Did the Emperor Have Clothes?

The evil that men do lives after them,
The good is oft interred with their bones.

Richard J. Walton, the author of Cold War and Counterrevolution,* might claim that the same conditions could apply to our late President John F. Kennedy. However, the author would probably be inclined to add that the evil is still obscured by the unwillingness of most people to compare Mr. Kennedy’s actual record with what they thought to be his record.

In a speech given at the University of Rochester in 1959, Mr. Kennedy said: “The real test of Mr. Khrushchev’s desire to end it [the Cold War] will be in his deeds, not his words. . . .” Cold War and Counterrevolution applies this same test to Mr. Kennedy. Seemingly less interested in iconoclasm than in a new consideration of recent events, Mr. Walton points out that the late President’s actions were based solidly on the traditional post-World War II policy of containment—with the usual knee-jerk reactions—and that he showed little ability to distinguish and exploit differences in the monolith of Communism or to distinguish between “honest” revolution and Communist conspiratorial revolution.

* Richard J. Walton, Cold War and Counterrevolution (New York: Viking Press, 1972, $7.95), 250 pages.

The author finds contrast his most effective tool. In laying the words of the late President beside his deeds, Mr. Walton found he could often dispense with commentary. Contrasting rhetoric and record is not a new technique, of course, nor is it an invalid one. Presidents, no less than the rest of us, should be held responsible for the things they say they are going to do. Nevertheless, most people would probably admit that no Chief Executive could successfully squeeze the final sprawl of his policies back into the neat mold of his intentions. After all, one is written precisely on long yellow pads in a vacuum of sorts, while the other must grapple with the real world.

The type of exercise undertaken in Cold War and Counterrevolution is particularly appropriate today. Never—since the advent of mass public pulse-taking—has the people’s confidence in political figures been at a lower ebb than it is now. On the other hand, the late Mr. Kennedy’s reputation continues to soar. Should the thesis held by Mr. Walton prove true, should the hopes of those who thrust their political dreams into the late President’s hands turn out to have been hung unwisely on panache rather than proof, it can only further weaken the already weak connections between the citizenry and its leadership.

Cold War and Counterrevolution is a short book of hardly more than two hundred pages. Though important, it is actually quite superficial. It is not particularly well researched, the bibliography consisting of only 43 references, mostly standard works. Furthermore, some chapters are loaded as to “sidedness”—32 of 38 footnotes in chapter 10 cite works of friends, such as Arthur Schlesinger. Yet, even when all this is taken into account, the aura of truth still lingers. Walton is in the forefront of those who will cry, like the child in the fable, “Look, the Emperor has no clothes.”

Other books of greater depth on this same theme will follow Cold War and Counterrevolution, but with this brief work the author has come up with a significant first.

Frequently, however, in his efforts to prove that Mr. Kennedy—despite widespread assumptions to the contrary—was in fact something much less than a liberal in his foreign policy, Mr. Walton is a little unfair on the subject. He chooses, for example, to cite these words from the President’s Inaugural Address as “tough talk” and provocative: “. . . only when our arms are sufficient beyond doubt can we be certain beyond doubt that they will never be employed.” The author neglects to add that the President went on to express solemn misgivings about the arms race, to talk about the need for arms control, and to summon all to take up the challenge of “tyranny, poverty, disease and war itself.”

Further on, the author talks about the substantial arms buildup initiated by President Kennedy, saying that this was quite unnecessary since “. . . the Soviet Union had reduced its military spending. . . .” The Yearbook of World Armaments and Disarmaments hardly supports this statement when it gives the following comparison of billions spent on arms by the U.S.S.R. and by the U.S. for the years in question:

	U.S.	U.S.S.R.
1960	45.3	22.1
1961	47.3	27.6
1962	51.2	30.2
1963	50.5	33.1¹

(The reader is cautioned against quick judgments concerning overall amounts, since the U.S.S.R. “conceals” many of its arms expenditures by inserting them into the budgets of several departments.)

Cold War and Counterrevolution makes a fairly good case when it associates the Bay of Pigs fiasco, the Berlin crisis, and Cuban missile crisis with dangerously haphazard combinations of hard-line thinking, bungling, and certain recent traditions. Walton hits home when he says, “. . . that is just the rewarming of the old Washington myth that the Russians always back down when faced by American resolve.” This simplistic approach to international confrontations is the type of quick answer that Americans prefer. Before applauding ourselves unduly for those instances where our “firmness” has been rewarded, however, it might be most profitable to stand back and (1) ask how seriously the U.S.S.R. has needed (not necessarily wanted) the points over which we have successfully faced them with force; and (2) also remind ourselves that, despite the “American resolve” in Cuba, the U.S.S.R. got much of what it sought there, though it did back away from our show of force.

In his discussion of Vietnam and related issues, Mr. Walton blames the late President for “the war and all its terrible consequences. . . .” He suggests that Mr. Kennedy’s most grievous mistakes stemmed from his failure to understand the inseparability of burgeoning nationalism and revolution; his belief that nationalism could always be converted to American purposes; and his inability to come up with an imaginative policy that would strengthen nationalism—even though it was based on Communist principles.

Today, of course, Titoism is a familiar argument as we acknowledge our failures in Vietnam, Cuba, China, et al., and admit that Communism is not the monolith we once thought it to be. But this sort of thinking was not as widespread in 1961 as it is today. And the argument about how to deal with nationalism and revolution, always difficult to conclude, was never less clear than when the ferment took place under the eaves of a neighboring Communist giant and the shadow of containment.

Politics is still the art of the possible. Stanley Karnow, writing of President Nixon’s China visit in the February 20 Washington Post, noted that “a reconciliation with Peking could make it easier for him to justify an American withdrawal from Vietnam by seeming to remove the Chinese threat that originally served as the rationale for the US commitment.” Without doing too much violence to logic, one might also conclude that such a reconciliation, if concluded ten years ago, would have made our entry into Vietnam unnecessary. But was it politically possible ten years ago?

In speaking to the Senate on 14 August 1958, President Kennedy certainly indicated that he understood what revolution was all about:

For Walton to cite Diem, rigidity, and the absence of reform in South Vietnam as indictments of Kennedy’s understanding does not seem sound. Nevertheless, the general charges that he makes do seem valid, and other authors will doubtless pursue them. The period of literary mourning is apparently past. Those of us who sat numbly transfixed before the TV set during those long, sad November days in 1963 will follow the new quest with mixed feelings.

1. Yearbook of World Armaments and Disarmaments, 1970, Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.

Colonel Don Clelland (M.A., University of Colorado) is Executive Assistant to the U.S. Representative, NATO Military Committee. He flew a tour in RF-101s in Vietnam and was an F-86 pilot in postwar Korea. He has served in numerous squadron assignments and in the Research and Analysis Division, Office of the Secretary of the Air Force. At the Air Force Academy he was a history instructor, an Air Officer Commanding, and a Special Assistant to the Superintendent.

The conclusions and opinions expressed in this document are those of the author cultivated in the freedom of expression, academic environment of Air University. They do not reflect the official position of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, the United States Air Force or the Air University.