invention has been incorrectly called a death ray,” he said. “It is an electrical beam which I have demonstrated to be of a hitherto unknown character.” The ray, he explained, was “more of a defensive than an offensive device, and the country possessing it would be immune from attack by another power. I firmly believe that it could be used to destroy an army or stun it, as I have demonstrated by first stunning and then killing the mouse in my experiments in England. Stunned by the electric beam, the enemy army could easily be captured, and its use would speedily put an end to wars. An airplane could carry the beam easily, fly over a city and set it on fire or stun the population so that the place could be easily captured,” he predicted. Grindell-Matthews refused to apply for a patent, because, he said, it would require revealing the properties of his invention. He may, however, have shared his secret with the New York physician who treated his eye, Dr. Henry H. Beers.9 The idea of a death ray gained currency in the press and in popular culture. Pictures and diagrams of what Grindell-Matthews’s invention might look like appeared in both the American and the British mainstream press.10 In early November 1924, a short movie of Grindell-Matthews’s invention was shown at the Rialto Theater in New York City. The silent film purportedly showed the inventor using the ray machine to turn on a lightbulb, ignite gunpowder, kill a mouse, and explode a motorcycle engine. The movie concluded by speculating that the weapon could eventually be made powerful enough to bring down aircraft.11 The British, French, and U.S. governments were all reported to be interested in Grindell-Matthews’s work. Attracted by the possible military applications of the device, the British asked Grindell-Matthews for a demonstration. When officials were unconvinced by what they saw and expressed doubts about the weapon, Grindell-Matthews threatened to sell it to either the French or the Americans, whoever would offer him the most money. Reportedly the U.S.

9. “Says His ‘Death Ray’ Could Stun Armies: But Defense, Declares Inventor Matthews, Is Chief Purpose of Electrical Beam: Will Sell Only to Britain,” NYT, July 20, 1924; “Hurt by Death Ray, Inventor Aids Cure: His Eyesight Impaired, He Reveals Properties to Physician Who Is Treating Him,” NYT, July 30, 1924. 10. See, for example, Samuel McCoy, “‘Diabolical Ray’ Makes Scientists Wonder: Leaders Here Are Skeptical of So-Called Death-Dealing Invention Shown in England—Power to Project at Long-Distance Questioned,” NYT, June 1, 1924. For a cartoon depicting Grindell-Matthews’s invention, see Joseph J. Corn and Brian Horrigan, Yesterday’s Tomorrows: Past Visions of the American Future (New York: Summit, 1984), 115. 11. “‘Death Ray’ Shown Vividly in a Movie: H. Grindell-Matthews Operates His Machine, Killing a Rat and Blowing Up a Motorcycle,” NYT, November 3, 1924.

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Department of the Navy offered to buy Grindell-Matthews’s “Diabolical Ray.”12 In early 1925, the inventor claimed he had sold the weapon to the United States.13 Grindell-Matthews became known in the press as “Death Ray Matthews” and remained a well-known figure in discussions about British air defense until his death on September 12, 1941. During the late 1930s, secluded in a guarded mountaintop laboratory near Swansea, Wales, he was reported to be working on a “Torpedo Rocket” that would release parachutes with dangling wires and small bombs that would entangle enemy aircraft. These “aerial mine fields” would help to make London and other British cities unassailable.14 Grindell-Matthews was only one of several inventors who claimed in 1924 that they had developed a ray weapon. Although many skeptics doubted that a death ray had been invented or that it was even feasible, especially after Grindell-Matthews failed to provide a convincing demonstration for the British military, the possibility that such a weapon might exist apparently convinced national leaders elsewhere that it was necessary for them to boast about their capabilities. In April 1924, the French announced that they had possessed a “demon ray” since the end of World War I. It was “the most terrible annihilating force which the mind of man had ever conceived,” according to the French, who made the fantastic claim that their weapon could have utterly destroyed the German army and killed “every man, woman, and animal” in Germany’s cities. France had abandoned the weapon after the war, so the press reported, only to revive it on hearing of Grindell-Matthews’s device. Not to be outdone, the Soviets let it be known in May that they had also created an “electro-magnetic invention . . . for destroying airplanes.” It had been tested and improved, with the aid of German experts, and was thought to make a large air force unnecessary for national defense. In September 1924, an inventor living in San Francisco claimed that he, not Grindell-Matthews, had been the first to build a weapon that could knock planes out of the sky and kill people from a great

12. “Three Nations Seek ‘Diabolical Ray,’” NYT, May 28, 1924. See also “British Army Experts See ‘Death Ray’ Test: Ask Matthews to Submit It to a Further Simple and Conclusive Experiment,” NYT, May 27, 1924; “Paris Movements Kept Secret,” NYT, May 28, 1924. 13. “Says He Sold ‘Death Ray’: H. Grindell Matthews Declares It Goes to Americans,” NYT, March 2, 1925. There were also reports that the U.S. Army Air Service had attempted to purchase the plan for a similar weapon from a German scientist. See “Tries to Sell U.S. a Deadly War Ray,” NYT, May 29, 1924. 14. “British Inventor of Death Ray Dies: Harry Grindell-Matthews, 61, Mystery Man of Science, Had Mountain-Top Laboratory: Working on ‘Air Defense,’” NYT, Sept. 12, 1941; “New Rocket Designed to Halt Bomb Attacks: Inventor Asserts Device Will Make Areas Impregnable Against Flyers,” Los Angeles Times (hereafter LAT), June 17, 1938. See also “Briton Is Making ‘Torpedo Rocket’ to Entangle and Bomb Foe’s Planes,” NYT, June 19, 1938.

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distance. Edwin R. Scott announced that he had a patent pending for an electrical ray. “Death ray” was a “misnomer,” he said. It was “not really a ray, but rather a human-made lightning stroke.” According to Scott, “an airplane in the sky can be hit with a search light and then struck with an electrical flash that will render it hors de combat.”15 As nations accumulated more advanced weapons during the 1930s, news accounts that scientists and engineers were working on ray machines increased. As a radio broadcaster in Davenport and Des Moines, Iowa, Reagan may well have encountered some of these stories. In January 1933, scientists at the California Institute of Technology announced that they had been working on a way to develop X-rays so that they “could be directed against aircraft, and disable them by quenching the spark of their motors.” In May 1934, the president of the National Inventors’ Congress startled an audience in Kansas City, Missouri, by telling them that a death ray had already been invented and was in the hands of the U.S. government. It was, he said, capable of killing pigeons in midair up to six blocks away.16 It was not long before reporters and skeptical scientists began to poke fun at the idea of death rays. Less than a month later, a writer for the Los Angeles Times said that the government had invited one of the inventors to a dinner where pigeons on toast would be served—unless the invention flopped, in which case the inventor would “be expected to eat his own machine.” Other writers ridiculed the idea that a death ray could be created and assured readers that it was highly unlikely that such a weapon would be available in the next war. A professor of radiology in Paris, who reputedly had built his own ray at a cost of $2,000 to kill a mouse at thirty paces, said that while it was not impossible to build a more powerful death ray, he thought the reality was “many years off.”17 Still, in early September 1934 reports circulated that something similar to a death ray had been invented by a German engineer named Keibaus. A French newspaper, Paris Midi, claimed that a 150,000-candlepower ray had been tested

15. “‘Demon Ray’ to Wipe Out Armies Held by France,” Chicago Daily Tribune (hereafter CDT), April 14, 1924; “Suggests Russia Has a ‘Ray’: It Can Destroy Airplanes, Says Report Reaching London,” NYT, May 28, 1924; “Denies Britisher Invented ‘Death Ray’: E. R. Scott Asserts He and Other Americans Preceded Grindell-Matthews,” NYT, September 5, 1924. 16. “X-Ray May Wreck Planes: California Scientist Describes the Tests to Quench Electrical Sparks,” NYT, January 30, 1933 (see also “Planes May Be Foiled by X-ray Tube,” LAT, January 29, 1933); “California Inventor’s Disclosures Startling,” LAT, May 25, 30, 1934. 17. Harry Ferguson, “Pigeon Shoot Planned for Death Ray Inventor,” LAT, June 8, 1934; “‘Death Ray’ Expert Scoffs at War Use: It Costs $2,000 to Kill a Mouse at Thirty Feet, Dr. [Jacques] Brettmon of Paris Says Here,” NYT, May 2, 1935. See also Jean Bosquet, “Terrors of the Next War—Are They Real or Fancied?” LAT, July 22, 1934.

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in both Germany and France and that it could “stun animals at a distance of five-eighths of a mile.” A more powerful version of the ray, perhaps one million candlepower, was thought to exist.18 Another press account in late 1934 suggested that the Germans had built a truly novel weapon that used a ray that could halt motors and other machinery. Although there was no confirmation of this device, European military commanders were “apprehensive over the persistent reports that the Reich” possessed “such a vital secret.” The existence of this weapon seemed to be confirmed when, on several occasions, French planes that had flown over Germany between Paris and Warsaw and Paris and Prague were forced to land on German territory, usually near Nuremberg, “by the sudden mysterious stoppage” of the planes’ engines. Tourists in the area had also reported that their automobiles had stopped unexpectedly.19 Perhaps no stories about death rays during the 1930s carried more credibility than those involving Marconi. In 1909, Marconi had shared the Nobel Prize in Physics with Carl Ferdinand Braun for developing wireless telegraphy. He was enthusiastic about Italy’s fascist government and took to the airwaves in 1932 to extol its virtues and to paint “a glowing picture of a reborn scientific Italy at successful work.”20 Marconi envisioned a wireless world. “Nothing can be labeled impossible in wireless; a month’s research might change everything,” he said in 1933. His attention then turned to studying short-wave radio and microwaves. In 1935, the New York Times reported that he had constructed a ray weapon for dictator Benito Mussolini. On October 18, a Times story indicated that Marconi “had carried on experiments with short wave radio beams designed to stop the engines of enemy airplanes in flight.” Marconi’s experiments had “been surrounded by the deepest secrecy because of their military significance.” Marconi offered his services to Italian troops in eastern Africa but later abandoned his plan to travel there to test the weapon. Earlier that year, in May, it was believed that he secretly demonstrated the weapon for Mussolini by stopping automobiles in Rome. Marconi later denied those reports but not that he had invented, or at least was working on, a new weapon, and he admitted that the Italian army had conducted tests during its recent maneuvers. He would 18. “New War Knockout Ray Found,” LAT, September 3, 1934. Candlepower, now an obsolete term, was the radiated power of a light with the strength of one candle. In 2006, one could purchase a rechargeable flashlight with two million candlepower and a portable lantern with ten million candlepower. 19. Henry Wales, “How Europe Is Preparing for War,” LAT, December 2, 1934. 20. “Marconi Discloses Science’s Aid to Italy: Senator Also Tells of Plans to Study Penetrating Rays, Sea Depths and Stratosphere,” NYT, November 20, 1932. See also “Fascists’ 10th Year Hailed by Marconi: He Tells, Over Radio, of Great Progress Made in Italy Since the March on Rome,” NYT, October 16, 1932.

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only confirm that his endeavors were still “in the experimental stage” and that everything printed about them was “pure guess work.”21 That Marconi was a staunch defender of Mussolini and fascist aggression in Ethiopia, and was contemptuous of the League of Nations, troubled American, British, and French observers.22 Although American experts doubted that Marconi had progressed far on his invention, his reputation as an inventor made it difficult to dismiss reports of his success.23 Even if Marconi and the Italians succeeded in building a death ray, American scientists felt confident that they could easily defend against it. “Assuming that such a thing is possible with planes using modern airplane motors,” the president of Bell Telephone Laboratories said, “it should be easy to shield them against such an attack.”24 Marconi died of a heart attack on July 20, 1937, before perfecting his invention. In addition to reports about Marconi’s efforts, newspapers carried stories about other scientists in the United States and elsewhere who had created death rays. At the University of California in Berkeley, Professor Ernest O. Lawrence announced that he was working on a way to control a 4,500,000-volt neutron beam so powerful it would damage or kill animals within a fifty-foot radius. Lawrence’s findings carried weight. He was a major scientist who in 1939 would win the Nobel Prize in Physics for inventing and developing the cyclotron. From Cleveland came news that a physician, Dr. Antonio Longoria of Spain, had discovered a death ray that could kill pigeons in flight from a great distance. Longoria could see little application for the ray except in war, “and I don’t like war,” he added. When the California Pacific International Exposition opened in San Diego in February 1936, it featured a “perfected ‘death ray’ device,” for which several governments were said to be bidding. It could, the Los 21. Orrin E. Dunlap Jr., “Marconi Visions a New Wireless Era: The Inventor Talks of the MicroWaves and the Possibilities They Hold Out,” NYT, October 15, 1933; “Marconi Ready to Take Micro-Wave to War: Said to Have Tested Halting Planes in Air,” NYT, October 18, 1935; “Offer Made by Marconi to Join War,” LAT, October 19, 1935; “Marconi to Stay Home: Decides Not to Go to the Front to Test Micro-Wave Device,” NYT, January 5, 1936; “Marconi Ray Is Tested to Halt Armies in Field,” NYT, September 17, 1935. See also Arnaldo Cortesi, “Marconi Working on New Invention: Mussolini and High Officer of Army See Demonstration of Latest Product,” NYT, June 2, 1935. 22. See “Marconi Ready to Take Micro-Wave to War: Said to Have Tested Halting Planes in Air,” NYT, October 18, 1935; “Italian Plea Made by Marconi on Air: Asks Sympathy of Americans for His Country’s Position—Holds League Unjust,” NYT, November 1, 1935; and “War Menace Seen by World Leaders: Speakers for 6 Nations Warn of Danger Arising from the ItalianEthiopian Clash: Marconi Defends Italy,” NYT, November 12, 1935. 23. There was skepticism that Marconi’s weapon existed or that it had been used in Ethiopia in what the Los Angeles Times called “Italy’s Schrecklichkeit” (January 4, 1936). 24. Frank B. Jewett quoted in “Americans Think They Could Armor Planes Against Radio ‘Death Ray,’” NYT, September 1, 1935.

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Angeles Times said, melt “steel with the efficiency of a sunbeam on a dish of sherbet.” The inventor of this “death dealing gun” was said to be an English engineering professor, Harry May. His creation killed by “projecting an invisible ray of electricity.”25 It seemed to many during the 1930s that all of civilization was teetering on the brink of catastrophe. “The next war,” Pope Pius XI predicted in 1935, “will be not only monstrously murderous but almost certainly suicidal.” The only defense any nation would have against the modern weaponry that would include “deadly gases, bacteria bombs, long-distance death rays, more powerful explosives and swifter airplanes” (and even unmanned “robot planes”), another observer concluded in 1935, would be to retaliate “with even greater frightfulness.”26 These fears found their way into popular culture in the United States, where the public revealed a “robust appetite for pulp literature of technological and ecological apocalypse” and shared deep-seated “anxieties about American vulnerability.” In what seems now a foreshadowing of Reagan’s “space shield,” some scientists, government officials, and military leaders hoped that the death ray might offer nations an impenetrable defense, saving cities from almost certain destruction in future air raids. In July 1934, Tesla claimed that he had perfected a particle beam weapon, or a “death beam,” that could bring down a fleet of ten thousand planes at a distance of 250 miles, or that could silently and instantly annihilate an army of one million men. His device, he said, could enforce the peace. “It is, I believe, the greatest aid to international peace ever perfected, because through it every country in the world may be made impregnable and all possibility of invasion will be ended.” Tesla’s invention, the Los Angeles Times reported, would set up “an invisible wall” around any country that owned it and thus render that nation “impenetrable to enemy attack by air or otherwise.”27 (A few years later, the New York Times would call Tesla’s 25. “Death Ray Created at Berkeley: Danger Range Fifty Feet: Shields of Metal Useless Against 4,500,000-Volt Neutron Beam,” LAT, December 2, 1935; Longoria quoted in “Science,” CDT, October 11, 1936, and “Doctor Cites Death Ray Test: Animals Killed at Distance, He Asserts,” LAT, October 8, 1936; “Fair Bills Death Ray,” LAT, February 4, 1936; “Exposition at San Diego Improved in Second Year,” LAT, June 7, 1936 (see also “San Diego Exposition Again Beckons Tourists,” LAT, June 19, 1936); “Death Rays Will Flash: Demonstration at San Diego Fair to Be Given Saturday by Inventor,” LAT, July 11, 1936. 26. Harold G. Calhoun, “Is Civilization Teetering on the Brink?” LAT, July 14, 1935. 27. Michael S. Sherry, In the Shadow of War: The United States since the 1930s (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), 42; Tesla quoted in “Tesla Says Ray to Bring Industrial Revolution: Invention Hailed as Death Scourge Means Cheaper Transmission of Power, Scientist Avers,” LAT, July 15, 1934; Earl Craven, “History in the Making,” LAT, July 15, 1934. See also “Tesla, at 78, Bares New ‘Death-Beam’; Invention Powerful Enough to Destroy 10,000 Planes 250 Miles Away, He Asserts; Defensive Weapon Only: Scientist, in Interview, Tells of Apparatus That He Says Will Kill without Trace,” NYT, July 11, 1934.

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weapon a “secret Chinese Wall of defense around the country.”)28 The columnist Joseph Alsop, who interviewed Tesla for the New York Herald Tribune in 1934, thought the scientist’s story was credible. After Tesla’s death in 1943, the FBI seized and classified the inventor’s papers. Tesla was not the only inventor to make claims about the defensive value of his weapon. Defense was also the main theme in reports about Harry May, who demonstrated his ray in San Diego in 1936. A picture showing him with his invention appeared in the Los Angeles Times under the headline “Gun Designed to End War.”29 Many stories about ray weapons were clearly exaggerated and little more than wishful thinking. In Britain, where there was justifiable fear of air attacks, an air ministry official predicted in late 1936 that within five years “an impassible barrier of invisible rays”—a “wall of death”—would protect the British Isles from enemy bombers. These rays, he said, had already been perfected “to the point where bombers flying at a height of several thousand feet will be completely disabled in the zones where they attempt to penetrate the invisible barrier. The rays will destroy life within a few minutes if man remains within the area affected, and are able to explode the more sensitive type of fulminate of mercury fuse used on bombs.”30 Most British officials rejected such predictions as wildly optimistic. The British government had been approached repeatedly during the early 1930s by a variety of “death ray merchants,” and in early 1935 H. E. Wimperis, who was director of scientific research in the Air Ministry, decided to investigate whether electromagnetic waves could create a beam powerful enough to destroy enemy planes. With the help of Robert Watson Watt, a superintendent at the Radio Research Station in Slough, and others, those doing the investigation concluded that the best technology at the time could not begin to generate enough power to operate such a weapon. Wimperis passed these conclusions on to Henry T. Tizard, the chairman of the Aeronautical Research Committee. The Tizard committee concluded that a death ray was not possible but that using radio waves to detect aircraft was very promising. Eventually this line of thinking led to the development of radar.31 Although most scientists continued to dismiss death rays as “a fantastic impossibility,” troubling reports persisted about Nazi Germany. In May 1938, as Hitler provoked a crisis with Czechoslovakia over the Sudetenland, the Germans 28. “Nikola Tesla Dies; Prolific Inventor,” NYT, January 8, 1943. 29. Seifer, Wizard, 446–62; “Gun Designed to End War,” LAT, July 11, 1936. 30. “‘Death Ray’ Barrier to Protect Britain from Enemy Planes,” CDT, November 9, 1936. 31. Ronald W. Clark, The Rise of the Boffins (London: Phoenix House, 1962), 32. See also Walter E. Grunden, Secret Weapons and World War II: Japan in the Shadow of Big Science (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2005), 86–87.

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accused the Czechs of sending an armed plane over their territory at Baerenstein in Saxony. When the plane was returning to Czech territory it crashed mysteriously. Although no one saw anti-aircraft fire from the Germans, speculation centered on a “death ray,” the New York Times reported, a German weapon that could “halt airplane motors in flight.” Later in 1938, as Germany conducted secret military maneuvers near the Polish border and prohibited aircraft from flying over the region, rumors circulated that the Nazis were conducting secret tests of a death ray that would down enemy planes. Two years later, once war had begun in Europe, conjecture centered on a “new German secret weapon . . . a death ray machine small enough to be carried on a soldier’s back” and capable of exterminating “any living creature in a radius of 1000 feet.” German radio propagandists claimed that the rays had been developed from “the splitting of atoms.”32 There were also reports in 1938 that German television towers could transmit signals that would disable automobile and aircraft engines. R. V. Jones, the British physicist and authority on scientific military intelligence, saw pictures of the odd configurations of the German towers and heard stories from tourists who reported that their cars had mysteriously stopped near the transmitters, only to restart once a German sentry appeared. Jones doubted the truth of these stories but decided to start similar rumors about cars being stopped in England, if only to give the Germans pause as they contemplated attacking Britain.33 Given the many news reports about inventors and governments working to build death ray weapons, it is not surprising that moviemakers turned to the subject. Reagan’s studio, Warner Bros., was not the first to exploit the topic. Columbia Pictures of California had made a movie in England, released in the United States in June 1939, called Clouds over Europe. (In England it was called Q-Planes, and yet another alternate title was Foreign Sabotage.) The movie starred Laurence Olivier, featured a secret ray weapon that could destroy airplanes, and specifically mentioned Marconi as the inventor. Filmmakers at Warner Bros. were well aware of Olivier’s movie, and when Clouds over Europe premiered in New York City it was paired at Radio City Music Hall with one of Warner’s patriotic short films about American history, Sons of Liberty (1939), a movie made 32. John Clayton, “Too Hot to Handle: Scientists Dispose of ‘Death Rays’ as a Fantastic Impossibility . . . ,” LAT, December 6, 1936; “Reich Emphasizes Border Incidents: Relations with Prague Still Critical, Though War Scare Is Somewhat Abated: Czech Apology Rejected,” NYT, May 24, 1938; “Hitler Orders Huge Forts on French Border: Seen as Preparation for Drive to the East,” NYT, July 10, 1938; “Nazis Using Death Ray, Rome Reports,” LAT, May 14, 1940. Japan also conducted research to build a ray weapon (Grunden, Secret Weapons and World War II, 110–23). 33. Jones, Most Secret War (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1978), 50–51; Vaughn, Reagan in Hollywood, 78.

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in Technicolor about a Jewish merchant from Poland, Haym Salomon, who gave financial support to the American Revolution.34 Less than three months later, in September 1939, and only days after World War II began, Reagan began filming Murder in the Air. The movie did not open in New York City until the following summer, over the Fourth of July weekend, and was shown at the Palace Theater as part of a double feature that included My Favorite Wife (1940), a comedy starring Irene Dunne and Cary Grant.35 Perhaps it was only coincidence, but about three weeks later, on Nikola Tesla’s eighty-fourth birthday, the latter was again in the news offering to give the U.S. government the secrets to his death beam. He claimed his weapon was “based on an entirely new principle of physics that no one had ever dreamed about” and used a ray only “one one-hundred-millionth of a square centimeter in diameter.” It would erect “an invisible and impregnable wall around the country,” the Los Angeles Times reported.36 Thus, although it may be true that Reagan was a fan of science fiction, when he began filming Murder in the Air it is probable that he and the filmmakers at Warner Bros. did not think of the movie’s super weapon as science fiction but as science. They had only to look at newspaper headlines for proof. Like Nikola Tesla’s “death beam” that would create an “invisible wall” around a country, or Professor Harry May’s “Gun Designed to End War,” the Inertia Project was a “death ray projector” that could make any nation that possessed it “invincible in war.” It was, simply, “the greatest force for world peace ever discovered.” The death ray of news reports during the 1920s and 1930s, and the weapon dramatized in Murder in the Air, reflected the hopes and fears shared by many in Europe and the United States that such a weapon might be a reality, or at least a possibility. As with the SDI proposal that Reagan put forward as U.S. president—a plan that sharply divided leaders over its feasibility—the death ray the of 1920s and 1930s elicited skepticism and hope among leading scientists and government officials. Many of the efforts to build ray weapons were simply bad science. As noted earlier, many people dismissed the possibility of death rays, and British officials concluded by 1935 that such a weapon was not feasible. Tesla’s work became 34. “Screen News Here and in Hollywood: . . . ‘Clouds Over Europe’ and ‘Sons of Liberty’ to Open at Radio City Today: Of Local Origin,” NYT, June 15, 1939. On the patriotic shorts, see Vaughn, Reagan in Hollywood, 252 n. 44. 35. “Of Local Origin,” NYT, July 3, 1940. 36. “Nikola Tesla Dies: Prolific Inventor,” NYT, January 8, 1943; “Tesla Invents Death Beam: Offers It as Gift to Government,” LAT, July 24, 1940.

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suspect in the minds of some, especially after 1937, when he had talked about communicating with other planets and declared that “life on other planets” was “an infinite probability, a certitude” and that one day “advanced thinkers” would live and work on other worlds.37 But with many people harboring deep-seated fears about aerial attack during the 1930s—and then later during World War II and after—many military leaders and government officials who had little background in scientific research eagerly accepted such stories as they desperately looked for ways to defend their countries. American military leaders continued to worry during World War II that the Germans might have developed a weapon not unlike the Inertia Projector. Indeed, Gen. Henry (“Hap”) Arnold, who commanded the Army Air Forces, apparently was intrigued by the possibility that a “beam weapon” might be used to destroy the warheads on enemy missiles. Near the end of the war, however, Arnold learned that current scientific research offered “no hope” for building such a weapon.38 Despite these negative reports, research continued in the postwar years, and by 1960 light-amplification devices, or lasers, had become a reality. Although the early efforts to build a ray weapon, whether based on electrical energy, particle beams, or electromagnetic waves, produced few tangible results, these efforts foreshadowed the far more sophisticated missile-defense research of SDI, described by one writer as involving work with “space-based chemical lasers, ground-based lasers with space-based mirrors, nuclear-pumped X-ray lasers, space-based particle beams and space-based kinetic-energy weapons such as ‘smart rocks’ (later ‘brilliant pebbles’) and microwave generators.”39 Yet, however advanced and complex this research has been, after more than two decades it has failed to achieve the goal set out by Reagan in 1983. The similarities between Reagan’s proposed SDI and the weapons projected by scientists of the 1920s and 1930s and dramatized by Reagan’s 1940 film are obvious. Would Reagan have proposed SDI if he had not starred in Murder in the Air? That question is impossible to answer, except by saying that making the film must certainly have had an effect on Reagan’s thinking, if only by focusing his attention on the scientific possibilities of such a weapon. In addition to SDI, what of the other broad goals of the Reagan presidency during the 1980s: (1) bringing about a patriotic revival in the wake of the 37. “Sending of Messages to Planets Predicted by Dr. Tesla on Birthday,” NYT, July 11, 1937. Tesla also said that his beam weapon could be used for the “volatilization of matter” on the moon. 38. Donald R. Baucom, The Origins of SDI, 1944–1983 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1992), 206; Th. [Theodore] von Kármán, Toward New Horizons: Science, the Key to Air Supremacy: A Report to General of the Army H. H. Arnold, Submitted on Behalf of the A.A.F. Scientific Advisory Group (Alexandria, Va.: Defense Documentation Center, [1945]), 74. 39. Cannon, President Reagan, 325. See also Baucom, Origins of SDI, 107–13.

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Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal; (2) strengthening American military power; and (3) advancing capitalism in the international struggle to defeat communism? For each of these goals, there are strong parallels in Reagan’s career in Hollywood between 1937 and 1964. Given the nature of these parallels, we should begin to rethink the part that Hollywood played in Reagan’s development as a political leader and how the movie industry intersected, and continues to intersect, with American political, social, and military affairs. First, as noted, from 1937, when Reagan arrived at the studio, until early 1942, when he entered the Army Air Corps, many of the movies made by Warner Bros. were calculated to revive patriotism and promote military preparedness. Certainly Murder in the Air fell into this category of film since Reagan as the hero (Brass Bancroft) pursued enemy agents and saboteurs, and the movie showcased the futuristic weapon, the Inertia Projector. In relation to the second goal, Reagan’s work during World War II as a public relations officer in the Army Air Corps had similar objectives. Reagan stayed stateside thanks to Warner Bros. Well before the attack on Pearl Harbor and even afterward, the studio used its connections in the military to try to get Reagan deferred permanently from active military duty. When those attempts failed and Reagan was required to report to active duty, he spent his time in a film unit that Jack Warner created by lobbying the head of the Army Air Corps, Gen. “Hap” Arnold. Arnold was a great proponent of air power and believed it essential that the United States build a powerful air force to win the war and to ensure its leadership in the postwar world. As a result, during World War II, Reagan narrated and appeared in both propaganda films that encouraged men to enlist and instructional films that taught them how to fly. Underlying the short-term objectives of these films was the long-term goal of promoting the expansion of American air power during the war and afterward.40 In relation to the third goal, the themes of patriotism and military power continued after World War II as Reagan moved increasingly into the world of politics to become a proponent of capitalism and an opponent of communism. As president of the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) between 1947 and 1952, and again at the end of the 1950s, he came in contact with Eric Johnston, a former president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, who replaced Will H. Hays as president of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) in 1945. An ardent capitalist, Johnston called Hollywood “America’s traveling salesman” and believed the ordinary entertainment film that simply showed the abundance of American life could be potent propaganda to counter Soviet communism. 40. See Vaughn, Reagan in Hollywood, 104–18.

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He became known in the mainstream press as “capitalism’s pinup boy,” and he wrote such works as America Unlimited (1944), Ideology for Democracy (1948), and We’re All in It (1948).41 Johnston developed friendly relationships with presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S Truman, and Dwight D. Eisenhower and represented the U.S. government abroad on a variety of missions during their administrations. As domestic movie attendance plummeted after World War II, Johnston became intensely focused on expanding foreign markets for Hollywood films. His work to expand overseas markets was successful, and by the end of the 1950s the audience for Hollywood movies was four times larger abroad than it was in the United States.42 As president of SAG, Reagan worked closely with Johnston. In 1948, he and Johnston helped to create the Motion Picture Industry Council, which engaged in public relations endeavors to promote entertainers and Hollywood and to discredit critics of the industry. There was little disagreement between Reagan and Johnston on using movies to promote capitalism or to fight communism. Reagan was well aware of the movies’ potential for influencing opinion. In 1965, he referred to Hollywood as a “grand worldwide propaganda base” from which one could reach a “weekly audience of about 500,000,000 souls.”43 There is, then, a remarkable continuity between the politics of Hollywood during Reagan’s early years as an actor and the broad policy goals of the Reagan presidency. It is altogether likely that, during the 1980s, Reagan and members of his administration saw Hollywood and other forms of popular entertainment as potentially powerful allies in their efforts to influence opinion at home and abroad. In investigating this connection between the presidency and popular entertainment, there are at least three areas that merit close examination. First, there is the question of how movies might have been used to promote patriotism and military preparedness. In his efforts to revive American patriotism and build U.S. power, how large a role did Reagan, as president, envision for the motion-picture industry? During this period, Hollywood produced many movies that emphasized patriotic themes, heroism, and modern military technology. Tom Wolfe’s novel The Right Stuff (1979), made into a 1983 Warner Bros. movie about American astronauts; Paramount’s Top Gun (1985), starring 41. Johnston, “Hollywood: America’s Traveling Salesman,” address to New York Sales Executives Club, May 28, 1957, p. 3, copy in MS 118, box 7, Folder 84, Eric A. Johnston Papers, Eastern Washington State Historical Society, Spokane; “Capitalism’s Pin-Up Boy: Eric Allen Johnston,” NYT, February 26, 1958. 42. Eric Johnston, Statement, U.S. House of Representatives, Subcommittee on Postal Operations of the Committee on Post Office and Civil Service, Hearings, Self-Policing of the Movie and Publishing Industry, 86th Cong., 2nd Sess., February 2, 1960, 5. 43. Reagan, Where’s the Rest of Me? (New York: Duell, Sloan, and Pearce, 1965), 62.

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Tom Cruise, about advanced fighter pilots; and Sylvester Stallone’s Rambo movies (1982, 1985, 1988), made by Orion and TriStar, come to mind as just a few of the films that countered the perceived pessimism and defeatism of the era following Vietnam and Watergate. As MPAA president Jack Valenti told a U.S. Senate hearing in 1985, “Rambo suddenly says, ‘By Jingo, we can win.’”44 Second, historians should examine the extent to which the U.S. government used movie entertainment to project American power and influence abroad. In 1985, the MPAA operated what some have called a small “state department,” with representatives in sixty nations. Hollywood movies played in more than one hundred countries, and Valenti called them “America’s secret weapon— the supreme visual force in the world, dominating screens in theaters and in living rooms.”45 Like Johnston, as MPAA president Valenti developed many levels of cooperation between Hollywood and the government, and he worked hard to expand foreign markets for American movies, including markets in Communist China and the Soviet Union. In 1986, Paramount and Universal began distributing movies in more than twenty thousand theaters in China, the first time U.S. studios had been able to market films in that country since the communist takeover in 1949.46 By the late 1980s, Rambo posters were widespread in Asia, and Stallone’s Rambo-like movie Cobra (1986) had a much wider audience abroad than it did in the United States. Likewise, in 1987 and 1988 Valenti negotiated an agreement with USSR film minister Alexander Kamshalov that gave American movies “unprecedented” access to the Soviet market.47 Finally, historians need to inquire into the role of technology in the interaction between Hollywood and Washington. Certainly, one aspect of the promotion of American movies abroad that needs further study is the extent to which the Reagan administration used new cinema-related technologies, such as video cassettes and satellite transmissions, to further its objectives and perhaps even to destabilize unfriendly nations. There is literature to suggest that one reason for the collapse of the Soviet Union was the arrival of new communications 44. Valenti testimony in “Role of the Feature Film Industry in a National Effort to Diminish Drug Use among Young People,” U.S. Congress, Senate, Committee on Governmental Affairs, Hearings before Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, 99th Cong., 1st Sess., Oct. 24, 1985, 81. 45. Clyde H. Farnsworth, “Jack Valenti’s State Department,” NYT, December 18, 1985. 46. Geraldine Fabrikant, “Hollywood Returns to China,” NYT, February 7, 1986. By 1985, Hollywood films also dominated most European theaters. See Richard Grenier, “When It Comes to Movies, the World Looks to America,” NYT, September 22, 1985. 47. Geraldine Fabrikant, “Box Office Abroad Now More Valuable,” NYT, September 28, 1987; Kerry Segrave, American Films Abroad: Hollywood’s Domination of the World’s Movie Screens from the 1890s to the Present (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland and Co., 1997), 240, 257; Harold Myers, “Valenti Urges Soviets to Buy More U.S. Pix, Widen Audience,” Variety 327 (July 22, 1987): 3, 23; Steve Pond, “Thaw in the Russian Market,” Washington Post, October 7, 1988.

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technologies during the 1980s—computers, fax machines, satellite TV, VCRs— that overwhelmed the ability of Soviet authorities to control information.48 When I taught at Tashkent University, then in Soviet Asia, in 1987, I watched on local television a town meeting between Soviet and U.S. citizens, emceed by the American TV celebrity Phil Donahue and made possible by a satellite linkup. More surprising was watching a video cassette of Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” at the dacha of my host, who was then dean of the history department. My Uzbek students found my young son’s audio cassette of the Beach Boys, which he played on a Walkman, enormously fascinating. Whether or not Reagan himself thought about using such new technologies as tools to undermine Soviet authority is an interesting question, but also of significance is the extent to which advisers in his administration may have thought along these lines. Secretary of State George P. Shultz, for example, was well aware during the 1980s that new communications technologies were changing international relations in important ways.49 Yet another significant topic related to technology is the extent to which the motion-picture industry and the American military cooperated in the development of new technologies. Advances in digital imaging and the creation of computer simulations are only some of the areas that likely had important longterm policy and strategic consequences during the Reagan years. Finding the connections between the movie industry and the Reagan administration is not necessarily an easy task. We know that the Pentagon censored the scripts of virtually all Hollywood films that used military equipment, personnel, or bases. Pentagon censors even intervened in the production of The Right Stuff and Top Gun (which one director called a “recruiting poster”) to insist on changes.50 This kind of censorship by the Pentagon, however, represents only one level of governmental involvement in movie making. Other important questions remain largely unexamined. To what extent did the Reagan administration view movies as a means for changing public opinion and the 48. See Scott Shane, Dismantling Utopia: How Information Ended the Soviet Union (Chicago: I. R. Dee, 1995); Gladys D. Ganley, Unglued Empire: The Soviet Experience with Communications Technologies (Norwood, N.J.: Ablex, 1996); Manuel Castells, End of Millennium (Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 1998); and, more recently, Walter LaFeber, “Technology and U.S. Foreign Relations,” Diplomatic History 24 (Winter 2000): 14–17. 49. Schultz, Turmoil and Triumph: My Years as Secretary of State (New York: Scribner’s, 1993), 44, and “Diplomacy in the Information Age,” Keynote Addresses from the Virtual Diplomacy Conference (Washington, D.C.: United States Institute of Peace, 1997), 12–17. 50. Rod Lurie quoted in David L. Robb, Operation Hollywood: How the Pentagon Shapes and Censors the Movies (New York: Prometheus Books, 2004), 154; see also 94, 177, 182, 188. Similarly, Department of the Navy censors insisted on changes to Paramount’s An Officer and a Gentleman (1982). See Lawrence Suid, Sailing on the Silver Screen: Hollywood and the U.S. Navy (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1996), 220–25.

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national culture? To what extent did the administration try to use motion pictures to publicize new and futuristic weaponry and technologies such as SDI or artificial intelligence, in which it invested resources through the strategic computing initiative?51 (Even though it was the critics of SDI who labeled the president’s proposal “Star Wars,” after George Lucas’s 1977 blockbuster film, surely Reagan appreciated that this name elevated public awareness and perhaps even support for his plan.) As archival records from the 1980s become available to scholars, a more extensive network of cooperation between Hollywood and Washington than we have previously imagined is likely to become evident. As historians, we must continue to work vigorously to ensure that scholars have access to relevant government documents. We must also be more forceful in insisting that the motion-picture industry save its archives and make them available to the public. Few primary collections contain materials pertaining to the inner workings of MPAA after 1945. Does it matter whether Reagan’s 1940 movie played a role in his later decision to proceed with SDI? Does it matter whether the idea for the Inertia Projector came from science fiction, scientific fact, or some combination of the two? The answer to both questions is emphatically “yes.” Sadly, Reagan was not inclined to analyze how his film career might have influenced his thinking about issues, nor was he inclined to help scholars explore the significance of those early years. We are left to draw our own conclusions. To assume, though, that the idea for the Inertia Projector, and by extension for SDI, came merely from the world of fantasy is to ignore a substantial body of evidence that many scientists, military men, and government officials were in fact working on just such a weapon during the 1920s and 1930s, and that there were many who believed that such a weapon actually existed. And it trivializes the fears and hopes that many people had during that period, fears and hopes that Reagan helped to dramatize, if only in a quickly made B film, in 1940. Perhaps even more significant, to treat this movie as only fantasy leads us to underestimate the importance of Reagan’s 51. On the strategic computing initiative, see Paul Edwards, The Closed World: Computers and the Politics of Discourse in Cold War America (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1996), chap. 9. Reagan-era films that might be relevant include: Scanners (Paramount, 1981); First Blood (Artisan Entertainment/Disney, 1982); An Officer and a Gentleman (Paramount, 1982); Tron (Disney, 1982); Firefox (Warner Bros. 1982); The Right Stuff (Warner Bros., 1983); Star Wars: Episode VI, Return of the Jedi (20th Century Fox, 1983); Wargames (MGM, 1983); Firestarter (Universal, 1984); The Terminator (Orion Pictures, 1984); Commando (20th Century Fox, 1985); Rambo: First Blood Part II (TriStar, 1985); Cobra (Warner Bros., 1986); The Delta Force (MGM, Cannon, 1986); Platoon (Orion, 1986); Top Gun (Paramount, 1986); Hamburger Hill (Paramount, 1987); RoboCop (Orion, 1987); The Presidio (Paramount, 1988); Rambo III (TriStar, 1988); Hunt for Red October (Paramount, 1990); Flight of the Intruder (Paramount, 1991); Terminator 2: Judgment Day (Lightstorm/Carolco/TriStar, 1991).

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film career in the development of his later political career and to miss the important connection that had already been established by World War II between Hollywood (and other entertainment industries) and American national power. The movies were able to dramatize events in unique ways. They were powerful agents for promoting patriotism and preparedness and for vilifying the country’s enemies. They offered unprecedented means to publicize new and advanced—even futuristic—weaponry, and they easily blurred the lines between science fiction and scientific fact. All these things Reagan learned firsthand as a movie actor. When we consider these realities, Murder in the Air and the Inertia Projector can be seen as only an early chapter in a much longer, more involved, and more important story.

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ON NOVEMBER 12, 2005 ,

as his popular-approval rating continued sinking to new lows, President George W. Bush responded to critics of the Iraq war: “When I made the decision to remove Saddam Hussein from power, Congress approved it with strong bipartisan support. While it’s perfectly legitimate to criticize my decision or the conduct of the war, it is deeply irresponsible to rewrite the history of how that war began.” Ten days later, his vice president, Dick Cheney, was more incensed, charging that “any suggestion that prewar information was distorted, hyped or fabricated by the leader of the nation is utterly false. . . . This is revisionism of the most corrupt and shameless variety.” Were the administrations’ critics rewriting history? How did the Bush administration get the nation involved in a war in Iraq? To answer these questions, one needs a little historical background. In 1979 two important international events changed the course of American history. Fundamentalist Shiite Muslims in Iran revolted, ending the rule of a U.S. ally, Shah Pahlavi, and establishing an Islamic state headed by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. The shah was dying from cancer, and President Jimmy Carter allowed him to have medical treatment in New York, which sparked young radicals in Tehran to storm the U.S. Embassy and take more than fifty Americans hostage. Meanwhile, to the east, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, supposedly to keep a friendly government on its southern border. President Carter proclaimed the invasion the “most serious threat to peace since the Second World War.” As Iranians burned American flags and called the United States the “Great Satan,” and as the Soviets beat up on the Afghans, President Carter was running for reelection. He looked weak, and that boosted the campaign of the Republican challenger, Ronald Reagan, who easily won in November 1980. On Reagan’s inauguration day in January 1981, Iran released the American hostages, yet the crisis in Tehran meant that the Reagan administration remained hostile to the fundamentalist Islamic regime in Iran. 231

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Hostile as well were other nations in the Middle East, more secular Sunni regimes that feared the rise of Islamic fundamentalist governments. One of those was the government of Saddam Hussein in Iraq. For a number of reasons, including ideology and oil, Saddam launched a war against Iran at the end of 1979. It became a long and brutal conflict, resulting in about a million deaths on both sides. The Reagan administration supported Iraq. The administration did not sell arms to Saddam, but it allowed the Saudis to supply him with American arms. In 1983 it appeared that Iraq might loose; in December, President Reagan sent a special envoy to Baghdad to confer with Saddam—former and future defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld. The envoy informed Saddam that he could use American intelligence, and so U.S. satellites began beaming pictures of the battlefield to Saddam so he could conduct a more efficient war. The war eventually ended in a draw, saving Saddam’s regime. The Reagan administration also provided credits and loans to Saddam so he could buy weapons and chemical agents. At the end of the conflict, the Kurds in north Iraq rose up against Baghdad, and the dictator used chemical and biological weapons against them, killing hundreds of thousands. Meanwhile, in Afghanistan, the Soviets became embroiled in a long guerrilla war, and one of the leaders of the insurgents was Osama bin Laden, the son of one of the richest families in Saudi Arabia. The Reagan administration reacted to the conflict by supplying the guerrillas with Stinger anti-aircraft missiles and rocket launchers. Eventually, the Afghans shot down more than 270 Soviet helicopters and aircraft. The war dragged on for ten years, and in 1989 the beleaguered Russians withdrew. The war had been so costly for the Soviets that their nation began to fall apart, ending the Cold War and leaving the United States the world’s only superpower. The Afghans eventually formed an Islamic fundamentalist government, the Taliban, led by Mullah Omar, who had married one of the daughters of bin Laden. Omar, a religious fanatic, created a “theocracy at the point of a gun.”1 Islamic law was harshly enforced: Western music was forbidden, thieves had their hands cut off, and citizens who had sex out of wedlock were stoned to death. While bin Laden in Afghanistan was becoming more fundamentalist, and much more anti-Western, Saddam was heavily in debt because of the war, especially to Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. He demanded that those two nations forgive the debt; when Kuwait refused, Saddam moved his army to their common 1. Richard A. Clarke, Against All Enemies: Inside America’s War on Terror (New York: Free Press, 2004), 142.

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border. No one thought that the Iraq dictator would invade another Arab nation, but in August 1990 he did, taking control of Kuwait in one day. President George H. W. Bush called on the United Nations, which supported expelling Saddam. Bush worked diligently to form a UN coalition; it was composed of twenty-eight nations, including the French, Germans, British, and seven Arab nations—including, importantly, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, and Turkey. Saddam warned that if the coalition attacked, they would be involved in the “mother of all battles,” but that was nonsense. The coalition invaded with almost 400,000 troops. The French and British air forces flew alongside the USAF, and the conflict was over in forty-three days. Yet after the liberation of Kuwait and the destruction of most of the Saddam’s army in the southern part of Iraq, the president decided not to occupy that nation and overthrow the dictator, later writing: “Going in and occupying Iraq, thus unilaterally exceeding the United Nations’ mandate, would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression that we hoped to establish. Had we gone the invasion route, the United States could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land.”2 With the Gulf War over in 1991, the UN imposed sanctions against Iraq. The Iraqis could not build chemical or biological weapons, nor could they have any missiles with a range of over ninety miles. Independently, the United States and Britain established the “No Fly Zone” in northern and southern Iraq, and their planes monitored the nation. Bill Clinton became president in 1993, and that year the emir of Kuwait asked former president Bush to visit his country. Bush took many members of his family on the trip, and during the celebrations the Kuwaiti police discovered a plot: Saddam Hussein had enlisted Iraqi agents to drive a Toyota Land Cruiser, loaded with ample explosives, to park along the path of the motorcade and assassinate the former president and the emir. Fortunately, the Toyota became involved in a traffic violation; the police uncovered the plot and arrested the Iraqis. Clinton responded by ordering the navy to launch twenty-three cruise missiles during the night, and they blew up the headquarters of Iraq Intelligence in Baghdad. Saddam got the point—that was the last time that Saddam used terror against the United States, according to Richard Clarke.3 Clarke had been in the government since 1973, working on and researching defense and security matters. Reagan appointed him deputy assistant secre2. George Bush and Brent Scowcroft, A World Transformed (New York: Knopf, 1998), 489. 3. Clarke, Against All Enemies, 83–84.

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tary of state for intelligence. Bush promoted him to assistant secretary of state for politico-military affairs, and Clinton elevated him to the first national coordinator for security and counterterrorism, or “terrorism czar.” Clarke’s office was in the White House, and throughout the 1990s he and his team of assistants had been tracking bin Laden and his organization that aimed to mobilize jihads against the West, al-Qaeda. President Clinton met regularly with Clarke, especially after al-Qaeda terrorists began attacking the United States. In 1993 they set off a bomb in the basement of the World Trade Center, killing six and wounding hundreds. Three years later they struck the Khobar towers, U.S. Air Force barracks in Saudi Arabia, killing nineteen Americans. Then in August 1998, al-Qaeda hit the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, killing 257, including 12 Americans, and in 2000 they attacked the USS Cole anchored in Aden, Yemen, killing seventeen sailors. The attacks provoked Clinton, and in 1995 he signed Presidential Decision Directive 39, “U.S. Policy on Counterterrorism,” which instructed the CIA to conduct an “aggressive program” of foreign intelligence gathering and covert action and to capture terrorist suspects “by force . . . without the cooperation of the host government.” In response to the embassy bombing in 1998, Clinton ordered U.S. intelligence agencies to find Osama bin Laden—and kill him. At that time bin Laden was in Afghanistan, training terrorists. Satellite pictures revealed the camp, and the president told Gen. Hugh Shelton of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, “I want boots on the ground in Afghanistan; go in and kill bin Laden and his camps.” Shelton talked to the Joint Chiefs, but the military did not think the operation was a good idea.4 Clinton relented, and then ordered the navy to fire cruise missiles. Yet in order to fire the missiles over Pakistan and into Afghanistan, the navy had to inform the Pakistani government, which apparently leaked the information to bin Laden. The navy launched seventy-five missiles. Traveling at four hundred miles per hour, they took two hours to reach the camp; unfortunately, almost all of the terrorists evacuated about an hour before the missiles hit the target, sparing bin Laden. That same year, 1998, Saddam Hussein moved against the United Nations. Since the end of the Kuwait war, UN weapons inspectors had been entering Iraq to inspect for illegal weapons. Saddam declared that he would allow no more inspections, prompting protests from many countries, including the United States. In response, Congress passed and the president signed the Iraq Liberation

4. Directive 39 in James Bamford, A Pretext for War: 9/11, Iraq, and the Abuse of America’s Intelligence Agencies (New York: Doubleday, 2004), 205–6. Clinton and Shelton in NPR interview with Richard Clarke, September 22, 2004.

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Act, declaring that “it should be the policy of the United States to support efforts to remove the regime headed by Saddam Hussein from power.” That was the state of affairs when George W. Bush became president in January 2001. Saddam had barred the UN inspectors, and the U.S. Air Force was patrolling the no-fly zone. Relatively speaking for the Middle East, the area was at peace. The new administration was interested in the Middle East, especially Iraq. In the first meeting of the National Security Council (NSC) on January 30, the president noted that his administration intended to cease being the honest broker in the Palestine-Israeli peace process. When Secretary of State Colin Powell stated that the “consequences of that could be dire, especially for the Palestinians,” Bush shrugged: “Maybe that’s the best way to get things back in balance. . . . Sometimes a show of strength by one side can really clarify things.” Thus, after thirty years of engagement and an attempt by each president since Nixon to broker a peace between Arabs and Israelis, the Bush administration was washing its hands of the task. Bush had another interest, allegedly, and he turned to his NSC director, Condoleezza Rice, “So, Condi, what are we going to talk about today? What’s on the agenda?” “How Iraq is destabilizing the region, Mr. President.” Within minutes CIA director George Tenet had rolled out a large grainy photograph of a factory that “produces either chemical or biological materials for weapons manufacture.” The photo excited Vice President Dick Cheney, who waved to his assistants, “You have to take a look at this.” One member of the NSC, Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill, looked at the photo and commented, “I’ve seen a lot of factories around the world that look a lot like this one. What makes us suspect that this one is producing chemical or biological agents for weapons?” It was a good question, for Tenet admitted that there was “no confirming intelligence” about what was being produced at the factory. Nevertheless, by the end of the meeting the president had assignments for everyone. Powell would draw up new sanctions against Saddam; Tenet would get more intelligence. O’Neill would investigate how to financially destabilize the regime, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld “should examine our military options.” During the next meeting of the NSC on February 1, a State Department memo was introduced that mentioned “possible regime change.” Secretary Powell discussed a new strategy of “targeted sanctions,” when Rumsfeld interrupted. “Sanctions are fine,” he said. “But what we really want to think about is going after Saddam.” “From the very beginning,” recalled O’Neill, “there was a conviction, that Saddam Hussein was a bad person and that he needed to go.” Going after Saddam

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was “topic A” in the first meeting of the NSC, just ten days after the inauguration. “It was all about finding a way to do it,” O’Neill continued, and he was surprised in the meeting that no one asked “Why Saddam?” and “Why now?”5 Yet all that was kept secret from the American public. In fact, the administration stated exactly the opposite—that Iraq was no threat to the United States. In February, Secretary of State Powell declared that Saddam “has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbors.” Powell told the German foreign minister that containing Saddam was a “successful policy,” and that Iraq didn’t “really possess the capability to attack their neighbors.” Condoleezza Rice made a similar statement in July. “We are able to keep arms from” Saddam. “His military forces have not been rebuilt.”6 Meanwhile, during the months before September 11, 2001, Richard Clarke warned the new administration about a possible terrorist attack, not from Saddam but from Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda. On January 25, Clarke asked for an urgent meeting of all important officials, but the administration stalled and did not hold such a meeting until eight months later, on September 4—a meeting that the president did not attend. Between Bush’s inaugural in January and September 11, Clarke later stated, the CIA had sent the president fortyfour reports that al-Qaeda was going to attack the United States. Clarke was not alone. The administration refused to heed the warnings of two Clinton administration experts, Daniel Benjamin, who had been director for counterterrorism on the NSC, and Brian Sheridan, former assistant secretary of defense for special operations. It also refused to listen to Lt. Gen. Don Kerrick, who sent a memo to the NSC after Bush’s inauguration, “We are going to be struck again.” No one responded. At the Defense Department, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Henry Shelton, tried to warn the new secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, and his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz. But Rumsfeld did not think that counterterrorism should be a military mission. Nor was the president concerned, even in his own daily intelligence briefings; the one on August 6 was alarming, entitled, “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US.” It stated that the FBI had information that “indicates patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks.” The president 5. NSC meetings in Ron Suskind, The Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush, the White House, and the Education of Paul O’Neill (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2004), 71–75, 84–86, and “why now” from CBS News, January 11, 2004. 6. Powell in John Prados, Hoodwinked: The Documents That Reveal How Bush Sold Us a War (New York: New Press, 2004), 5, and Bamford, Pretext for War, 268; Rice quoted by Associated Press (AP), July 29, 2001.

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went on vacation. In fact, the first time that Bush wanted to meet with his own terrorism czar was on September 12, the day after the horrific attacks on the United States.7 On that day Clarke was called to the West Wing of the White House to discuss terrorism—where the next attacks might be, what were our vulnerabilities—only to be shocked: “I walked into a series of discussion about Iraq. At first I was incredulous that we were talking about something other than getting al-Qaeda. Then I realized with almost sharp physical pain that Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz were going to try to take advantage of this national tragedy to promote their agenda about Iraq.” Finally Clarke blurted out, “Having been attacked by al-Qaeda, for us now to go bombing Iraq in response would be like our invading Mexico after the Japanese attacked us at Pearl Harbor.” Later in the day, Rumsfeld complained that there were no decent targets for bombing in Afghanistan and that we should consider bombing Iraq, which had better targets. He was not joking. President Bush said at the meeting that what was needed was regime change in Iraq, and later in the evening he appeared in Clarke’s office and ordered, “Look, I want you, as soon as you can, to go back over everything, everything. See if Saddam did this. See if he’s linked in any way.” Clarke and his entire staff were incredulous, and he later wrote: “All agencies and departments agreed, there was no cooperation between” Iraq and al-Qaeda.8 Nevertheless, on September 17, Bush signed an order that laid out the plan for going to war in Afghanistan; the document also directed the Pentagon to begin planning military options for an invasion of Iraq. Three days later, when British Prime Minister Tony Blair arrived at the White House, the president advocated attacking Iraq. Blair responded, “don’t get distracted; the priorities” are “al-Qaeda, Afghanistan, the Taliban.” “I agree with you Tony,” said the president. “But when we have dealt with Afghanistan, we must come back to Iraq.” The next morning, September 21, intelligence experts gave Bush the President’s Daily Briefing. The PDB stated that there was “no evidence” linking the Iraqi regime to the attacks of September 11 and little evidence that Saddam had any ties with al-Qaeda. The briefing continued that Saddam viewed al-Qaeda as well as other theocratic radical Islamist groups as a threat to his secular regime. This information was incorporated into a later CIA estimate and, like the PDB, was distributed to Cheney, Rice, and the secretaries and undersecretaries of

7. Clarke on NPR, September 22, 2004, and see his Against All Enemies, chap. 10 and 237. Other warnings reported by AP, April 1, 10, 2004. 8. Clarke, Against All Enemies, 30–33.

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State and Defense. “What the President was told on September 21,” said one former high-level official, “was consistent with everything he has been told since—that the evidence was just not there.”9 Nevertheless, the commander in chief prepared for war against Iraq. On November 21 Bush met with Rumsfeld, asking, “What kind of war plan do you have for Iraq?” Not current, replied the defense secretary, so the president ordered: “Let’s get started on this,” and the Pentagon begin planning for a military operation. When a CIA report predicted “ethnic and tribal violence” after an American invasion, the administration seemed uninterested, instead requesting evidence of Saddam’s weapons program. In January 2002, the president gave his State of the Union Address, naming the “Axis of Evil,” which singled out Iran, North Korea, and Iraq.10 A year earlier, in February 2001, Secretary Powell had declared that Saddam was not a threat, but in February 2002 he spoke differently to Congress: “With respect to the nuclear program, there is no doubt that the Iraqis are pursuing it.” He declared that “it has long been . . . a policy of the United States government that regime change would be in the best interest of the region, in the best interest of the Iraqi people, and we are looking at a variety of options that would bring that about.” Vice President Cheney joined the chorus a week later, on February 19, insisting that Iraq harbored terrorists and that the United States would never allow “terror states” or their “terrorist allies” to threaten us with weapons of mass destruction, or WMD.11 Yet did Saddam possess weapons of mass destruction? To prove its claim, the U.S. government sent veteran diplomat Joseph Wilson to Niger to investigate reports that Saddam had or was securing uranium from that nation so the dictator could build nuclear weapons. Wilson found no proof that the African country had shipped any uranium to Iraq and was convinced that any such claims were based on forged documents. He reported these conclusions to the CIA, which informed the White House. Nevertheless, in March, Cheney declared that Saddam was “actively pursuing nuclear weapons at this time,” a charge he continued to restate over the next six months. By October, as Congress debated a war resolution, the State Department stated that “claims of Iraqi pur-

9. Bamford, Pretext for War, 287. Source on Blair’s visit is the British ambassador to the United States, in AP, April 5, 2004, and “no evidence” is Murray Wass, “Key Bush Intelligence Briefing Kept from Hill Panel,” National Journal, November 22, 2005. 10. Bush-Rumsfeld meeting in Bob Woodward, Plan of Attack (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2004), 1–3. 11. Powell in Bamford, Pretext for War, 305; administration’s statements in Prados, Hoodwinked, 8–9.

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suit of natural uranium in Africa” were “highly dubious,” and a CIA assessment sent to the White House at that time determined that the “evidence is weak” and the “Africa story is overblown.”12 On the diplomatic front, the Bush administration met resistance. In March 2002 Vice President Cheney flew to Europe, where he tried to sell the war to America’s traditional allies. While Britain’s Tony Blair seemed sympathetic to the U.S. position, the European Union nations spoke out against war—so did UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, who called the war “illegal” since a preemptive strike against another nation without the consent of the Security Council would violate the UN Charter. Religious leaders also began speaking out. “No to war!” declared Pope John Paul II. “It is always a defeat for humanity.”13 The administration countered with Texan macho. The powerful “Old Europe” now had become the puny “New Europe,” said the administration, while conservative talk-show allies hurled insults at the French, declaring that redblooded Americans should no longer order French fries but instead enjoy “freedom fries.” Silly talk had no diplomatic impact, and the administration faced a similar response from governments in the Middle East. Although Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Jordan had supported the Gulf War in 1991, in 2002 and 2003 none supported the administration’s calls for regime change in Iraq. The Saudis would not let the United States use bases to attack Iraq—nor would Turkey, which had been a staunch ally since the Truman Doctrine of 1947. Nevertheless, the Bush administration continued to prepare for war in the summer of 2002. The Joint Chiefs of Staff began carrying out war games in May, and on June 1 the president gave an address at West Point announcing his doctrine of preemptive war: “Our security will require all Americans to be forward-looking and resolute, to be ready for pre-emptive action when necessary to defend our liberty and to defend our lives. . . . If we wait for threats to fully materialize, we will have waited too long. We must take the battle to the enemy, disrupt his plans, and confront the worst threats before they emerge.” Not only terrorists groups but rogue states “could attain a catastrophic power to strike great nations.” Bush also pressured British prime minister Tony Blair to support the conflict. According to the Downing Street memorandum, released to the public in May 2005, there was “a perceptible shift in attitude” in the Bush administration in July 2002. “Military action was now seen as inevitable,” said Britain’s 12. New York Times, July 17, 2005. 13. Pope on CNN.com, January 13, 2003.

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intelligence chief, who had returned from Washington. “Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action,” and “the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. . . . There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action.” The administration wanted Britain to help in the invasion by deploying “up to 40,000” troops, “tying down two Iraqi divisions.” This idea alarmed Foreign Minister Jack Straw, who described the case for war as “thin” because “Saddam was not threatening his neighbors and his W.M.D. capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran.” The British attorney general stated that “regime change was not a legal basis for military action,” since an attack only could be legal if it was done in self-defense, for humanitarian reasons, or with authorization from the United Nations. The prime minister hoped that Saddam would “refuse to allow in the UN inspectors,” concluding that if the “political context were right, people would support regime change.”14 The British government pondered the wisdom of invading Iraq, but the Bush administration already had made up its collective mind and began to sell the war to the American people. On August 27, 2002, Vice President Cheney declared, “We now know that Saddam has resumed his efforts to acquire nuclear weapons. Many of us are convinced that Saddam will acquire nuclear weapons fairly soon.” He continued, “Deliverable weapons of mass destruction in the hands of a terror network or a murderous dictator or the two working together constitutes as grave a threat as can be imagined. The risks of inaction are far greater than the risks of action.” On September 7 the president declared that the Iraqis were “six months away from developing a weapon. I don’t know what more evidence we need.” The next day, the administration blitzed the Sunday morning talk shows, Meet the Press, Face the Nation, and Late Edition.“We don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud,” said Rice on CNN, and Cheney continued the doomsday drumbeat by describing Saddam as “actively and aggressively seeking to acquire nuclear weapons.” Defense Secretary Rumsfeld tied it all together: “Imagine a September 11 with weapons of mass destruction,” which would kill “tens of thousands of innocent men, women, and children,” later adding, “No terrorist state poses a greater or more immediate threat to the security of our people, and the stability of the world, than the regime of Saddam Hussein.” On September 12 the president addressed the United Nations, claiming “numerous meetings between Saddam Hussein and his nuclear scientists, leaving 14. My italics. Times (London), May 1, and see Los Angeles Times, May 12, and New York Times, May 20, all 2005.

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little doubt about his continued appetite for these weapons.” Moreover, the dictator was trying to get enriched uranium, and then Saddam “would be able to build a nuclear weapon within a year.” He continued, “Iraq possesses a force of SCUD type missiles” and was working on long-range missiles that could “inflict mass death throughout the region.” He also claimed, “Iraq possesses biological and chemical weapons.” The president’s tough talk had an impact on Saddam. Under increasing international pressure, on September 17, 2002, Iraq announced it would readmit UN inspectors without condition. That concession marked a diplomatic victory for Bush, but instead of waiting for UN inspectors to find WMDs, the Bush administration intensified its barrage, and on September 25 Rice began advancing a new contention—Saddam and bin Laden were in some sort of alliance. “There clearly are contacts between al-Qaeda and Iraq that can be documented . . . there’s a relationship here. . . . And there are some al-Qaeda personnel who found refuge in Baghdad.” The president added, “You can’t distinguish between al-Qaeda and Saddam when you talk about the war on terror.” The next day, Rumsfeld added, “We have what we consider to be credible evidence that al-Qaeda leaders have sought contacts with Iraq who could help them acquire . . . weapons of mass destruction capabilities.” The president continued to claim an alliance, and on October 7 he extended the threat. “We know that Iraq and al-Qaeda have had high-level contacts that go back a decade,” and “we’ve learned that Iraq has trained al-Qaeda members in bomb-making and poisons and deadly gases.” He continued: “Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof, the smoking gun that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.”15 Still, the public had doubts about a war on the other side of the world against a dictator who easily had been beaten in 1991 and who, apparently, had no way to deliver an attack against the United States. A CBS News opinion poll in September found “no consensus on adopting a pre-emptive strike in general— except where a nuclear attack against the United States is contemplated.”16 That being the case, Vice President Cheney delivered the delivery system. He told members of Congress that Iraq’s threat against the United States consisted of a fleet of UAVs—unmanned aerial vehicles. “I was looked at straight in the face,” recalled Florida Democratic senator Bill Nelson, “and told that Saddam Hussein had the means of delivering those biological and chemical weapons

15. Administration statements can be found in press reports, most summarized in Wass, “Key Bush Intelligence Briefing,” and Houston Chronicle, June 17, 2004. 16. CBS News, September 7, 2002.

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of mass destruction by unmanned drones. . . . Further, I was . . . told that UAVs could be launched from ships off the Atlantic coast to attack eastern seaboard cities of the United States.”17 Cheney’s delivery vehicles seemed to work, for by October 2002 popular pressure was mounting and being felt on Capitol Hill. Congress passed a “joint resolution to authorize the use of United States armed forces against Iraq.” The resolution passed 77–23 in the Senate, with 29 of 50 Democrats voting with the majority, and 296–133 in the House, with 81 Democrats voting in favor. It authorized the president to use the military to “defend the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq” and to “enforce all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions regarding Iraq.” Nothing in the resolution permitted war for the purpose of regime change or approved a preemptive strike against Iraq. Contrary to President Bush’s claim, Congress did not pass a resolution that gave him the power “to remove Saddam Hussein from power.” The resolution prompted many citizens to protest a possible war. More than sixty religious groups issued a declaration denouncing a preemptive attack. On October 26, 2002, the largest antiwar march since the Vietnam War took place in Washington. Between one hundred and two hundred thousand demonstrated on the National Mall, and eventually there were protests in thirty-seven states. Cities joined the campaign, and by the new year more than thirty had passed resolutions opposing the war. That autumn the protests became global. In November a half million Italians marched in Florence, and later hundreds of thousands demonstrated in London, Berlin, Paris, and Madrid. One group opposing the war was unique—military brass and former Republican policy makers. Marine Gen. Anthony C. Zinni, former commander of the U.S. Central Command, which includes Iraq, and Bush’s special envoy to the Middle East, urged caution in the unpredictable and violent Middle East. He said the administration would need an invasion force of a half million; Rumsfeld called him “old and stale” and demanded his retirement. The army chief of staff, Gen. Eric Shinseki, told Congress that the occupation of Iraq could require “several hundred thousand soldiers.” He, too, was retired. Prominent Republican foreign policy experts Brent Scowcroft and Henry Kissinger wrote important articles. Scowcroft advocated caution, while Kissinger declared that preemptive wars run “counter to modern international law, which sanctions use of force in self-defense only against actual, not potential, threats.”18 17. Nelson quoted in Bamford, Pretext for War, 330–31. 18. Generals on troops needed, see George Packer, The Assassins’ Gate: America in Iraq (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005), 114–18; on Scowcroft see Jeffrey Goldberg, “Breaking Ranks,” New Yorker, October 31, 2005.

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Meanwhile, since November 2002, UN weapons inspector Hans Blix had been scouring Iraq. Saddam had agreed to “no notice” inspections, opening all areas of the country to scrutiny, including the presidential palaces. By January 2003 Blix had a team of about 250 inspectors and had conducted some 300 visits to 230 different sites. The result? On January 27, 2003, Blix reported finding a few missiles with a range of slightly over ninety miles—and they were destroyed. They also found sixteen gas warheads for artillery rockets, and they too were demolished. Blix summarized: There was no evidence of a nuclear weapons program, or of weapons of mass destruction.19 One day after the Blix report, on January 28, 2003, the president delivered his State of the Union speech. In front of the nation, Bush claimed, “Our intelligence officials estimate that Saddam Hussein had the materials to produce as much as 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent. . . . these chemical agents could kill untold thousands.” He stated that the “British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa,” and continued, “Year after year, Saddam Hussein has gone to elaborate lengths, spent enormous sums, taken great risks to build and keep weapons of mass destruction. But why? The only possible explanation, the only possible use he could have for those weapons, is to dominate, intimidate, or attack.” He concluded that “intelligence sources, secret communications, and statements by people now in custody reveal that Saddam Hussein aids and protects terrorists, including members of al-Qaeda.” Thus, instead of accepting Blix’s findings about Iraq, the Bush administration continued its claims of WMDs. On February 5, 2003, Secretary of State Powell went to the UN, unveiling a new charge, the “existence of mobile production facilities used to make biological agents.” Powell claimed, “Our conservative estimate is that Iraq today has a stockpile of between 100 and 500 tons of chemical weapons agent.” And then the secretary surprised the diplomats by refuting Blix: “we have more than a decade of proof that [Saddam Hussein] remains determined to acquire nuclear weapons.” The next day, February 6, the president again upped the ante to the United Nations, repeating the claim that Iraq had “mobile factories for the production of biological agents,” and then a new charge: “Iraq has developed spray devices that could be used on unmanned aerial vehicles with ranges far beyond what is permitted by the U.N. Security Council. A UAV launched from a vessel off the American coast could reach hundreds of miles inland.” Bush also charged, “Senior members of Iraqi intelligence and al-Qaeda have met at least 19. Hans Blix, Disarming Iraq (New York: Pantheon, 2004), 138–41 and 152–57.

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eight times since the early 1990s. Iraq has sent bomb-making . . . experts to work with al-Qaeda,” and “Iraq has also provided al-Qaeda with chemical and biological weapons training.” Americans like to believe their presidents, and these statements had an impact on public opinion. A CBS News New York Times poll released two weeks after September 11, 2001, found that only 6 percent thought bin Laden had collaborated with Saddam in the strikes against America, but by the time Bush invaded Iraq in March 2003, CBS News found that about 70 percent of Americans believed that there was a link between Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein, 53 percent believed that Saddam had been “personally involved” in September 11, while other polls showed that more than half surveyed had convinced themselves that the attackers were Iraqis; in fact, not one came from Iraq.20 Americans, nevertheless, remained divided about going to war in the Middle East, while traditional allies in Europe were demonstrating against a possible preemptive strike. On February 15 a million protested in Madrid, more in Rome, and even more in London—the largest demonstration ever in Britain. Indeed, these were the largest global opposition to an American foreign policy in history. Yet anti-American demonstrations had no apparent effect on the Bush administration; those officials continued to prepare for war and, in fact, were beaming with optimism. Vice President Cheney declared “we will be greeted as liberators.” Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld proclaimed that Iraqis would be “waving American flags” when we occupied their country. As for the cost of the Iraq War, the administration claimed it would be on the cheap—since Iraq has oil. Assistant Secretary of Defense Richard Perle said, “Iraq is a very wealthy country . . . they can finance, largely finance, the reconstruction of their own country.” How much would the war cost? The largest estimate was fifty to sixty billion dollars, which the administration called “affordable.” There remained one last hurdle: the United Nations. The British and Americans had presented the UN with a proposal to approve a preemptive strike against Iraq. On March 10 the UN rejected it, which irritated British prime minister Blair, but had no impact on President Bush. He prepared to attack without UN approval, violating international law and the UN Charter. A few days later the president gave his last ultimatum to Saddam. Bush demanded that the dictator leave Iraq in forty-eight hours and go into exile, or the United States would attack. That incredible demand elicited stinging criticism from the French president and German chancellor, who called the ultimatum illegal. 20. Frank Rich, New York Times, November 13, 2005.

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Naturally, Saddam could not accept the ultimatum, so Bush declared that the dictator had made his “final mistake.”21 On March 19, 2003, Bush marched off to war, calling his attack on a peaceful nation Operation Iraqi Freedom. In his address to his own nation he claimed, “Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised. . . . And it has aided, trained and harbored terrorists, including operatives of al-Qaeda.” “Shock and Awe,” Rumsfeld called the quick invasion. U.S. troops entered Baghdad on April 5. While there was euphoria at the Pentagon, there was looting in Baghdad and scattered attacks on U.S. forces, both considered temporary events by the White House. On May 1, Bush flew out to the USS Abraham Lincoln and declared, “Major combat operations in Iraq have ended.” Behind him waved a banner: mission accomplished. That was folly. The real war was just beginning. Virtually everything that the Bush administration had predicted turned out to be wrong. The Iraqis’ happiness at being rid of Saddam was short-lived, and after a few days they were not waving flags at American liberators; many were engaging U.S. troops in a guerrilla war. “We don’t accept humiliation and we don’t accept colonialism,” stated an Iraqi teacher, adding, “We’ve exchanged a tyrant for an occupier.” The American liberation became the American occupation. A poll in January 2006 found that about half of Iraqis approved of attacking U.S. troops because 80 percent thought the Americans planned to remain permanently in their nation. The war dragged on, and casualties mounted. By the end of 2006, almost 3,000 American troops had been killed, at least 22,000 had been wounded, while the war had cost the Iraqi people some 150,000 lives, by their own estimate. Ethnic violence ensued between the Sunnis and Shiites, bordering on civil war. The number of suicide attacks skyrocketed, with ninety in just one month, May 2005, about equal to the total number of Palestinian suicide attacks since 1993. At the end of that month, Vice President Cheney announced that the “insurgency is in its last throes,” but that was wishful thinking. Iraqi morgues in July and August 2006 reported that sectarian violence had claimed a record 6,600 lives. “It’s not just a little bit worse,” said NPR reporter Anne Garrels in November, “it’s a lot worse”— and she had been covering the conflict for almost three years. She and others also reported that almost two million Iraqis, including the professionals, 21. On Blair see John Keegan, The Iraq War (New York: Vintage, 2005), 120–21; final mistake is New York Times, March 19, 2003.

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had left their country for the relative safety of Jordan or Syria, creating an enormous burden on those countries and, according to Refugees International, “the fastest-growing humanitarian crisis in the world.”22 All the while the White House continued to claim progress in building a new Iraq army. But the American generals in that country could claim only that one division of the new security force, not three as the administration declared, was ready for combat, and the desertion rate remained staggering. At the end of September 2005 the top U.S. commander in Iraq, Army Gen. George Casey, testified to Congress that the presence of American troops made the nascent Iraqi army overdependent on the U.S. military, that it “fuels the insurgency,” and that it had energized terrorists across the Middle East, a finding supported one year later by the National Intelligence Estimate. Meanwhile, living conditions inside Iraq remained miserable, also fueling the insurgency. National unemployment hovered around 30 percent, with higher rates in most cities, and in February 2006 the inspector general of reconstruction testified before Congress that virtually every measure of infrastructure performance still operated below pre-invasion levels—electrical output, drinking water, sewage service, and oil production. By then the American taxpayers had spent about $25 billion on reconstruction, and by the end of the year the war itself had cost over $350 billion; some experts were estimating the eventual cost to be between one and two trillion dollars.23 As the war turned into a tragedy, a desert Vietnam, the press began to investigate and Congress held hearings, resulting in a series of stunning revelations. There had been no Iraqi attempt to buy uranium from Niger, just as diplomat Joseph Wilson had informed the Bush administration before the war; that fact was disclosed in a New York Times op-ed article on July 7, 2003. During the summer of 2004 the bipartisan 9/11 Commission Report became a best-seller, and it shocked citizens, revealing “no evidence . . . indicating that Iraq cooperated with al-Qaeda in developing or carrying out any attacks against the United States.” By the end of the year U.S. weapons inspectors David Kay and Charles Duelfer confirmed the Blix report—Saddam had no WMDs. After a fifteen-month inspection of Iraq, Duelfer concluded that Baghdad had abandoned or destroyed its biological and chemical weapons 22. Teacher in Washington Post Weekly Edition, September 26–October 2, 2005; http://worldpublicopinion.org, January 2–5, 2006; Garrels interview, NPR Morning Edition, November 3, 2006, and New York Times, December 8, 2006. 23. Casey in Los Angeles Times, October 2, 2005; National Intelligence Estimate in New York Times, September 24, 2006; for cost of the war see http://nationalpriorities.org and Bob Herbert, “George Bush’s Trillion-Dollar War,” New York Times, March 23, 2006.

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probably in 1991 but no later than 1996 and was not seeking to reconstitute its nuclear program.24 Since 2004 former policy makers and investigators had published new books with more revelations—James Bamford, Hans Blix, Richard Clarke, George Packer, John Prados, Thomas Ricks, Ron Suskind, Bob Woodward, Gen. Anthony Zinni—or had retired from the government and spoken out against the administration, such as Secretary of State Colin Powell’s assistant, Col. Larry Wilkerson, and the CIA’s former deputy chief of counterterrorism, Paul Pillar. The new information revealed that the Bush administration had misled the nation into war, often based on faulty intelligence and selective use of evidence. Bamford found that before the conflict the CIA was under tremendous pressure from the administration. In January 2003 a CIA manager allegedly called a meeting at headquarters and told some fifty workers, “If President Bush wants to go to war, ladies and gentlemen, your job’s to give him a reason to do so.” “This is awful,” said an agent. “This is something that the American public, if they ever heard, if they ever knew, they would be outraged.” But the public did not hear; instead they heard the administration’s charges against Saddam, many of which were based on the opinions of Iraqi defectors supposedly with inside knowledge of the regime. One informant was Ahmed Chalabi, the Bush administration’s choice to head a post-Saddam Iraq. He had not lived inside Iraq since he left as a boy in the 1950s, was educated in the United States, and agreed with many in the administration that the publicly owned Iraq oil reserves would be used much more “efficiently” if Western corporations were allowed to privatize that oil and break free from OPEC. Another informant was in German custody, code named “Curveball,” the brother of one of Chalabi’s top aides. The Germans stated that he was of questionable mental stability and that he wanted to remain and work in Germany. He had fed their intelligence organization so much bogus information that the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency posted a “fabricator notice” on his testimony.25 Yet fabrications did not prevent the administration from continually claiming that the United States must protect itself and make a preemptive strike against Iraq. “They were distorting some of the information that we provided to make it seem more alarmist and more dangerous,” said senior State Department intelligence official Gregory Thielmann. “I thought there were limits 24. The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (New York: W. W. Norton, 2004), 97; Duelfer and Kay in New York Times, October 7, 2004, and January 24, 2005. 25. For informants see Bamford, Pretext for War, 333–35, 319–20, and Los Angeles Times, November 20, 2005.

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on how much one was willing to do in order to twist things.” Former CIA official Paul Pillar was blunter. He accused the administration of “cherry picking” intelligence on Iraq to justify a decision it already had made to go to war. As the Downing Street memorandum phrased it, “intelligence and facts were being fixed.”26 Such damning revelations, as U.S. troops took more casualties and as Iraq slid into chaos, resulted in a decline of confidence in the administration. In March 2006 reporters pressed Bush on what he intended to do in Iraq, and his response was flippant: Iraq and the U.S. withdrawal will be left to “future presidents and future governments of Iraq.” That wasn’t good enough for most of the public. By October 2006 only 30 percent of those asked approved of Bush’s handling of Iraq, and over 60 percent disapproved, thought the war was a mistake, and believed troops should be withdrawn. During the year the war surpassed the economy as the “nation’s top problem,” and in the November elections voters cast their ballots against the president’s party and handed both houses of Congress to the Democrats. One day after the elections, Donald Rumsfeld resigned as secretary of defense.27 Meanwhile, between the 2004 and 2006 elections, the administration revised the original reasons for and the aims of going to war. Without WMDs, UAVs to deliver mushroom clouds, or a bin Laden–Saddam link, Bush declared the United States was “bringing freedom” and democracy to Iraq, and that insurgents “hate freedom.” As the 2004 election campaign was under way, Bush invented a reason few could disagree with: “The world is better off without Saddam Hussein in power.” Shortly thereafter the president declared that he would “stay the course” and that it’s better “to fight terrorists there in Iraq than here in America.” Safely reelected, but with mounting criticism throughout 2005, he unloaded another new rationale. On October 6, he declared that bin Laden and his disciple inside Iraq, Abu Musab Zarqawi, were trying to take over Iraq and establish a nation that would export terrorism. “The terrorists regard Iraq as the central front in their war against humanity, and we must recognize Iraq as the central front in our war on terror.” After comparing Zarqawi with Hitler, Stalin, and Pol Pot, Bush declared his administration’s innocence in Iraq: “No act of ours invited the rage of the killers,” and more surprisingly, that “in many ways, this fight resembles the struggle against communism in the last

26. Thielmann in “Truth, War, and Consequences,” PBS Frontline, October 9, 2003, and Bamford, Pretext for War, 323; Pillar in Washington Post, February 10, 2006, and his “Intelligence, Policy, and the War in Iraq,” Foreign Affairs 85 (March/April 2006). 27. New York Times polls, October 27–31, 2006.

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century.” Such historical analogies were so inaccurate, so disturbing, that the New York Times editorialized that the president’s rhetoric and “avoidance of today’s reality . . . seemed downright frightening.”28 Revisionism is part of all wars. World War I brought the “merchants of death” idea of the 1930s; World War II, the “back door to war” at Pearl Harbor; Vietnam, Rambo movies claiming that the “liberals wouldn’t let us fight and win”; and, most recently, the idea that Ronald Reagan’s policy of strength through peace made the Soviet Union fall apart and thus he “won the cold war.” These revisions and simplifications of history are written by boosters or haters of presidents after they have retired from office. Sometimes revisions are written by former policy makers, even by retired presidents, such as Richard Nixon in his No More Vietnams, where he boasted that his administration was victorious in Southeast Asia. Yet George W. Bush and Dick Cheney are unique. While still in office they began claiming that their critics were revising how the administration became involved in a war in Iraq. It “is deeply irresponsible to rewrite the history of how that war began,” declared the president in November 2005. Indeed; yet it was not the critics who had become revisionist historians—it was Bush and Cheney. Historians will agree with the president; the administration’s revisionism was of the “most corrupt and shameless variety.”

28. Zarqawi and editorial, New York Times, October 6–7, 2005.

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PRIOR TO WORLD WAR II , relations between the United States and Iran remained

largely peripheral to the foreign policy concerns of the two nations. Only some sixty years ago did the two nations become intimately involved with each other. A survey of those years reveals a troubled relationship dominated by a series of crises. The first of these began in April 1951 with the nationalization of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. This was a pivotal event in the recent history of Iran, and one in which the United States was centrally involved. The crisis ended on August 19, 1953, with the overthrow of Iranian prime minister Muhammad Musaddiq. The memory of Musaddiq (and of America’s meddling) influenced bilateral relations for decades. He was never far from the thoughts of U.S. policy makers or of his fellow Iranians. Many American students today have probably never heard his name, but members of an older generation know him as a funny little man with a balding pate and oversize nose, a man given to weeping and fainting in public, who greeted foreign dignitaries in his sickbed, wearing striped pajamas. Caricatures of Musaddiq, the clown, were the legacy of the contemporary Western media, and even Albion Ross of the New York Times, who wrote balanced articles about the prime minister, felt compelled to title one of his more perceptive pieces, “Mossadegh—Prophet or Buffoon.” Such views have been recycled by any number of history textbook writers in search of comic relief.1 We might wonder how anyone could have taken Musaddiq seriously. Yet millions of Iranians did and still do. For them he held the short-lived promise of a more liberal Iran. He was honest, hardworking, and patriotic. He had weaknesses, of course; he was no saint. He could be stubborn and overly suspicious, 1. New York Times, September 28, 1952. See Mary Ann Heiss, “Real Men Don’t Wear Pajamas: Anglo-American Cultural Perceptions of Mohammed Mussadeq and the Iranian Oil Nationalization Dispute,” in Empire and Revolution: The United States and the Third World since 1945, ed. Peter Hahn and Mary Ann Heiss (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2001), 178–91.

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but in the eyes of his people these imperfections did not tarnish the overall character of the man. These two radically divergent views of Musaddiq have changed little over half a century, even after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War. The epic struggle over oil and the Eisenhower administration’s judgment that the prime minister was too soft on domestic communists led to his overthrow with the assistance of the CIA. This seems a surprising conclusion given the fact that the prime minister had refused to lift the ban on the Iranian Communist Party, the Tudeh, and that he and his advisers remained suspicious of both the Tudeh and the Soviet Union. Nor did the communists warm to Musaddiq. Perhaps he should have suppressed the Tudeh, but he believed they would be less of a threat if they worked in the open. U.S. ambassador Loy Henderson disagreed. He judged leaders by the rigor with which they supported the global crusade against communism, and he found Musaddiq wanting. He warned Washington repeatedly about what he considered the growing communist influence on Musaddiq. He urged Secretary of State Dulles not to visit Iran on his tour through the region in May 1953. After meeting with Henderson in Pakistan, Dulles returned home a firm advocate for change in Iran.2 Other American voices at the time cautioned against such intervention, pointing out that Musaddiq was both popular and an anticommunist, which seemed a rare combination in those days. Former U.S. ambassador to Iran Henry Grady even likened him to India’s Mahatma Gandhi. These were minority voices, however, and once Musaddiq had offended Britain by nationalizing the AngloIranian Oil Company (London’s largest overseas investment) and the United States by not being sufficiently pro-Western, his ouster seemed almost assured.3 Iranians took to the streets twice to support their secular nationalist leader, at first successfully in July 1952 and then unsuccessfully the following year. In August 1953 disgruntled officers—Musaddiq had forced a number of them into retirement—led by Gen. Fazlollah Zahidi, and supported by the United States and Britain, staged a coup d’état, resulting in the arrest of the prime minister. Musaddiq had refused to arm his civilian supporters. His overthrow brought the return of Shah Muhammad Riza Pahlavi, who had fled the country prior to the American-sponsored coup d’état against Musaddiq. U.S. officials, especially 2. Minutes of NSC meeting, June 1, 1953, NSC series, 147th Meeting, Ann Whitman File, Dwight D. Eisenhower Library, Abilene, Kans. 3. Grady to secretary of state, May 13, 1951, 888.2553, Record Group 59, National Archives. James F. Goode, The United States and Iran: In the Shadow of Musaddiq (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997), 92.

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the ardent cold warrior John Foster Dulles, rejoiced at this miraculous second chance. Dulles secretly awarded the president’s medal of honor to Kermit (Kim) Roosevelt, grandson of President Theodore Roosevelt, the CIA agent who organized the successful plot.4 Iranians were stunned by this turn of events, for they understood almost immediately that the United States had taken part in destroying their prime minister. They would not soon forget this decisive action. Until August 1953, the United States had enjoyed a good reputation among Iranians, and many saw Iran as a model of democracy, freedom, and philanthropy. Although U.S. contacts had been few and irregular prior to World War II, they had been influential. Samuel Benjamin, the first U.S. minister to Iran in the early 1880s, for example, had written knowledgeably and sympathetically about traditional Iran in his Persia and the Persians (1887). (Muhammad Riza Pahlavi would later refer to Benjamin as an exemplar of U.S.-Iranian friendship during his welcoming remarks for President Jimmy Carter in December 1977.) There was also Howard Baskerville, a young, idealistic American teacher in Tabriz, who sacrificed his life defending the first Iranian revolution in 1909; his bravery was well known. Arthur Upham Pope, a native Californian, had spent his career encouraging his countrymen to take greater interest in this ancient land, and in May 1925 he spoke to the assembled leadership of Iran, urging them to protect and preserve their grand historical monuments and ancient sites such as Persepolis. At Pope’s death in 1969, the shah would oversee his burial in a simple tomb on the banks of the Zayandeh River in Isfahan. Long before World War II, American missionaries had set up hospitals and schools and had earned much goodwill by their actions. Thus, the United States enjoyed a solid reputation, especially when compared with Britain, Germany, and Russia. Unfortunately, much of this goodwill was sacrificed in the events of August 1953. To what extent was Washington responsible for the overthrow of Musaddiq? Some historians have argued that the Iranians exaggerated the U.S. role, that the prime minister would have fallen even without American involvement because he had created too many enemies and the economy was failing. Admittedly, the ouster was a complex affair. Yet the CIA team led by Kim Roosevelt clearly provided the catalyst for the coup. Without their plotting, the shah, who had shown indecisiveness at critical moments, would have been reluctant to act. Any ranking of factors, therefore, must assign a prominent place to U.S. covert activity. Without it, Musaddiq could have maintained himself in power indefinitely.5 4. Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1952–1954 (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1989), 10:773. 5. Goode, United States and Iran, 123.

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What especially troubled educated Iranians was the derisive view of Musaddiq, which appeared regularly in the American press. In the words of one well-known Iranian author, “they reduced the most benevolent and democratic leader we have ever had to a foolish, half-mad old man, making an indecent spectacle of himself.” After serving a three-year prison sentence, the former prime minister spent the rest of his life under house arrest. He died in March 1967 in his eighty-sixth year.6 The first crisis had passed. The American public quickly forgot Musaddiq. Few knew the truth about his overthrow until decades later, for U.S. documents remained classified well into the 1980s. The shah returned, showing a new determination to rule as well as to reign. Perversely, he did not seem in the least beholden to the Americans, somehow convincing himself that the love of his people had rescued his throne. U.S. officials had expected General Zahidi, now prime minister, to exercise power in Iran, but the shah claimed that role for himself. He mistrusted the general and would not tolerate any challenge to his authority. Eventually, Zahidi resigned in frustration. The Americans acquiesced in this unexpected development. It was enough for them that the threat in Iran had been extinguished and that containment of the Soviet Union had been maintained.7 Over time, officials, too, forgot the details of Musaddiq’s administration but not the perceived lesson about the dangers of Iranian nationalism. Successive administrations, whether Republican or Democratic, could not forgive Musaddiq and his followers, whom, they were convinced, had posed a grave threat to the free world. This obsession led them to embrace the shah more firmly as the guarantor of stability and order in that strategic country, which shared a long border with the Soviet Union and possessed vast oil reserves. They helped the shah set up SAVAK, his secret police force, in the late 1950s.8 Occasionally, American officials toyed with thoughts of political reform in Iran, most notably early in the Kennedy administration, but this idealism faded quickly when it encountered a combination of Cold Warriors in Washington 6. Time, January 7, 1952; Sattareh Farman Farmaian, Daughter of Persia (New York: Anchor Books, 1992), 196. 7. Office of Naval Intelligence Review 8 (1973): 533, Naval History Center, Washington Naval Yard; Mohammed Reza Shah Pahlavi, Mission for My Country (New York: McGraw Hill, 1961), 58. There is no evidence that the Soviets plotted against Iran during the Musaddiq years. They treated the prime minister with considerable reserve, however, for they were suspicious of the so-called third force in world affairs that he represented. Goode, United States and Iran, 62–63. 8. John W. Bowling, March 20, 1961, Declassified Documents Reference System, 1978, 81A; Phillips Talbot telephone conversation with author, September 26, 1989; James A. Bill, The Eagle and the Lion: The Tragedy of American-Iranian Relations (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988), 98.

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and skillful manipulation by the shah, who announced a White Revolution to bring land reform to the Iranian peasantry. Land reform fit the mantra of the New Frontier, and Muhammad Riza Pahlavi quickly became a shining success in the eyes of the administration, notwithstanding the flawed implementation of his program.9 In the years after 1953 the shah steadily increased his control over the country, with advances in education and health care and the development of infrastructure. Through it all, however, he refused to open the political system. He silenced the secular and religious opposition through a combination of cooptation, imprisonment, and exile. The United States seemed to nod its assent. Facing serious challenges over Vietnam, Watergate, and the failing economy of the 1970s, U.S. officials grew progressively quieter. They did not want to stir up any trouble with Tehran, which had become one of Washington’s best customers, purchasing billions of dollars of sophisticated weaponry. The shah boasted—at least on paper—the fifth largest military in the world. As the price of oil shot up, often at Iran’s instigation within the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), the shah understood only too well how dependent the United States was becoming. Iran no longer relied on American aid, which freed him to speak his mind, and he spoke out more forcefully on what he considered the growing decadence of the West. To an emissary from Lyndon Johnson he confided how impressed he was with the fighting spirit of the American soldiers in Vietnam, whereas previously he had thought that American youth were only interested in watching television and eating ice cream. After Watergate he decried the fact that even the American president could be hounded from office for offenses that mattered little to the shah. In response to a friendly note from President Gerald Ford in 1976, assuring him of continued warm relations with the United States, the shah grandly replied: “In view of your profound understanding of what is at stake, I do not expect your attitude to be otherwise.”10 In May 1972, after a summit meeting in Moscow, President Richard Nixon, a personal friend of the shah, and National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger stopped briefly in Tehran. During their meetings they gave the shah permis9. Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, Oral Interview Transcript, 1964, 12–13, John F. Kennedy Library, Boston; Bowling, letter to author, March 28, 1988; William S. Gaud to administrator US AID, March 2, 1963, Declassified Documents Reference System, 1962, 000200; William Brubeck to McGeorge Bundy, January 21, 1963, Declassified Documents Reference System, 1978–79, 80B; Dean Rusk to president, April 20, 1963, NSF: Meetings and Memoranda, NSAM 228, box 340, Kennedy Library; James Goode, “Reforming Iran during the Kennedy Years,” Diplomatic History 15 (Winter 1991): 13–29. 10. Walt Rostow to Lyndon Johnson, February 10, 1968, Declassified Documents Reference System, 1988, 000169; Muhammad Riza Pahlavi to President Ford, February 22, 1976, box 25, White House Central files, Gerald R. Ford Library, Ann Arbor, Mich.

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sion to purchase any nonnuclear weapon in the American arsenal, without the usual review by the Pentagon. The shah spent $16.2 billion over the next five years. In keeping with the tenets of the Nixon Doctrine, Iran was to become the enforcer of U.S. policy in the Persian Gulf region, a role long coveted by the shah. To satisfy the Arab states of the Gulf, Saudi Arabia joined Iran as the decidedly weaker partner of this “Twin Pillars” policy.11 As the United States became more dependent on its relationship with the shah, whose arms purchases made it possible for Washington to pay for huge increases in the cost of foreign oil, few were willing to sound a warning. Academics, too, fell into the habit of lauding the shah’s accomplishments. The Iranian government funded special conferences for them and gave them grants for scholarly research in Iran. It established endowments at major universities for the study of Iranian language and culture. Little of the scholarly work on Iran during the 1960s and 1970s raised hard questions about the nature of the present regime. On the eve of the revolution, a volume of essays, Iran under the Pahlavis (1975), appeared that boasted writings by leading scholars of Iran, praising without stint the first fifty years of the dynasty. One of the very few exceptions at that time was Professor Richard Cottam of the University of Pittsburgh. Ironically, he had begun his career as a CIA officer in Tehran in the 1950s, but he turned against U.S. policy there and became a lonely dissenter.12 No wonder, therefore, that policy makers were unprepared to deal with the next crisis in U.S.-Iranian relations. Serious problems began to surface in the mid-1970s, but U.S. officials paid little heed, for they had become prisoners of a secularist mind-set, which had long ago dismissed religion as an unimportant agent in the modern world. In the prerevolutionary period only one or two American scholars had consistently argued that religion and the ulama, or religious class, were still vitally important.13 No one could believe that a group of unarmed clerics could defeat a modern army. On November 9, 1978, less than three months before the shah would be forced into exile, U.S. ambassador William Sullivan cabled Washington suggesting that they “Think the Unthinkable,” namely, that the shah’s regime might not survive. Even at that late date many Carter officials thought the ambassador was being unduly alarmist.14 11. Henry Kissinger, White House Years (Boston: Little, Brown, 1979), 1264–65; William Shawcross, The Shah’s Last Ride: The Fate of an Ally (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1988), 162–63. 12. Franklin Crawford interview, 31, Foreign Affairs Oral History Project: part 4, Georgetown University, Washington, D.C.; Bill, The Eagle and the Lion, 370–73. 13. See, for example, Hamid Algar, Religion and State in Iran, 1785–1906 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969). 14. Bill, The Eagle and the Lion, 248.

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The Carter administration had been divided against itself. On one side stood the staunch supporters of the shah, such as National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, and on the other were those such as Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, who believed that change was in order and lobbied for negotiations with the opposition. The president himself sent out mixed messages, at one point indicating a lessening of support and at another praising the shah’s rule. In Tehran on December 31, 1977, the president made one of his more infamous observations, referring to Iran under the shah’s “great leadership” as “an island of stability in one of the more troubled areas of the world.” Moved perhaps by the friendly crowds that had lined the streets of Tehran for his motorcade, Carter went on to pay tribute to the shah as the much beloved sovereign of his people. How mistaken this assessment was would soon become apparent.15 As oil prices declined in the mid-1970s due to a recession in the industrialized nations with a consequent decline in demand, the Iranian economy weakened and unemployment rose. The shah’s health worsened—he was secretly ill with terminal cancer. The regime quickly unraveled. Because the shah had effectively disposed of his secular opponents, there was no one left with a broad power base in the country except the Shiite ulama. Nonetheless, U.S. officials were reluctant to contact Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the leading Shiite cleric, then living in exile outside Paris. Even the shah was perplexed at the tardiness with which the Americans approached the religious opposition.16 With U.S. support, the shah turned at the eleventh hour to the aging followers of Musaddiq, men whom he had scorned for twenty-five years. The shah, in fact, would leave a caretaker government in the hands of one of them, Shahpour Bakhtiar, when he left the country on January 16, 1979. But Bakhtiar attracted little support, and he was disowned by other of Musaddiq’s colleagues, who had made an agreement with Khomeini not to cooperate with anyone whom the departing shah appointed. As the old regime crumbled and Khomeini prepared to return after fifteen years of exile in Turkey, Iraq, and France, officials in the Carter administration scrambled to understand the worldview of the leading cleric and his close aides. All eyes turned toward the ayatollahs, and Americans went overnight from ignoring Islam to making it the centerpiece for interpreting every development in Iran. This fixation has been a continuing problem. Historians have reinter15. December 31, 1977, “Iran Remarks,” box 13, Speechwriter’s Office—Chronological File, Presidential Speechwriters, Staff Office files, Jimmy Carter Presidential Papers, Jimmy Carter Library, Atlanta, Ga. 16. Robert E. Huyser, Mission to Tehran (New York: Harper and Row, 1986), 74, 80, 99, 113, 134.

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preted even the largely secular Musaddiq years in light of the new orthodoxy. Yet Islamic fundamentalism—or Islamism, as we know it today—did not emerge until the late 1960s. The archival records of earlier decades contains almost no reference to this phenomenon, and indeed the most prominent Iranian cleric of that day, Ayatollah Abulqasim Kashani, regularly consulted with Western diplomats.17 Too often Americans have misunderstood Muslims generally and Shiites in particular. The widespread presumption of a religious predisposition toward violence among the latter has little substance. Very few Iranians, for example, have carried out terrorist acts in recent decades. Outside Iran, members of Shiite communities have traditionally been excluded from power. As a result, they are often poorer and less educated than their fellow citizens. Their radicalism in recent years has been rooted in this unfortunate socioeconomic reality. We tend also to exaggerate the role of Islam in the lives of Iranians and of other peoples in the region. Although religion remains an important factor in the lives of millions of Middle Easterners, it is not the only determinant of attitudes and behaviors, and for many it is not even the most significant one. We need to understand this complexity and to recognize that Iran is as nuanced as our own society. A number of factors compounded the difficulty of understanding the new regime in Iran. Khomeini and his spokesmen taunted the United States as the Great Satan, which, they claimed, had for decades manipulated the deposed shah to serve its own material interests. The reality, of course, was that the shah had never served as a mere puppet of the United States, but in the revolutionary climate of Iran, when new excesses of the shah’s regime, especially those of SAVAK, came to light each day, such charges were readily accepted. To make matters worse, in October 1979 President Carter allowed Muhammad Riza Shah to enter the United States for medical treatment. Seen as a humanitarian gesture in Washington, in Tehran, where few believed that the shah was seriously ill, this action was interpreted as part of a conspiracy to return him to his throne just as the CIA had done in August 1953. Iranians vowed that there would be no such repeat in 1979. Radical students, with the support of Ayatollah Khomeini, seized the U.S. Embassy and its sixty-six diplomats. They were held for over a year allegedly to guarantee that there would be no American-sponsored countercoup. To end the crisis, the Carter administration tried a variety of approaches, threats, 17. H. W. Brands, Into the Labyrinth: The United States and the Middle East, 1945–1993 (New York: McGraw Hill, 1994), 36, 39–40.

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embargoes, a high-level UN delegation, and finally a military rescue mission, all to no avail. During this time Khomeini used the diplomatic standoff to strengthen his control over the revolution; once he had achieved this objective, silencing his opponents, he was prepared to release the hostages. The election of Ronald Reagan, who promised a more aggressive policy toward the Islamic Republic of Iran, may also have influenced his timetable. In any case the hostages returned amid yellow ribbons and national rejoicing on inauguration day 1981.18 The hostage crisis had come at a time when Americans were reeling from a number of foreign and domestic setbacks. The loss of the Vietnam War a few years earlier had turned Americans inward, and they showed a temporary reluctance to engage in new foreign ventures. At home they experienced stagflation for the first time, a combination of high unemployment and inflation that resulted from escalating foreign oil prices and massive government spending on the war. Then came the crisis with Iran, which U.S. leaders appeared almost helpless to resolve. Americans now saw themselves as victims. Not surprisingly, they rallied behind Ronald Reagan’s muscular rhetoric, calling on them to abandon their doubts and to embrace a more interventionist foreign policy. They prepared to accept a hard line toward the regime in Tehran, which had taken advantage of their setbacks. Washington gave its support to Iraq in the destructive war with Iran from 1980 to 1988, fearing that, if Iran were to win, it would extend its hegemony throughout the Persian Gulf region. On March 16, 1988, Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein used poison gas at Halabja, a Kurdish border town seized by the Iranians. An estimated four thousand people, including many civilians, died in the attack. This use of chemical weapons received only brief attention in the West during the war, and some scholars believe that authorities in Tehran took careful note of how little censure Saddam had encountered. This silence may have encouraged Iranians to consider developing such weapons of their own after the war.19 In April 1988 Iraq moved to reclaim the Faw peninsula at the mouth of the Shatt al-Arab from Iranian control. The United States regularly made its intelligence gathered by AWACS based in Saudi Arabia available to Saddam for such operations. During this campaign the United States blinded Iranian radar 18. Amir Taheri, Nest of Spies: America’s Journey to Disaster in Iran (New York: Pantheon, 1988), 123. 19. Phillip Wilcox interview, 61, and Hume Horan interview, 193, Foreign Affairs Oral History Project: part 4, Georgetown University; Stephen Zunes (discussant), “US-Iran Relations: Rhetoric and Ideology in International Affairs,” US-Iran Relations Conference: Regional and Global Dynamics, Salt Lake City, September 9, 2005.

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for three days so that the attack could take place successfully. Again, Iraq used chemical weapons to retake the territory.20 All the while, Iranian and American forces continued sparring in the Persian Gulf, with the U.S. Navy the clear victor. This skirmishing culminated on July 3, 1988, with the U.S. cruiser Vincennes downing an Iranian civilian airliner en route from Bandar Abbas to Dubai. All 290 passengers died. Washington declared it an accident and did not apologize. Shortly after the airliner incident, Iran reluctantly agreed to accept UN Resolution 598, calling for a cease-fire and return to the status quo ante. To this day Iranians have difficulty overlooking the pro-Iraqi American role in that costly decadelong war of attrition. The hostage crisis had terminated Jimmy Carter’s reelection bid in 1980, yet the policy of isolating Iran internationally, which he introduced, has continued for more than twenty-five years, through five Democratic and Republican administrations. The United States would not soon forget that humiliation, which has troubled relations for decades. Even as the American sanctions continued, however, the rest of the world, including China, Britain, Germany, France, Japan, and Russia, reestablished friendly relations with Iran and negotiated lucrative business deals, focusing on the country’s extensive oil and gas fields. Historically, nonrecognition has not been the preferred policy of the United States. During the French Revolution of the late eighteenth century, the leaders of the young republic saw fit to maintain diplomatic contact with successive groups that came to power in Paris. A century later, the government chose initially not to recognize the results of the Russian revolution of 1918, but after fifteen years formal relations were restored with the Soviet Union, and during World War II the USSR and the United States became allies in the campaign against fascism. Even in the case of China, the refusal to recognize the communist regime had ended after a generation. Yet, twenty-five years after the release of the American diplomats in Tehran, the U.S. government holds dogmatically to a position that it may no longer be in its interests to defend. The former hostages themselves have spoken in favor of normalizing relations. Most recently, Bruce Laingen, chief diplomat at the embassy in 1979, now retired, called for the United States and Iran to meet to discuss their differences. “Washington needs to start building up its own direct relationship with Iran,” he wrote. “Cold, hard American interests make that clear. . . . Iran matters; let’s recognize reality.”21

20. William Beeman, “‘The Great Satan and the Mad Mullahs’: What of the Future of USIranian Relations,” US-Iran Relations Conference, Salt Lake City, September 9–10, 2005. 21. New York Times, October 2, 2005.

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Certainly, the early years of the Islamic republic were filled with revolutionary excesses, massive numbers of arrests, summary executions, and censorship of words and behaviors—all developments that Muhammad Musaddiq would have found repugnant. Not surprisingly, the memory of the old nationalist leader did not fare well under the new regime. At first the new rulers embraced him, considering themselves at one with Musaddiq because of a shared desire to end foreign control and increase Iran’s independence. On March 5, 1979, the twelfth anniversary of his death, thousands of mourners made the pilgrimage to his grave site to hear Ayatollah Mahmud Taliqani, one of the most respected clerics, deliver a speech honoring the former prime minister. Such ceremonies were repeated across the country. By early 1981, however, as divisions within the revolutionary movement became more apparent, the regime began to distance itself from Musaddiq, largely because it rejected the concept of a secular, democratic state that he symbolized. It had no wish to breathe new life into his middle-class supporters. As the internal political crisis deepened, officials allowed accounts to be published that discredited the former prime minister, charging him with responsibility for the failure of the nationalist movement and with being a British stooge. After a brief rehabilitation, Musaddiq had again become persona non grata, but the new regime has been no more successful than its predecessor in sullying his memory.22 In recent years the excesses of the Islamic Republic of Iran have diminished, and moderate reformers have pressed the hardliners to reduce restrictions on the press and on personal freedoms. A leading reformer, Muhammad Khatemi, was elected president twice with overwhelming popular support, but he had to move cautiously to avoid a conservative backlash and inevitable bloodshed. Most Iranians alive today do not remember life under the shah. They find current restrictions intolerable, but so far they have been willing to wait for the passing of the older generation of revolutionary leaders, men such as Ayatollah Ali Hussain Khamene’i, who still control the security forces.23 Khatemi made overtures for dialogue with the United States several years ago, but the Clinton administration did little to pursue that opportunity, choosing instead to wait for the Iranians to come around to an American way 22. Nikki R. Keddie, Modern Iran: Roots and Results of Revolution (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), 131; Said Amir Arjomand, The Turban for the Crown: The Islamic Revolution in Iran (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 140; Farhang Rajaee, “Islam, Nationalism and Musaddiq’s Era: Post-Revolutionary Historiography in Iran,” in Musaddiq, Iranian Nationalism and Oil, ed. James A. Bill and William Roger Louis (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1988), 129–36; Ervand Abrahamian, Khomeinism: Essays on the Islamic Republic (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 104–10. 23. Interviews conducted by author in Iran, summer 2003.

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of thinking. In his now famous State of the Union Address in January 2002, President Bush lumped Iran with Iraq and North Korea as part of the Axis of Evil. His justification for including Iran was far from clear; he must have been persuaded by neoconservative beliefs in spreading democracy and using American power to serve moral purposes—that is, to combat despotism. His rhetoric set off a new crisis in relations, which continues today.24 Despite the absence of diplomatic relations between the two countries, there were contacts prior to the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, during which Iran supported the destruction of the Taliban. In the case of Afghanistan, Washington took the sensible course of consulting with Tehran before launching its attack.25 It seems evident that no such discussion took place prior to the U.S. invasion of Iraq in March 2003. Iranian officials of whatever political persuasion must be feeling extremely vulnerable just now, with U.S. forces on all sides and the president on record lumping Iran with the ousted regime of Saddam Hussein. One former U.S. defense official with ties to the Bush administration has reported military planning based on the questionable belief that “a sustained bombing campaign in Iran will humiliate the religious leadership and lead the public to rise up and overthrow the government.” According to one authority, “Iran’s security has improved through the removal of Saddam and the Taliban and yet its feelings of insecurity have intensified.” Put plainly, Iran fears encirclement and attack.26 The campaign to vilify Iran is well under way, with a series of articles and other media presentations accusing the country of developing weapons of mass destruction and claiming that Iran is acting as a spoiler in Iraq, sending its agents to stir animosity against the Americans and to impose an Islamic regime there. These charges may or may not be accurate, but we can only lament the absence of dialogue today between the United States and Iran. It seems the height of folly to ignore the vital interests of Iran in a post-Saddam Iraq. Iran has millions of Kurdish citizens in the northwest of the country, and it is naturally concerned, as is its neighbor Turkey, over the future of Iraqi Kurdistan. In the south of Iraq the holy cities of Najaf and Karbala are of great significance to Iran as sites of Shiite pilgrimage to the tombs of Imams Ali and Hussain, sonin-law and grandson respectively of the Prophet Muhammad. 24. Kenneth M. Pollack, The Persian Puzzle: The Conflict between Iran and America (New York: Random House, 2004), 340–41; Paul Berman, “Neo No More,” New York Times Book Review, March 26, 2006. 25. Pollack, Persian Puzzle, 346–47. 26. Seymour M. Hersh, “The Iran Plans,” New Yorker, April 17, 2006, p. 30; Ray Takeyh, “Iran’s Nuclear Calculations,” in American Foreign Policy, 2006/2007, 12th ed. (Dubuque: Contemporary Learning Series, 2006), 196.

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One influential media source closely connected to the U.S. government believes that Iran should have a “disinterested approach to what happens in Iraq” and should not even try to influence events there through broadcasting or other kinds of soft power. This view is unrealistic. We know that when Israel and the United States ignored the legitimate interests of Syria in Lebanon in the early 1980s, their mission there ended in disaster. It is to be hoped that American policy makers have learned that lesson and will avoid a similar confrontation with Iran. Some have argued that Tehran, if it wished, could make the war in Iraq unwinnable for the United States.27 Tehran has other international interests in the region as well. How will oil from the Caspian Sea and Central Asia find its way to world markets? Who should guarantee security in the Persian Gulf, which runs the entire length of Iran’s southern border? What will future relations with Afghanistan and Pakistan be? Finding the answers to these questions and others like them must involve dialogue with the United States. No issue looms larger than that concerning Iran’s nuclear development program. The Iranians have sought access to nuclear energy since the days of the shah. It was an issue high on President Carter’s discussion list when he visited Tehran in December 1977. The two multinational giants Westinghouse and General Electric were heavily involved in the Iranian program. Today, the Iranians live in a nuclear neighborhood. Israel, India, and Pakistan all have nuclear weapons. Various pro-Israeli lobbies have influenced Congress to maintain a hard line toward Iran. Both India and Pakistan have been embraced by the Bush administration, despite having developed nuclear weapons. Neither of them has signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. The president’s trip in early March 2006 to New Delhi, during which he agreed to lift the nuclear embargo against India, elicited heated words from Tehran and must have been at least partly responsible for rejection of the Russian compromise plan to enrich Iranian uranium.28 Despite all of this bitterness, many of Iran’s seventy million citizens view the United States with a good deal of sympathy. Most Iranians are young and have no memories of life under the shah’s regime. They face high unemployment, 27. Bill Samii, “Iran: Talks with US Won’t End Use of ‘Soft Power’ in Iraq,” March 30, 2006, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, http://www.rferl.org/features; Mohiaddin Mesbahi, “Iran-US Relations: Dynamics of Subjectivity and Securitization,” US-Iran Relations Conference, Salt Lake City, September 9–10, 2005. 28. December 1, 1977, press briefing, Press Office—Granum, Staff Office Files, box 101, Jimmy Carter Presidential Papers, Carter Library; John P. Miglietta, “From Ally to Adversary: A Comprehensive Analysis of American-Iranian Relations, 1975–2005,” 12–14, paper presented at US-Iran Relations Conference, Salt Lake City, September 9–10, 2005.

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and their cynicism toward the present Islamic regime cannot be missed. Many young Iranians prefer to go abroad to study and to find work. Those who remain defy the authorities by listening to Western music and watching foreign films. These positive feelings, however, could easily evaporate if Washington were to move unilaterally against their country. We should not forget that it was the Iraqi invasion in September 1980 that galvanized the revolution in Iran. There can be little doubt that, given their recent history, Iranians would rally to support the present government in response to an unprovoked U.S. attack. According to James Bill, a leading scholar on Iran, “If the Islamic Republic and the US fail to cooperate, then violence and warfare are sure to intensify and to spread across the Persian Gulf region. In choosing the role of global gendarme, the American giant must understand the social and political environments in which it travels. Otherwise, in spite of infrared goggles, laser-guided automatic weapons, and Kevlar bullet-proof vests, the giant is easily lost and its destination uncertain.”29 The present administration and much of the American media have directed our attention recently to the new president of Iran, Mahmud Ahmadinejad. He is a relative newcomer to politics, without much experience. His speech is often intemperate; he makes outlandish claims. They rarely tell us that he represents only a narrow slice of the Iranian political reality, and that indications are he has offended important elements within the establishment and his influence with them may be declining. We need to be reminded frequently of the complexity of Iranian politics. Even among the so-called conservatives there are several factions. No single individual or small group can make major decisions on its own. Iran is not Egypt or Pakistan. There must be discussion and debate to achieve consensus. Although much of this takes place out of public view, we can chart it in part through the Iranian media. To overlook or ignore this complexity as we attempt to understand Iranian affairs does the U.S. public a great disservice.30 It is difficult to know how the current impasse with Iran will end. There is room for peaceful resolution of differences if men of goodwill seize the opportunity. Unfortunately, a change of political party in the White House or Congress offers no guarantee of a more enlightened policy toward Iran. Only a better-informed citizenry can make that a reality.

29. Bill, “U.S.-Iran Relations: Forty Years of Observations,” March 15, 2004, http://www.wm.edu/ news/?id=3472. 30. Abbas William Samii, “The Changing Landscape of Party Politics in Iran—A Case Study,” Vaseteh—Journal of the European Society for Iranian Studies 1 (Winter 2005): 3–5.

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WORDS, WORDS, AND STILL more words on foreign policy, hallmarks of the William

Jefferson Clinton administration, littered the corridors of the White House and the Oval Office as a new occupant arrived in 2001. Most were soon discarded or deleted, some picked up and deconstructed for their true meanings, while a few, apparently hiding in dark corners, perhaps in the Lincoln bedroom, rose up again to become policy guidelines for President George W. Bush. Indeed, almost every member of the Clinton administration had a word or more about foreign affairs. The short-lived secretary of defense, Les Aspin, had suggested that preemption had possibilities. Madeleine Albright, on the other hand, had liked the heft of indispensable nation and as United Nations ambassador informed the UN that the United States “will behave multilaterally when we can and unilaterally when we must.” Democratic enlargement and nation building rolled easily off the tongues of other advisers. Forceful or coercive diplomacy had sounded good to foreign policy adviser Nancy Soderberg. Bill Clinton, the word meister himself, supported Albright’s unilateralism, ignoring the UN, and questioned the meaning of is. Vice President Al Gore, the closet war hawk, had believed in intervention.1 Warren Christopher, the secretary of state, uttered no word that anyone could easily recall. One must include words that Clinton didn’t want spoken, genocide and Iraqi children. Finally, a goal, prudently muted, was empire, a word never openly said. It is important that the above words were first used or not used but certainly acted upon by the Clinton administration. 1. Michael Mann, Incoherent Empire (London: Verso, 2003), 7; Andrew J. Bacevich, American Empire (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002), x; Noam Chomsky, “U.S. Iraq Policy,” in Iraq under Siege, ed. Anthony Arnove (Cambridge, Mass: South End Press, 2002), 72; Gary T. Dempsey and Roger W. Fontaine, Fool’s Errands: America’s Recent Encounters with Nation Building (Washington, D.C.: Cato Institute, 2001), 4; Nancy Soderberg, The Superpower Myth: The Use and Misuse of American Might (Hoboken, N.J.: John Wiley, 2005), 94, 100; “Scenes from a Marriage: Bill Clinton and Al Gore,” in Marjorie Williams, The Woman at the Washington Zoo (New York: Public Affairs, 2005), 132–52. Clinton, in part, it appears, offered Gore the vice presidential slot because he had voted to support the Gulf War.

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1 Prior to his presidency, Clinton had given little thought to foreign affairs outside of deciding that he did not want to fight for his country in the Vietnam War. Neither at Georgetown University nor as a student intern for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, when, according to his own claim in his autobiography, he was reading Vietnam War classified information, did he develop any intense interest in what was happening in the rest of the world.2 Nor did his studies at Oxford and Yale serve to stimulate such a desire. No one ever called Bill Clinton a “foreign policy wonk.” After all, foreigners did not cast votes in American elections. Furthermore, just one incident in his fourteen years as attorney general and then governor of Arkansas, the Carter administration’s use of Arkansas military facilities to hold Cuban refugees, involved a foreign issue, and Clinton treated it much more as a domestic political issue that might hurt him locally than as an international problem. Not surprisingly, in the presidential election of 1992 he wisely chose not to debate George H. W. Bush on foreign affairs, Bush’s strength, but concentrated on domestic economic issues. He raised objections only on China, where he criticized the president as too lenient on trade relations; on Bosnia, where he argued that Bush wasn’t active enough; and over the issue of Haitian refugees, where he believed the United States was treating the Haitians too harshly. His foreign policy advisers, unknown and unproved, operated behind the scenes during the campaign.3 Clinton, widely criticized for not spending enough time on making his cabinet and subcabinet choices, followed the same pattern in his national security selections.4 When choosing his national security team he often selected individuals who had held subordinate positions under the previous Democratic president, Jimmy Carter. Warren Christopher, an international lawyer and Clinton’s choice to head the group recommending all his major political appointments, received the prime position as secretary of state. Competent but modest and unassuming, he would neither capture headlines from Clinton nor publicly disagree with him. Christopher was from the most liberal wing of the Democratic Party, and his influence, never great, was diminished further by those closer to Clinton. Les Aspin, a bright and respected congressman with considerable knowledge of military affairs, received the secretary of defense position. Overmatched, and not an FOB (friend of Bill), he was the 2. Bill Clinton, My Life (New York: Knopf, 2004), 104. 3. Anthony Lake, Nancy Soderberg, and Samuel “Sandy” Berger’s names appeared most often. 4. Elizabeth Drew, On the Edge: the Clinton Presidency (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1994), 22, 27, 34.

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first cabinet member to fall, replaced by William Perry, a veteran Department of Defense official who performed extremely well. A moderate Republican, William Cohen, later succeeded Perry. Anthony Lake, an intelligent, strong personality who favored active policies, became the national security adviser but also lacked the kind of access to the president that he felt his position deserved. Sandy Berger, the assistant national security adviser, a former corporate lawyer who had served as a campaign adviser, lacked Lake’s experience but as an FOB stayed the entire course of the administration and later became the national security adviser. Madeleine Albright, an FOH (friend of Hillary), named as the American chief delegate to the United Nations, was the most outspoken hawk of all the advisers and later succeeded Christopher as secretary of state, even though Richard Holbrooke felt he deserved the appointment. Official advisers, however, did not play the key roles. The vice president, Al Gore; the president’s wife, Hillary; and, of course, Clinton himself held the star billings.5 Al Gore had insisted upon and received a weekly luncheon and other means of access for himself and key staff members as a part of his agreement upon accepting the candidacy for vice president. At least until campaign fundraising issues in the 1996 election strained the relationship and the Monica Lewinsky scandal then broke the friendship, it was a unique partnership. More pertinent to the current discussion, Gore was an aggressive adviser, arguably one of only three vice presidents in the twentieth century who were more qualified than their presidents in the areas of military and foreign policies (McKinley’s vice president, Theodore Roosevelt, was another, and George Bush, as Reagan’s, was the third). From the limited materials now available until the Gore papers are opened, it appears that the vice president was one of the leading hawks. Not popular with the FOBs and seldom reticent, he forced his options strongly on Clinton and appears to have had great influence, but it remains unclear how often Clinton actually followed Gore’s suggestions. Hillary’s opinions are even less documented, but, as a U.S. senator positioning herself for a presidential run, she later voted for and supported the Iraq war. It seems fair to assume that when she gave advice it was to call for an active role. Unlike her husband, she seldom acted indecisively. When forced to make decisions, the president, ever fearful of closing any option, reluctantly and grudgingly took action. It drove his staff and cabinet members insane.6 He denied, both in his autobiography and in the seventeen volumes

5. James MacGregor Burns and Georgia J. Sorenson, Dead Center: Clinton-Gore Leadership and the Perils of Moderation (New York: Scribner, 1999), 169–72. 6. Ibid., 113: Drew, On the Edge, 149–50, 205–11.

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of the Public Papers of the President, that he was ever indecisive. But then, Clinton possessed a highly selective memory. As Nietzsche wrote, “‘I have done that,’ says my memory. ‘I could not have done that’ says my pride, and remain inexorable. Eventually—memory yields.”7 In a good example, while he was governor of Arkansas, Clinton said in front of hundreds of people and reporters that he could not support President George H. W. Bush’s leading the United States into the Persian Gulf War. After the war’s successful conclusion, he denied ever having taken that position, insisting that he had, in fact, always supported Bush.8 The president’s lack of interest in foreign affairs, most noticeable in his first term, greatly weakened the importance of the Department of State. As the chief carrier of the American message to the world, Clinton chose to focus on free trade rather than on diplomatic issues. Globalization became the hot word and Clinton its crusading missionary. Free trade and open markets across unrestricted borders would bring prosperity to all in the world. Clinton had great success, but, like all strong believers, he failed to notice that not all countries, groups, and peoples saw globalization so favorably. Indeed, many considered it an American threat. Clinton married his call for economic prosperity to a liberal, neo-Wilsonian approach that supported an aggressive, forceful promotion of democracy as the only answer to the plethora of civil wars, failed states, and ethnic cleansings that plagued the world of the 1990s. Anthony Lake phrased it best when he argued that Wilson, and those presidents who had followed him, “understood that we must promote democracy and market economics in the world because it protects our interests and security and because it reflects our values that are both American and universal.” Although this approach was breathtaking in its idealism and arrogance, little thought was given to whether or not the troubled peoples of the world actually wanted market economies or even knew what democracy was, let alone welcomed it. These policies existed as assumptions, untested, but, as Albright said, “This is what America is good at: Helping people.”9 The next few years would severely test those aspirations. The president’s broad goals met considerable opposition from his military advisers. His opposition to the Vietnam War had not gained him the respect of the generals, and in the first weeks of his administration a controversy over gay soldiers prevented anything except a brittle truce. Clinton lost that initial 7. Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, trans. Walter Kaufman (New York: Vintage, 1966), 80. 8. Paul Greenberg, No Surprises: Two Decades of Clinton Watching (London: Brassey’s, 1996), 12–14, 24–25, 99. 9. All quotes in the paragraph from Dempsey and Fontaine, Fool’s Errands, 5, 11.

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fight, and it weakened him. He never enjoyed a good relationship with the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Colin Powell. Clinton viewed the generals as interlopers on his policy turf, and it was not until he replaced them with technocrats and began to take policy decisions away from them that he achieved an element of control. Still, it is fair to say that “during the Clinton era, the problem was one of a weak commander-in-chief unable or unwilling to assert effective control over the generals.”10 But apparently not all had been lost. With the financial and political evisceration of the Department of State as the chief center of foreign policy operations, Clinton shifted a proportion of its functions to generals, such as Anthony Zinni, who as regional military leaders had fostered close relationships with foreign military leaders. Zinni served virtually as a Roman proconsul.11 The use of the military in forceful or coercive diplomacy was to become another hallmark of the Clinton administration. The resort to such tactics led to a dependence on the military to solve political problems by force rather than by negotiation. Clinton liked to compare himself to John Kennedy and, more surprisingly, to Harry Truman. He saw himself, perhaps, as being like the former in a personal sense, but like the latter in issues related directly to foreign policy. In the Public Papers of the President he often compared the early 1990s with the years from 1945 to 1948. He believed that both he and Truman were equally successful in leading Americans to overcome challenges and in designing new policies. This represented an astonishing leap of imagination.12 First, the foreign and military policy advisers surrounding Truman—George Marshall, Dean Acheson, Averell Harriman, Dwight Eisenhower, George Kennan, Paul Nitze—were men of great experience, universally respected even by those who disagreed with them. They were widely known as realists, and few ever suggested they lacked the ability to make decisions or to create new institutions and policies to meet the Cold War threats. It is difficult to come to the same conclusions about Clinton’s advisers. Second, the Truman administration developed new institutions and policies to cope with the Cold War. A truncated list of those initiatives would include the Department of Defense, National Security Council, Central Intelligence Agency, United Nations, Bretton Woods, National Security Agency, the Marshall Plan, the Truman Doctrine, and containment. It is difficult to name any new 10. Andrew J. Bacevich, “A Time for Reckoning,” American Conservative, July 19, 2004. 11. Dana Priest, The Mission: Waging War and Keeping Peace with America’s Military (New York: W. W. Norton, 2003), 61–98. 12. Can one, even in wildest imagination, envision Bess sitting quietly beside Harry on national television as he denies a love affair? More likely, Harry would have sported two black eyes, broken fingers, and a severely mangled bowtie.

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institution or effective policies of that stature (except, perhaps, the World Trade Organization) established by the Clinton administration to meet the threats of terrorism, failed states, and humanitarian disasters. On the terrorism issue, Clinton was not even talking to the heads of the FBI and the CIA, let alone effectively using other institutions established by the Truman team. Finally, one should note that Truman was seldom if ever accused of being indecisive or of lacking the ability to lead, even when he was wrong. People did not have to deconstruct Truman’s words to discover their true meaning. No sign saying “The Buck Stops Here” stood on Clinton’s desk. Truman also talked considerably less, especially about himself. Truman’s Public Papers totaled eight volumes; Clinton bequeathed seventeen volumes and displayed much more self-absorption. His use of the pronoun “I” exceeded Truman’s by about fifty to one. Historian William H. Chafe notes “a degree of self-absorption about Clinton that bordered on narcissism.”13 2 After the end of the Cold War, almost every observer on foreign policy hoped to hear an announcement of a new overall American foreign policy akin to the Truman administration’s policy of containment. The Bush administration’s “new world order” barely got off the ground. At the time it appeared that Clinton had also failed. Within a few years, however, one of the most insightful writers on foreign and military policies discovered its identity and summed it up in two words. Andrew J. Bacevich entitled his book American Empire. Bacevich argues that George H. W. Bush and Clinton had policy “objectives aimed at nothing short of a full-scale transformation of the international order. Whereas during the Cold War Americans had justified the maintenance of a great military establishment as a necessary but presumably temporary departure from the Founders’ republican vision, they now flaunted their nation’s status as the world’s only superpower.” This empire resulted in more military interventions than at any other time in American history. During the Cold War from 1947 to 1989, the United States sent in troops on sixteen occasions; from 1989 to 1999, the United States intervened nearly four dozen times. By the turn of the millennium, according to political scientist Chalmers Johnson, the United States had 725 military bases.14 13. Chafe, Private Lives/Public Consequences (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2005), 339. 14. Bacevich, American Empire, viii, 142–43 (Bacevich cites as his source U.S. Commission on National Security/21st Century, New World Coming [Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1999], 128); Johnson, The Sorrows of Empire (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2004), 151–90.

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U.S. involvement in Somalia began a progression of interventions that turned American military and foreign policies upside down. In the last months of 1992 the George H. W. Bush administration joined a UN-sponsored “humanitarian” intervention designed to protect international food supplies to ensure that they actually reached starving civilians caught in a tribal civil war. By and large the military units accomplished that limited part of the mission, but the Clinton administration, after some initial confusion, concluded that a local leader, Gen. Mohammed Farah Aideed, was the main source of difficulties in the capital and ordered him captured and removed from power. This decision changed the entire nature of the intervention from humanitarian to political, the goal becoming the forcible change of the local political order. General Aideed represented an important part of the country’s power structure. The decision to remove him was made without Somalian assent. American soldiers, acting on orders from the president to Ranger units under command of American officers, not UN commanders, followed their directives. Unsupported by tanks, which had been asked for but never sent, the Rangers ran into a clever ambush that cost the lives of eighteen of their own, and the loss of Black Hawk helicopters, and presented the image on international television of an American officer being dragged through the streets of Mogadishu. Clinton’s first reaction was, “We’re not inflicting pain on these fuckers. When people kill us, they should be killed in greater numbers.” In that fight more than a thousand Somalians either lost their lives or were wounded. Badly burned by this result, Clinton pulled American troops out. That retreat and failure had an enormous unintended consequence. Thousands of miles away a young Saudi, Osama bin Laden, saw those images and later claimed that the incident in Somalia convinced him of the weakness of the United States and its military, which could not stand a high level of casualties. Despite the Americans’ overwhelming military power and technology, those willing to sacrifice lives for their cause, like al-Qaeda, would defeat them.15 The first buds on the September 11 tree had sprouted. Haiti posed a long-standing and difficult problem. It was one of the poorest nations on the face of the earth, and its periodic civil wars, dictatorial leaders, and poverty caused disruptions that brought about the exodus of large numbers of refugees, most hoping to land in the United States. Clinton, as noted, had criticized the elder President Bush during the 1992 election for not handling the refugee problem correctly. But Clinton found he did not have the an15. Clinton quoted in George Stephanopoulos, All Too Human (Boston: Little, Brown, 1999), 214; Karin von Hippel, Democracy by Force: U.S. Military Intervention in the Post–Cold War World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 74; Bruce Lawrence, ed., Messages to the World: the Statements of Osama bin Laden (London: Verso, 2005), 54–55.

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swer either, and he ended up putting large numbers of the refugees at America’s favorite detention home, Guantanamo Bay. It was not directly the refugee problem that prompted the Haiti invasion in September 1994 but the overthrow of an elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. After Aristide was elected in 1990 as a promising reformer, a military cabal pushed him aside in February 1991, and he fled to the United States. Under immense pressure from black political groups, both in Congress and outside Washington, Clinton, largely for domestic political rather than humanitarian reasons, felt he had to act. Without asking for congressional permission and having already decided to send U.S. troops, he sent former president Jimmy Carter and General Powell to persuade the military leaders to step aside, which they did, just hours before the troops landed. Aristide used the troops to consolidate his power, and several billions of dollars were poured in by both the United States and other nations. American soldiers had no idea of who the bad guys were, who the good guys were, and what exactly they were to do there.16 By the time they left, conditions had already begun to deteriorate. Reelected in 2000, Aristide became more and more like his opponents and soon employed thugs to kill them. In 2004, the second Bush administration withdrew support from the president, who again left his country. Haiti remains to this day in turmoil. Coercive force from the outside failed to bring democracy to a country three hundred miles from North American shores that had seen constant U.S. interventions for more than a century, with almost no discernible progress. But it was Bosnia that first revealed the full dimensions of the Clinton administration’s ambitions and methods. If Somalia reflected humanitarian impulses gone wrong and Haiti demonstrated a failed use of coercive diplomacy to bring about only a semblance of democracy, Clinton, ignoring those lessons, even after three years of dithering, expanded his Wilsonian goals to nation building. Bosnia, one of the constituent states of Yugoslavia, in April 1992 took advantage of the breakup (beginning in 1991) of that tortured polyglot country to join Croatia and Slovenia as a newly recognized independent state. Having failed to keep either Croatia or Slovenia within the Yugoslavian Republic by negotiation, threat, or the use of force, the leader of Serbia, Slobodan Milosevic, raising the battle cry of Serbian nationalism, turned his troops on the weakest of the newly declared states, Bosnia. Mobilizing Yugoslav regular and irregular troops and Bosnian Serbian militias, Milosevic supported the Bosnian Serbs in a civil war against the largely Muslim Albanian Bosnian national government. Under the UN Charter, which specifically supports all independent sovereign 16. Bob Shacochis, The Immaculate Invasion (New York: Viking, 1999), xv–xvi, 381, 394.

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countries who are attacked by outside aggressors, both the UN and the United States condemned the attack in strong words but with little action. Viewed by many Americans and by the Clinton administration as a European problem, not an American issue, despite outrages and resolutions, the war deepened as ethnic cleansing atrocities occurred (but, as former secretary of state James Baker had clearly stated, “we don’t have a dog in this fight”).17 Clinton, who had blasted the Bush administration for not acting in Bosnia, characteristically could not make up his mind. On one occasion he sent Secretary of State Warren Christopher to Europe with a proposal and then pulled the rug out from under him.18 But as tens of thousands died and neither the Europeans nor the Americans nor the United Nations did little but talk, two events apparently convinced Clinton to finally act. The first occurred in the early months of 1994 when a civil war in Rwanda descended into the depths of genocide and some eight hundred thousand Rwandans died in a hundred days. A president who was constantly telling Americans that he “felt their pain” not only ignored the ultimate pain of the Rwandans but prohibited representatives of the U.S. government from even using the word genocide for fear the public response might compel him to do something. Years later Anthony Lake called that decision “shameful” and acknowledged that there had “never even been a principals meeting” at the level of cabinet officers to discuss Rwanda.19 When Clinton finally visited Rwanda five years later, the president, rarely ever willing to admit error, “did not actually say he was sorry” or apologize. But he was so uneasy that he never left the airport, nor were Air Force One’s engines ever shut off during the visit.20 The second was the upcoming presidential election of 1996. Clinton, having abdicated domestic leadership (albeit only temporarily) to Newt Gingrich and the Republicans, turned to that habit of many presidents when in trouble at home: concentrating on foreign affairs and looking strong. If he could do something in Bosnia that would raise his image as a statesman while costing few American lives, be relatively cheap and preferably quick, and not require the use of ground troops, it would benefit him politically. Clinton turned to his favorite weapon, airpower—if not cruise missiles, then bombers. Cruise missiles seldom, if ever, influenced any country to stop doing anything, but their use made Clinton look resolute to the American people. After all, innocent Afghans, Sudanese, and others did not vote in American elections. 17. Baker quoted in David Halberstam, War in a Time of Peace (New York: Scribner, 2001), 46. 18. William G. Hyland, Clinton’s World: Remaking American Foreign Policy (Westport: Praeger, 1999), 37. 19. New York Times, December 20, 2004. 20. Halberstam, War in a Time of Peace, 277–78.

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Apparently, sending missiles to bomb other countries was no longer in this American imperial phase considered an act of war but, instead, merely coercive diplomacy. In the Bosnian case, Clinton hoped to use airpower not only to achieve humanitarian goals and protect Bosnia but also to create a democratic nation that would, within a year (his promise), adopt not only American political and economic institutions but American values—a veritable Little Rock in the Balkans. This, mind you, among people whose enmity at least matched if not exceeded that of the Union and the Confederacy in the American Civil War. The intervention, sanctioned by the UN, did not immediately bring an end to the massive ethnic killings. But the Dayton agreements of 1995, choreographed by special ambassador Richard Holbrooke, succeeded in getting Milosevic to withdraw his open support of the Bosnian Serbs.21 A military regime then was established designed to enforce, in effect, a truce. Although deeply flawed and at best solving only the immediate security problem, this arrangement produced a deeply divided populace under a UN regime whose high representative more often acted as an imperial proconsul using undemocratic methods through coercive force to bring about democracy—neglecting Napoleon’s advice that you can do everything with bayonets except sit on them. More of an old-fashioned colonial occupation than a democratic tutoring, the promised one-year intervention still existed eleven years later. Few today expect either a democracy or a successful ending. Most predict at worst a civil war that would begin again the moment the troops leave or at best a partition unlikely to leave either side happy. Nation building remains a risky and uncertain business, both in an economic sense (Bosnia was a very poor nation) and in the political sphere. If Bosnia stretched the traditional framework of American intervention practices, Kosovo smashed them to pieces and set precedents that many Americans and others would come to question. Having progressed from the initial humanitarian purpose in Somalia, to democracy promotion by coercive force in Haiti, to nation building in Bosnia, the Clinton neo-Wilsonians with NATO support now intervened in a province of a sovereign state. Kosovo, of course, remained a part of Yugoslavia. Done in a manner both imperial and coercive, the intervention also happened without the approval of the United Nations. Neither Russia, a longtime friend of the Serbs, nor China, fearful of setting precedents for Tibet and Taiwan, could support such a vote, and each had a veto. Few areas of the world offered such complexities and difficulties as did Kosovo to American goals and values. It went a long way to again prove the old adage that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. 21. Holbrooke, To End a War (New York: Random House, 1998), 288–312.

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Kosovo’s ethnic makeup was similar to Bosnia’s. Over the centuries following the Ottoman victory over the Serbs in 1389, the majority of the settlers, due to both conversions and migrations, had become Muslim. Their loss became the lodestone of the Serbs’ nationalism in the years to come. Fate, bad karma, or history, call it what you wish, determined that the site of the 1389 battle was in an area dominated by Muslims. Various agitators over time had stirred up the ashes of Serbian resentment.22 None had done so as successfully as Slobodan Milosevic, who used the issue to rise to the leadership of Serbian Yugoslavia. With malice aforethought, he deliberately provoked the situation by holding a rally at the site of the battle on its six hundredth anniversary in 1989. Claiming that the minority Serbs in Bosnia were mistreated and discriminated against by the majority Muslims, he pledged that such victimization would never happen again.23 The Clinton administration focused on trying to stabilize Bosnia and, having used Milosevic to secure the Dayton settlement, left the Kosovo issue out of the agreement. The Kosovo Muslims, having by and large not officially replied with violence to Serbian provocations, drew a lesson from the Bosnian experience: if by using force the Bosnians had gained Western recognition of their independence, then the Kosovo Muslims could do the same. At this point, Serbian Yugoslavia had lost Croatia, Slovenia, and Bosnia. Milosevic could not lose Kosovo and survive. It was then that he decided to drive as many Muslims out of Kosovo as possible. Clinton and his hawks—Gore, Albright, Cohen, and Berger—with very little support from Congress or with little public discussion began to push for a brief bombing attack, convinced that a show of force would stop Milosevic. The Serb leader knew, however, that the United States would not send ground troops into Kosovo because Clinton, in a major mistake, out of either fear of American casualties or just bad judgment, had declared publicly that no ground troops would be sent.24 Such a denial took away a major lever. Milosevic, not unreasonably, thought that Clinton, when push came to shove, would always talk bigger than he would act. Milosevic used this time to ethnically cleanse the province, using a combination of force and intimidation to escort Muslims out of the country and, 22. Still useful on the Serbian discontents is Rebecca West’s Black Lamb and Grey Falcon: A Journey through Yugoslavia, 2 vols. (New York: Viking, 1941). 23. The most useful volume on the Kosovo intervention is Philip E. Averswald and David P. Averswald, eds., The Kosovo Conflict: A Diplomatic History through Documents (Cambridge: Kluwer Law International, 2000). 24. Soderberg, Superpower Myth, 91.

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when necessary, carrying out mass killings. NATO forces, not blue-helmeted UN peacekeepers, then launched large and sustained bombing attacks on Serb forces in Kosovo and the capital of Yugoslavia. The attacks had little success in knocking out Serbian tanks, which remained hidden. They did, however, break the back of the various Serbian forces from Yugoslavia and of the Kosovian Serbs. By the end of the air war and the brutal attacks by the Kosovo Liberation Army, the tide had turned. Kosovo was soon 90 percent Muslim and 10 percent Serb, but still part of Yugoslavia. Occupation troops from the United States and Europe moved in, and the United Nations took over the administration of Kosovo and turned it into a protectorate under a UN high commissioner. The stated goals of the United States, tacitly supported by the UN, were to use the troops to achieve the security of the country, establish democratic institutions both politically and economically, inculcate Western values of tolerance and peaceful coexistence, and build a new state on the ashes of the old province. No nation in the history of the modern world has had great success in democratic nation building, and the United States was no exception. It had failed in both the Caribbean and the Philippines in previous imperial attempts. The oft-cited examples of Germany and Japan not only took years of actual military presence, during which the United States had great control, but also involved homogenous nations already exposed to democracy. More important, those countries were not in the midst of civil wars and had strong industrial foundations that provided a good chance for economic prosperity. Neither Bosnia nor Kosovo had any of these elements. Eight years of military occupation in Kosovo have resulted in exactly what almost anyone with historical knowledge would have expected. Conquerors and military organizations have had little success as builders of democratic institutions. Despite the presence of several thousand civilian organizations, including the UN and NGOs with more than twenty thousand employees, Kosovo is fundamentally run as a military protectorate on nondemocratic foundations. Coercive force is used by the UN high commissioner to remove leaders who are not viewed as democratic or cooperative. That same force is used to make economic decisions. People who represent important constituencies within Kosovo are denied roles. The very essence of democracy is to include all groups. To the people of Kosovo this outside presence is surely viewed as a military occupation of the same kind that both empires and colonists have known since the beginning of history.25 The occupiers are there without the consent of the people. 25. Kimberly Zisk Marten, Enforcing the Peace: Learning from the Imperial Past (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), 6.

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The neo-Wilsonians convinced themselves that they were saving people whose presence and culture had survived thousands of years without America’s assistance and interference. Certainly, they might elect bad leaders, but the United States is not exactly a perfect role model, nor has it been setting such high standards for its own leaders that it can self-righteously give advice to others. Nation building is an arrogant process. Iraq, the recipient of the most consistently followed policies of the major Clinton military interventions, faced an aggressively hostile United States, which had anointed itself as the leader against the Saddam Hussein regime. More accurately described as a limited war rather than an intervention, Clinton’s Iraqi coercion differs significantly from the others in several ways. An even more elevated use of airpower occurred, and the United Nations became the diplomatic cover for many of Washington’s actions. Humanitarian considerations, so important in the previous interventions, all but disappeared. The economic sanctions and bombings inflicted enormous collateral damage on the Iraqi people: their human rights became unimportant. Clinton and his advisers viewed Saddam as very dangerous. William Cohen, the secretary of defense in 1997, said that Saddam might have had enough chemical weapons to “be able to kill every human being on the face of the planet.” Albright compared Saddam to Hitler and argued he had “weapons of mass destruction.” Berger warned that Saddam “seeks weapons, including weapons of mass destruction, in order to use them.” Clinton’s reports to Congress about Iraq offered no quarter.26 A cruise-missile attack on Iraq’s intelligence headquarters, allegedly in retaliation for an assassination plot against former president Bush during a visit to Kuwait, took place on June 27, 1993. Again on September 3 and 4, 1996, the president sent missiles in to protect the Kurds and unilaterally expanded the no-fly zone.27 In November 1997 the New York Times reported that Clinton had said that the “sanctions will be there until the end of time or as long as he lasts.” This was followed in January 1998 by the threat of a huge air attack, when an American was barred from a UN weapons inspection team. Only a visit by Secretary General Kofi Annan to Baghdad averted a bombing at that time. On December 16, 1998, Anglo-American air strikes began on a large scale after a report that Iraq was in “noncompliance” with the inspections routine.28 26. Quotations from David Brooks, New York Times, November 3, 2005; see Public Papers of the President of the United States, William J. Clinton, 1999 (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 2001), August 2, 1999, letter to Congress, book II, pp. 1365–69. 27. Naseer Aruri, “America’s War against Iraq: 1990–2002,” in Iraq under Siege, ed. Arnove, 42 28. “How Tough Questions and Shrewd Mediating Brought Iraq Showdown to an End,” New York Times, November 23, 1997; Aruri, “America’s War,” 42.

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John Mueller and Karl Mueller reported that the United States had caused “hundreds of thousands of deaths” in Iraq because of the sanctions and bombings. Most infamous was the reply of Madeleine Albright, who said when asked if the deaths of a reported half-million Iraqi children as a result of the sanctions was too high a cost to pay, “we think the price is worth it.”29 The president in 1998, pressured by neoconservatives, supported the Iraq Liberation Act in Congress. Regime change became the “official policy of the United States” for Iraq. In a strong speech in December, he offered Saddam one last chance, again. But, again, little changed.30 The oil-for-food program appeared a good idea, but the corruption reached into the highest levels of the United Nations, and Saddam also took great advantage of this opportunity to buy French and Russian support. In the end, neither the Clinton administration’s words nor the bombings forced Saddam Hussein to comply with the UN resolutions. These pressures did, however, contribute to the continued existence of a Kurdish enclave in northern Iraq. Clinton’s containment policy had neither won nor lost this limited war. The Iraqi people, however, did lose substantially. Perhaps the highest priority of Clinton’s interests was captured by a Texan who wrote in the Austin American Statesman that Bill Clinton six days earlier on a CBS 60 Minutes interview had said “that the worst day of his presidency was the day he had to disclose his infidelity to his wife.” The Texan concluded that he “would have thought it might have been the first World Trade Center bombing, the Oklahoma City bombing, the Somalia Ranger massacre, the USS Cole bombing, the East African embassy bombing, the Khobar barracks bombing, etc.”31 3 A veritable revolution in American intervention policies occurred during the 1990s. Fueled by liberal neo-Wilsonians, the Clinton administration backed away from the traditional practice of sending military troops only when vital interests were at stake and adopted in its place what political scientist Michael Mandelbaum

29. Mueller and Mueller, “Sanctions of Mass Destruction,” Foreign Affairs 78 (May/June 1999): 49–53; Arnove, ed., Iraq under Siege, 22. Further material on the negative effects of sanctions can be found in Thomas Cushman, ed., A Matter of Principle: Humanitarian Arguments for War in Iraq (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005). 30. David Rieff, At the Point of a Gun: Democratic Dreams and Armed Intervention (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2005), 209; Micah L. Sifry and Christopher Cerf, eds., The Iraq Reader (New York: Touchstone, 2003), 209. 31. Letters to the editor, Austin American Statesman, June 26, 2004.

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has labeled global “social work.”32 Strongly supported by international law advocates, NGO workers reversed their opposition to the use of force to an advocacy of war for human rights purposes, and peace organizations muted their traditional resistance when the United States marched its troops and dropped its bombs and missiles on numerous countries.33 With few exceptions, Congress, the media, and Americans citizens did not protest. No major peace march took place in the United States until 2000. Clinton never asked the American people to pay any price, bear any burden, or fight any foe for his policies. No great national debate occurred. Most Americans appeared unaware of the significance of what was evolving. Clinton pushed the policy with little thought of its consequences or of what precedents it might set for future presidents. Always willing to use airpower early on, he was very reluctant to follow up with ground troops and tended to dump the final problems into the lap of the United Nations, using it, as one critic wrote, like a “Kleenex” to clean up the mess.34 Two critics of these actions called nation building “Fool’s Errands.”35 Contrary to numerous statements by members of the Clinton administration, the United States had a far from successful record of nation building, in part because of a lack of knowledge among Americans about critical areas of the world. For example, there are few Balkans studies programs in American universities. Clinton had, to our knowledge, never read a book on that area until he and Hillary read Robert D. Kaplan’s Balkan Ghosts and, according to the author, drew exactly the wrong conclusions.36 Why wasn’t the president calling on academic or government experts? Incredibly optimistic, and unrealistic about what could be done, Clinton pushed ahead, much like his successor as president. In the best book yet about the interventions, Andrea Kathryn Talentino has drawn attention to an important change of definition. War, “an act long considered aggressive and illegal[,] was reborn as part of an international strategy to build both intra- and interstate peace, moving from banned to desired, manipulative to constructive in the space of a decade.” This astonishing reversal lies at the very heart of the Clinton interventions. A key part of this transformation occurred in a change in the definition of sovereignty. Although sovereignty had long been considered the key protective right of every nation, and

32. Mandelbaum, “Foreign Policy as Social Work,” Foreign Affairs 76 (January–February 1996): 16; for the nature of Cold War interventions, see Odd Arne Westad, The Global Cold War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005). 33. Rieff, At the Point of a Gun, 33–35. 34. Ibid., 31, quoting an unknown UN official. 35. Dempsey and Fontaine, Fool’s Errands. 36. Kaplan, Balkan Ghosts: A Journey through History (New York: St. Martin’s, 1993). See the author’s remarks in the foreword of the 2005 edition.

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enshrined in the UN Charter as such, both the secretary general of the United Nations and the American neo-Wilsonians agreed that any nation that abused the human rights of its citizens should lose the shield of sovereignty, opening itself [to] usage by the international community of military and political forces to correct the abuses.37 Both of these reinterpretations opened Pandora’s box. Was turning the old bugaboo of war into a hero’s role simply a conjurer’s trick, cosmetic surgery covering up the hidden hands of great power interests? Or was it a permanent turnaround? Perhaps the 1990s (and the extension of the Clinton policies by the second Bush administration) represent an aberrant decade that will begin to unravel with the end of globalization. Already showing the strains of terrorism and increasingly nationalist protectionist steps, globalization may not last. Building a balance between human rights and the protective aspects of state sovereignty is also a difficult task that rampant nationalism may render impossible. The rejection of the European Union constitution in 2005 is but one reminder that the nation state has not yet died. Perhaps even more significant is that the interventions have failed without achieving their professed goals. Despite the forced settlements in Bosnia and Kosovo, neither entity, despite years of Western tutoring, appears any closer to democracy. Deep ethnic antagonisms still exist, international aid is siphoned off by the opposing political groups to support their ambitions, corruption is rampant, and both Balkan enclaves have become asylums for domestic crime gangs and international terrorists. Somalia and Haiti fare little better. There are thus serious questions of whether such policies are simply flawed and can be corrected or are impossible to accomplish and should be abandoned. There is also more than a whiff of empire and imperialism involved in the policies. The protectorate established in Kosovo emits the strongest odor. The high commissioner of the UN, as mentioned, arbitrarily dismisses and removes citizens whose political actions do not appear to have democratic goals; the participants are, in effect, not allowed to develop the political skills of accommodation so necessary in a democracy. The people of Kosovo did not ask the West to take over, nor did they volunteer for three hours of credit in political science. The occupation looks suspiciously like a military one. Perhaps a multilateral imperialism is no different in its ultimate results, despite the denials, from the imperialism achieved by classical colonial methods.38 From the Romans, to the British, to the Americans, all invaders described their undertakings as altruistic and designed to help benighted peoples. 37. Talentino, Military Intervention after the Cold War: The Evolution of Theory and Practice (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2005), 276, 67. 38. Marten, Enforcing the Peace, 8–13.

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A former leader of the neoconservatives, Francis Fukuyama, however, has again recently demonstrated the power of the Wilsonian appeal. His America at the Crossroads describes his own abandonment of the movement when the Bush administration hypocritically adopted Clinton’s goals of promoting democracy. During the 2000 campaign the Republican candidate had criticized the Clinton interventions as too idealistic and had forsworn nation building. Fukuyama claimed in the New York Times that Bush “embraced democracy only after the failure to find unconventional weapons in Iraq. The issue was seized to justify the war in retrospect, and then expanded for other countries.” He called for a new conservative policy that he labeled “Realistic Wilsonian” for lack of a better term. This “differs from classical realism by taking seriously as an object of U.S. foreign policy what goes on inside states.”39 That both the neo-Wilsonians of the Clinton administration and the neoconservatives of the Bush administration share the same philosophical parentage as Fukuyama’s new movement should cause one to pause. At first blush it appears that the professorial conceit of Woodrow Wilson—that the United States, with force, if necessary, should make the world safe for democracy and also “teach” countries to have good governments—has trumped the wise advice of John Quincy Adams. Almost two hundred years ago, on July 4, 1821, he counseled that Americans go not abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own. She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom.40

Adams’s words, unlike the mostly forgotten ones of Bill Clinton, still ring true as the twenty-first century begins. Unfortunately, Adams’s latter sentences are an accurate description of the current state of American foreign policy. We must not forget that Clinton was “president at the creation” of the new words and era.

39. Fukuyama, America at the Crossroads: Democracy, Power and the Neoconservative Legacy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006); New York Times, March 17, 2006. 40. Adams’s “Address of July 4, 1821,” quoted in Norman A. Graebner, Ideas and Diplomacy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1964), 88–89.

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DURING THE FALL OF 2002 ,

when President George W. Bush’s administration was insisting that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and had aided the terrorist al-Qaeda organization in its attacks on the United States in September 2001, many officials and public commentators held that war against Iraq would not only rid the world of a growing military threat but also liberate the Iraqi people from Saddam Hussein’s brutal rule and effect a change of regime that would bring democracy to Iraq and serve as a model for the Middle East. Thus many editorialists urged Bush to act as boldly as President Harry S. Truman had in combating North Korea after it attacked South Korea in June 1950.1 Similarly, prominent historians such as John Lewis Gaddis hailed publication of the Bush administration’s September 2002 National Security Strategy (NSS)—which insisted that the United States had the right to wage preventive war against other states that posed a security threat, no matter how remote— as the most important reformulation of American grand strategy since the Truman administration promulgated National Security Council (NSC) document NSC 68 in 1950.2 Further, even after the U.S. invasion of Iraq in March 2003 had failed to find WMD there, or links between Baghdad and al-Qaeda, Gaddis would insist that despite dire warnings of opponents of the war, the U.S. occupation of Iraq had not brought military resistance, the eruption of outrage in the Arab world, a spike in oil prices, or immense human or material costs. And Vice President Richard (Dick) Cheney would insist that just as Truman had resisted the global danger of imperial communism and “saved Korea” by military action, so Bush

1. See Anne Applebaum, “It’s Not Whether You Win or Lose,” Washington Post, December 6, 2006. 2. Gaddis, “Grand Strategy of Transformation,” Foreign Policy 133 (November/December 2003): 50–57.

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was demonstrating the same “perseverance and moral clarity” and commitment to a “forward strategy” of freedom.3 Most historians agree that Truman deserves praise for his bold decision to repulse North Korea’s attack on South Korea. But there is reason to contend that his conduct of that earlier war set some bad presidential precedents and led to serious political consequences. Most significantly, the decision to invade North Korea in October 1950 to effect “roll-back,” or “regime change,” resulted in a long and costly war that brought high casualties to all sides, a permanently inflated U.S. defense budget, long-term embittered relations with North Korea and the People’s Republic of China (PRC), and extensive, and tragic, U.S. military commitments in Asia. Similarly, the Bush administration’s effort to impose regime change on Iraq has led to a prolonged and costly war in which U.S. forces have come to be viewed not as liberators but as occupiers, while sectarian factions engage in brutal civil conflict that has prevented the return of civic stability and the formation of a government of national unity. Further, terrorists are increasingly drawn to embattled Iraq, while U.S. relations with neighboring Iran—once Iraq’s enemy—have sharply deteriorated, as have U.S. relations with many longtime allies. Perhaps, then, analysis of the Truman and Bush administrations’ efforts at regime change will reveal significant similarities, or differences, that—as Truman would have said—might serve as “lessons of history” that can enlighten Americans about their past, present, and future. 1 When word came to Washington late on June 24, 1950, that troops from the People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), equipped with Soviet arms and aided by Russian advisers, had attacked the Republic of Korea (ROK) across the Thirtyeighth Parallel, Truman determined to “let them have it,” and he never deviated from his initial public statement on June 26 that North Korea was engaged in “unprovoked aggression” and “lawless action.”4 In conferences with senior diplomatic and military advisers and congressional leaders during June 25–30, the president put his stamp of firmness on U.S. policy. This included moving the UN Security Council to insist that the DPRK withdraw its troops, and then 3. Gaddis, Surprise, Security, and the American Experience (Cambridge: Harvard University. Press, 2004), 81–82; Vice President Richard Cheney Remarks to the Los Angeles World Affairs Council, January 14, 2003, http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2004/01/20040114–7.html. 4. Robert J. Donovan, Tumultuous Years: The Presidency of Harry S. Truman, 1949–1953 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1982), 195–96; New York Times, June 27, 1950.

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to authorize UN members to support ROK efforts to repulse the aggressors and to restore peace in the region. Truman immediately instructed Gen. Douglas MacArthur, supreme commander of the allied powers in Japan, to send military supplies and a survey team to Korea, and ordered U.S. planes and naval units to cover the ROK retreat. The president also had the Seventh Fleet moved from the Philippines to the Taiwan Straits to preclude both a PRC attack on Taiwan—now home to China’s former Guomindang (GMD) government— and a GMD assault on the mainland that would widen the conflict.5 Truman informed congressional leaders of his actions on June 27, and after learning that the Soviet Union, then boycotting the UN to protest its refusal to admit the PRC, did not intend to intervene in Korea, he authorized air strikes on North Korea, instructing the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) to be “damned careful” that their directive to MacArthur did not anticipate war with Russia. On June 30, after MacArthur called for deployment of U.S. forces to prevent a disaster, the president approved sending a regimental combat team and two divisions, with more to follow. But upon informing congressional leaders of the approved strikes against North Korea, Truman referred only to providing “certain supporting ground units,” thus obscuring, as Secretary of State Dean Acheson later admitted, that the United States was now “fully committed to Korea.”6 Truman’s rapid response to North Korea’s attack was admirable. Although the DPRK and ROK were artificial states derived from the U.S.-Soviet division of the peninsula in 1945, South Korea was a UN-recognized and sovereign state and entitled to that organization’s protection against aggression. Had Truman not acted, his administration, already under attack for having “lost” China in 1949, would have been charged with engaging in 1930s style appeasement, with the UN branded as being as ineffective as the former League of Nations. Democrats also rightly feared that Acheson’s earlier speech in Washington on January 12, 1950, in which he had “omitted” Korea from the U.S. defense perimeter (as was consistent with current strategic plans), would now lead to charges that his words had invited North Korea’s attack.7 Nonetheless, Truman regarded the Korean conflict as larger than two rival regimes battling for control of the peninsula. He viewed Korea as the “ideological battleground” of the world and during 1947–1950 had called for more military aid (reduced by Congress) to Korea than to Greece. On June 26, 1950, 5. Arnold A. Offner, Another Such Victory: President Truman and the Cold War, 1945–1953 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002), 372–74. 6. Ibid., 374–76; Dean Acheson, Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department (New York: W. W. Norton, 1969), 413. 7. Offner, Another Such Victory, 355–57.

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he said that Korea was “the Greece of the Far East,” and that if the United States stood idly by the communists would seize Iran, and perhaps the Middle East. The next day he told a group of congressmen that “if we let Korea down, the Soviets will keep right on going and swallow one piece of Asia after another,” and then perhaps the Middle East and Europe. Thus he would “go all-out to maintain our position.”8 Truman also took an exaggerated view of his power as commander in chief. He had authority to respond to North Korea’s attack, but after he deployed two divisions on June 30 he refused to seek a congressional declaration of war. Acheson did compile a list of eighty-seven prior incidents to claim as precedents for presidential action without Congress’s approval, but these were primarily small-scale interventions to protect American lives and property during revolutionary turmoil, not the dispatch of divisions to wage war against an army. Further, the UN Participation Act of 1945 required that Congress approve the sending of U.S. forces to support a UN action. But, as a White House aide noted, Truman was determined to act on his own.9 Thus, when the war subsequently turned sour, his critics could call it “Truman’s war.” But his action also allowed his successors to make extravagant claims of executive authority while leading the nation to war.10 Truman also erred in his belief that North Korea’s invasion was an opening gambit for greater Soviet expansion. Stalin had armed the North Koreans and approved their attack, but the war was Kim Il-sung’s brainchild. He had long pressed this solution on Stalin until Stalin gave in, with the caveat that if the United States intervened and “you get kicked in the teeth, I shall not lift a finger. You have to ask Mao for all the help.” Stalin’s support for Kim’s venture did not signal a design for global expansion; rather, the Soviet leader looked to communist control of South Korea to buttress the USSR against a stronger U.S.-Japan alignment and the prospect of a Pacific NATO, and to provide Russian access to South Korea’s ports at Inchon and Pusan to compensate for Moscow’s recently having to retrocede to the PRC the port and rail concessions in Manchuria that had been gained at Yalta in 1945. And, by supporting Kim, Stalin could assert primacy over Mao as the leader of world revolution.11 8. Truman quoted in ibid., 348, 371. 9. Gary R. Hess, Presidential Decisions for War: Korea, Vietnam, and the Persian Gulf (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2001), 37; Elsey Memorandum, July 16, 1951, box 76, George M. Elsey Papers, Harry S. Truman Library, Independence, Mo. 10. Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., The Imperial Presidency (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1973), 134–35. 11. Stalin quoted in Sergei Goncharov, John W. Lewis, and Xue Litai, Uncertain Partners: Stalin, Mao, and the Korean War (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993), 145; Zhihua Shen, “Sino-

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Meanwhile, Truman’s two speeches on July 19 escalated a “police action” against a “bunch of bandits”—later, “pagan wolves”—into an issue of American security and world peace.12 He likened North Korea’s “naked, deliberate unprovoked aggression” to that of the Axis powers in the 1930s and called for a major military buildup: $10 billion at once, with military support for the Philippines, Indochina, Greece, Turkey, and Iran; then $125 million and a military mission for Taiwan; and, in September, a supplemental $4 billion for NATO.13 The president also approved NSC 68, which he had initially dismissed in April as too militaristic and too expensive. But in September he signed off on implementing the recommendations of the report, which depicted a world polarized between the United States and the USSR (or “free” and “slave” states) with the Soviets animated by “a new, fanatic faith, antithetical to our own,” and bent on solidifying their control at home, abroad, and then over “the rest of the world.” NSC 68 advocated “affirmative” containment: developing vast stores of atomic and conventional weapons; building major military forces and a U.S.led alliance system; and fostering extensive economic and military programs and covert and psychological warfare operations. The purpose was to reduce Soviet power on its own periphery, incite nationalities within the USSR, and force basic change in the Soviet system—in sum, to force unconditional surrender on Moscow. The NSC drafters put no price tag on this program but looked to increase current defense spending from $13.5 billion yearly to $50 billion, or from 5 percent to 20 percent of GNP.14 Not surprisingly, the U.S. government kept this document classified until 1975, although military spending reached NSC 68 levels in late 1950. By then Truman had made his most fateful Korean decision. After U.S. forces had created a defensible enclave along the so-called Pusan perimeter in southeastern Korea in the summer of 1950, they dealt the overextended North Korean army its first major defeat in September and prepared a counteroffensive. Meanwhile, sentiment grew for an attack north of the Thirty-eighth Soviet Relations and the Origins of the Korean War: Stalin’s Strategic Goals in the Far East,” Journal of Cold War History 2 (Spring 2000): 51–62. 12. For “police action,” New York Times, June 30, 1950; Truman, “Special Message to the Congress Reporting on the Situation in Korea, July 19, 1950,” New York Times, July 20, 1950; “pagan wolves” quoted in Donovan, Tumultuous Years, 256. 13. Offner, Another Such Victory, 378. 14. “A Report to the National Security Council by the Executive Secretary, Apr. 14, 1950,” and Note by the Executive Secretary of the NSC, September 30, 1950, Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1950, 7 vols. (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1977–1980), 1:234–92, 400. Hereafter FRUS with year, volume, and page.

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Parallel to destroy the regime in Pyongyang and unify the country. John Allison, head of the Northern Asian Affairs office in the State Department, and Dean Rusk, assistant secretary of state for far eastern affairs, held that the UN resolution of June 27 calling for restoring peace in the region permitted the dispatch of troops as far north as the PRC border, and Republican spokesman John Foster Dulles, then negotiating a treaty with Japan for the administration, said that the United States should not allow the “aggressors” asylum in North Korea. MacArthur told JCS members that North Korean forces had to be destroyed: either “we win here or we lose everywhere,” but “if we win here we improve our chances of winning everywhere.” Allison then insisted that the Soviet goal was not Korea but Japan, that “appeasement” would fail just as it had in the 1930s, and that the United States had to fight “raw aggression,” even at the risk of global war. “When all legal and moral right is on our side, why should we hesitate?”15 In mid-August, UN Ambassador Warren Austin asked rhetorically whether only a part of Korea was to know freedom, and he emphasized the UN’s obligation to unify the nation. The next week, Navy Secretary Francis Matthews publicly urged the United States to become “the first aggressors for peace.”16 Now public opinion mounted heavily against a return to the status quo, and right-wing Republican critics including Sen. Joseph McCarthy assailed the administration for having given the “green light” to Moscow to grab China, Korea, and Taiwan. George F. Kennan and his Policy Planning Staff (PPS) stood almost alone in arguing that the United States should hold to its UN mandate to repel aggression; crossing the Thirty-eighth Parallel posed too great a risk of war with the USSR or PRC. But by late August the PPS had retreated to calling for the United States to propose a negotiated settlement before crossing the Thirty-eighth Parallel. Kennan, about to leave the State Department, counseled Acheson that it was unnecessary to establish an anticommunist state in all of Korea, and he warned not to allow MacArthur too much latitude regarding policy statements and military operations.17 The die was already cast, with NSC officials seeking White House approval for a “roll-back” operation. On August 31, Truman publicly disclaimed knowing if UN troops would enter North Korea, but the next day he hailed the UN 15. Offner, Another Such Victory, 386; MacArthur quoted in William Whitney Stueck Jr., The Korean War: An International History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), 62; Allison memorandum, July 24, 1950, FRUS, 1950, 7:458–61. 16. Offner, Another Such Victory, 387. 17. Ibid.

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for repulsing communist aggression and vowed that Korea had a right to be free, independent, and united. Then on September 11 the president signed off on NSC 81/1, which called for gaining UN approval for “liberation” of North Korea, with MacArthur allowed to advance UN forces to the Chinese and Soviet borders.18 Notably, this “regime change” directive came four days before MacArthur’s troops launched their spectacular invasion at Inchon, which, combined with the breakout of U.S. forces from the Pusan area, drove the DPRK army into rapid retreat and led to reinstallation of the Rhee government in Seoul. South Korea was restored, and UN forces stood at the Thirty-eighth Parallel in late September. The JCS and MacArthur now discussed entry of his troops into North Korea, with a view to avoiding war with the PRC or USSR, although Gen. George C. Marshall, just returned to government as secretary of defense, told MacArthur that he should “feel unhampered tactically and strategically” in heading north. MacArthur replied that he regarded “all of Korea” as open to military operations, and he called on Pyongyang to surrender.19 To legitimize the invasion, however, on October 7 Great Britain and seven cosponsors pushed through the General Assembly (where the Soviets had no veto) a U.S.-approved resolution calling on the UN to stabilize Korea, hold unifying elections, and then withdraw its troops.20 The U.S. First Cavalry had already entered North Korea. Truman never doubted his decision to destroy the DPRK regime and unify Korea militarily. He equated North Korea’s initial aggression with that of the Axis powers in the 1930s, and he was determined to demonstrate to the communists his long-held biblical conviction that “punishment always follows transgression.” Similarly, the JCS and the military-diplomatic bureaucracy saw an opportunity to impose a defeat on the USSR and PRC and transform containment into “rollback.” On September 29, Acheson told the Cabinet that Korea would now be used as “a stage to prove to the world what Western Democracy can do to help the underprivileged countries of the world.”21 Thus hubris, and the “taste of victory,”

18. Truman News Conference, August 31, and Truman Report to the American People, September 1, 1950, Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Harry S. Truman, 8 vols. (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1961–1966), 6:605–8; NSC Report (NSC 81/1) to the president, September 9, 1950, FRUS, 1950, 7:712–21. 19. Marshall to MacArthur, September 29, 1950, FRUS, 1950, 7:826; MacArthur quoted in Forrest C. Pogue, George C. Marshall: Statesman, 1945–1959 (New York: Viking Press, 1987), 457. 20. Hess, Presidential Decisions, 48. 21. Robert H. Ferrell, The Autobiography of Harry S. Truman (Boulder: Colorado Associated University Press, 1980), 33; Connelly Cabinet Notes, September 29, 1950, box 2, Matthew Connelly Papers, Truman Library.

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impelled the Truman administration to impose “regime change” on the DPRK and to seek preponderant American power in Asia.22 Power and hubris also led the Americans to disregard PRC warnings about the unconstrained northward march of MacArthur’s troops and his threat to establish an anticommunist state in North Korea. On September 1, Truman complacently said that the PRC should not be misled or forced into fighting its American “friends,” and nine days later Acheson publicly prophesied that the PRC was “intelligent enough” to know that intervention in the war would lead to its “dismemberment and destruction.” When PRC warnings grew stronger after the Inchon invasion, the administration dismissed these as “bluff ” or “blackmail.”23 Truman’s sudden flight to Wake Island to confer with MacArthur on October 10 was intended mainly to earn political credits for the Democrats in the November elections and to show the Soviets that, even though American jets had just strafed a Soviet air base, the U.S. government had MacArthur under control. The president did not question his general’s view that the USSR lacked troops to enter the war or that PRC entry would lead to the “greatest slaughter.” They talked chiefly about how soon the war would be won. Upon return to Washington, Truman bragged that there was no substitute for conversation with the field commander.24 By then Mao and his key supporters had overcome the reluctance of many PRC civilian and military officials to fight the Americans. On October 19, Chinese People’s Volunteers (CPV) began to cross the Yalu River into North Korea and to skirmish with UN forces, perhaps seeking to signal the UN to halt its troops’ northward advance. But MacArthur only increased the bombing of North Korea, and on November 24 he launched his “home by Christmas” campaign. This action triggered a stunning counterattack of 200,000 CPV and 50,000 DPRK forces that routed the U.S./UN troops, with MacArthur wiring the JCS on November 28 that “we face an entirely new war” completely beyond the control and strength of his command. As Acheson would lament ever after, the last chance to avert a disastrous wider war had gone.25 22. Melvyn P. Leffler, A Preponderance of Power: National Security, the Truman Administration, and the Cold War (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992), 396–97. 23. Truman Report to the American People, September 1, 1950, Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Harry S. Truman, 6:609–14; Acheson quoted in John W. Spanier, The Truman-MacArthur Controversy and the Korean War, rev. ed. (New York: W. W. Norton, 1965), 99; Harry S. Truman, Memoirs, 2 vols. (Garden City: Doubleday, 1955–1956), 2:62. 24. Offner, Another Such Victory, 391. 25. MacArthur to JCS, November 28, 1950, FRUS, 1950, 7:1237–38; Acheson, Present at the Creation, 468.

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2 To their credit, Truman and his advisers determined to maintain unity at the UN, establish a strong defensive line in Korea, and “get out with honor.”26 But serious missteps along the way made this more difficult than anticipated. For example, at his November 30 press conference the president uttered an illconceived comment (but also half-veiled threat) that use of the atomic bomb was always under consideration. This was technically true, but State Department studies had concluded that there were no suitable atomic targets in North Korea and that an attack on the PRC might bring Soviet retaliation (on Japan) and rouse Asians—and allies—against the United States.27 Truman’s words also caused British Prime Minister Clement Attlee to fly to the U.S. in early December to preclude a wider war and to seek joint control of the atomic bomb. But the president would give only his “man’s word” to consult on atomic matters, and despite Attlee’s view that the PRC could be both Marxist and “not bow to Stalin,” Truman persisted that Mao and his allies remained “complete satellites” of Moscow and sought to conquer Korea and Southeast Asia.28 Then in early 1951 the president refused any compromise with the PRC: no recognition, no UN seat, and no Korean negotiations before a cease-fire. In February he got the UN to brand the PRC an “aggressor,” which precluded any prospect of an early Korean settlement.29 MacArthur then undercut the administration’s quest for a cease-fire by demanding on March 24 that the communists surrender to him or face destruction, and on April 5 Republican House Minority Leader Joseph Martin released the general’s nonconfidential letter stating that there was “no substitute for victory.”30 Truman thereupon bravely fired his larger-than-life field commander, whose dismissal brought grave political harm to the administration. Ironically, Truman’s and MacArthur’s early war aims, as well as their views of the DPRK and PRC, were highly similar; the difference in April 1951 was the president’s political realization that he had to limit the war. 26. Philip Jessup Memorandum (Notes of NSC Meeting at the White House), November 29, 1950, FRUS, 1950, 7:1242–49. 27. Offner, Another Such Victory, 397–98. 28. “Man’s word” in Jessup Memorandum, December 7, 1950, FRUS, 1950, 7:1462; U.S. Delegation Minutes of the First and Second Meetings of President Truman and Prime Minister Attlee, December 4 and December 5, 1950, FRUS, 1950, 7:1394–1408. 29. Burton I. Kaufman, The Korean War: Challenge in Crisis, Credibility, and Command (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1986), 136–39. 30. Martin to MacArthur, March 8, and MacArthur to Martin, March 20, 1951, FRUS, 1951, 7:298–299.

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Armistice talks began in July, and by November there was agreement to regard the current battle line as the permanent demarcation, an advantageous accord for South Korea.31 But the president’s personal diplomacy obstructed further progress. In February 1952 he rejected “all for all” compulsory repatriation of prisoners of war, as called for by standard military practice and the 1949 Geneva Convention provisions (to which the United States had committed). Instead he insisted on only voluntary repatriation of POWs. Truman took this new position partly for moral reasons and because of the USSR’s post1945 harsh treatment of returning POWS. But the president also sought to embarrass the PRC and North Korea politically, and he believed, as Secretary of Defense Robert Lovett noted in September 1952, that if they resisted “we can tear them up by air.”32 This narrow view transformed the POW issue from one that could have been resolved in a few months of hard bargaining into one that produced indefinite stalemate. Meanwhile, behind the facade of calm crisis management, the president fantasized about giving the USSR and the PRC ten days to surrender or face atomic destruction of all of their major cities.33 Thus war in Korea would continue until President Dwight Eisenhower’s administration forged a compromise (a small victory for Truman) in July 1953 that turned nonrepatriated POWs over to a commission of neutral nations to be released ultimately as civilians.34 Korean War costs were immense: 35,000 dead and 100,000 wounded Americans, and a combined 2.5 million dead and wounded Chinese and Koreans. The United States spent $70 billion on the war, and its defense budget quadrupled by 1953 to NSC 68 projections of 20 percent of GNP annually. U.S. relations with the PRC and DPRK remained embittered for decades, and the stage was set for long-term U.S. military commitments to client states—the ROK and the GMD—and to France’s war in Indochina, which ultimately became an American quagmire. Meanwhile, the Fair Deal was dead, McCarthyism ran rampant, and Truman left the White House in extremely low regard. Truman made the right decision to repulse North Korea’s attack in 1950. His action upheld respect for international boundaries, state sovereignty, and U.S. 31. Offner, Another Such Victory, 407–8. 32. Barton J. Bernstein, “The Struggle over the Korean Armistice: Prisoners of Repatriation,” in The Korean-American Relationship, 1945–1973, ed. Bruce Cumings (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1983), 273–75; Acheson Memorandum, February 27, 1952, box 67, Dean G. Acheson Papers, Truman Library; Lovett quoted in Connelly Cabinet Notes, September 12, 1952, box 2, Connelly Papers. 33. Entries for January 27 and May 18, 1952, Truman Diary, President’s Secretary’s File, box 33, Harry S. Truman Papers, Truman Library. 34. Offner, Another Such Victory, 417–20.

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and UN credibility as agents of collective security. But the belief that DPRK action signaled Soviet global expansion was mistaken, as was the decision to expand containment into “roll-back,” or “regime change,” and to use Korea as a stage to show what Western democracies could do for “underprivileged” nations. Unfortunately, this imperial view, or hubris, ignored PRC security concerns and Asian resistance to imposition of American power. In the end, Truman brought not victory but tragedy. 3 A half century after the Korean War ended, President George W. Bush’s administration launched another war of liberation, or “regime change,” in Iraq. Once again an attack set matters in motion, but now the aggressor was not an invading army but al-Qaeda terrorists who on September 11, 2001, hijacked four U.S. airliners, crashing two of them into the World Trade Center in New York, another into the Pentagon, while a fourth plane crashed in western Pennsylvania. American officials and the populace were stunned but rallied quickly. There occurred also a remarkable global outpouring of empathy for the United States, symbolized by France’s leading newspaper, Le Monde, declaring, “We Are All Americans.”35 Americans and the world were quick to forgive Bush’s initial visceral comments that he wanted al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden “dead or alive” and that he intended to undertake a “crusade” in Afghanistan, where Osama (a Saudi Arabian) and his legions were based.36 But when the ruling Taliban regime refused to hand over Osama, U.S. military forces conducted a swift campaign that by December drove the Taliban from power, although Osama and many al-Qaeda associates escaped from the rugged Tora Bora region bordering Pakistan. In his January 29, 2002, State of the Union address, however, Bush declared that the “war against terror” had just begun, and that it now included dealing with regimes that directly threatened the United States or its allies with biological, chemical, or nuclear WMD, or by passing such weapons to terrorists. The president added that states seeking WMD—that is, North Korea, Iran, and Iraq—constituted an “axis of evil” and that he would not wait upon events while dangers gathered.37 35. Jean-Marie Colombani, “We Are All Americans,” Le Monde, September 12, 2001; France’s President, Jacques Chirac, was the first head of state to visit the United States after 9/11; “A Nation Challenged,” New York Times, September 19, 2001. 36. “A Nation Challenged,” New York Times, September 18, 2001. 37. http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/01/print/20020129–11.html.

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Media focused on the “axis of evil” phrase, intended to remind Americans of 1930s aggressors, but officials soon abandoned this controversial term. The administration did not abandon, however, its intent to wage war against Saddam Hussein and Iraq. Why this was the case, especially since Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, remains subject to debate. But powerful political, ideological, and personal factors led the Bush administration to choose to go to war rather than to continue America’s past policy of “containment” of Saddam and Iraq. Thus did the president and his aides not only involve the United States in another long and costly war but also cause many people the world over to question whether Washington was fighting a “war on terror” or seeking to advance its own interests and establish preponderant power in the Middle East. In September 2001 there was reason to think that perhaps Saddam had a role in the attacks on the United States. He had ruled Iraq brutally since 1979, initiated a costly war against Iran in 1980, and used chemical weapons against both Kurdish dissidents in Iraq and the Iranians. He had also sought to acquire nuclear capability, and to pay for his adventures he had invaded neighboring oil-rich Kuwait in August 1990.38 President George H. W. Bush, denouncing this aggression as Hitler-like, had forged a large military coalition (including Arab states and Israel) that under UN auspices in the winter of 1991 drove Saddam’s troops from Kuwait.39 But despite many calls for coalition forces to march to Baghdad to depose Saddam, Bush called a halt because the UN mandate was to liberate Kuwait, not to undertake regime change, which would have split the coalition. Nor did the U.S. military want to fight costly battles in Baghdad. Bush did urge the Iraqi people to be rid of Saddam but provided no help to the Kurds and Shiites who rose against the regime. Thus Saddam’s troops, using weaponry retained at the end of this Gulf War I, slaughtered them. Finally public outrage forced the United States and the UN to create “safe havens” and “no-fly” zones to contain Saddam’s assaults.40 In 1993 Saddam organized a plot that failed to kill former president Bush during a visit to Kuwait. President Bill Clinton retaliated with missile strikes that destroyed Iraq’s intelligence headquarters.41 Meanwhile, UN inspection 38. Charles Tripp, A History of Iraq, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 223–53. 39. Seyom Brown, The Faces of Power: United States Foreign Policy from Truman to Clinton, 2nd ed. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), 534–52. 40. Ibid., 553–55. 41. Richard A. Clarke, Against All Enemies: Inside America’s War on Terror (New York: Free Press, 2004), 80–84.

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teams went to Iraq to search for, and destroy, any WMD programs, but Saddam threw out the inspectors in 1998. Congress then passed the Iraq Liberation Act (PL 105–338), which called for removal of Saddam’s regime and promotion of democratic government in Baghdad but did not explicitly authorize use of force.42 The Clinton administration seemed more intent to strike at al-Qaeda terrorists who had bombed U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998 and attacked the U.S. destroyer Cole in Yemen in 2000. During January–September 2001, the new Bush administration paid little attention to terrorism despite many CIA warnings (albeit highly unspecific) of alQaeda intent to attack the United States.43 Instead officials proposed to withdraw from the 1972 ABM treaty and build a Strategic Defense Initiative system, and they rejected the Kyoto Treaty on Global Warming, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, the International Criminal Court, and the Treaty on Land Mines. The horrific 9/11 attacks, however, demonstrated that even the world’s most powerful nation was vulnerable, while an administration that liked to appear tough and ready to act unilaterally undoubtedly worried that it might be criticized for not paying enough attention to the threat of terrorism. Not surprisingly, the day after the attacks Bush asked counterterrorism adviser Richard Clarke to “see if Saddam did this. See if he’s linked in any way,” while Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary Paul Wolfowitz seemed intent on “getting Iraq.” Given Saddam’s brutal record, he made an excellent, easy to vilify suspect, although no intelligence reports had linked him to al-Qaeda. Still, even as U.S. forces girded to invade Afghanistan, Bush told Rumsfeld to prepare war plans for Iraq, and the secretary told his staff to plan to “sweep it all up. Things related and not.” Even before the Afghanistan campaign ended in December, the secretary pulled U.S. troops from there (probably allowing Osama and his aides to escape from the Tora Bora region) and reviewed three iterations of war plans for Iraq.44 Meanwhile, even though Bush persistently claimed, deceptively, that there were no war plans on his desk, in his January 2002 State of the Union address he assailed the “axis of evil” states (Iran, North Korea, and Iraq) that sought to gain WMD, and said he would not allow such dangers to gather. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice immediately had her speech writers alter an address that she was about to give to the Conservative Political Action 42. “Crisis with Iraq,” New York Times, November 1, 1998. 43. Clarke, Against All Enemies, 227–37. 44. Ibid., 30–32; Rumsfeld quoted in Larry Everest, Oil, Power, and Empire: Iraq and the U.S. Global Order (Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press, 2004), 7; Bob Woodward, Plan of Attack (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2004), 40–43.

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Conference to emphasize the “axis of evil” theme and the president’s determination not to delay. Then, on June 1, Bush told the graduating class at West Point that the danger to freedom was at the crossroads of “radicalism and technology,” that “unbalanced dictators” could readily acquire WMD or give them to terrorists, and that war could be won only by taking the battle to the enemy and confronting the worst threats even before they emerged.45 As war planning continued, Secretary of State Colin Powell, distressed by the rush to use of force, emphasized to Bush in a White House talk on August 2 that war with Iraq meant that the president would own the country and the issues or concerns of its twenty-five million people. Powell thought he had “hit a home run” with the president, but he doubted whether Bush understood the full implications of going to war with Iraq.46 Regardless, from March 2002 onward Bush, and especially Cheney, contended that Saddam had WMD or could manufacture them on short notice, and that he had close operational ties to al-Qaeda. The vice president, in fact, sought to preempt the WMD issue with two speeches in August to veterans’ groups in which he insisted that he had “no doubt” that Saddam had WMD and that he could use them against the U.S. and its allies.47 Meanwhile Sir Richard Dearlove, head of Britain’s MI6 (equivalent of the CIA), met with his American counterparts and reported to Prime Minister Tony Blair and his senior foreign policy advisers in late July 2002 that U.S. officials viewed military action against Saddam as “inevitable,” that they justified this by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD, and that “the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.” Further, the NSC “had no patience with the UN route,” and U.S. officials wanted the British to contribute up to forty thousand troops for an invasion of Iraq—but no planning was being done for the postwar era.48 For Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, “it seemed clear that Bush had made up his mind to take military action,” but the case was “thin” because Saddam was not threatening his neighbors and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea, or Iran. Attorney General Lord Goldsmith said that “the desire for regime change was not a legal basis for military action”; and neither self-defense, nor humanitarian intervention, nor past UN resolutions per45. Woodward, Plan of Attack, 129, 95; http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/06/ print/20020601-3.html. 46. Woodward, Plan of Attack, 148–52. 47. “Eyes on Iraq,” New York Times, August 27, 2002; “As Bush Campaigns, Cheney Talks,” New York Times, August 30, 2002. 48. The so-called Downing Street Memo was first printed in the Sunday Times (London), May 1, 2005; it is available at http://www.downingstreetmemo.com/memos.html.

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tained in this case. Blair weighed in, however, that the political and legal problems could be resolved if Saddam refused a UN request to have its inspectors return to Iraq; in short, “if the political context were right, people would support regime change.” Thus it seems that the forthcoming Anglo-American proposals to renew UN inspections were not intended to resolve the WMD issue but to get Saddam to reject the idea in order to establish a basis for war.49 Bush met with his advisers at Camp David on September 7. Cheney argued against going the “UN route,” and Powell pressed for UN inspections. Bush made no commitment and then met with the recently arrived Blair, who held that he needed a UN resolution (which he thought Saddam would reject) to gain domestic political support. The president agreed to go to the UN, and Blair committed to the use of British forces against Saddam when the time came.50 Five days later Bush announced at the UN that he was prepared to seek the necessary resolutions to deal with Iraq. He also charged that Saddam had not lost his appetite for nuclear weapons, and that Iraq could build them within a year if it could acquire fissile material.51 Then on September 17 the administration published its NSS, which stated that the United States had unprecedented power and special responsibility to move the world toward its political and economic systems; that the Cold War strategies of containment and deterrence were outdated, and now the United States would engage unilaterally in “preemptive” strikes against even remote threats and before they were fully formed; and that no other power would be allowed to build to the U.S. military level. Thus the Bush administration declared America’s “right” to maintain military predominance and proposed to extend the legally accepted right of preemptive strikes against imminent threats to hitherto legally unacceptable preventive strikes, that is, war against any threat, no matter how vague or remote. Further, the NSS emphasis on the U.S. need to act against “tyrants” or “unbalanced dictators” who possessed WMD or who might give them to terrorists suggested that the document was written to target Saddam.52 Meanwhile National Security Adviser Rice declared on national TV that the administration did not want the “smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud,” while Rumsfeld persisted that Iraq was rebuilding its nuclear sites, and that he had “bulletproof ” evidence that a senior al-Qaeda official had recently been in 49. Ibid. 50. Woodward, Plan of Attack, 176–78. 51. http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/09/20020912-1.html. 52. http://www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/nss/2002/index.html; international law allows action in the face of an imminent threat; Article 51 of the UN Charter allows individual or collective selfdefense or action sanctioned by the Security Council.

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Baghdad.53 In a speech in Cincinnati on October 7, Bush reiterated his charges that Saddam’s regime had chemical and biological weapons, was seeking to rebuild its nuclear weapons programs, and could build a nuclear weapon within a year if it got fissile material, and that it had trained al-Qaeda members to make bombs, poisons, and deadly gases.54 The administration then pressed Congress to grant the president power to use force against Iraq, alleging that otherwise the UN would avert its responsibility. After only a week’s debate, on October 10–11, the House (292–133) and Senate (77–23) authorized Bush to use all “necessary and appropriate” military action to defend the U.S. against Iraq’s threat to its security and to enforce all relevant UN resolutions.55 Sen. Edward Kennedy’s pleas that the administration had not shown that Iraq posed an imminent threat, or given an estimate of the cost of war in blood and treasure, went unheeded. The Senate also brushed aside the calls of the highly conservative Democrat Robert Byrd of West Virginia for more time for debate and for an amendment to limit Bush’s use of force under this legislation to threats posed by Iraq, not removal of Saddam, or regime change.56 Thus Congress gave the president a blank check. Powell then used his prestige and diplomatic skill to gain unanimous Security Council passage on November 8 of Resolution 1441, which returned weapons inspectors to Iraq and declared that if Saddam was found to be in “material breach” of the UN’s post-1991 disarmament terms, “serious consequences” would follow.57 Powell dissuaded the French from including terms that would require a second resolution to authorize the use of force by agreeing that “material breach” would require that Saddam make both a false declaration about Iraq’s WMD status and refuse to cooperate with the UN inspectors. France, Russia, and the PRC issued a separate joint statement, however, saying that the UN had to pass a second resolution to authorize war.58 UN inspectors began their work in late November. After Saddam issued a cumbersome report on Iraq’s WMD in early December, Cheney sought to have Iraq declared in material breach, but everyone else preferred to await further accounting. Two weeks later Bush responded skeptically 53. “Threats and Responses,” New York Times, September 9, 28, 2002. 54. http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/10/print/20021007-8.html. 55. New York Times, October 12, 2002; joint resolution is at http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/10/20021002-2.html. 56. Woodward, Plan of Attack, 203; Robert C. Byrd, Losing America: Confronting a Reckless and Arrogant Presidency (New York: W. W. Norton, 2004), 175–76. 57. http://www.un.int/usa/sres-iraq.htm. 58. Woodward, Plan of Attack, 221–26; “Threats and Responses,” New York Times, November 9, 2002.

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to CIA deputy director John McLaughlin’s briefing by insisting that “Joe Public” would not be convinced and asking if this was “the best we’ve got.” Whereupon CIA director George Tenet twice reassured the president that making the case for war against Saddam for possessing WMD would be a “slam dunk.” Still, Bush said the case needed “a lot more work.”59 By late January 2003, however, Rumsfeld and JCS chair Gen. Richard Myers had approved final plans for war against Iraq, while on January 27 inspectors from the UN and the International Atomic Energy Agency reported that there were some discrepancies regarding Iraq’s biological and chemical weapons, but no evidence of nuclear weapons programs.60 The next day, Bush’s State of the Union address charged that Saddam had enough biological and chemical weapons to kill millions of people and, worse, that the British had recently learned that he had sought to buy significant quantities of uranium in Africa.61 The president made this latter claim even though in February 2002 the CIA had sent former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson to Niger to investigate, and he had reported in March to the State Department and the CIA that the claim was false; further, the CIA had excised this claim from Bush’s speech in Cincinnati in October 2002.62 But evidently White House aides forgot or ignored this in their zeal to make a case against Saddam at the start of 2003. In addition, after a meeting on January 31, 2003, between Bush and Blair and their senior foreign policy advisers, David Manning (Blair’s top adviser) wrote that the Americans had already decided on war even if no WMD were found in Iraq, and even if the Security Council did not vote a second resolution (which Blair wanted as an “insurance policy” in the event of postinvasion problems). Thus, Manning concluded, “our diplomatic strategy had to be arranged around the military planning,” with the bombing already set to begin on March 13.63 Then, in a major address at the UN on February 5, Powell said that the United States had “more than a decade of proof ” that Saddam sought to acquire nuclear weapons, and that, among other violations, he had imported high-strength aluminum tubes to create enriched uranium and possessed mobile biological weapons capacity and facilities, bunkers with “decontamination vehicles,” and one hundred to five hundred tons of biological and chemical WMD. Powell 59. Woodward, Plan of Attack, 234–35, 247–59 60. Ibid., 287–94. 61. http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/01/print/20030128-19.html. 62. Woodward, Plan of Attack, 294. 63. Text of the memo in New York Times, March 27, 2006 (see story, Don Van Natta, “Bush Was Set on Path to War, Memo by British Adviser Says”).

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also disputed the consensus that Saddam’s secular tyranny and al-Qaeda’s fundamentalist and terrorist beliefs precluded their cooperation; rather, the secretary said, “ambition and hatred” were enough to unite Iraq and al-Qaeda.64 Powell had to know that most of his charges were distortions, if not falsehoods, based on dubious evidence. But he had bought into the war against Iraq, as White House aides noted. And the next day, in a brief speech at the UN, Bush reiterated Powell’s charges, adding that Saddam’s “game” was over and now he would be “stopped.”65 Thus, when the UN’s chief weapons inspector, Swedish diplomat Hans Blix, said that it was yet possible to gain disarmament through inspections, Powell brushed him off. Still, Blair wanted a second UN resolution authorizing war, and Bush agreed to accommodate his chief ally politically. In early March the Americans and British pushed a draft resolution, with a deadline in two weeks, insisting that Saddam comply with major disarmament tests and admit to possession of WMD. But the resolution lacked support: the French opposed a deadline, while Bush insisted that he would veto any resolution that did not meet U.S. terms. Thus the Americans and British withdrew their proposal on March 17, and the White House announced that the diplomatic window had closed. That night the president publicly declared that Saddam had forty-eight hours to leave Iraq, and two days later the president announced the start of hostilities.66 Military victories came swiftly. On April 9 U.S. forces entered Baghdad, and on May 1 Bush, after a photoopportunity landing on the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln off the San Diego coast, announced that major military operations were over, while a huge banner in the background proclaimed “Mission Accomplished.” 4 The American mission—whatever it may have been—was and is far from accomplished. Bush’s public admission on March 21, 2006, that final withdrawal of U.S. troops will be decided by “future presidents and future governments of Iraq” marked his first serious acknowledgment that the war which his administration insisted would be short has become a long, perhaps endless, struggle.67 Further, U.S. failure to plan for the postwar era, combined with major 64. “Threats and Responses,” New York Times, February 6, 2003. 65. Woodward, Plan of Attack, 312; http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/02/ print/20030206-17.html. 66. Woodward, Plan of Attack, 318, 360; http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/03/ print/20030317-7.html. 67. “Bush: Troops to Stay in Iraq for Years,” Washington Post, March 22, 2006.

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mistakes in administering Iraq after the collapse of Saddam’s regime, led to initial enormous looting and an inability to provide basic societal services, the rise of a major insurgency, and then virtual civil war, especially between Sunnis and Shiites. Many thousands of Iraqis have died, their nation has become a magnet for terrorists, and sectarian violence has blocked formation of a government capable of providing security and stability. Meanwhile, Iran, an enemy of Iraq, has been provided with the opportunity to foster instability across its border and flaunt its ability to produce enriched uranium.68 American troops, whom the administration had said would be welcomed as liberators, are now viewed as occupiers, are under constant attack, and have suffered over 3,200 deaths and thousands of casualties, while Washington has spent almost $500 billion on the war, with no end in sight. Further, failure to discover any WMD in Iraq, or ties between Baghdad and al-Qaeda, has given the lie to the urgent reasons that the Bush administration pressed for rushing to war in 2003. This prevarication has greatly undermined the government’s credibility at home and abroad and raised serious questions about the purpose of the war: whether it was to deal with a threat to U.S. and world security; or to advance American interests, especially regarding oil, in the Middle East; or to conclude the “unfinished business” (as Cheney and his supporters wished) of the 1991 Gulf War; or to demonstrate U.S. ability to wage preventive war, and/or to establish hegemony in the Middle East. There is also strong reason to believe that the Bush administration’s contention that it was necessary to invade Iraq because Saddam was concealing WMD was based not on faulty intelligence but rather on intelligence that was publicly misstated for political ends.69 Despite the administration’s claim that the war against Iraq embodied a major element of the “war against terror,” officials have failed to present credible evidence that Saddam’s regime had any operational ties to al-Qaeda or any connection to the 9/11 attacks. Further, the claim that Saddam sought to purchase uranium from Niger was long known by the CIA and others to be false, as former ambassador Wilson had reported in March 2002. But the president included this claim in his State of the Union 68. James Dobbins, “Iraq: Winning the Unwinnable War,” and Edward N. Luttwak, “Iraq: The Logic of Disengagement,” Foreign Affairs 84 (January/February 2005): 16–25, 26–36; see also Peter Galbraith, review of Paul Bremer III, My Year in Iraq: The Struggle to Build a Future of Hope (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2005), New York Review of Books, March 9, 2006, pp. 27–29. 69. For a recent account, see Paul R. Pillar, “Intelligence, Policy, and the War in Iraq,” Foreign Affairs 85 (March/April 2006): 15–27; see also Douglas Jehi, “Report Warned Bush Team About Intelligence Doubts,” New York Times, November 8, 2005; “Skewing Intelligence,” editorial, New York Times, November 23, 2004; and Thomas Powers, “Secret Intelligence and the ‘War on Terror,’” New York Review of Books, December 12, 2004, pp. 50–53.

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address in January 2003. After Wilson publicly revealed in July 2003 that he had reported in March 2002 that the charges against Saddam were not true, Bush authorized Cheney to permit dubious information reiterating the false charge against Saddam to be leaked to the press in an effort to discredit Wilson’s statements.70 Meanwhile, Cheney’s ten trips to CIA headquarters during 2001–2003 were highly unusual and likely intended to put pressure on analysts to bend information to favor the administration’s case for war. As Paul R. Pillar, the CIA’s national intelligence officer for the Near East and South Asia during 2000–2005, has written in Foreign Affairs: “In the wake of the Iraq War, it has become clear that official intelligence analysis was not relied upon in making even the most significant national security decisions, that intelligence was misused publicly to justify decisions already made, that damaging ill will developed between policy makers and intelligence officers, and that the intelligence community’s own work was politicized.”71 In the spring of 2006, seven retired generals, all of whom believe in civilian control over the military, called for Secretary Rumsfeld’s resignation because he repeatedly rejected prewar advice that the military needed far more than the 150,000 troops he was providing to secure victory and the postwar order in Iraq. Estimates of need for as many as 500,000 troops came from individuals such as Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric Shinseki (who made his case to Congress in February 2003) and such organizations as the Rand Corporation, the Army War College, and the National Defense University. But Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz publicly attacked Shinseki and rejected all advice that did not fit with their plans.72 In sum, Rumsfeld’s critics charged that he emphasized technology over manpower far too much and did not adapt to developments on the ground after May 1, 2003. The result was the extremely costly failure to provide sufficient troops and resources to guard armaments caches, to deal with an immediate and rap70. Wilson’s public revelation of his report on the false claim about Saddam seeking uranium in Niger appeared in an op-ed, “What I Didn’t Find in Africa,” New York Times, July 6, 2003. On the Bush administration’s leaking of information intended to discredit Wilson’s report, see David Johnston and David E. Sanger, “Cheney’s Aide Says President Approved Leak,” New York Times, April 7, 2006; the aide in question is Lewis I. (“Scooter”) Libby, former chief of staff to Vice President Cheney. Libby has been indicted by a federal grand jury for allegedly perjuring himself and obstructing justice in testifying as to whether he informed a reporter that Ambassador Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame, was an undercover CIA agent; see Peter Canelos, “Questions Raised on President’s Role,” Boston Globe, April 7, 2006. 71. Pillar, “Intelligence, Policy, and the War,” 15. 72. James Risen, State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration (New York: Free Press, 2006), 135; “More Retired Generals Call for Rumsfeld’s Resignation,” New York Times, April 14, 2006.

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idly growing insurgency, to seal Iraq’s borders, and to undertake nation building, including retraining of Iraq’s army rather than dismissal of the soldiers, who quickly joined with dissident leaders or groups who provided jobs and money.73 5 What should we make of these two ambitious American efforts, a half century apart, to produce “regime change”? There are, to be sure, meaningful similarities and differences between the Truman and Bush administration wars. Both presidents undertook military action after acts of aggression, but in Truman’s case North Korea was clearly the aggressor, whereas Bush has yet to offer evidence that Iraq had anything to do with the 9/11 attacks or al-Qaeda. Both administrations determined to destroy an adversary regime and, presumably, to bring democracy to dictatorial states, but both Truman and Bush discovered that war making was more complex and more dangerous than they had anticipated. Truman, however, sought UN authorization for “regime change” in North Korea, although he worked through the General Assembly rather than risk a Soviet veto in the Security Council. But he did not understand or take into account that the PRC would view the march of U.S./UN forces under MacArthur’s command toward its borders as a national security threat and would be willing to risk war with the United States despite the U.S. atomic arsenal. Bush did obtain an ambiguous Security Council resolution that warned Iraq of “serious consequences” if it proved in “material breach” of its disarmament obligations, but whether this commitment automatically meant military action without a second authorizing resolution is debatable. Regardless, the Bush administration arrogated to itself authority to enforce UN resolutions and thus went to war. Saddam’s regime was weak and crumbled rapidly. But U.S. failure to uncover WMD not only made it appear that the administration had misled everyone about the reason for the war but also showed that once again Americans had difficulty understanding other societies. Hence, they could not imagine why Saddam would appear to be hiding his alleged illegal weapons when his WMD cupboard was bare; in fact, he might have wished to bluff regional opponents, such as Iran, or feared loss of prestige. He might also have concluded that the United States was bent on invading, so he sought to frighten Washington with the prospect of facing WMD retaliation. Further, the American view that it could bring democracy to Iraq, or the whole Middle East, showed how little officials understood 73. Michael R. Gordon and General Bernard E. Trainor, Cobra II: The Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq (New York: Pantheon Books, 2006), esp. 497–507.

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about sectarian divisions in Iraq, about the extreme difficulty of transplanting democracy to a society with little or no tradition in republican government, and about how quickly U.S. liberators would be perceived as occupiers. Finally, Truman was quick to recognize in 1950 that he had engaged in what he called “overreach.” Hence within weeks after PRC intervention drove U.S./UN forces from North Korea, his administration decided to settle for having achieved its original goal of restoring South Korea and proposed to maintain UN unity and “get out [of the war] with honor.” When MacArthur tried to thwart this policy in spring 1951, the president fired him, thus asserting civilian control over the military, despite knowing that MacArthur’s popularity with Republican opponents of the administration would lead to a costly political “explosion.”74 Unfortunately, Truman also made his ultimate goal of an armistice far more difficult to achieve first by pressing the UN to label the PRC an “aggressor,” and then by insisting upon voluntary repatriation of prisoners of war rather than allowing the standard “all for all” exchange. Thus a war that might have been concluded in early 1952 dragged on until July 1953, but at least it was settled then. By contrast, after three years of conflict in Iraq, the Bush administration has not indicated that it is prepared to withdraw U.S. forces until the people there establish a unity government that can provide civic order and control sectarian warfare. The goal might appear to be lofty, but it is unlikely be achieved as long as U.S. forces remain in Iraq because their presence provides terrorists and insurgents with an attractive target and an opportunity to charge any regime that governs with being an American acolyte. At the same time, sectarian conflict makes formation of a unified government extremely difficult if not impossible. Moreover, Rumsfeld’s critical failure to plan properly for the postwar era led to a rapidly growing loss of confidence in his leadership by the public and politicians, as well as formerly high-ranking military officers who have felt morally compelled to speak out notwithstanding their respect for civilian authority. Bush, however, refused to fire his defense secretary—until the day after the November 2006 elections, when the Democrats won a sweeping victory (including gaining control of the House and Senate) that has been widely interpreted as the electorate’s call for major policy change in Iraq.75 74. Diary entry for April 10, 1951, in Robert H. Ferrell, ed., Off the Record: The Private Papers of Harry S. Truman (New York: Penguin Books, 1980), 211. 75. On the case of Rumsfeld critic Maj. Gen. John Batiste, who served in Iraq and felt morally obligated to speak out, see Greg Jaffe, “Two Star Rebel,” Wall Street Journal, May 13–14, 2006; “Press Conference of the President,” November 8, 2006, http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/ releases/2006/11/20061108–2.html.

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A few weeks later another call for major policy change came from the socalled Iraq Study Group, headed by former Republican secretary of state James A. Baker III and former Democratic congressman Lee Hamilton. They declared that the situation in Iraq was “grave and deteriorating” and that there was urgent need for a major new diplomatic and political effort that would include talking with Iraq’s neighbors, Iran and Syria; setting goals and milestones for the Baghdad government regarding national reconciliation, security, and governance; and limiting the role of U.S. forces to supporting the Iraqi army, with virtually all combat forces withdrawn from Iraq by early 2008.76 Unfortunately, as late as January 2007 Bush seemed intent to press his own proposal, comprising a “surge” of about an additional 20,000 U.S. forces to supplement the 130,000 troops already in Iraq to try to quell the bitter violence in Baghdad, plus a series of political benchmarks for the Iraqi government to meet and an infusion of dollars for an economic development program. Whether Congress and the American public were prepared to accede to Bush’s proposal, and whether it would improve conditions in chaotic Iraq, remained doubtful.77 Meanwhile, the Bush administration has long shifted its rationale for war against Iraq from its alleged possession of WMD and ties to al-Qaeda to the liberation of its people from a despot. Saddam was driven from power in 2003 (and hanged in early January 2007), but public support for the Bush administration has plummeted dramatically. This loss of confidence has resulted not only because the administration has changed its rationale for the war but also because it apparently manipulated prewar intelligence and clearly failed to plan for the postwar period. Thus it would seem that unless the president and his chief advisers recognize their “overreach” and need to “get out with honor” with U.S. forces rapidly withdrawn, insurgency and civil war are likely to continue, while American and Iraqi deaths mount and the formation of a unifying government is precluded. Finally, a strong case can be made that the Bush administration’s decision to go to war against Iraq has violated three major principles of international affairs: the 350-year-old Westphalian doctrine of state sovereignty and noninterference in another nation’s internal affairs; the UN Charter prohibition on use of force except in self-defense or by Security Council mandate; and the Nuremberg trials judgment that “preventive” war is a crime. Consequently, other peoples and nations may conclude that the United States is practicing 76. James A. Baker III and Lee H. Hamilton, co-chairs, The Iraq Study Group Report: The Way Forward—A New Approach (New York: Vintage, 2006), xiii–xiv. 77. “White House Gears Up to Sell Plan for Troop Increase in Iraq,” New York Times, January 9, 2007, and “Bush Works to Rally Support for Iraq ‘Surge,’” Washington Post, January 9, 2007.

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a foreign policy more suited to a “rogue president” and “rogue nation” than to a world leader.78 And this means not only that America has lost its claim to the high moral ground in foreign affairs but also that it will find itself increasingly subject to world criticism and growing isolation, and—come the next international crisis—unable to lead or to mobilize collective action that is vital to this nation’s security and to world order.

78. Clyde Prestowitz, Rogue Nation: American Unilateralism and the Failure of Good Intentions (New York: Basic Books, 2003), 33.

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Appendix Robert H. Ferrell, Teacher and Scholar

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The Young Bob Ferrell From Yale to Indiana

enjoyed life as much as the last couple of years. I’ve got the academic bug so bad that every night after work I adjourn to the Library of Congress and study for about four hours. . . . Only trouble is there just aren’t enough hours in the day to read everything.” Thus wrote the thirty-year-old Robert H. Ferrell to his graduate mentor, Samuel Flagg Bemis, in June 1951. It was an important moment in the young World War II veteran’s career. His Ph.D. dissertation on the origins of the Kellogg-Briand Pact had just won Yale’s prestigious John Addison Porter Prize at the June commencement, an award that Ferrell modestly attributed to “politicking” from his advisory committee. (Bemis jotted an emphatic “Not so!” on the margin of Ferrell’s letter.) The next year Yale University Press would publish the book version as Peace in Their Time, which won the George Louis Beer Prize of the American Historical Association. Already at work at a boring job as an intelligence analyst for the U.S. Air Force, the young scholar wished that “Podunk University would call into Yale for an instructor in history; I’d go in a minute, even though it would mean a thousand or so less a year.” Then, in words that Bob Ferrell’s own students would echo in the decades to come, he told his adviser: “I’ll always be grateful for your help and encouragement the past few years. I know you can remember when I couldn’t write ‘for sour apples.’ It was good of you to keep pushing me, even when it seemed that nothing would happen.”1 Much did happen over the next decade. Robert Ferrell soon finished his purgatory as a Washington bureaucrat, taught for a year at Michigan State University (1952–1953), and then moved to Indiana University in 1953 where he soon attracted first-rate graduate students of his own. Over the next few years he engaged the Pearl Harbor revisionists in an influential article;2 published a second book, American Diplomacy in the Great Depression (1957), and a textbook, “I DON’T THINK I EVER

1. Ferrell to Bemis, circa June 20, 1951. All the letters from Ferrell to Bemis cited are in the Samuel Flagg Bemis Papers, Sterling Library, Yale University. 2. “Pearl Harbor and the Revisionists,” Historian 17 (1955): 215–33.

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American Diplomacy: A History (1959); won two Social Science Council Research grants; and garnered a Carnegie Corporation fellowship that returned him to Yale for a year (1955–1956) and a Smith-Mundt teaching appointment at the University of Cairo (1958–1959), in addition to several visiting summer stints at the universities of South Carolina, Wisconsin, and Nebraska. Indiana University promoted him to associate professor in 1958 and full professor in 1961. Bob’s most important achievement in that first decade, of course, was meeting, courting, and marrying Lila Sprout of Quincy, Michigan, whom he first described to Bemis as bright, warm, and unpretentious—“a real country girl . . . unlike the movie star Grace Kelly” who had starred in a film with that very title.3 In the early 1960s Professor Bemis invited Ferrell to join him as editor of the revived series The American Secretaries of State and Their Diplomacy, in which capacity Bob would also undertake the double duty of writing the volumes on Frank B. Kellogg/Henry L. Stimson and George C. Marshall.4 The Bloomington professor, now in his early forties, had made his mark. When his mentor retired from Yale, some colleagues referred to him as Bemis’s successor as the “dean of American diplomatic historians,” an appellation that Bob has always rejected, probably because he thought that no one could succeed Bemis but also because he disliked the title (and office) of “dean.” Bob Ferrell’s students will testify that in addition to his many injunctions about writing style (never use the passive voice, in particular), he always taught us not to be satisfied with researching familiar materials but to look for untapped sources that might shed new light on basic questions. Thus did Bob’s use of the diaries of William R. Castle, for example, along with many other rarely used manuscript collections, help to illuminate his treatment of American diplomacy in the Coolidge-Hoover era. Similarly, I hope to emulate the Ferrell technique in a modest way by drawing upon a heretofore neglected manuscript source, namely Bob’s letters to Sam Bemis during the 1950s, so as to sketch certain highlights of his early career. Available to researchers since the early 1980s when the Bemis papers opened at Yale, this valuable source should not be confused with Bob’s own voluminous papers, those hundreds of manuscript boxes we used to glimpse atop the many shelves of his Bloomington office and homes, which now reside, uncataloged, in the basement of Indiana’s Lilly Library.5 Finding a suitable academic job was a basic theme of RHF’s early letters to Bemis. “My luck at [finding] teaching jobs has . . . been miserable,” he noted 3. Ferrell to Bemis, June 27, 1955. 4. Frank B. Kellogg and Henry L. Stimson (New York: Cooper Square, 1963) and George C. Marshall (New York: Cooper Square, 1966). 5. Carolyn Ferrell to Garry Clifford, February 22, 2006.

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in April 1952. With a possible job lined up with the CIA in the autumn, he planned to work all summer on what he called “the Stimson book, perhaps 10–12 hours a day” because “publication may be the only way out of the mire.” Then came a last-minute job at Michigan State at the end of the summer: “three sections of American history and one of economic history. The salary is $4500. Rank is instructor . . . the very bottom of the totem pole.” He assured Bemis that despite warnings that “there will be no time for study because of the exigencies of classroom preparation,” he thought those nay-sayers were “all wet, for most people who use that excuse would not do outside study if they had the chance.” Two months later he asked Bemis for a recommendation letter to Indiana University (“I know they are a nuisance for you to write”). Ferrell had visited Bloomington earlier that summer and had met the department chair, John D. Barnhart, who was “very cordial.” The “idea there would be to teach the course in diplomatic history presently taught by Mr. [A. L.] Kohlmeier,” who was retiring. With Peace in Their Time now published, Indiana offered Ferrell an assistant professorship. Michigan State matched it with a substantial raise, but he chose Indiana because MSU seemed to hold out “no chance of teaching diplomatic history” until a colleague “holding on to colonial history, frontier history, and diplomatic history” finally retired.6 Once in Bloomington, Bob thrived. He enjoyed his senior colleagues, especially the European historian F. Lee Benns, with whom he “went to see ‘The Caine Mutiny Court Trial’” and then “to his house for tea and Mrs. Benns’s excellent cookies.” He shared an office that first year with the retired Professor Kohlmeier, who observed with respect to Sam Bemis’s forthcoming biography of John Quincy Adams that “those young fellers [Bemis] are writing pretty fast these days.” A colorful character and “very nice person,” Kohlmeier had “an old roll-top desk and a funny old chair with a very high back and arms, in which he completely relaxes with his eyes shut. Sometimes I ask him a question and he sits in his chair and doesn’t say a word for nearly a minute, and then he says, ‘Wellll . . . .’” As for the department meetings, there seemed “quite a different atmosphere” than that of Michigan State. One discussion dealt with “decorating up the catalog with some extra though student-less courses, so that the administration would think that our teaching load was fairly heavy; no one minced words,” and it was “a happy meeting for the business was faced and dispatched in short order.”7

6. Ferrell to Bemis, April 14, September 10, November 8, 1952, June 8, 1953. 7. Ferrell to Bemis, December 11, 1953.

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Bob also joked about his most famous Indiana colleague in another discipline. With Dr. Alfred Kinsey and his researchers arousing national attention, Bob opined that IU students may “not be very bright in history, but there is one topic anyway, s.e.x., which they know a great deal more about than I.” Later that year he actually met Mrs. Kinsey, “a mild, meek little lady, with crock-cut hair . . . [and] a little fussily nervous.” Bob pretended to be indignant when a friend had kidded him that his new address was “SEX, Bloomington, Indiana.”8 RHF also reported meeting former Austrian chancellor Kurt Schussnigg after a speaking engagement in Indianapolis. Then teaching at St. Louis University, Schussnigg mentioned that he yearned to live in California, whereupon Bob asserted that California was “just a big hot dog stand.” The Austrian retorted that he “liked hot dogs.”9 Correspondence before and after a 1954 visit to the Bemis summer home in New London, New Hampshire, hints at subtle changes in the mentor-student relationship. That spring Ferrell had visited the University of Illinois, where he was offered a position (with a thousand-dollar raise) to replace Frank Freidel in twentieth-century U.S. history. Even though one of Bemis’s best friends in the profession was the history chairman, Ferrell turned the job down when Indiana’s administration matched the raise and promised him two private offices. The main drawback at Illinois was that he would “not have had diplomatic history” to teach, but “I like the rolling woods here, and there is nothing but flat prairie at Urbana. Well, I suppose I’m a fool for not going.” The summer visit to New Hampshire patched up any misunderstandings. “I do not know anyone who will read another person’s work with as much attention and helpfulness as you do,” wrote RHF in thanking Bemis for editing revised chapters of his Stimson book manuscript, as well as for putting “me up overnight and pay[ing] for my meals.” In return, Bob offered to help with “technical points— misspellings and the like” regarding the second volume of Bemis’s John Quincy Adams biography. While not claiming “an advanced form of scholarship,” he did think he possessed “a certain ability to spot small technical errors,” so “please don’t hesitate to call on me.” Adopting Bemis’s own practice “of giving an ‘A’ to a person who found an error in your [text]book,” Bob continued to send his mentor corrections and many other kinds of assistance.10 By the fall of 1956, after his year at Yale as a Carnegie fellow, Bob arranged for Bemis to come to Bloomington to participate in a symposium on Woodrow 8. Ferrell to Bemis, September 15, December 11, 1953. Three years later Ferrell would report the demise of Dr. Kinsey and “Kinseyland” (Ferrell to Bemis, October 25, 1956). 9. Ferrell to Bemis, February 20, 1954. 10. Ferrell to Bemis, June 8, August 25, 1954, June 8, 1954.

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Wilson’s foreign policy on the centennial of Wilson’s birth. Not only did Bemis give a paper on Wilson that was published the following year in a volume by the Indiana University Press, but he also delivered a lecture to Ferrell’s diplomatic history class with the jaw-breaking title “The Two Careers of John Quincy Adams, with Some Historiographical Considerations.”11 Bemis’s visit to Bloomington also coincided with the publication by the IU Press of the paperback edition of The Diplomacy of the American Revolution, an undertaking that Bob Ferrell himself had catalyzed through his growing friendship with editors Bernard Perry and Miriam Farley, not to mention his incisive manuscript reviews for the press. Once the paperback edition came out, Bob reportedly told “that old skinflint Perry (he and I joke around like this) that I thought you ought to have 25 copies for they only cost him a nickel apiece. . . . I’ll send you a postcard as to the results of my efforts.”12 Of course, the paperback edition of Bemis’s 1926 monograph became one of the IU Press’s all-time best sellers. Ferrell’s keen eye for new sources and the potential books that might be crafted from them became another theme of his letters. “Probably you heard that the long-lost papers and diaries of Andrew D. White had been discovered in a closet of the Cornell [University] Library,” he noted in 1952. “This would of course make more inviting than ever the topic of ‘The United States and the First Hague Conference.’” Since Bemis kept “a hopper of thesis topics,” the Hague conclave deserved a place “close to the top of the heap”; Ferrell added, “it would be a shame for a poor student to get it.” Three years later he was still touting the topic, this time suggesting it for Louis Galambos, a former Indiana student whom he had recommended to Yale, even sending on a catalog of the White papers. Eventually, of course, the Hague Conference became the subject of a dissertation by Calvin D. Davis, one of Bob’s first Ph.D. students at Indiana, and in 1961 it won the American Historical Association’s Albert Beveridge Award for the best book in English on the history of the United States, Latin America, or Canada.13 Another Ferrell discovery was that the Yale Law School Library had accessioned a mimeographed copy of the Tokyo War Crimes Trials, a source also available at the Library of Congress, along with some two million frames of 11. Edward H. Buehrig, ed., Wilson’s Foreign Policy Reconsidered (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1957); Ferrell to Bemis, October 8, 1956. 12. Ferrell to Bemis, April 25, 1957. 13. Ferrell to Bemis, February 20, 1952, and October 8, 1956; Davis, The United States and the First Hague Conference (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1961). Davis recalls a conversation while washing dishes with Bob Ferrell at the University of Nebraska in the summer of 1960, when he was told that “one more draft” ought to get the dissertation into final form. That last draft won the Beveridge Prize the following year (phone conversation with Davis, March 21, 2006).

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captured Japanese Foreign Office documents on microfilm. “Most of us” will “never learn Japanese,” but possibly someone with language facility could be hired “to scan Japanese documents.” What “would you think” of the following topics, he asked Bemis: “The United States and the China Incident, 1937–38. Year of Decision in Japan: 1941. Ambassador Grew and Japan, 1932–41.” In the end, Ferrell himself exploited these materials to write a nuanced account of the Manchurian Crisis of 1931–1932 in American Diplomacy in the Great Depression. Some of his Ph.D. students, most notably Eugene P. Trani and Thomas H. Buckley, did later hire translators to help read Japanese diplomatic records for their dissertations and first books.14 By the late 1950s Bob Ferrell was accumulating his own little “hopper” of dissertation topics, probably including one on the Plattsburg Training Camp Movement of World War I, a subject that he suggested to several of his students before one unsuspecting acolyte said yes.15 Indeed, one topic stands out above all others in the Bemis correspondence— Bob’s dedicated interest in his own students. Early on one catches a glimpse of the cranky young instructor who “had a bad moment in class last Friday morning” when “one of the students complained bitterly about the length of the assignments and the unfairness of pop quizzes. I had no choice but to squelch her properly, but I do hate occasions of that sort.” A month later he could lament that “nobody teaches the kids spelling anymore,” so he would test them on words such as “parallel, privilege, independent, Britain, etc. But as one student said today, he has no friends . . . in Connecticut so why should he learn to spell the word” because “he can always look it up.”16 Once he arrived in Bloomington, however, he began to attract excellent students. One of the first was Lou (“Skip”) Galambos, a Navy veteran and transfer student from Purdue who was “fumbling around” until he enrolled in Bob’s introductory U.S. history course. Ferrell himself recalls first noticing the smiling, alert young man sitting in the front row of a 7:30 a.m. lecture surrounded by yawning classmates.17 Galambos remembers having his first serious conversation with Bob when they bumped into one another in the old IU Library on the Saturday of the Indiana-Purdue football game, apparently the only patrons 14. Ferrell to Bemis, October 28, 1952; Trani, The Treaty of Portsmouth: An Adventure in Rooseveltian Diplomacy (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1969); Buckley, The United States and the Washington Conference, 1921–1922 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1970). 15. John Garry Clifford, The Citizen Soldiers: The Plattsburg Training Camp Movement, 1914– 1920 (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1972). 16. Ferrell to Bemis, November 8, December 2, 1952. 17. Phone conversation with Galambos, March 27, 2006; phone conversation with Ferrell, April 3, 2006.

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in the stacks that afternoon. He soon found himself drawn into Bob Ferrell’s “orbit,” along with a “bright-eyed little girl from Brooklyn”—Beatrice Lauter Farnsworth. Both students were amazed at Bob’s “incredible energy,” as he “read everything” that they wrote, admonishing Galambos that he must learn to type fast, telling them both that studying history was a serious calling, spending hours with Farnsworth one-on-one as she researched and wrote a senior thesis on William Bullitt and the Soviet Union. Farnsworth marveled at his popularity and suspected that his senior colleagues might become jealous. He gave as much attention to the “C student as he did the A student,” she recalls. When Galambos stayed in Bloomington during the summer of 1954 prior to his senior year, RHF gave him a daunting assignment: read William L. Langer’s Rise of Modern Europe series and write a concise review of each volume, all of which would elicit painstaking comment. Bob also advised Farnsworth to take a whole year off and read the classics starting with Thucydides.18 He was preparing both to go to Yale and do their Ph.D.s under Bemis. Bob carefully attended to the diplomatic preliminaries with Bemis. He had Galambos visit New Haven in the autumn of his senior year. “I’d like to have you see him . . . even if you had my word for him” for “he would make an excellent grader for next year,” RHF wrote. “He is an extremely hard worker. . . highly presentable, mature, bright, quick.” A bit later he sang the praises of Beatrice Farnsworth: “She is . . . bright as a dollar and has been in the Archives, House papers, and the Library of Congress. She is only twenty years old, and her husband is coming to Yale to study in the English department, and I think you could easily corral her as a student. She wants to develop her Bullitt essay. She has interviewed Bullitt’s first wife,” an “exotic interview complete with butler and poodle in Gramercy Park.” He also touted a third student, Reginald Horsman, then attending Indiana on a scholarship from the English Speaking Union, who had written a “first-rate” M.A. thesis at the University of Birmingham on Britain and “the events leading up to the War of 1812.” He was afraid Bemis might “think I am overenthusiastic, but if you saw these students you’d agree that they were extraordinary” and “could match wits with any of the students I’ve seen at Yale.” These students, he said, would make Bemis “the envy of your confreres at Yale.”19 In the end, only Galambos and Farnsworth matriculated at Yale in the autumn of 1955, accompanied by Bob Ferrell as a Carnegie Fellow during their 18. Ferrell to Bemis, June 27, 1955; phone conversation with Farnsworth, March 27, 2006. Farnsworth recalls that she did not take the year off, the only time she did not follow his advice. 19. Ferrell to Bemis, October 30, 1954; June 27, 1955; October 30, 1954.

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first year. Reginald Horsman remained at Indiana, where he finished his Ph.D. in 1958, completing his dissertation, “The Causes of the War of 1812,” under the direction of John Barnhart and Ferrell, before going on to become a distinguished historian at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee and the author of several fine books on early nineteenth-century diplomacy. Farnsworth did get accepted by Bemis as a student and completed her dissertation on Bullitt in record time; Indiana University Press published William C. Bullitt and the Soviet Union in 1967. She has taught Russian history at Wells College in upstate New York for more than forty years. “Skip” Galambos started at Yale under Bemis but switched to economic and business history under David M. Potter. Galambos remained close to Bemis and remembers the bond between Bemis and Ferrell as a mutual dedication to the “enterprise of doing history.” Bob’s emphasis on narrative structure and his rules for writing clearly stood Galambos in good stead when he became editor of the Dwight D. Eisenhower papers in the 1970s. Bob Ferrell’s many students will appreciate Farnsworth’s most indelible memory of him at Yale in 1955–1956. Living in a spacious apartment at one of Yale’s undergraduate colleges, surrounded by bookshelves and stacks of the New York Times that he would read when he “had the time,” Bob introduced her to the addictive allures of used bookstores in southern Connecticut. She still buys used books whenever she can.20 Both Farnsworth and Galambos agree that Bob Ferrell changed their lives. So he did as well with the hundreds of students who followed. One should also mention in this regard Bob’s first graduate seminar in diplomatic history at Indiana in the autumn of 1954. This class of some fifteen students met unaccountably in the Hershey Room in the southwest corner of the University Library’s often waterlogged basement. Named after Professor Amos Shartle Hershey, an IU political scientist from the turn of the century, the seminar room was lined with dusty bookshelves groaning with unread volumes on international law. Seminar members gathered around a large oak table with Hershey’s name engraved on it. The group included Reginald Horsman; Tom Buckley; two Indiana veterans returning to graduate school on the GI Bill, namely Cal Davis and Bill Kamman; and “a lively undergraduate from Louisiana, Nancy Pritchard” (who soon became Mrs. Kamman). Seminar participants also noticed a “young lady from Michigan State named Lila [who] visited the class several times” but said very little. “It was in this way we first became acquainted with the future Mrs. Robert H. Ferrell,” Cal Davis later wrote. The “pleasant but arduous” seminar required each stu20. Phone conversation with Farnsworth, March 27, 2006.

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dent to do intensive reading as well as to write two essays and a book review, all of which had to be made available in the Hershey Room on Wednesdays prior to the Friday afternoon seminar. These essays, after undergoing the legendary Ferrell treatment, “looked as though they had been in combat.” Arrows “pointed to parts of sentences that should be reversed.” The passive voice “almost disappeared.” Scissors and “a stapler had done good work in Mr. Ferrell’s hands,” as Davis recalled.21 There nonetheless emerged “a camaraderie among Ferrell and the students that I do not believe I ever experienced in another class,” Bill Kamman recently remembered. When asked why this first seminar was so remarkable, with Horsman, Davis, Buckley, and Kamman all eventually becoming successful historians of U.S. foreign relations, Bob Ferrell discounted his own pedagogical influence and generously attributed all positive results to the energies and abilities of his students. In fact, his most enduring memory was inviting European historian F. Lee Benns to the seminar, whereupon Benns proceeded to correct Bob as to the sequence and substance of Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points.22 Bob has remembered all fourteen points ever since. It therefore seems evident that Robert Ferrell’s first decade as a historian, taking him from Yale to Indiana, emulating his mentor in both scholarship and inspiring students, set a pattern for the next forty-five years. We honor him in this volume as a distinguished scholar and founder of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations. In closing, I quote from a letter that Bob Ferrell wrote nearly a half century ago, just after publication of American Diplomacy in the Great Depression. He thanked Sam Bemis for saying “a number of gracious things,” especially that “I was no longer a ‘one-book man’. This was very much a compliment, which I somehow catch myself remembering more than I should. The book . . . represented—as all books do—an awful labor, and I’m glad that it is over.”23 What is truly amazing about Bob’s comment is that fiftyodd more Ferrell books would gestate in the years to come, and the labor is not likely to stop (or be “over”) anytime soon.

21. Davis, “Working with Robert H. Ferrell,” unpublished manuscript, 3, 4. 22. Kamman to Clifford, April 14, 2006; phone conversation with Ferrell, April 28, 2006. 23. Ferrell to Bemis, December 3, 1957, Bemis Papers.

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invited me to write an “appreciation” of Bob Ferrell’s scholarly and professional contributions, I gladly accepted. As they knew, I had wanted for many years to express my views on the remarkable career of the scholar who succeeded his mentor, Samuel Flagg Bemis, as doyen of American diplomatic historians. A festschrift provided by his many distinguished disciples offers an appropriate occasion to share some reflections about my relationship with Bob as well to offer a few comments about his professional accomplishments. Bob’s graduate life at Yale corresponded exactly with mine. We entered the university in 1947 and left with our degrees in 1951. In fact, we left for the same place—Washington, D.C.—and for government jobs when few university positions were open during the Korean War. Study at Yale under a master historian was a memorable experience, but it did not assure the graduates of that time of an academic career afterward. The history department did not think it seemly to solicit jobs for its students. The assumption—false at this time— was that other universities would come to Yale with jobs in hand. This setback was four years away in 1947. My first day at Yale was far more traumatic than was the later failure to find an academic position. After all, when the job market looked bleak in the spring of that year, Sherman Kent, temporarily back in the Yale history department, placed many of us in different agencies at salaries higher than we would have had in academic life. Bob went to Air Force Intelligence as an analyst, and I ended up in the historical office of the secretary of defense to study, among other assignments, the impact of NATO on the Defense Department. On our first day at Yale, Bob and I took the German examination, a prerequisite, along with French, to formal admission to the doctoral program. It was a shock for me after winning a German prize at Colby College to fail miserably in translating passages from Die Grosse Politik. To this day I have not forgotten that cowrie shells were used as currency in East Africa, but on that critical morning

WHEN GARRY CLIFFORD AND TED WILSON

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I had no idea of the context. Rather than mastering the diplomatic jargon of the Kaiser’s bureaucracy, I had immersed myself in the classical histories of the nineteenth century. It was little consolation to learn that none of the other aspiring American historians had passed the exam either. What brightened my life at this moment was meeting Bob Ferrell in the anteroom of Harry Rudin’s office. We both listened in fear as Rudin gently but firmly turned down a draft by an unhappy graduate student. (Incidentally, this hapless victim ultimately became a distinguished professor of European history at the University of Kansas.) We commiserated with each other over our probable fates, only to find Rudin offering us a reprieve. He gave us a chance to take the examination again. After a few months of desperate cramming, we both passed it. The experience created a bond that has never been broken. Neither of us will forget the panic of that day and the gracious, if condescending, way Rudin permitted us to survive. Bob and I had both come from smaller and less prestigious institutions and suspected for the moment that we would be sent back in disgrace. For me this crisis, although of considerably less magnitude, generated feelings similar to those I had felt on the Philippine island of Leyte on D-day less than three years before. Despite all the terrors on that day, the landing created a bond with the men of my company. We had survived an experience that none of the replacements over the next year could share. The bond did not survive the war; we went our separate ways. But Bob and I shared similar interests and a similar weltanschauung. We shared too a discomfort with the ideas that dominated the profession in the wake of the Vietnam War. We stayed in contact over the next fifty-plus years, even if our paths usually crossed only at conventions or conferences. As I read the recollections of his former students and current friends from their 2005 “book bash” reunion in Michigan, I recognized how frequently over the years I was the beneficiary, as they all were, of Bob’s influence and help at critical moments. I even benefitted on occasion from the “Ferrell treatment,” a term I first heard when Bob’s former student Frank Merli spent a year at Kent in 1961. In a Bemis seminar in 1948, I recall Bob quietly pointing out that my inspired description of Bonaparte as “the little corporal” was as hackneyed as it was inaccurate. The recollections of his students frequently touched on his personal interest in their lives and, more to the point, on his unobtrusive service to them and their families. In 1969 when I was teaching at the University of London and Bob was a Fulbright lecturer at the University of Leuven in Belgium, I embarked with my wife and two young children on a lecture tour of European universities. In the aftermath of the shootings on the Kent State campus I met with

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considerable hostility in the course of the USIA-sponsored trip. Our first stop was at Leuven, where Bob lent a helping hand. Since his wife, Lila, and daughter, Carolyn, had just returned home, he had an attractive apartment to himself, while we were in a cramped hotel room next to the railroad station. He insisted that we exchange living quarters for the few days of our stay. My wife has not forgotten the gesture. A more enduring contribution, but in the same generous spirit, was his acceptance of the editors’ invitation to provide the keynote comments for my festschrift. I believe they had in mind some memories of our long relationship. Instead, they were delighted to have a keynote chapter, “Diplomacy without Armaments,” in which Bob with telling irony wrote about the illusions Americans and Europeans held concerning the ability of American nuclear weapons to cope with Soviet military power. If our first meeting occurred at a low point in my academic history, Bob was also present at a high point, although in the shadows this time. I have no primary evidence to prove that Bob’s hidden hand was involved in my appointment as university professor at Kent State in 1977. There were only six holding this rank at the time. No one expected that a successor to a Melville specialist in the English department would be another historian, since my colleague, August Meier, had held that position for some years. But turmoil in the administration caused by the forced resignation of the president and the elevation of a new vice president to acting president brought me into the picture. An Indiana connection was in play. The former vice president had been an Indiana dean well known to Bob Ferrell, and one of his final acts in office had been to promote my candidacy. He succeeded with the strong support of our department chairman and the passive support of the acting president, a sociologist also with an Indiana background. It was my understanding, never documented, that Bob’s voice was heard on my behalf. Bob has been a friend and ally who has enriched my academic life through these and other examples of support. Regrettably, I feel that the relationship has been one-sided. He has given more than he has received, which accounts for my intruding more of my memories into this essay than the editors wanted. But I could not refrain from adding my own account of his generosity to those of his grateful doctoral students. To the profession at large, the Ferrell contribution rests on the special qualities of his scholarship, expressed with grace and economy, and often with humor, over the past half century. To say that he is a prolific scholar does not do justice to the stream of books—monographs, surveys, diaries, memoirs, texts,

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and documents—he has written or edited since the publication of his first book in 1952. They number more than fifty, with more to follow. Problems with vision and advancing age hardly seem to slow him down. As I wrote this remembrance, Presidential Leadership: From Woodrow Wilson to Harry S. Truman (2005) was in press.1 This book fittingly covers the chronological range of the main corpus of Bob’s work. Beginning with the Coolidge administration in Peace in Their Time, he moved on to the foreign policies of the Hoover administration and then gave special attention to the Truman administration and to the president himself in a dozen books since 1980. He extended his range with two edited diaries from the Eisenhower era, one by Ike himself and the other by his press secretary. FDR was not neglected, although he does not occupy a central position in the Ferrell constellation. Roosevelt’s final year along with an edition of the autobiography of one of his confidants are on his list.2 Working backward from his studies of the Coolidge presidency and press conferences and a coedited autobiography of Grace Coolidge, he examined the circumstances of Harding’s death. The Wilson administration was not one of his major subjects, but his perceptive Woodrow Wilson and World War I is an unjustly neglected book.3 While he was writing these specialized monographs and editions, he produced a series of surveys of American diplomatic history in the late 1960s and 1970, often in collaboration with other scholars. His influential text, American Diplomacy: A History, was published first in 1959, then revised and expanded in three editions. A fourth, in 1987, concentrated on the twentieth century.4 This text reflected the intellectual rigor associated with Sam Bemis but was written with easy grace and a light wit. I can attest to its popularity with my own students over the years. With Bemis as advisory editor, Bob revived the American Secretaries of State and Their Diplomacy Series, extending it through the tenure of Dean Rusk. His volumes on Kellogg and Marshall are part of the series.5

1. The months since have seen the publication of Harry S. Truman and the Cold War Revisionists, America’s Deadliest Battle: Meuse-Argonne, 1918, and a new edition of Argonne Days in World War I by Horace L. Baker. By the time this book reaches print, there may well be others. 2. The Dying President: Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1944–1945 (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1998); FDR’s Quiet Confidant: The Autobiography of Frank C. Walker (Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 1997). 3. Woodrow Wilson and World War I (New York: Harper and Row, 1985). 4. American Diplomacy: A History (New York: W. W. Norton, 1959; rev. ed., 1969; 3d ed., 1975; 4th ed., 1987, retitled American Diplomacy: The Twentieth Century). 5. Frank B. Kellogg and Henry L. Stimson (New York: Cooper Square, 1963) and George C. Marshall (New York: Cooper Square, 1966).

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Bob retired from Indiana in 1988 after spending the academic year at West Point, where I joined him at a conference he organized in the spring. I reciprocated the next year with an invitation to participate in a conference I had arranged in Brussels to emphasize the importance of NATO’s history to American historians. By then he had written or edited twenty-five books, a figure, I suspect, not matched by any of his contemporaries. Many of those publications were major works that have stood the test of time. What I find remarkable is the number of works that have appeared since his nominal retirement. Over the next eighteen years he has turned out twentysix books, if my count is right, one more than during his so-called active years in the classroom. They include his authoritative Harry S. Truman: A Life in 1994, with a paperback edition in 1996. I will return to this later. They also include edited letters, memoirs, and diaries of soldiers in American wars, pried out of archives left untouched over the years. In the last few years he has brought to light, with the support of the University of Missouri Press, half a dozen diaries and memoirs of World War I. They seemed to flow from his earlier book on Woodrow Wilson and the war. Most recently, the Meuse-Argonne has been the subject of his investigations, from a memoir by a young soldier to the diary of a division commander. The Meuse-Argonne campaign has had a special meaning for him. He dedicated Collapse at MeuseArgonne: The Failure of the Missouri-Kansas Division to the memory of his father, a veteran of that critical battle in September 1918. Capt. Harry Truman was a member of the 129th Field Artillery Regiment. Given Bob’s uncanny ability to ferret out important documents from a host of archives, it is likely that more such finds will see publication in the near future. At this point I should like to look at three of his major publications with more than a cursory glance. Peace in Their Time and Harry S. Truman are obvious choices. The third, The Teaching of American History in High Schools, is less obvious. This collaborative study draws attention to his commitment to high standards at every level in the study of American history. I want to consider first his classic study of the Kellogg-Briand Pact that won him the George Louis Beer Prize of the American Historical Association in 1952 and was reprinted in 1978, with a paperback edition in 1969. This book grew out of his doctoral dissertation in 1951 and was ready for publication almost immediately after its completion, an achievement few scholars can claim. I think it is fair to state that no diplomatic historian can discuss American’s foreign relations in the interbella period without giving major attention, if not pride of place, to this convincing and very readable account of the diplomacy be-

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hind the pact. Peace in Their Time merits special attention as an archetype of the Ferrell canon. Not least among the attributes of Bob’s studies has been their readability. The opening pages of Peace in Their Time, drawn from the newspapers of the day, set the scene for the disillusion that would follow. The moment was Armistice Day 1918, with celebrations in Paris, London, New York, and Washington in anticipation of peace in their time. Ferrell captures the spirit succinctly in three pages that end with Lloyd George’s address to the House of Commons on November 11, when he hoped that “this fateful morning came to an end of all wars.” It would be difficult to come up with a more fitting introduction to this book. It anticipates the disillusion that would follow. The special features of Bob’s work may be found in this book as well as in the books of his successful students. They are constantly in evidence—the spare prose, the absence of the passive voice, a minimization of needless adjectives and articles, striking quotations, and incisive analysis. Additionally, there are speculations that fit the scene. When considering the point at which Salmon Levinson, leader of the forces urging the outlawry of war, heard of Aristide Briand’s proposal to outlaw war between France and the United States, Ferrell finds sufficient evidence in Levinson’s behavior before and after the pact to assume that “he must have been speechless with joy” to find such success after so many years of “ceaseless propagandizing.” Felicitous language fills the text, nowhere more than in his conclusion that American diplomats “had to cope with a public opinion whose only virtue often was that it was public and opinionated.”6 He was careful to avoid elaborate locutions. His prose sparkled without them. Arguably, the most visible Ferrell touch was his discovery and exploitation of archival resources that other scholars might have missed. He has had an uncanny ability to extract material to be made into the centerpiece of a book. Such was the case of his relations with William Castle, assistant secretary of state for Western European affairs in 1927. His use of the Castle diaries illustrates this ability to dig up the unpublished memoirs, diaries, and letters that became hallmarks of his scholarship. But Bob always did more than just locate documents. He often made friends with archivists who gladly came up with suggestions to a scholar who showed a genuine interest in them, beyond the confines of the archive. Castle was obviously taken with Bob’s personality as well as with his scholarly acumen. Even when an archivist no longer has information to offer, Bob takes time to reminisce about the old days. Certainly, the veteran John Taylor, still at his stand as gatekeeper of the modern military archives at the National Archives, 6. Peace in Their Time: The Origins of the Kellogg-Briand Pact (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1952), 70–71, 265.

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has been appreciative of the attention Bob gives him. I have the feeling after talking with John that a visit with Bob makes his day. The title itself, Peace in Their Time, suggests the ironic touches that often infuse Bob’s work. Kellogg with Castle at his side managed to frustrate Briand’s effort to lure the United States out of its isolationism by converting his proposed bilateral pact into a declaration by all major powers to renounce war as an instrument of national policy. Nobel Prize winner Briand could not object to such a goal. By undercutting his effort to make a bilateral Franco-American treaty under the guise of a pact of perpetual friendship, Kellogg was able to win over the American advocates of outlawing war. Ferrell recognized the irony in Kellogg’s subsequent conviction that the multilateral pledge against war was actually meaningful. While the pact was a product of “some very shrewd diplomacy and some very unsophisticated popular enthusiasm for peace,” the book leaves the impression that at least in 1927 the affirmation of nonentanglement with Europe served the nation’s interests.7 It may be worth noting that in 1800, when the United States formally severed its ties to France, Bonaparte’s family at Mortefontaine tried to entice the United States into a new alliance under the rubric of a new league of armed neutrals. Plus ça change. . . . Reviewers of the book at the time recognized its distinction, even as a State Department official complained about the excessive reliance on Castle’s diary. William Appleman Williams, in an early manifestation of his revisionist positions, insisted that Soviet-American relations were more significant than the issue of the outlawry of war for Senator Borah. It was left to Dick Leopold in the Mississippi Valley Historical Review to say what scholars today would support, namely, “This may not be the last book on the subject, but it should be.” If Peace in Their Time contained the special qualities that animated all his future work, Bob’s Harry S. Truman: A Life may fairly be called his summa, the height of his achievement and the summation of so many of his earlier studies on Truman. In this book one can find the many sources he had located over the years, from Truman’s life on family farms as a youth, to his relations with Boss Pendergast, to his vice presidential candidacy in 1944, to the commentaries of White House insiders during his presidency. I was particularly struck by his vivid description of Captain Truman’s role in the Meuse-Argonne in the last months of World War I, a subject Bob returned to a decade later in his Collapse at Meuse-Argonne.8 The future president, released from war but still in France, expressed his distaste for international 7. Ibid., 263. 8. Harry S. Truman: A Life (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1994), 67; see also Collapse at the Meuse-Argonne: The Failure of the Missouri-Kansas Division (Columbia: University of

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politics in letters to his wife, reprinted in Dear Bess: Letters from Harry to Bess Truman, 1910–1959: “For my part, and every A.E.F. man feels the same way, I don’t give a whoop (to put it mildly) whether there’s a League of Nations or whether Russia has a Red government or a Purple one, and if the President of the Czecho-Slovaks wants to pry the throne from under the King of Bohemia, let him pry but send us home.”9 While Truman never wholly shed the parochialism of his early life, Bob’s biography clearly depicts the evolution of a leader who learned from experience. He presents a clear picture of Pendergast’s role in Truman’s career, a subject that he revisited five years later with two books on the Kansas City boss. He does not fail to note Truman’s mistakes in this relationship. He made a point of noting how the Pendergast connection provided the rare occasion of his losing “control of himself on the senate floor, resorting to an emotionalism of which he was seldom guilty.” Bob observes Truman’s reaction, as president, to the charge that he libeled Senator McCarthy in claiming that he and supporters were “the greatest asset the Kremlin had.” Truman’s puckish response to reporters: “Do you think that is possible?” A quotation of this kind is vintage Ferrell. But despite the president’s feisty rejoinder, Bob suggests that Truman might have done more to condemn McCarthy’s calumnies and feels that the Truman record “would have looked better if he had said more, but he chose to stand back from this dismal fray.”10 There is nothing hagiographical about his treatment of Truman. Everything one would expect from a Ferrell book is here: well-chosen quotations, nuggets from archives, and occasional subtle digs over the antics of politicians. But it also reflects Bob’s deep appreciation of what Harry Truman managed to accomplish in the critical years following the end of World War II. Nowhere in this book is his admiration for the president’s management of his office better illustrated than in his naming of the Marshall Plan. His crediting Marshall displayed a realistic view of his vulnerabilities: “Anything going up there bearing my name will quiver a couple of times, turn belly up, and die.” By naming the European recovery program after Marshall, he guaranteed that “the worst Republican on the Hill can vote for it.”11 This was modesty tempered by shrewd judgment and a sense of what was in the national interest.

Missouri Press, 2004); Five Days in October: The Lost Battalion of World War I (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2005); and America’s Deadliest Battle: Meuse-Argonne, 1918 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2007). 9. Dear Bess: Letters from Harry to Bess Truman, 1910–1959 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1983), 293. 10. Ferrell, Truman, 145, 305. 11. Ibid., 255.

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For the diplomatic historian, Ferrell’s Truman is the most valuable work to date, even as David McCullough’s popular biography overshadowed his accomplishment. Appearing two years before Bob’s book, it captured the public’s attention and earned the acclaim that McCullough has received for almost all his books. He is a great storyteller, and he had a great story to tell in his biography. But a scholar looking for a nuanced evaluation of Truman’s life would not be fully satisfied. It is not just that McCullough lacked Bob’s familiarity with foreign relations. There is the matter of proportion as well. McCullough devotes twelve pages to the redecoration of the White House while allowing the origins of NATO only two pages. Ferrell’s Truman allots seven pages to the creation of the alliance and more than double that number by linking the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan to the creation of the Atlantic alliance. Unlike many historians of American foreign relations, Bob recognizes the alliance for what it was—a major break in the tradition of nonentanglement that began, as he notes, with the abrogation of the Franco-American alliance of 1778 in the Convention of Mortefontaine in 1800. He calls that convention “long forgotten,” as he reminds readers of its importance.12 Before leaving this subject, I want to give at least passing mention to Lon Hamby’s fine biography of Truman that appeared about the time Bob’s was published. It deserves particular recognition for political insights and emphasis on the connections between Truman’s personal traits and his presidential decisions. McCullough’s Pulitzer Prize winner regrettably has eclipsed the achievements of the two academic historians. Up to this point I have emphasized Bob’s career as scholar and only alluded to his role as teacher. Yet it is arguable in light of the recollections of his students that his influence as a teacher may have been more significant than his accomplishments as a writer. I recall Sam Bemis referring to himself as a “teacher” when talking with a librarian over the phone, a seemingly modest self-description. He usually had professors from other universities auditing his classes, and he unfailingly addressed them as “doctor” while identifying himself as “mister.” There is no false modesty about Bob’s claim to the title of teacher. It appears that every one of his former students recognized his qualities. Perhaps the essence of the “Ferrell treatment” was the care he took in communicating his approach to the study of history. His passion for excellence in teaching history certainly surfaced during his service as a member of Bowling Green’s board of trustees. His alma mater may have regretted the appointment as well as the honorary doctorate it bestowed in 1971 when he used the occasion to denounce 12. Ibid., 264.

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the watering down of the teaching of history at the university. He was particularly critical of the prominent place the study of popular culture had achieved at Bowling Green. It represented to him the trivialization of our discipline. Bob’s concern for how history is taught was long-standing. In the early 1960s he joined his colleagues Maurice Baxter and John E. Wiltz in writing a report under the auspices of the Lilly Endowment program at Indiana University on the teaching of American history in that state. After visiting classrooms, taping interviews, and sending questionnaires to every American history teacher, principal, and librarian in high schools throughout Indiana, the authors came up with extensive recommendations for assisting teachers. The Teaching of American History in High Schools, published in 1964, was a devastating critique of the shortcomings of the teachers and their teachings. One of the two chapters he wrote was an exposé of the poorly prepared classroom teacher, along with suggestions to remedy the situation. In the second chapter, entitled “The Other World,” Bob concluded that “in our apocalyptic second half of the twentieth century too many things are at stake to allow inefficient learning. The placid routines of many American history classrooms are far too slow for today’s pace of life. Our contemporary era has seen almost incessant crises. . . . Both for Americans as individuals and for their country it is a dangerous time to continue allowing the nation’s students to graduate from high school with so little knowledge or appreciation of American history.”13 I like to think that the high school teachers studying in classes taught by Bob’s many students are leading the fight to give new life to the study of American history. His embrace of history is not confined to the twentieth century. His range after all includes the Mexican, Civil, and Spanish-American wars and the presidencies of both Roosevelts. While many of his doctoral students have followed the path of their adviser, it is obvious that he has not pushed any of them onto projects with which they might be uncomfortable. On the contrary, under his guidance his students found subjects they might not have discovered without his discreet nudging. Equally important was his unwillingness to impose his own views on them. Look at the variety of the topics contributors to this collection have offered. Nor have the authors necessarily followed the master’s interpretations of American history, or for that matter continued a professorial career. One of his ablest students produced a Truman biography from a very different perspective, and another took on college presidencies

13. The Teaching of American History in High Schools (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1964), 120–21.

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without surrendering his academic credentials.14 Both remain grateful for his continuing advice and support. At the risk of sounding a pretentious note, which I am sure Bob will deplore, I cannot refrain from attributing to him Christopher Wren’s famous epitaph in St. Paul’s Cathedral—Si monumentum requiris, circumspice.

14. See Arnold A. Offner, Another Such Victory: President Truman and the Cold War, 1945– 1953 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002); Eugene P. Trani is currently the president of Virginia Commonwealth University.

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1961 Thomas H. Buckley, “The United States and the Washington Conference, 1921– 1922” Calvin D. Davis, “The United States and the First Hague Peace Conference” Parthenia Norris, “United States and Liberia: The Slavery Crisis, 1929–1935” 1962 William A. Kamman, “A Search for Stability: United States Diplomacy toward Nicaragua, 1925–1933” 1964 Joseph Grabill, “Missionaries Amid Conflict: Their Influence upon American Relations with the Near East, 1914–1927” Ross Gregory, “The Ambassadorship of Walter Hines Page” Robert A. Hart, “The Voyage of the Great White Fleet, 1907–1909” Frank J. Merli, “Great Britain and the Confederate Navy, 1861–1865” Arnold A. Offner, “American Diplomacy and Germany, 1933–1938” 1966 Eugene P. Trani, “The Treaty of Portsmouth: An Adventure in Rooseveltian Diplomacy” Theodore A. Wilson, “Meeting at Argentia”

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1969 J. Garry Clifford, “The Plattsburg Training Camp Movement, 1913–1917” Stanley Granat, “Chinese Participation in the Washington Conference, 1921– 1922” Gordon H. Warren, “The Trent Affair, 1861–1862” 1970 Carol J. Marion, “Ministers in Moscow” Michael J. Smith, “Henry L. Stimson and the Philippines” 1971 Jon D. Holstine, “American Diplomacy in Samoa, 1884 to 1889” Ronald J. Jensen, “The Alaska Purchase and Russian-American Relations” Joyce E. G. Williams, “Colonel House and Sir Edward Grey: A Study in AngloAmerican Diplomacy” 1972 Melvin A. Goodman, “The Diplomacy of Nonrecognition: Soviet-American Relations, 1917–1933” Rachel West, “The Department of State, at Home and Abroad, on the Eve of World War I” 1973 Richard Bradford, “The Virginius Affair: A Study of Crisis Diplomacy” William J. Brinker, “Robert W. Shufeldt and the Changing Navy” 1974 Camillus Gott, “William Cameron Forbes and the Philippines, 1904–1946” 1976 James P. Tate, “The Army and Its Air Corps: A Study of Army Policy towards Aviation, 1919–1941”

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1977 Charles M. Dobbs, “American Foreign Policy, the Cold War, and Korea: 1945– 1950” David H. Herschler, “Retreat in Germany: The Anglo-American Decision to Withdraw from the Soviet Zone, 1945” Suzanne Van Meter, “A Noble Bargain: The Louisiana Purchase” Stephen L. Vaughn, “‘Holding Fast the Inner Lines’: Democracy, Nationalism, and the Committee on Public Information” 1978 Terry H. Anderson, “Britain, the United States, and the Cold War, 1944–1947” 1979 Daniel F. Harrington, “American Policy in the Berlin Crisis of 1948–49” 1981 Joyce Goldberg, “The Baltimore Affair: United States Relations with Chile, 1891–1892” Peter A. Witkowski, “Roman Dmowski and the Thirteenth Point” 1984 James Goode, “US-Iranian Relations, 1947–1951” 1988 Richard W. Fanning, “The Geneva Naval Conference of 1927: Disarmament in the 1920s and 1930s”

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About the Contributors

Terry H. Anderson, Professor of History at Texas A&M University; author of The United States, Great Britain, and the Cold War, 1944–1947 (1981), The Movement and the Sixties (1995), The Sixties (1999), and The Pursuit of Fairness (2005); and coauthor of A Flying Tiger’s Diary (1984).

Richard H. Bradford, Emeritus Professor of History at the West Virginia Institute of Technology and author of The Virginius Affair (1980).

Thomas H. Buckley, Professor of History at the University of Tulsa and author of The United States and the Washington Conference, 1921–1922 (1970) and coauthor of American Foreign and National Security Policies, 1914–1945 (1987).

J. Garry Clifford, Professor of Political Science at the University of Connecticut; author of The Citizen Soldiers: The Plattsburg Training Camp Movement, 1914–1920 (1972); editor of Memoirs of a Man: Grenville Clark (1975); and coauthor of The First Peacetime Draft (1986), America Ascendant (1995), and American Foreign Relations: A History (6th ed., 2005).

Nick Cullather, Associate Professor of History at Indiana University and author of Illusions of Influence (1994) and Secret History (1999).

Donald E. Davis, Professor of History at Illinois State University in Normal; coauthor (with Eugene P. Trani) of The First Cold War (2001); and editor of No East or West: The Memoirs of Paul B. Anderson (1985). Charles M. Dobbs, Professor and Chair of History at Iowa State University and author of The Unwanted Symbol (1982) and The United States and East Asia, 1945–1985 (1990). 331

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About the Contributors

James Goode, Professor of History at Grand Valley State University and author of The United States and Iran (1997).

Ross Gregory, Professor Emeritus of History at Western Michigan University and author of Walter Hines Page (1969), The Origins of American Intervention in World War I (1971), America in 1941 (1989), Modern America, 1914–1945 (1995), and Cold War America (2003). Howard Jones, Research Professor of History at the University of Alabama and author of To the Webster-Ashburton Treaty (1977), Mutiny on the Amistad (1987), A “New Kind of War” (1989); Dawning of the Cold War (1991); Union in Peril (1992), Prologue to Manifest Destiny (1997), Crucible of Power (2001), Abraham Lincoln and a New Birth of Freedom (1999), and Death of a Generation (2004).

Miriam Joyce, Professor of History at Purdue University/Calumet and author of The Sultanate of Oman (1995), Kuwait, 1945–1996 (1998), and Ruling Shaikhs and Her Majesty’s Government, 1960–1969 (2003).

William A. Kamman, Professor of History at North Texas State University and author of A Search for Stability: United States Diplomacy toward Nicaragua, 1925–1933 (1968). Lawrence Kaplan, Professor Emeritus of History at Georgetown University and Kent State University and author of Colonies into Nation (1972), Culture and Diplomacy (1977), Jefferson and France (1980), NATO and the United States (1988), Thomas Jefferson (1999), and Alexander Hamilton (2002).

Arnold A. Offner, Cornelia F. Hugel Professor of History at Lafayette College; author of American Appeasement (1969), The Origins of the Second World War, 1917–1941 (1975), and Another Such Victory (2002); and coeditor of Victory in Europe, 1945 (2000). William B. Pickett, Professor of History at Rose-Hulman Institute and author of Dwight David Eisenhower and American Power (1995) and Eisenhower Decides to Run (1999).

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Eugene P. Trani, President of Virginia Commonwealth University; author of The Treaty of Portsmouth (1969) and The Presidency of Warren G. Harding (1972); and coauthor (with Donald E. Davis) of The First Cold War (2002).

Stephen Vaughn, Professor of Communication at the University of Wisconsin and author of Holding Fast the Inner Lines (1980), Ronald Reagan in Hollywood (1994), and Freedom and Entertainment (2005).

Theodore A. Wilson, Professor of History at the University of Kansas; author of The First Summit (1969, 1991) and The Marshall Plan, 1947–1951 (1977); and coeditor of D-Day (1994) and Victory in Europe 1945 (2000).

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Index

Abernathy, Ralph, 178n14 Accommodation, Roosevelt’s Russian policies as, 45, 49–51 Acheson, Dean, 176, 268; Korean War and, 283–84, 286–88; Soviets and, 49, 51 Adams, John Quincy, 280 Adenauer, Konrad, 151 Afghanistan, 232, 234; Soviet war in, 231–32; U.S. war against, 237, 261, 291, 293 Agriculture: famine and, 175, 177–78; in India, 182, 184–85; in U.S., 179–80 Agriculture Department, U.S., 180–81 Aguado, Enoc, 86 Ahmadinejad, Mahmud, 263 Aideed, Mohammed Farah, 270 Al-Khalifah, Mubarak, 197 Al-Mana, Abdullah Saleh, 199–200, 202–3 Al-Qaeda: 9/11 attacks by, 237, 291; Bush administration seeking link between Iraq and, 244, 293, 295–96, 298; in Bush’s justification for U.S. war against Iraq, 237, 243–45; Clarke tracking, 234, 236–37; Clinton vs., 234, 293; lack of connection with Iraq, 237, 246, 299; Saddam seeing as threat to regime, 237–38; warnings of possible attacks by, 236–37, 293 Al-Thani, Abdul Aziz bin Ahmad, 196–97 Al-Thani, Abdul Aziz bin Khalifah, 203–5 Al-Thani, Hamad bin Khalifa bin Hamad, 196–97, 206–7 Al-Thani, Sheikh Ahmad bin Ali (ruler of Qatar), 191–99 Al-Thani, Sheikh Khalifah bin Hamad (ruler of Qatar), 205; Americans impressed with, 191–92, 196; replacing cousin as ruler,

193–97; security for, 197, 199; son seizing power from, 206; trying to assure popularity, 196, 198; U.S. and, 190–91, 204; wanting good relations with U.S., 194–95, 199–200 Al-Thani, Sheikh Suhaim bin Hamid, 200 Al-Thani (ruling family of Qatar), 190–93, 195–96, 205 Albright, Madeleine, 264, 266–67, 274, 276– 77 Alexander III, Tsar, 33, 35 Algeria, 204 Allison, John, 286 Alsop, Joseph, 219 America at the Crossroads (Fukuyama), 280 America First Committee, 108 American Empire (Bacevich), 269 Anderson, Chandler P., 58, 64–65 Anderson, Clinton P., 110–11 Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, 250–51 Annan, Kofi, 239, 276 Appeasement: Roosevelt’s Russian policies called, 45, 50, 283; Truman avoiding charges of, 283, 286 Arab-Israeli conflict: oil prices and, 204–5; U.S. and, 201, 235. See also Palestine/Palestinians Arabs, 201, 239; customs of, 123–24, 126–27, 129, 132, 195; Ibn Saud’s self-image as leader of, 125; Jews and, 120–21, 129–33, 200; nationalism of, 190, 194; oil and, 202–5; radical, 199, 205–6; united against Israel, 122–23, 194, 197–98. See also specific countries

335

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336 Aramco (Arabian-American Oil Company), 118–19 Arbenz Guzmán, Jacobo, 88, 90 Arévalo, Juan José, 87–88 Argentina, 85 Argüello, Leonardo, 85–86 Aristide, Jean-Bertrand, 271 Arms. See Weapons Army, U.S., 103; draft extension act and, 99, 100, 107–8, 111–12; mobilization for WWII, 100–103; morale of, 106, 112; Roosevelt’s relations with, 101, 104, 113; training in, 103–4, 108 Arnold, Henry (“Hap”), 222–23 Asia: Chinese influence in, 172–73; strengthening of governments in, 164, 170; U.S. role in, 161, 168n29, 288; weakness of governments in, 154, 159. See also specific countries Aspin, Les, 264–66 Atherton, Ray, 44 Atlee, Clement, 289 Aurand, Henry, 102 Austin, Warren, 286 “Axis of Evil,” 238, 261, 291–94 Bacevich, Andrew J., 269 Bahrain, 189–90, 192, 201, 206 Bailyn, Bernard, 6 Baker, James A., III, 272, 303 Baker v. Carr, 179–80 Bakhtiar, Shahpour, 256 Balkan Ghosts (Kaplan), 278 Bamford, James, 247 Bangladesh crisis, 187–88 Barnett, A. Doak, 161–62 Barthes, Roland, 8 Baskerville, Howard, 252 Beard, Charles Austin, 4, 188 Becker, Carl, 4 Before the Mayflower (Bennett), 15 Bellow, Saul, 9 Belmont, August, 22 Bengal famine, 176–77, 181 Benjamin, Daniel, 236 Benjamin, Samuel, 252 Bennett, Ivan, 178 Bennett, Lerone, Jr., 15–17, 25 Berger, Sandy, 266, 274, 276

Index Beria, Lavrenti, 53 Berlin, U.S.-Soviet confrontation over, 139, 143, 145–47, 150–51 Bihar famine, 174; compared to Bengal famine, 176–78, 181; Indian government responses to, 175–76, 181; reality of questioned, 181–82, 186–87 Bill, James, 263 Biltmore Program, Zionist, 120 Bin Laden, Osama, 232, 244, 270; Clarke tracking, 234, 236–37; U.S. hunting for, 234, 291, 293 Bissell, Richard, 149 Blair, Tony, 237, 239–40, 244, 294–95 Blix, Hans, 243, 247, 298 Bohlen, Charles “Chip,” 44, 46, 51 Bolsheviks: expectations about longevity of, 41, 43; U.S. relations with, 40, 43, 49; Wilson on relations with, 47–48. See also Soviet Union Borah, William E., 64 Bosnia, 265, 271–73, 279 Bowles, Chester, 182 Braden, Spruille, 85 Brands, H. W., 8–9 Brass, Paul R., 175, 179 Braun, Carl Ferdinand, 216 Brenes Jarquín, Carlos, 77 Brezhnev, Leonid, 169 Brezhnev Doctrine, 169 Briggs, Ellis O., 84 Britain, 177; death ray machines and, 212– 14, 217, 219–21; influence of in Middle East, 117, 119–20, 131, 189–90, 201, 202; Musaddiq and, 251, 260; Qatar and, 190– 92, 205; U.S. Civil War and, 21–25; war on Iraq and, 233, 244, 276, 294–95, 297; WWII and, 104, 113–14 Brown, Lester, 181 Bryan, William Jennings, 58 Bryan-Chamorro Treaty, 58 Brzezinski, Zbigniew, 256 Bullitt, William C., 41n26, 43, 45 Bundy, William, 171 Bush, George Herbert W., 234, 266; Clinton on foreign policy of, 265, 270, 272; Gulf war and, 233, 267, 292; Saddam’s assassination attempt on, 233, 276, 292 Bush, George W., 207, 237; “Axis of Evil” of,

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Index 238, 261, 291–93; Clinton’s foreign policy and, 264, 280; foreign policy of, 269, 295, 303–4; handling of Iraq war by, 248, 298– 99, 302–3; on Iraq’s weapons as threat, 243–44, 296, 297; justifications for war on Iraq, 245, 248–49, 281, 296–97, 303; on preemptive attacks, 239, 244, 293–95; regime change in Iraq by, 282, 291, 301; response to opposition to Iraq war, 231, 239, 249, 300; ultimatum to Saddam by, 244–45, 298; war on Iraq by, 242, 245, 282, 292, 298, 302 Bush, George W., administration, 300; alQaeda attacks and, 236–37; commitment to war on Iraq in, 237, 240–41, 244, 293– 96; considering intervention in Iran, 261; denying Saddam as threat, 236; on Iraqi response to invasion, 244–45; on Iraq’s purported WMD, 238–41, 246, 262; misstating intelligence about Iraq, 239–40, 247–48, 299 Byrd, Robert, 296 Byrnes, James F., 85 Calderón Guardia, Rafael Angel, 90 Calhoun, John C., 20 Camp David summit, Khrushchev and Eisenhower at, 148–51 Cannon, Lou, 209 Cantril, Hadley, 210n5 Capitalism, 69; communism vs., 40–41, 46, 52–53, 223–24 Caribbean Legion, 88 Carter, Jimmy: Clinton and, 265, 271; Iran and, 231, 257–59; shah and, 231, 255–57 Casey, George, 246 Casoc (California-Arabian Standard Oil Company), 118 Castillo Armas, Carlos, 88, 90 Central America, 81; continuismo in, 80, 82, 84; U.S. economic penetration in, 56–57; U.S. fear of communism in, 72, 90; U.S. goals in, 87, 91 Chalabi, Ahmed, 247 Chamorro, Emiliano, 65; Dennis and, 60–64, 67; lack of U.S. recognition of, 58–60, 63– 65; Liberals vs., 62, 72; presidency of, 57– 59, 66; U.S. and, 56, 58; U.S. support for, 58–60, 63

337 Chandu the Magician (radio show), 210 Chaos theory, 8–9 Chavan, Yashwantrao, 184 Chen Jian, 173 Cheney, Dick, 237, 245, 249; comparing Iraq war to Korean War, 281–82; on Iraq’s weapons, 235, 240–42; pushing for war on Iraq, 238–40, 244, 295–96, 300 Chernov, Victor M., 40n23 Cheyney, Edward Potts, 6 Chiang Kai-shek, 150, 194 China, People’s Republic of, 155, 265; aggressiveness of regime, 154–56, 161, 168; fear of Soviet-American accommodation, 156, 157, 159; influence of, 162–64, 172–73; Korean War and, 286–88, 289, 301–2; nuclear weapons of, 158, 160; relations with U.S., 163–65, 169–72; repressiveness of Mao’s regime, 166–67; Senate hearings on policy toward, 161–63; Soviets and, 150– 51, 155–58, 169–70, 172, 284, 289; Taiwan and, 154–56, 170–71, 283; in triangle relations with U.S. and Soviets, 157–58, 168– 72; UN and, 194, 289, 296; U.S. policy toward, 159–61, 164–65, 172–73; U.S. relations with, 156–57, 163, 166, 169–70, 172, 259, 290; Vietnam War and, 159, 165–66, 168. See also Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution; Sino-Soviet split Christopher, Warren, 264–66, 272 Churchill, Winston, 117, 119, 131 CIA, 162, 234; in building case against Iraq, 247, 296–97, 300; Eisenhower and, 138, 139n10; on India, 181, 184; on Iraq’s weapons, 235, 238–39, 297; in overthrow of Musaddiq, 251–52; in plot to oust Arbenz, 88n52, 90; on Saddam seeing alQaeda as threat, 237–38; on U-2 spy flights, 137, 147–48; warning of possible al-Qaeda attacks, 236, 293 Civil War, U.S.: effects on Lincoln, 17–18, 27; emancipation in, 21–25; foreign intervention in, 21–23, 25, 28; to preserve Union, not end slavery, 16–18, 21–22, 26–28 Clark, Grenville, 108 Clarke, Richard, 233–34, 247; on link between Iraq and al-Qaeda, 237, 293; warning of possible terrorist attack, 236–37 Clifford, Clark, 46

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338 Clifford, Garry, 2, 10 Clinton, Bill, 234; election of, 233; foreign policy, 265–67, 269, 278–80; foreign policy style, 264, 268–75; indecisiveness of, 266, 268–69, 272; intervention in Bosnia by, 271–73; intervention in Haiti by, 270–71; intervention in Kosovo by, 273–75; intervention in Somalia by, 270; interventions by, 277–79; Iran and, 260–61; Iraq and, 276–77; leadership style of, 266–67, 269; relations with military, 266–67; retaliation for Saddam’s assassination attempt on Bush, 233, 292; self-absorption of, 269, 277; vs. terrorism, 234, 293 Clinton, Hillary, 266, 277 Clouds over Europe (movie), 220 Cobra (movie), 225 Cohen, William, 266, 274, 276 Colby, Bainbridge, 40 Colby Note, 47 Cold War, 40, 48, 51n54, 52, 69, 194, 268; arms buildups in, 137, 142–43; Eisenhower trying to ease, 138–39, 152; ending, 232, 269; Somoza’s repression of communism in, 87–90. See also Containment policy; Soviet Union Cold War: A Study in U.S. Foreign Policy, The (Lippmann), 48 Cole, USS, al-Qaeda’s attack on, 234, 293 Colonization, of blacks, 17, 21 Committee to Defend America by Aiding the Allies (CDAAA), 107 Communism, 44, 49, 176; capitalism vs., 40– 41, 52–53, 223–24; expectation of collapse of, 34–35, 49; in Gulf region, 190, 201, 251; in Latin America, 87–90; leadership of, 156, 284; Qatar’s opposition to, 194, 200; similarity to tsarism, 53–54; U.S. fear of in Central America, 72, 90; U.S. fight against, 248–49. See also China, People’s Republic of; Containment policy; Domino theory; Soviet Union Communists: in Nicaragua, 86–87; in Qatar, 199 Congress, U.S.: authorizing action against Iraq, 242, 293, 296; on China policy, 161– 63; draft extension act in, 99–101, 106–11; farm bloc’s loss of influence in, 179–80;

Index influence of military-industrial complex on, 145–46; on Palestine, 121–23; split over entering WWII, 99–100; and Truman’s lack of consultation about Korean War, 283–84; war against Iraq and, 241–42, 246, 248 Conservatism, in narrative histories, 7, 9 Conservative Party (Nicaragua), 85; Chamorro leading, 61–63; cooperating with Liberals, 73, 77; Dennis and, 62–63, 65–66; Liberals vs., 57–58, 62, 66; negotiating for resignation of Chamorro, 65–66 Constitution, U.S., 17–18, 23 Containment policy, 40, 49, 295; as China policy, 154, 156, 160–62, 164; Eisenhower and, 139–40; of Iraq, 292; Kennan on, 48– 50; Korean War as, 284, 286; as policy after Roosevelt’s death, 46–47; as political vs. military, 47–48, 51; of Soviets, 253, 285; Vietnam War as, 163 Contingency, 8, 11 Continuismo, in Central America, 80, 82, 84; by Somoza, 86, 93 Coolidge, Calvin, 67, 71 Costa Rica, 57n4; Somoza and, 87–92; U.S. and, 89, 91 Cottam, Richard, 255 Crane, Charles, 39 Crawford, David, 205 Croce, Benedetto, 8 Cronkite, Walter, 168 Cruise, Tom, 224–25 Cuban Missile Crisis, 156, 169 Cullen, Fred, 107 Cultural Revolution. See Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution “Curveball” (Iraqi informant in Germany), 247 Custine, Marquis de, 37n15, 53 Czechoslovakia, invasion of, 155, 169–70 Dallek, Robert, 99 Davies, Joseph E., 43 Davies, Rodger P., 202–3 Davis, David Brion, 2 Day the Earth Stood Still, The (movie), 209n2 Dearlove, Richard, 294

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Index Death Ray Mystery, The (radio show), 210 Death rays: as defensive, 212–13, 218–19; movies and books about, 208–10, 220–21; news reports about, 208–11; rumors of existence of, 213–21; scientists working on, 211–17, 221–22, 227; skepticism about, 215, 217n23, 219, 221–22. See also Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) DeBayle, Luis Manuel, 79 Declaration of Independence, 18–20, 28 De Gaulle, Charles, 142, 151–52 Democracy: Clinton wanting to spread, 267, 271, 275, 279; inexorable movement toward, 35, 94; unlikelihood of Russian, 52– 53; U.S. trying to promote, 273, 279–81, 301–2; in U.S. goals for Latin America, 93– 94 Democratic Party (U.S.): on draft extension act, 109–11, 115; elected as reaction to handling of Iraq war, 248, 302 Dennis, Lawrence: forcing Chamorro’s withdrawal, 56, 60, 62–66; resignation of, 67– 68; as theorist of fascism, 69–70 Depression, the, 41, 68 Deterrence, 139n10, 149, 161, 295; death ray weapons as, 218, 221 Díaz, Adolfo, 58, 65–66, 68, 71 DiCapra, Dominic, 5 Dickman, Francois, 199 Dinsmore, Lee, 191–92, 196–97 Diplomatic historians, 5–6 Dole, Bob, 178 Domino theory, influence on China policy, 154, 162, 164, 172–73 Douglas, Stephen A., 18, 20 Douglass, Frederick, 26 Downs, Le Roy D., 111 Draft extension. See Selective Service Extension Act (1941) Drèze, Jean, 175 Du Bois, W. E. B., 27 Dubai, 197 Dubˇcek, Alexander, 169 Duelfer, Charles, 246–47 Duggan, Laurence, 79 Dulles, Allen, 141, 147–48 Dulles, John Foster, 89, 92n60, 156, 286; containment policy and, 49, 139; on Costa

339 Rica–Nicaragua conflict, 91–92; on Musaddiq, 251–52 Duranty, Walter, 42 Eastern Europe: countries as Soviet satellites, 169–70 Eberhardt, Charles W., 59–61, 64, 67 Eckstein, Alexander, 161–62 Economy: of India, 175–76, 182, 184–85; of U.S., 180 Eddy, William A., 118, 123–29, 131 Edison, Thomas, 212 Egypt, 179, 192, 202 Eilts, Herman, 191 Eisenhower, Dwight D., 223, 268, 290; concern about power of military-industrial complex, 145–46; Gulf region and, 191, 251; Khrushchev and, 137–40, 144, 146, 150–52; Latin America and, 90, 93; not having control over CIA, 138, 139n10; at Paris summit, 142, 151; trying to improve relations with Soviets, 138–39, 144; trying to verify Soviet military capability, 137, 140, 143–47; U-2 spy flights and, 142–49, 151–52 El Salvador, 76 Elegant, Robert S., 162–63 Eliot, Thomas H., 110–11 Emancipation: Lincoln and, 15–17, 21, 23– 25; as military tactic, 21–25 Emancipation Proclamation, 24–26 Ethiopia, 217 Europe, 69, 102, 272; war against Iraq and, 239, 242, 244 European Union, 239, 279 “Evil empire,” 50 Fairbank, John King, 162 Faisal, King (of Saudi Arabia), 191, 193, 202 “Faith of an Historian” (Morison), 4 Famines: in Bangladesh crisis, 187–88; Bihar compared to Bengal, 181; definitions of, 176–79, 186–87; forecasting of, 177–80; as man-made, 175–76, 179, 183; self-help steps for, 174, 177; use of statistics on, 177–79, 181, 187–88. See also Bihar famine Farouk, King (of Egypt), 116, 119, 125 Fascism: Dennis as theorist of, 69–70

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340 FBI: on possible al-Qaeda attacks, 236 Febvre, Lucien, 5 Ferrell, Robert H., 2–3, 8 “Ferrell approach,” 3 Figueres Ferrer, José, 87–88, 90–92 Film industry, 224; government and, 225–27; influence of, 225, 228; influence on Reagan, 208, 222–23, 227–28; movies about death rays from, 208–10, 220–21; news reports used in, 210, 221; Warner Bros. in, 210, 212, 221, 223; working to increase patriotism, 211, 220–21, 224–25 Fitzgerald, Frances, 209 Florinsky, Michael, 39 “Food for Peace” program. See P.L. 480 (“Food for Peace” program) Forced into Glory (Bennett), 15–17 Ford, Gerald, 254 Foreign policy, U.S., 40–41, 113, 168; after Cold War, 269; becoming more interventionist, 258, 278–79, 286; Clinton’s, 264– 65, 267–75, 278–79; in Cold War, 69; components of, 1; G. H. W. Bush’s, 265; G. W. Bush’s, 235, 239, 291, 293–95, 303–4; Johnson’s, 179, 181, 186; Kennedy’s, 157; in Middle East, 117, 122–23, 132, 194, 196–97, 205–7, 235; nonintervention as, 69, 74, 77–79, 84, 93; nonrecognition of governments in, 58–60, 63–65, 69, 72, 87, 259; opposition to Roosevelt’s, 100, 112– 13; on Palestine, 121; preemptive attacks in, 239, 281, 293–95; presidents acting without congressional approval in, 284; presidents resorting to focus on, 272; presidents vs. vice presidents on, 266; regime changes in, 235, 238, 242, 277, 293, 301; roles of individuals in, 1–2, 5; toward China, 154, 159–61, 164–65; toward Iran, 250, 259; toward Soviet Union, 41; Truman setting bad precedent in invasion of North Korea, 282, 284; Wilson’s influence on future, 40–41, 46, 267, 273–80 Foreign Sabotage (movie), 220 Formosa Straits, 143 Forrestal, James, 118 “Fractal History, or Clio and the Chaotics” (Brands), 8–9 France, 205, 259, 291; death ray machines

Index and, 213–14, 217; U.S. Civil War and, 21, 25; on war against Iraq, 233, 239, 244, 296, 298 Franklin, John Hope, 16 Freeman, Orville, 178, 180, 183, 185 Frost, George, 32–33 Fukuyama, Francis, 280 Gaddis, John Lewis, 6–7, 54, 281 Gandhi, Indira, 185; famine and, 174, 177, 186–87; perceptions of, 183–84, 186 Garrels, Anne, 245–46 Gaud, William, 183 Gay, Peter, 8 General Treaty of Peace and Amity (by Central American governments): effectiveness of, 76–77; U.S. adhering to, 57–58, 62–64, 76; U.S. disillusionment with, 68– 69, 76 Geneva Conference on Indochina, 156 Germany, 244, 247; in Cold War, 48–49, 145, 150; said to possess death ray, 215–16, 219–20, 222; suggestion that Jews be given land in, 129–30; in WWII, 102–3, 116–17 Gerow, Leonard, 101 Gettysburg Address, 28 Gingrich, Newt, 272 Gladstone, William, 25 Gleason, S. Everett, 99 Globalization, 267, 279 Goh, Evelyn, 173 Goldsmith, Lord, 294 “Good Neighbor Policy,” 69, 72, 78, 93 Goodpaster, Andrew, 149 Gorbachev, Mikhail, 51 Gore, Albert, Jr., 264, 266, 274 Gould, Stephen Jay, 11 Government, U.S.: film industry and, 211, 220–21, 225–27; use of communication technologies, 225–26 Grady, Henry, 251 Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution: effects of, 169, 171; influence on relations with U.S., 154, 163, 166–67, 172–73 Greeley, Horace, 22 Green revolution, 175 Greene, Roger, 107 Griffin, Philip, 193–94

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Index Grindell-Matthews, Harry, 211–14 Guatemala, 76, 88–91 Guelzo, Allen, 16 Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), 206 Gulf region. See Middle East Gulf wars: Arab support for, 206–7, 239; first, 232–33, 267, 292, 299. See also Iraq Hagerty, James, 146 Haig, Alexander, Jr., 192 Haile Selassie, 116, 119, 125 Haislip, Wade H., 107n25 Haiti, 265, 270–71, 279 Haldeman, H. R., 189 Halperin, Morton, 162 Hamilton, Lee, 303 Hanhimaki, Jussi, 187 Hanna, Matthew, 71, 73–74 Hard, William, 65 Harper, Samuel N., 39 Harriman, E. H., 38 Harriman, W. Averell, 43, 52, 268 Harrison, Selig, 183 Heaton, Leonard, 93 Heinrichs, Waldo, 188 Henderson, Edward, 193, 195, 203, 205 Henderson, Loy, 44, 251 Herter, Christian, 142 Hilsman, Roger, 166 Historical narratives: criticisms of, 3–8; usefulness of, 3–5, 8–11 History: explanations in, 11; fractal geometry of, 9; individuals in, 1, 5; ways of writing about, 3–9 “History as a Literary Art” (Morison), 4–5 Hitchcock, Alfred, 210 Hitler, Adolf, 210–11, 219–20 Holbrooke, Richard, 266, 273 Hollywood. See Film industry Holocaust, 120–22 Hoover, Herbert, 69 Hopkins, Harry, 45–47, 119, 125, 131 Hughes, Charles Evans, 57 Hughes, Thomas, 171–72 Hull, Cordell, 83 Humboldt’s Gift (Bellow), 9 Hungary, 143 Hussein, King (of Jordan), 200

341 Hussein, Saddam, 292, 301; al-Qaeda and, 237–38, 243–44; assassination attempt on Bush by, 233, 276, 292; Bush denying as threat, 236; Bush’s ultimatum to, 244–45, 298; Chalabi chosen to lead after, 247; Clinton and, 276–77; demanding forgiveness of debt, 232–33; Kurds and, 232, 258; removal of, 234–36, 240, 245, 248–49, 281; weapons inspectors and, 234–35, 241, 293. See also Iraq Ibn Saud, Abdul Aziz: Churchill meeting with, 119, 131; contingent of, 125–28; on Palestine, 124, 129; Roosevelt asking advice on Jews, 129–30; Roosevelt meeting with, 116, 118–19, 123–25, 128–31; Roosevelt renewing pledge to, 132 Iceland, 104 Ickes, Harold, 110, 117 Imperialism, U.S.: containment of China policy as, 156; nation building as, 269, 279 India, 156, 182, 187; central and provincial governments of, 175, 179, 184; famine forecasts for, 180–81; famines in, 176–78, 181, 183, 185; Johnson’s short-tether policy in, 181, 185; nuclear weapons of, 262; pleas for emergency food aid for, 183; on reality of famines, 178, 181–82; separatism in, 183–84; U.S. goals in, 174–75, 185 India: The Most Dangerous Decades (Harrison), 183 Indian food crisis, 174 Indonesia, 164 Industrialization, of India, 182, 184–85 Industry, U.S., for WWII, 101–2 Inter-American Conference for the Maintenance of Peace, 78 Interoceanic canal, 58, 79 Interventionism, U.S., 264; Adams advising against, 280; increasing, 258, 269, 277–78 Iran, 253n7; Bush considering intervention in, 261, 263; in Bush’s “Axis of Evil,” 238, 261, 291; Iraq and, 193, 261; Islamic regime in, 231, 260, 262–63; Musaddiq in, 250–51, 260; under Nixon Doctrine, 189– 91, 193, 197–99; overthrow of Musaddiq in, 250–52; reforms in, 253–54, 260; relations with U.S., 202, 252–54, 256, 260–61;

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342 religion in, 231, 255–57; shah’s regime in, 255–56; U.S. hostages taken in, 231, 257– 58; U.S. relations with, 250, 259, 282; U.S. war on Iraq and, 261–62, 299, 303; war with Iraq, 232, 258–59 Iran under the Pahlavis, 255 Iraq: al-Qaeda and, 237, 246, 293, 295–96, 298–99; Bush administration denying threat of, 236; Bush administration trying to build support for war on, 239, 241–42, 295–96; in Bush’s “Axis of Evil,” 238, 261, 291; Bush’s commitment to war on, 239– 40, 247, 292–95, 300, 303; Bush’s justifications for war on, 231, 245, 248–49, 303; Bush’s misinformation before war on, 247, 299–300, 303; Chalabi chosen to lead, 247; Clinton and, 264, 276–77; containment of, 292; costs of U.S. war on, 244, 299; disapproval of handling of U.S. war on, 248, 300–303; effects of U.S. war on, 245–46, 298–99; failures of postwar planning for, 298–99, 302; G. H. W. Bush not wanting to invade or occupy, 233; insurgency in, 245– 46, 299, 302–3; invading Kuwait, 193, 206, 232–33, 292; Iran’s interests in, 261–62; Kurds in, 232, 258, 261, 276–77, 292; lack of justification for U.S. war on, 294–95, 303–4; new army of, 246; opposition to U.S. war on, 231, 242, 244, 247, 249; regime change in, 235, 238–39, 242, 277, 282, 291, 293, 301; relations with other Arabs, 201, 204, 235; sanctions against, 233, 235, 276–77; Soviets and, 192, 201; terrorism and, 238; U.S. invasion of, 237, 244–45, 281–82, 299; U.S. occupation of, 245, 299, 302; U.S. preemptive attack on, 239, 244, 281, 293–95; U.S. war on, 238, 241, 242, 244–45, 262, 281, 294, 298, 303; war with Iran, 232, 258–59; weapons of, 238, 258–59; WMD of, 238–41, 243–44. See also Hussein, Saddam Iraq Liberation Act, 234–35, 293 Iraq Study Group recommendations, 303 Islam: in Afghanistan, 232; in Bosnia, 271; in Iraq, 261, 292; in Kosovo, 274; Shiites, 257, 292; U.S. and, 231–32, 256–57 Isolationism: Adams advising, 280; before WWII, 99–100, 108, 112–13

Index Israel, 200; Arab states united against, 194, 197–98; Qatar’s relations with, 197, 206; U.S. support for, 132, 202; Yom Kippur attack on, 201–2; Zionists’ proposal for, 120. See also Arab-Israeli conflict Italy, 216–17, 244 Jaidah, Ali, 204 Japan: persistence in WWII, 116–17; Russia and, 36–39; Soviets and, 41–42, 284, 286; U.S. and, 38–39, 41–42, 286 Jenkins, Alfred, 160, 170–71, 173 Jews: immigration of to Palestine, 120–21; Roosevelt on, 122–23, 129–33 Jha, L. K., 186 Jiang Jieshi, 156, 165–66, 172 John Paul II, Pope, 239 Johnson, Chalmers, 269 Johnson, Lyndon B., 99, 167; Bihar famine and, 174, 177–79, 181, 183, 186–87; China policy of, 162, 164–65, 172–73; foreign policy of, 180, 186; goals in India, 174–75, 185; short-tether policy of, 174, 179, 181; style of, 174, 188; trying to improve relations with China, 154, 163, 166, 169–72; Vietnam War and, 165, 168–69 Johnson, U. Alexis, 200–201 Johnston, Eric, 223 Jones, R. V., 220 Judson, William, 45 Kalinin, Mikhail, 40, 42 Kamaraj, Kumaraswami, 185 Kamil, Hassan, 194–95 Kamshalov, Alexander, 225 Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854), 18 Kaplan, Lawrence, 2 Kaplan, Robert D., 278 Karloff, Boris, 210 Karpovich, Mikhail, 39 Kashani, Abulqasim, 257 Kay, David, 246 Keating, John S., 125–28 Kelley, Robert F., 43–44 Kellogg, Frank B., 58, 62, 64, 67–68 Kennan, George, 268; comparing Russia and Japan, 36–37; on democracy in Russia, 35, 52; influence of, 35–36, 38–40; opinions of

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Index Russia, 39, 44, 49–50, 52, 54; similarity to younger relative, 39, 49; study of Siberian prisons, 32–35; on tsarism, 32, 35 Kennan, George F., 36, 37n15, 43–44, 47, 286; on capitalism vs. communism, 52–53; on containment, 47, 48, 49–50; on elder relative’s influence, 39–40; expectation of Soviet decay, 48, 52; influence of, 39, 46, 52; on likely collapse of communism, 34– 35; opinions of Russia, 39, 46, 49, 52, 53– 55; pessimism of, 54–55; Princeton’s Centennial Conference honoring, 53–54; similarity to elder relative, 39, 49; on tsarism vs. communism, 37, 48n46; on U.S. dealings with Soviets, 45–46, 51, 52 Kennedy, Edward, 296 Kennedy, John F., 156–57, 174, 268 Kenya, al-Qaeda’s attack in, 234, 293 Kerrick, Don, 236 Keylor, William R., 41 Khamene’i, Ali Hussain, 260 Khan, Yahya, 187 Khatemi, Muhammad, 260 Khomeini, Ruhollah, 231, 256, 257–58 Khrushchev, Nikita, 141, 145, 150, 156; China and, 156, 157; Eisenhower and, 137–40, 146, 152; Paris summit and, 140– 42, 149–52; style of, 141; on U-2 flights, 141, 144, 147–48; visiting U.S., 139, 148– 51; waning influence of, 149–50, 158 Khrushchev, Sergei, 141 Kim Il-sung, 167, 284 King, Martin Luther, 27 Kissinger, Henry, 176, 187–88, 192, 242; Iran and, 202, 254–55; Nixon Doctrine and, 189–90, 197–99 Kohler, Foy, 158 Komer, Robert, 178–79 Korea: as democracy’s demonstration for underprivileged countries, 287–88, 291. See also North Korea; South Korea Korean War, 155–56, 165, 281, 291; armistice ending, 290, 302; China’s intervention in, 159, 288, 301–2; goals in, 283–84, 285–87, 286; Truman and, 281–87, 289; UN troops in, 286–87 Kosovo, Clinton’s intervention in, 273–75, 279 Krishnamachari, T. T., 184–85

343 Kurds, in Iraq, 232, 258, 261, 276–77, 292 Kuwait: Iraq and, 201, 232–33; Iraq’s invasion of, 193, 206, 232–33, 292; U.S. and, 195, 201 Ladd, Robert, 199 Laingen, Bruce, 259 Lake, Anthony, 266–67, 272 Landis, James, 124 Landon, Alf, 108 Lane, Arthur Bliss, 74, 75–76 Langer, William L., 99 Lansing, Robert, 40, 49 Laos, 162–63 Latin America, 185; democracy and, 94; State Department policies in, 88–89; U.S. goals in, 75–76, 87, 91, 93; U.S. policy of nonintervention in, 69, 77–79, 84 Lawrence, Ernest O., 211, 217 Leahy, William D., 129 Lebanon, 143, 262 Lee, Robert E., 22–23 Leffler, Melvyn P., 50 LeHand, Marguerite (Missy), 115n55 LeMay, Curtis, 139 Lend-lease, 113, 118 Lenin, 49 Lewis, George Cornwall, 25 Liao Hoshu, 171 Libby, Frederick J., 108 Liberals (in Nicaragua): Argüello as, 85–86; Conservatives vs., 57–58, 62; cooperating with Conservatives, 66, 73, 77; Dennis and, 63, 66; revolution by, 65–67, 71; U.S. and, 62, 67 Lin Biao, 161 Lincoln, Abraham: Civil War and, 17–18, 21– 23, 26–28; contradiction to myths about, 15–17; emancipation by, 21–25, 23–25, 26; legacy of, 28; opinions about, 15, 17, 26– 27, 27; opposing slavery, 17–20, 26–28; race and, 16 Lindbeck, John, 161–62 Lippmann, Walter, 47n44, 52n56; on containment policy, 48–50; on Russia, 51–52 Litvinov, Maxim, 42–43 Long, Boaz Longoria, Antonio, 211, 217

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344 Long Telegram, G. F. Kennan’s, 45–46, 52–53 López Pérez, Rigoberto, 92 Lovett, Robert, 51, 290 Lugosi, Bela, 210 MacArthur, Douglas, 283; invasion of North Korea by, 286–87; Truman firing of, 289, 302 Macmillan, Harold, 142, 152 Manasco, Carter, 109 Mandelbaum, Michael, 277–78 Manning, David, 297 Mao Zedong, 163, 288; aggressiveness of regime, 154–55; Cultural Revolution and, 166–67; as leader of communism, 156, 284; repressiveness of regime, 155, 166–67; Soviets and, 150–51, 157; U.S. and, 154, 173 Marconi, Guglielmo, 211, 216–17, 220 Marines, U.S., 79; in Nicaragua, 57–58, 67, 69, 72–73 Marshall, George C., 101, 268, 287; on army morale, 106, 112; draft extension and, 100, 104–7, 109–10, 113, 115; mobilization by, 103–4 Martin, Joseph, 109, 289 Matthews, Francis, 286 May, Harry, 211, 218–19 McCarthy, Joseph, 286 McCarthyism, 51, 160 McClellan, George B., 23 McCloy, John, 51 McCormack, John, 109, 111 McElroy, 147 McIntyre, Marvin, 110 McLaughlin, John, 297 McNarney, Joseph, 110 Media: on Bahir famine, 181–82, 187; Chinese, 172; on death ray machines, 208– 13, 215, 218–21; on effects of U.S. war against Iraq, 245–46; Musaddiq in U.S., 250, 253; Nicaraguan, 61–62, 63, 64; U.S., 112, 167, 186, 240–41, 261, 292; U.S., on China policy, 160–61, 163, 170–71; on U.S. war on Iraq, 240–41, 245–46 Mehta, Ashok, 184 Mexico, 65–67 Middle East, 195, 199, 200, 207; British influence in, 119, 131, 189–90, 201; democracy

Index in, 281, 301–2; hostility to U.S. in, 231–32; Iran’s role in, 258, 262; Iraq’s role in, 193, 235; Nixon on, 197–99, 201; Palestine as crucial issue in, 119–21; perceptions of U.S. in, 201–2; sheikdoms of, 189–91; Soviet influence in, 191–92; U.S. foreign policy on, 117, 122–23, 132; U.S. influence in, 119, 131, 190–92, 195, 207, 263, 292; U.S. interests in, 201, 235, 301–2; U.S. war on Iraq and, 242, 281. See also Arab-Israeli conflict; specific countries Military-industrial complex, 1; power of, 138, 145–46, 152; Soviet, 150; Truman expanding, 285, 290 Miller, David, 88 Milosevic, Slobodan, 271–75 Mobilization process, U.S., 101–3, 113 Modernization, in India, 182, 184–85 Moncada, Jose M., 67, 73, 78 Monkkonen, Eric, 7 Morgan, Stokley W., 60 Morgenthau, Hans, 161–62 Morison, Samuel Eliot, 4–5 Morris, Edmund, 209 Mubarak, Mohammed bin, 197 Mueller, John, 277 Mueller, Karl, 277 Mundt, Karl, 113 Murder in the Air (movie), 211, 221, 223; Strategic Defense Initiative and, 208–9, 222 Murphy, Robert, 44 Murphy, USS, 125–28, 130–31 Musaddiq, Muhammad, 253n7, 256; Iranians’ hopes for, 250–51, 260; overthrow of, 250, 252–53 Mussolini, Benito, 216–17 Myers, Richard, 297 Napoleon III, 25 National Council for the Prevention of War, 108, 112–13 National Guard, Nicaraguan (Guardia), 74, 86; military academy for, 79–81; under Somoza, 75–78, 94; U.S. helping establish, 72–73, 93 National Guard, U.S., 99, 104–5, 108 National Security Council (NSC), 235, 294;

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Index 68, 281, 285, 290. See also Containment policy National security establishment, 139n10, 265–66 Nationalism, 279; Arab, 190, 194; Iranian, 251, 253, 260 NATO, 143, 274–75, 285 Navy, U.S., 118, 156, 167, 234, 259; transporting Ibn Saud to meeting with Roosevelt, 125–28 Near East. See Middle East Nehru, B. K., 183, 186 Nehru, Jawaharlal, 183 Nelson, Bill, 242 New Model Army, 103 Nicaragua, 58; Chamorro in, 58, 61–62, 66; Costa Rica and, 90–92; Dennis in, 60–62, 66; Eberhardt’s withdrawal from, 60–61; elections in, 72–73, 86; expecting recognition from U.S., 59, 61–62, 64; party politics in, 57–58, 66, 84–85; Rama road across, 80–82; relations with U.S., 58, 81– 82, 95; revolutions in, 61–62, 64–65, 87, 95; Somoza in, 73–74, 79–80, 85, 90–92; U.S. goals in, 75–76; U.S. intervention in, 56, 67, 69, 71, 73–74, 74, 78–79, 83, 89–90, 93; U.S. nonintervention policy in, 77–79; U.S. nonrecognition of, 58–60, 63–65, 67, 69, 87; U.S. recognition of, 66; U.S.supervised elections in, 67, 69, 72–73, 85 9/11 Commission Report, 246 Ninkovich, Frank, 41 Ninth International Conference of American States, 87 Nitze, Paul, 46, 49, 268 Nixon, Richard M.: China and, 171–72; on Gulf region, 193, 201, 205–6, 254–55; Qatar and, 193–94, 199; use of Bangladesh crisis, 187–88; Vietnam and, 201, 249 Nixon Doctrine, in Gulf region, 189–90, 197–99, 201, 255 No More Vietnams (Nixon), 249 North Korea: in Bush’s “Axis of Evil,” 238, 261, 291; Pueblo affair with, 167, 169; “roll-back” (regime change) in, 282, 286– 88, 291, 301; Truman and, 282–83, 285; U.S. invasion of, 282, 285–87; U.S. relations with, 290. See also Korean War

345 Novick, Peter, 6–7 Nuclear energy, Iran’s program, 262 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, 262 Nuclear-test-ban treaty, at Paris summit, 137, 150–51 Nuclear weapons. See Weapons: nuclear Objectivity, in historical inquiry, 6–7 Ohmans, John, 92 Oil, 117; Iran’s, 253–54; Iraq’s, 244, 247; Qatar’s, 195, 207; U.S. concern for, 117–19, 189–90, 191, 205, 253–54; used against supporters of Israel, 202–3 Oil-for-food program, 277 Oil prices, 203, 204–5, 254, 256 Olivier, Laurence, 220 Oman, 201, 206 Omar, Mullah, 232 O’Neill, Paul, 235 Operation Indigo, 104 Organization of American States, 91 Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), 190, 202–3, 254 Pach, Chester J., Jr., 139 Packer, George, 247 Paganelli, Robert R., 205 Pahlavi, Shah Muhammad Riza (of Iran), 251; fall of, 205, 231; Iranians not remembering life under, 260, 262; nature of regime of, 253–55, 257; relations with U.S. under, 202, 253–55, 257; threat to regime of, 255–56 Pakistan, 187–88, 234, 262 Palestine/Palestinians, 194, 204, 206; as hot issue in Middle East, 119–21; lack of U.S. policy on, 121, 123; Roosevelt and Ibn Saud on, 119–20, 124, 129, 131–33; in U.S., 121–22. See also Arab-Israeli conflict Palmerston, Lord, 23, 25 Panama Canal, in WWII, 81 Paris summit: Eisenhower and, 142, 146–47; Eisenhower and Khrushchev at, 137–38, 146; failure of, 152–53; Khrushchev’s expectations from, 146, 150–51; Khrushchev walking out of, 140–41, 149–52; timing of U-2 flight and, 137, 139–41, 149 Park Chunghee, 167

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346 Party politics: in modernizing countries, 185; in Nicaragua, 57–58, 72–73, 84–85; in U.S., 242 Patriotism: film industry working to increase, 211, 220–21, 224–25, 228; Reagan trying to increase, 222–24 Paul IV, Pope, 183 PBSUCCESS (CIA plot to oust Arbenz), 88n52, 90 Peng Zhen, 157 Penkovsky, Oleg, 140 People, vs. state: of Russia, 37n15, 47; of Russia and Japan, 36–37 Perle, Richard, 244 Perón, Juan, 85 Perry, William, 266 Persia and the Persians (Benjamin), 252 Pillar, Paul R., 247–48, 300 Pilsudski, Marshal, 48 Pius XI, Pope, 218 P.L. 480 (“Food for Peace” program), 174, 182 Poland, 48, 51n54 Politburo, Khrushchev’s influence in, 149–50 Politics: in foreign policy making, 113; in India, 179, 183, 185, 187; over natural disasters, 187–88; role of in famines, 175–76; in U.S., 108–10, 122, 179–80, 248 Pope, Arthur Upham, 252 Popular sovereignty, on slavery, 18–19 Population: famine and, 174, 178; relation to food production and income, 182–83 Portsmouth Peace Conference, 32, 37–39 Positivism, historical, 4–6 Powell, Colin, 235; Clinton and, 267, 271; on Iraq’s weapons, 236, 238, 243, 297–98; UN resolution of action against Iraq and, 295– 96; on war against Iraq, 238, 294 Power, from narratives, 9–10 Powers, Francis Gary, 137–38, 140–41 Prados, John, 247 President Roosevelt and the Coming of the War, 1941 (Beard), 4 Prisons, Kennan’s study of Siberian, 32–35 Progressive historians, 4 Pueblo, USS, 167, 169 Qatar, 200, 205–6; al-Thani family ruling, 191–92, 195–97, 199; ambassadors to, 194, 195, 202–3; history of, 190; independence

Index for, 189, 191–93, 199, 204; oil of, 195, 203– 4; on Palestine and Israel, 194, 206; relations with other Arabs, 193, 204–6; U.S. relations with, 192–93, 195, 207; wanting good relations with U.S., 199– 203, 205–6 Qatar Petroleum Company (QPC), 190, 203–4 Q-Planes (movie), 220 Quincy, USS, 116, 125, 128 Race, Lincoln and, 16, 19–20, 28 Radio shows, influence of, 210 Railey, Hilton, 112 Rama road, across Nicaragua, 80–81 Rambo (movies), 225 Ranke, Leopold von, 3–4 Rayburn, Sam, 106, 109–10 Reagan, Ronald, 211, 221, 231; Clarke under, 233–34; foreign policy of, 266; goals for presidency of, 222–24; government and film industry under, 226–27; influence of film career on policies of, 209, 227–28; Iran and, 232, 258; Soviets and, 31, 50, 51; Strategic Defense Initiative and, 208, 222 Relativism, historical, 4–5, 7 Religion: in Iran, 254–57. See also Islam Republican Party (U.S.), 108, 179n17 Republicanism, slavery and, 18–19, 28 Reston, James, 174, 186 Revolutions, 62, 82; in Costa Rica, 87; in Guatemala, 88, 90; in Nicaragua, 61–62, 64–66, 71, 74–75, 87, 95 Rice, Condoleezza, 235–38, 240, 293–95 Richardson, Elmo, 139 Ricks, Thomas, 247 Riga School, for U.S. diplomats, 43–44 Right Stuff, The (movie), 224, 226 Robins, Raymond, 45 Rockefeller, Nelson, 84–85, 186 Rogers, William, 199–200 Rogin, Michael Paul, 209 Roltsch, Albert, 199 Román y Reyes, Victor, 87 Roosevelt, Elliott, 131 Roosevelt, Franklin D., 10, 115n55, 127n20, 223; draft extension vote and, 99–100, 105, 107, 109, 111; illness of, 100, 105, 117, 125,

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Index 129; Latin America and, 69, 80; leadership style of, 100, 111, 131; meeting with Ibn Saud, 116, 119, 123–25, 128–31; opposition to foreign policy of, 100, 112–13; opposition to Russian policies of, 45, 50–52; policies for WWII and, 102n10, 117; policy toward Arabs and Jews, 129–31; relations with army, 101, 104, 113; Somoza and, 71–72, 80–81, 83; Soviet Union and, 41–47, 51–52; sympathy for Jews and Zionism, 122–23, 131–32; Yalta Axioms of, 44–45, 47 Roosevelt, Kermit (“Kim”), 252 Roosevelt, Sara Delano, 115n55 Roosevelt, Theodore, 37, 266; at Portsmouth Peace Conference, 38–39; on Russia, 31–32 Ross, Albion, 250 Rostow, Walt W., 157, 170–71, 185 Rowe, David, 161–62 Rowe, James, 110 Rumsfeld, Donald, 232; al-Qaeda attacks and, 236–37; commitment to war on Iraq, 235, 237, 240, 295–96; failures of war in Iraq and, 300–302; on opposition to war against Iraq, 242, 300; planning war against Iraq, 238, 244, 293, 297; resignation of, 248 Rusk, Dean, 155, 185, 286; assumptions underlying China policy of, 164–65, 172–73; in changing policies toward China, 159– 60, 162; on China’s foreign policy, 159, 170; criticisms of, 157, 160; relations with China and, 154, 166, 172 Russell, John, 21, 23, 25 Russia, 296; communism and tsarism in, 37, 48n46, 53–54; compared to Japan, 36–37; G. F. Kennan on, 34, 36, 49, 53–55; G. F. Kennan’s influence on U.S. opinion of, 34, 39, 54; Kennan on, 36, 49, 54; Kennan’s influence on U.S. opinion of, 32, 35–36, 40, 54; negativity of U.S. opinion of, 31, 39, 44, 50–51; unlikelihood of democracy in, 52–53; U.S. capitalism vs. communism of, 40–41, 52–53; U.S. diplomats educated about, 43–44. See also Soviet Union Russo-Japanese War, 32, 36–38 Rutherfurd, Lucy Mercer (aka Mrs. Paul Johnson), 105 Rwanda, 272

347 Sacasa, Juan B.: Chamorro and, 57–58; presidency of, 66–67, 69, 77; Sandino and, 74–75; Somoza and, 73, 75–76 Sadat, Anwar, 202 Salisbury, Richard V., 57n4 Sandinistas, in Nicaragua, 95 Sandino, Augusto, 67, 69, 73–76 Saudi Arabia, 234; Iraq and, 232–33, 239; under Nixon Doctrine, 189–91, 193, 201; oil from, 117–19, 202–5; Qatar and, 197–98, 204; relations with other Arabs, 204–6; U.S. relations with, 117–19, 130, 202–3 Saunders, Harold H., 195 Scalapino, Robert, 162 Schwartz, Benjamin, 161 Science fiction. See Death rays Scott, Edwin R., 215 Scowcroft, Brent, 242 Selective Service Act (1940), 99–100, 104–5, 108 Selective Service Extension Act (1941): closeness of vote on, 100–101, 112–15; debate in Congress on, 106–7, 111; passage of, 99; politics over, 108–11; public opposition to, 106, 109; Roosevelt’s lack of leadership on, 100, 105, 107, 114–15 Seward, William, 21, 25 Shah. See Pahlavi, Shah Muhammad Riza (of Iran) Shastri, Lal Bahaur, 183–84 Shell Oil Company, 203–4 Shelton, Henry, 236 Shelton, Hugh, 234 Sheridan, Brian, 236 Shinseki, Eric, 242, 300 Shultz, George P., 226 Siberia and the Exile System (Kennan), 32– 34, 35, 39 Sino-Soviet split, 150–51, 155–56; border tensions in, 169–70, 172; effects of, 161, 165; over ideological differences, 157–58 Sisco, Joseph, 199–200 Slavery: Lincoln ending, 15–17, 26–28; Lincoln opposing, 17–20, 27; partial emancipation and, 23–26; role in Civil War, 21, 26–28 Smith, Roswell, 33 Smith, Tony, 41 Snell, Edmund, 210

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348 Soderberg, Nancy, 264 Solorzano, Carlos, 57–58 Somalia, 270, 279 Somoza, Luis, 93 Somoza García, Anastasio, 71; Argüello and, 85–86; asking U.S. for arms, 79, 88–90; assassination of, 92–93; background of, 71– 72; communism and, 86–90; coups by, 77, 86; Figueres vs., 88, 90–92; Guardia and, 73, 77–78; presidency and, 76–77, 79–80, 87; reelection bid by, 82–85; Roosevelt and, 80–81, 83; Sacasa and, 75–76; Sandino and, 74–76; U.S. criticism of, 84– 85, 94; U.S. relations with, 73–74, 79–80, 83–84, 88–95; U.S. support for, 82, 86, 89– 90 Sons of Liberty (movie), 220–21 “Sources of Soviet Conduct, The” (Kennan), 45 South: in Civil War, 21, 24–25; effects of emancipation on, 23–25 Southeast Asia: Chinese vs. U.S. influence in, 162–63. See also Vietnam War South Korea, 167, 287. See also Korean War Soviet Union: China and, 155–58, 169–70, 172, 284, 289; Chinese fear of accommodation with U.S., 157, 159; containment of, 48–49, 253, 285, 286; Eisenhower and, 138–39; Eisenhower trying to improve relations with, 138–39, 144, 147; expansion by, 169, 286, 290–91; expectation of decay of, 48, 52; fall of, 205, 225–26; influence in Middle East, 132, 189, 191–92, 201, 205; Iraq’s relations with, 193, 201; Korean War and, 283–84, 286–87, 290– 91; military capability of, 100, 104, 137, 140, 146–47, 150, 169, 214; Musaddiq and, 251, 253n7; spy flights and, 137, 141, 143–45, 147–48; in triangle relations with China and U.S., 157–58, 162, 168–72; Truman and, 51–52, 283–85, 289; U.S. needing trade with, 41–42; U.S. opinion of, 46, 51–52; U.S. policies toward, 43–48, 51–52, 54–55; U.S. relations with, 41–45, 47–48, 139, 143, 154, 259; Vietnam War and, 165, 168; war in Afghanistan by, 231–32; in WWII, 100, 104. See also Khrushchev, Nikita; Russia

Index Spain, 244 Spying, 143. See also U-2 spy flights Stalin, Joseph, 117; effects of death of, 138–39, 156; U.S. and, 41n26, 46, 51n54, 52–53, 284 Stallone, Sylvester, 225 Standley, William H., 43 Star Wars. See Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) Stark, Harold R., 102–3 State Department, U.S., 160; anti-Russian countermovement in, 44; Central American policies of, 57–58, 72, 76, 90; on China policy, 171; Dennis in, 60, 67–68; focus on Europe, 67–68; on India, 181, 184; on Iraq, 235–36, 237–38, 247–48; on Nicaragua, 67–68; on Nicaragua and Chamorro, 58–64; on Nicaragua and Somoza, 79, 83, 86; nonintervention policy in Nicaragua, 74, 77–78; nonrecognition policy in Nicaragua, 58–60, 62–63; on Palestine, 122–23, 132; on Qatar, 196, 199, 204; on Roosevelt’s meeting with Ibn Saud, 119, 123–24 States’ rights, 24 Steinhardt, Laurence A., 43 Stettinius, Edward R., 85 Stimson, Henry L., 104, 108; Nicaraguan Liberals and, 67, 71; on Roosevelt’s leadership, 100n3, 105 Stoessel, Walter, 171–72 Stoltzfus, William A., Jr., 195, 197, 201, 203–4 Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), 221–22, 227; Bush’s support for, 293; Murder in the Air’s relation to, 208–9; Reagan’s support for, 208, 227; scientists working on, 208–9. See also Death rays Straw, Jack, 240, 294 Subramaniam, Chidambara, 181, 183–85 Suez, U.S.-Soviet confrontation over, 143 Sullivan, William, 255 Suskind, Ron, 247 Swope, Herbert Bayard, 48n47 “Sword of Peace in Japan, The” (Kennan), 36–37 Syria, 192, 202, 262, 303 Taiwan (Nationalist China), 160; expelled from UN, 194–95; as obstacle to improved

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Index U.S.-Chinese relations, 170–72; relations with PRC, 154–56, 170–71; U.S. support for, 155–56, 165, 170–71, 283; Vietnam War and, 165–66, 172 Takeso Shimoda, 171 Talbott, Strobe, 209n1 Talentino, Andrea Kathryn, 278 Taliban, 232, 261, 291 Taliqani, Mahmud, 260 Tanzania, al-Qaeda’s attack in, 234, 293 Taubman, William, 151 Technology: communication, 225–26; U.S.Soviet competition in, 141, 143, 150, 152 Tenet, George, 235, 297 Tent Life in Siberia (Kennan), 35–36 Terrorism, 257, 279; Bush vs., 207, 291; in Bush’s justification for war on Iraq, 248– 49, 281, 299; Clarke warning of possible attack, 236–37; Clinton vs., 234, 269; Iraq and, 233, 238, 244; Iraq war increasing, 282, 302. See also Al-Qaeda Tesla, Nikola, 211–12, 218–19, 221 That Noble Dream: The “Objectivity Question” (Novick), 6–7 Thielmann, Gregory, 247–48 Thompson, Llewellyn, 160 Thomson, James C., Jr., 160 Tibet, 155 Tizard, Henry T., 219 Top Gun (movie), 224–26 Torn Curtain (movie), 209n1 Trade, 41, 162, 265, 267 Treaty of Portsmouth, 32, 37–39 Truman, Harry S., 223, 268; containment policies of, 47, 140, 281, 285; firing MacArthur, 289, 302; firmness of foreign policy of, 282, 287–88; G. F. Kennan’s influence with, 46, 52; Korean War and, 281–91, 301–2; Somoza and, 88–89; Soviets and, 51, 285; supporting Taiwan, 156, 283 Truman Doctrine, 48, 51 Tsarism, 35; American disdain for, 32, 40; communism and, 49, 53–54; Kennan on, 32, 36–37 Tucker, Robert C., 53 Tudeh (Iranian Communist party), 251 Turkey, 239, 261 Twin pillars policy. See Nixon Doctrine

349 U-2 spy flights: Eisenhower authorizing, 146–49; Eisenhower stopping, 146–49, 152; Eisenhower using intelligence from, 139–40, 142–45; Khrushchev’s response to, 140–41, 149–52; Powers shot down on, 137–38; U.S. story about, 141–42 Ubico, Jorge, 88 Ulbrecht, Walter, 150 United Arab Emirates (UAE), 192, 206 United Nations (UN), 91, 264; on Bosnia, 271–73; on Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, 233, 292; Korean War and, 282–83, 286–87, 289–91, 302; Kosovo and, 273, 275, 279; Nationalist China expelled from, 194–95; People’s Republic of China in, 162, 194; on preemptive war against Iraq, 239–40, 244; Qatar admitted to, 194; sanctions against Iraq, 233; Somalia and, 270; Soviets boycotting, 283; U.S. interventions and, 270, 273, 278; in U.S. regime change efforts, 287, 301; on war against Iraq, 239–41, 243–44, 294–98. See also Weapons inspections United States: arrogance in spreading democracy and nation building, 267, 271, 275–76, 278, 287–88; hostility to, in Middle East, 201–2, 231–32, 252; international perceptions of, 58, 95, 169, 270, 291; legacy of fear of surprise attacks, 143, 145, 152; loss of moral high ground, 304; as only superpower, 232, 269, 279. See also Foreign policy, U.S.; specific countries and issues USSR. See Soviet Union Valenti, Jack, 225 Vance, Cyrus, 256 Vernadsky, George, 39 Victory Program (1941), 102–3, 113 Vietnam War, 163, 167, 246, 254; China’s involvement in, 159, 162, 165–66; efforts to increase patriotism after, 222–23, 225; influence of domino theory on, 162, 164; Nixon and, 201, 249; opposition to, 168, 265, 267; Taiwan and, 165–66, 172; Tet offensive in, 168–69; U.S. attention on, vs. Gulf region, 189, 191, 201; U.S. involvement in, 154–55, 159, 162; U.S. withdrawal from, 168–69, 249

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350 Vincennes, USS, 259 Voorhis, Jerry, 110 Wadsworth, James W., 109 Wagner, Robert, 122 Walker, Julian, 197 Walker, William, 56 Wallace, Henry A., 45, 47 Wang Guoquan, 163–64 War, Department of, 103n11, 105, 107–8 Warner, Jack and Harry, 210–11, 223 War of the Worlds (radio broadcast), 210 Warren, Fletcher, 84–86 Warsaw Pact, invasion of Czechoslovakia by, 155, 169 Watergate affair, 222–23, 225, 254 Watt, Robert Watson, 219 Weapons, 222; death rays as, 213–20; efforts to ease arms race, 154, 160; Eisenhower trying to keep in balance, 140, 146–47; escalation in Cold War, 137, 142–43; Iraq’s, 233, 235; Iraq’s chemical, 258–59, 276, 292; Iraq’s lack of WMD, 240, 243, 294–95, 299, 301; Iraq’s WMD, 236, 238–41, 245– 46, 281, 294–95, 297–98, 301; in movies, 226–28; nuclear, 137, 154, 158, 160, 169, 262, 289–90, 292; of 1930s, 218; Soviet, 169, 192; U.S. supplying, 79, 84, 89–91, 100, 104, 189–90, 202, 232, 254–55; WMD and Bush’s “Axis of Evil,” 291, 293 Weapons inspections, in Iraq, 292–93, 296– 97; not finding WMD, 243, 246–47; Saddam allowing, 241, 295; Saddam stopping, 234–35, 276–77, 295 Webster, Daniel, 27 Wedemeyer, Albert C., 101–2 Weinberg, Gerhard, 11 Weiss, Sammy, 111 Welch, Roland, 92 Welles, Gideon, 21–22 Welles, Orson, 210 Welles, Sumner, 44, 75–76, 78 Wells, H. G., 210 Westinghouse, George, 212 Westmoreland, William, 168

Index Weygand, Maxim, 48 Wheeler, Burton K., 69 Wheelock, John T., 195 Whelan, Thomas, 89, 92 “Which Is the Civilized Power?” (Kennan), 36–37 White, Francis, 74 Whitehead, Alfred North, 5 Wilkerson, Larry, 247 Wilson, Joseph C., 238, 297, 299–300 Wilson, Woodrow: influence on future policy toward Soviets, 40–41, 46; negativity of U.S. opinion of Russia under, 44, 50–51; neo-Wilsonian foreign policy and, 267, 273–80; relations with Bolsheviks, 40, 43, 47–49 Wimperis, H. E., 219 Wise, Stephen S., 131 Wolfe, Tom, 224 Wolfowitz, Paul, 236–37, 293, 300 Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Natures of History (Gould), 11 Woodward, Bob, 247 World Trade Center: 9/11 attacks on, 237, 291; 1993 attack on, 234 World War I, 221 World War II, 108, 116–17, 117, 144, 223; Central America in, 81–82; lack of coherent U.S. policy for, 101n8, 102n10; legacy of fears of, 137–38, 143, 222; Soviet contribution to, 45, 52; U.S. split over entering, 99–100, 109, 112–13 Yalta Axioms, 44–45, 47, 49 Yalta Conference, 117, 125, 127n20 Yemen, 201 Yom Kippur War, 201–2 Zagoria, Donald, 161–62 Zahidi, Fazlollah, 251, 253 Zarqawi, Abu Musab, 248 Zhou Enlai, 156, 159, 167, 173 Zinni, Anthony C., 242, 247, 267 Zionism, 120, 122–23, 131–32 Z-Ray, The (Snell), 210