Document created: 31 October 03
Air University Review,
January-February 1973
Defenders of American support for South Vietnam over the past decade have tended to take comfort in recalling previous instances when Administration foreign policy led to strong domestic repercussions. Korea is the most recent example; our military campaign there—once the initial Communist invasion from the North had been halted—evoked the typical American disillusionment with a policy that does not result in immediate, tangible success. A century earlier there was great opposition in the North to the Mexican War, and modern dissenters are fond of calling up the figure of the tall young Congressman from Illinois, Abraham Lincoln, as he paced up and down the aisle in the House, speaking out against the war and President Polk’s policies. Even farther back, the War of 1812—and the policies of Jefferson and Madison which helped bring it on—sharply divided the country. New England sailors and merchants, for whom the war was supposedly being fought, denounced it bitterly. Threats of secession and nullification were rife, and Daniel Webster, later to become the great champion of the Union, warned in 1814 that his state would not obey the conscription laws.
Yet all these precedents of opposition to American war policies do not account for the present torrent of shrill and violent criticism of the Vietnam war nor of American foreign policy in general. There is an element of our populace which, as author Philip Quigg puts it, “. . . believes that the United States is inherently aggressive, unprincipled and either incompetent or unsuited to play any responsible role in the world.”*
* Philip W. Quigg, America the Dutiful: An Assessment of U.S. Foreign Policy (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1971, $6.95), 223 pages.
Vietnam is, for a number of reasons, the focus of the uneasiness of some Americans over our foreign policy, but there are other underlying causes. There is the residual isolationism that survives from the nineteenth century, when Americans turned their backs on the world and for a century bent their energies to spreading over a continent. Then there was America’s deep involvement in the two World Wars and in the post-World War II period. Now the pendulum has swung back. There is the coming of age, vocally, of the first generation of Americans to be brought up on television, where, in the passage of an hour or half hour, problems are posed and neatly resolved. (It takes time to realize that the problems of the real world are not so simply settled.) And finally, there is the deep, subjective dissatisfaction with our society felt by many intellectuals and expressed through the media they largely dominate. Often intelligent and articulate, they convey the impression that in the “right” kind of society they would be the ones guiding policy and reaping the material rewards that now go to others. It follows that the policies of an Administration to which they do not belong are, by definition, misguided and ruinous.
Philip Quigg, who for fifteen years was managing editor of Foreign Affairs, notes how we have wavered between isolationism and responsibility toward the rest of the world, but he eschews discussion of most underlying factors in the current foreign policy controversy. Instead, he examines the bases for a series of current, commonly held denigrations of U.S. policy. Are we arrogant and messianic? Not so, says Quigg. We are known abroad as self-critics, and we have been far more restrained and pragmatic than many smaller nations.
Are we obsessively anti-Communist? Quigg, writing before the recent Strategic Arms Limitation agreements, finds that while we have had real bases for resisting Communism, our policies have been relatively restrained. Furthermore, he says, “Our fear of communism has been as nothing compared to our antagonists’ fear of freedom.”
A common radical-elite criticism of American foreign policy is that we oppose revolution and support “rightists.” Quigg approaches this subject by raising a question: “Is revolution really a shortcut to a more just society?” He thinks not, and he adds a consideration that revolutionaries are inclined to ignore-the massive bloodshed that accompanies revolutions: “For Americans to go about indiscriminately promoting revolutions is trifling with human life on a very large scale.” This, of course, is hardly a deterrent to American intellectuals, and Quigg quotes Irving Kristol’s observation that “. . . American foreign policy . . . must work within a climate of opinion that finds the idea of a gradual evolution of traditional societies thoroughly uninteresting—which, indeed, has an instinctive detestation of all traditional societies as being inherently unjust . . .”
Some of our intellectuals’ enchantment with revolutionary techniques arises from a misunderstanding of our own Revolution in the eighteenth century. Popular rhetoric to the contrary, the American Revolution does not constitute an example for poor, backward nations of today. Our Revolution had a conservative, legalistic character; it aimed only at political separation from Britain, because the mother country was thought to have altered the structure of the Empire as Americans had known it. As historian Daniel Boorstin has said, “The most obvious peculiarity of our American Revolution is that, in the modern European sense of the word, it was hardly a revolution at all.” The analogy to modern revolutions has even less application when we consider that in 1776 the United States was no poor country like most of the new nations of Asia and Africa. In 1776 the United States had the third-highest gross national product in the world, exceeded only by Britain and France, and per capita income was the highest in the world.
Quigg’s book also looks at instances of our supposed support of rightist dictatorships. The truth is, he says, that our policies have complex causes and are not based on any simplistic notion that “radical is risky and conservative is safe.”
In the remainder of his book, Quigg goes into other common assertions about recent American foreign policy. On our supposed overcommitment and propensity to intervene in other nations’ affairs, Quigg recalls that while there were 164 outbreaks of significant violence in the world between 1958 and 1966 the United States had been involved in only seven. Quigg’s analysis includes a long discussion of each instance. If we assume that the United States has any national interests at all—however difficult to define—then we have to assume that such interests impose obligations, even though the radical critics call this self-righteous and hypocritical. Many of these critics assert that our national interest has the real aim of establishing American economic domination of the world; yet, as Quigg says, “most nations of the Third World have nothing that is essential to us,” and our trade and investment go mostly to the developed nations (Europe, Canada, etc.). Furthermore, from the standpoint of political and military intervention, our greatest “sin,” Vietnam, is taking place in Asia; yet, as Quigg points out, “almost without exception the non-Communist countries of Asia have urged the United States not to reduce its commitments there in any significant degree.” The conclusion is that the United States is part of the world and, as Quigg demonstrates, critics of our foreign policy have failed to consider the consequences, even for our free society, should we abandon the field to those nations which have not renounced war.
Quigg’s book will irritate a good many readers; the radical-liberals, for example, will come up with their usual knee-jerk reaction to any suggestion that not all of our policies in the postwar period have been iniquitous or failures. The book will find some criticism from even the defenders of our policies; Quigg is at times overly sensitive, particularly on our policies toward Vietnam, South Africa, and the Philippines. As an example, in admitting “errors” in the case of South Africa, Mr. Quigg seems unaware of the impressive arguments to the contrary presented by Charles Burton Marshall and Dean Acheson. Probably the greatest by-product of the book will be increased recognition of the difficulties of conducting foreign policy in a democracy. Administration officials in the United States have problems not even dreamed of in other nations. No one, for example, expects Moscow and Hanoi to let their people know what they are planning, but Washington is expected to reveal all details, moment by moment. Any hint of benefits from our policies for special interests in the United States arouses automatic denunciation; yet, as Dean Acheson once mentioned to this reviewer, the support of special interests in a good cause is not to be neglected, and the former Secretary of State recalled the Biblical injunction, “Make to yourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness.” Quigg’s understanding of the complexities—political and otherwise—in the foreign policy process will prove beneficial, as will his conclusion that America has carried out, in a praiseworthy manner, the duties and responsibilities belonging to the world’s biggest power. The alternative? As George Ball has asked, If the United States does not walk the world policeman’s beat, who will?
Another recent book, by Raymond O’Connor looks at the relationship between force and diplomacy in American history.* The connection is not always clearly defined; most, although not all, of O’Connor’s chapters focus on fairly narrow, sometimes legalistic, applications of military pressure to achieve national objectives. “The correlation between military power and successful foreign policy is not generally understood,” says O’Connor at the beginning of his book, and he launches into a survey of how force influenced diplomacy throughout the history of the United States. From this, the publisher’s blurb draws the superficial observation that O’Connor challenges the traditional view of the United States as a peace-loving nation. This misleading statement is based on the author’s examples of U.S. territorial acquisition by military force. Apart from the fact that most of these were en-wrapped in political considerations and affected by the inexorable pressure of American settlers for more land, the statement ignores completely the biggest single addition to the territory of the original United States, the Louisiana Purchase, which was acquired, as Thomas A. Bailey has put it, “at one bloodless stroke.”
*Raymond G. O’Connor, Force and Diplomacy: Essays Military and Diplomatic (Coral Gables: University of Miami Press, 1972, $10.00), 167 pages.
O’Connor, a former naval officer who is now chairman of the history department at the University of Miami, begins a chapter entitled “Naval Strategy in the Twentieth Century” with a quotation, long enshrined in the canon of naval scriptures, from Sir Walter Raleigh: “Whosoever commands the sea, commands the trade; whosoever commands the trade of the world, commands the riches of the world, and consequently the world itself.” The courteous Raleigh would surely not, at this late date, begrudge the author’s getting in a good lick, right off the bat, for his cause. But the reader who wishes to find in this chapter an integration of naval strategy with the theme of current national security problems will be disappointed.º
ºColonel Gerald J. Carey, now attending the Industrial College of the Armed Forces, provided me with useful comments on this chapter.
We can concede that Admiral Mahan gave intellectual substance to the strategy of control of the sea. But the future interaction of force and diplomacy that will set the proper strategy for this country can no more be based on Mahan alone than on Clausewitz alone for land or Douhet alone for air, each to the exclusion of the other two. This does not daunt Professor O’Connor, however, and the thesis of this chapter forms yet another in the currently fashionable array of assertions that we should adopt what has been referred to as a “blue water strategy.”
O’Connor makes a valid point in his statement that “Russia, not surprisingly, has emerged as a rival to American naval dominance, and her efforts should be viewed in light of the competition on the international scene and the virtual equilibrium prevailing in other dimensions of military activity.” It does not follow, however, that the author’s summation in the final paragraph of the chapter is true:
. . . it is difficult to avoid concluding that the strategic significance of sea power has increased, most notably in its impact on land warfare. It is now capable of operating inland, with an even greater potential for what is called “blackmail’’ and for affecting the outcome of wars, either unconventional, limited or general.
What is not addressed by O’Connor, and should be in an analysis of force and diplomacy, is the extent to which in today’s world the United States must pursue control of “sea lanes” to achieve its national security objectives. Herman Finer, one of our most eminent political scientists, has noted that in 1917 Walter Lippmann called for the United States to enter World War I because at that time he thought sea power was decisive in America’s survival and the new seagoing power was Imperial Germany. “It is a danger to America …”says Professor Finer, to hark “back to Mahan’s teachings, without multiplying 20 knots by 350, and without multiplying the power of poor shots of dynamite by megatonic nuclear explosive and radioactive force.” Finer’s statement was an attack on the neo-isolationism of Lippmann and many other critics of U.S. “globalism” in the post-World War II period, so he stressed the time contraction posed by the nuclear threat to our security. His point is just as valid with regard to the wide-ranging capabilities of air power, whether or not it is accompanied by nuclear weapons.
Seven of O’Connor’s chapters were prepared in their original form under a contract with the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. They deal principally with the technical aspects of disarmament and the use of sanctions to enforce international agreements. Far more interesting are the next two chapters. One, “Roosevelt and Churchill: A Reinterpretation of the Diplomacy of World War II,” is a lengthy defense of FDR’s position on a second front, unconditional surrender, etc. It is intended to counteract what O’Connor calls the “conventional” interpretation of the diplomacy of the Second World War. That interpretation, according to O’Connor, contends that Roosevelt, unlike Churchill, “did not understand” the correlation between force and diplomacy, that the President was “obsessed with the military aspects of the war,” ignored political objectives, prolonged the conflict, enabled the Soviet Union to shape the peace, and, finally, that he thus made it possible for the Soviets to dominate Eastern Europe and threaten the security of the Western World. O’Connor’s opinion is that the reverse is more nearly correct. He argues that Churchill’s policy of striking at the Germans from the periphery of Europe, the “indirect approach,” was unsound, both militarily and politically, and he blames Churchill, not FDR, for concessions to Russia that gave her a stronger postwar position in Europe. To this reviewer, the evidence presented by O’Connor for assigning to Churchill the responsibility for these “errors” of strategy is not conclusive. Even less substantial is his defense of the Allied policy of unconditional surrender toward the Axis powers. Here I think the weight of opinion is correct—that, as Bailey says, the unconditional surrender policy “greatly complicated” the reconstruction of enemy nations.
O’Connor’s chapter on President Truman is by far the most useful—and welcome-in his book. Until recently, the great foreign policy initiatives of the Truman Administration—the Truman Doctrine, aid to Greece and Turkey, the Marshall Plan, and NATO —were regarded as statesmanlike applications of American strength in the interest of the free world’s peace and prosperity. Academics and other intellectuals (who, despite their horror of dictatorship, are fond of extraordinary one-man initiative on the part of a President whose policies they support) had advanced Truman to the rank of the “near great” among Presidents. But fashions in Presidents change, just as fashions in nearly everything else; and with the disillusionment over Vietnam came a broader disenchantment with the image of America as the champion of the free world, with consequent downgrading of the efforts taken by Truman to reconstruct Europe after the war and to use American support in protecting other nations from Communist aggression. Truman’s reputation as a President slipped as a result, just as did that of Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson later. O’Connor’s assessment, then, is all the more refreshing, coming as it does while the breast-beating of so many of our liberal intellectuals is at its loudest and their little-America policies are thrust continuously in the public eye.
O’Connor ticks off six dimensions in which Truman’s exercise of Presidential power or influence defined American national security policy:
1.Control over nuclear weapons. Truman, the only President who ever directed the actual employment of atomic bombs, in World War II, set the precedent for America’s policy of restraint with respect to them thereafter; in fact, he bent over backwards to avoid waving them as a “big stick.” O’Connor’s only criticism of Truman’s policies comes in this general area: the President’s abnegation of nuclear weapons was not accompanied by a corresponding beefing up of American conventional forces to carry out our foreign policy objectives in Europe and the Far East. As the author says, Truman, “by failing to coordinate American capabilities with American commitments, endangered security and world peace.
2. U.S. assumption of unilateral responsibility for protection of the free world. Here O’Connor notes that the American response to the Berlin blockade was “as near complete an exercise of executive prerogative as the nation had seen since the end of World War II.” It revealed, he says, that the future of resistance to Communism would be determined in the White House.
3. New machinery for the formulation and execution of defense and foreign policy. This included the Department of Defense and the National Security Council. As O’Connor says, the new machinery, under Truman’s manipulation, “augmented the powers of the president in international affairs, and the precedents established by Truman in the utilization of this machinery were not ignored by his successors.
4. U.S. assumption of the task of promoting world prosperity. The Anglo-American Financial Agreement and the Marshall Plan were the key measures here. O’Connor rightly stresses the landmark nature of Congressional approval of the Marshall Plan, the first of the giant peacetime foreign aid programs. He lists some of the factors involved and calls the President the “one absolutely essential figure” in the promotion and adoption of the proposal. O’Connor is correct in this, and he recognizes Truman’s superb orchestration of individuals and circumstances in the Marshall Plan effort. All of this is pertinent, but I think the author might have made more of the widespread fear in 1947 and 1948 of a Russian take-over in the war-devastated, poverty-stricken nations of Western Europe. As Senator Everett M. Dirksen, a leader in the House at the time, once told this reviewer, fear of such a take-over was the determining factor in the Congressional decision to pass the Marshall Plan.
5. Conclusion of a series of military or quasi-military alliances. The North Atlantic Treaty was the principal instrument among these, and, as in the case of the Marshall Plan, O’Connor’s discussion focuses on the careful efforts of the executive branch to work with the Senate in bringing about final approval of the treaty. The author notes here another example of Truman’s expanding the Presidential authority as commander-in-chief to encompass the peacetime disposal of forces to meet the obligations of a military alliance. It was feared that the Russians, taking advantage of the Korean War, would attack Western Europe, so Truman, without asking Congressional approval, sent four American divisions across the Atlantic. In a way, he was “bailed out” by the Korean crisis itself, which resulted in legislation calling for a rapid expansion of the American military establishment.
6. Membership in the United Nations. Truman strengthened the “embryonic organization,” as O’Connor calls it, by his commitment of American forces to the defense of South Korea. The whole Korean experience enlarged the role of the President in the conduct of national security affairs. The author uses it as a departure point for his conclusions on how Truman increased Presidential power in response to the expanded scope of action demanded of the President in foreign and military affairs. Truman, says O’Connor, “added new dimensions of power commensurate with America’s strength and her pre-eminent position in international affairs.”
O’Connor’s final chapter, on victory in modern war, is a trivial, pedestrian summary of how victory was accomplished in selected wars from the American Revolution on. The author’s attempted distinction between “military” and “negotiated” settlements is fuzzy, to say the least. Particularly distressing is his unfortunate misconception of the Boer War, which began, says the author, “when the Boer settlers revolted against their colonial master, Great Britain.” Nothing could be farther from the truth. The Boers were settled in two independent, long-established interior African republics, and they were the ones who declared war against Great Britain in 1899 and invaded Britain’s Cape Colony. We do not need to go into the causes here, but obviously they were out of the author’s ken.
The entire book is marred by the awkward, disjointed style that is frequently the characteristic of a book made up of essays written originally for other, particular purposes. There are other minor errors (e.g., in chronology), and proofreading errors abound. In the product of a university press, these are wondrous, to say the least, and someone should tell its proofreaders how to spell “casualties.”
The merit of both these books (although Quigg’s is the better by far) is that both authors recognize U.S. responsibilities to the rest of the world, and they do not see the U.S. role as completely invidious and destructive. Irresponsible critics argue that we should not become involved or that we should become involved only where their own particular “moral” judgment calls for it. But, as John P. Roche has pointed out, a moralist cannot play favorites. If there is one reason for us to support the black liberation of Rhodesia and South Africa, there are a hundred reasons for “liberals” to support the liberation of Russia, China, and North Vietnam. As police states go, says Roche, the U.S.S.R. makes Rhodesia and South Africa look like amateur performers.
Some people say we can do as Britain and France, which have fallen from their status of Great Powers; and they blandly compare the future decline of the United States with the precipitous fall of Great Britain after World War II. Not so bad, they say. But the situation of the United States with respect to the rest of the world now is a great deal different from what Britain’s was. Britain could recede from her empire and her obligations, for there was the United States, ready to pick up the torch. But if we draw down and in, who then will protect the rest of the world? Or, for that matter, who will protect us?
The truth is, as Morton Kaplan says, “the world is becoming so closely interrelated that the United States with its huge political, economic, ideological, and social power cannot avoid affecting the destinies of people in the remotest parts of the world. It does so whether it intervenes or fails to intervene. Almost any decision it makes is in effect a form of intervention.” What about efforts to “sanitize our intervention by providing assistance multilaterally or through the United Nations? These, Kaplan asserts, could have much worse consequences than unilateral American aid.
But aid, in itself, will not be enough if it is only economic or diplomatic. Military force will be required occasionally—and not only the nuclear power meant to be used as a deterrent. Fighting forces must be maintained—and used, at times—to throw the weight of the United States on the side of international order. If we eschew an active diplomacy and the occasional use of force in the interest of the peace-loving nations, the alternatives will be grim. The United Nations, as the Manchester Guardian says, is too weak to replace the alliances of the “American era,” and who else will feed the millions of starving people we have aided? Not the United Nations, which is unprepared and divided, and not any foreseeable combination of the democratic nations. The power is still ours, and although the glory has faded, our duty remains.
Arlington, Virginia
Colonel Harold L. Hitchens (Ph.D., University of Chicago) is Chief, Concepts Development Branch, Directorate of Doctrine, Concepts and Objectives, Hq USAF. His flying assignments have included test pilot and B-26 flight commander in Korea. He served two tours as Air Force Academy faculty member. Colonel Hitchens has edited several books and published articles in professional journals. He lectures on American history at Northern Virginia Community College.
Disclaimer
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.
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