CHAPTER EIGHT
THE TERRIFYING MOMENTUM TOWARD DISASTER

Were half the power, that fills the world with terror,

Were half the wealth, bestowed on camps and courts,

Given to redeem the human mind from error,

There were no need of arsenals or forts.

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW,
“THE ARSENAL AT SPRINGFIELD”

It is not the primacy of economic motives in historical explanation that constitutes the decisive difference between Marxism and bourgeois thought, but the point of view of totality.

Whatever the subject of debate, the dialectical method is concerned always with the same problem: knowledge of the historical process in its entirety. This means that ‘ideological’ and ‘economic’ problems lose their mutual exclusiveness and merge into one another.

GEORG LUKÁCS, History and
Class Consciousness

Though a few Americans began at the end of the 1940s to recognize and face the necessity of undertaking a thorough reevaluation of existing foreign policy, the decision makers either discounted the need for such action or were carried along by the momentum of the long commitment to expansion and to reforming the world in the image of the United States. The elite remained limited by the outlook that had crystallized during the 1890s: organize the world according to the principles of the Open Door Policy and reap the benefits of benevolent and liberal empire. The scene recalled Alice in Looking-Glass Land running as fast as she could to stay under the same tree—with the vital difference that she was not succeeding in her effort.

The power of that belief prompted the Truman Administration to intervene, immediately and without public debate, when the North Koreans launched their effort on June 25, 1950, to unify and revolutionize that divided country. The first major statement of policy suggested that the leaders of the United States were willing, at least for the time, to content themselves with reestablishing the South Korean Government that had been created under American direction. As he so often did, Secretary of State Acheson sounded reassuring: the military intervention had been undertaken “solely for the purpose of restoring the Republic of Korea to its status prior to the invasion from the north.”

Within three months, however, that apparent moderation had been proved illusory. President Truman approved military operations north of the 38th parallel on September 11, 1950, very probably on the assumption that General MacArthur’s landing at Inchon, scheduled for September 15, would be a success. Orders transmitting the President’s decision to MacArthur were sent on the day of the invasion. When his brilliant and difficult operation at Inchon did turn the tables on the North Koreans, MacArthur advised Secretary of Defense Marshall of his proposed directive to troops crossing the parallel. Marshall promptly ordered the General to withhold the document. “We desire that you proceed with your operations without any further explanation or announcement and let action determine the matter. Our government desires to avoid having to make an issue of the 38th parallel until we have accomplished our mission.”

The mission, as Acheson later revealed, was to realize one of the earliest, turn-of-the-century objectives in the strategy of the Open Door Policy. Put simply, it was to free Korea of Russian as well as Japanese influence. World War II had accomplished the latter; the Korean conflict would finish the job. Under American leadership, the United Nations General Assembly on October 7, 1950, approved a resolution authorizing “all appropriate steps to be taken to ensure conditions of stability throughout Korea.”

Secretary Acheson was later asked the key question during a congressional investigation:

SENATOR HARRY CAIN:    What, may I ask, were our United States forces doing on the shores of the Yalu River last November if it was not in an attempt to crush the aggressor and to unify Korea by force?

ACHESON:    General MacArthur’s military mission was to pursue them and round them up  .  .  .  and, as I said many times, we had the highest hopes that when you did that the whole of Korea would be united.  .  .  .

SENATOR CAIN:    If, sir, the Red Chinese had not entered the war, and our allied forces would have rounded up all those who were a party to the aggression in Korea, we would then have unified Korea by force; would we not?

ACHESON:    Well, force would have been used to round up those people who were putting on the aggression  .  .  .  unifying  .  .  .  it would be through elections, and that sort of thing.

Force would have played a part.  .  .  .

The attitude toward China that was an inherent part of the open door outlook served to subvert the effort to apply the strategy of the Open Door Policy to Korea. The United States assumed that it could unify Korea by force because it did not believe, despite many indications to the contrary, that the Chinese Communists would intervene. The assumption of overweening power, developed at the grass roots as well as within the elite during the 1880s and 1890s, remained a vital—and dangerous—part of the American outlook in the 1950s.

Secretary of State Dulles believed in that power and sought to use it (directly and as a threat) to consolidate (and hopefully extend) the American imperium when he took office in January 1953. But if he is evaluated only on the basis of his militant and overblown rhetoric, Dulles is easily misunderstood. Realizing that the policy of containment trapped the United States in a defensive posture, he wanted to seize the initiative and thereby sustain the momentum of American expansion. That might have been possible, at least for a time, if Dulles had been willing to concentrate on developing and improving the global system that had been created since the 1890s. Former President Herbert Hoover had pointedly advised the country in December 1950 to follow that course, even pulling back to the Western Hemisphere: otherwise, he warned, the nation would become overextended and risk the loss of freedom at home as well as disaster abroad.

That approach was too defeatist for Dulles (and other members of the elite), and he launched his diplomacy with extreme proposals for subverting the communist governments of Eastern Europe, with bold talk about threatening nuclear war in order to guarantee peace, and with supreme confidence in the ultimate breakdown of the communist systems in Russia and China. Several factors forced him to retreat on all fronts. One was the quiet but effective opposition that had developed in the United States against the interminable intervention in Korea. This resistance has often been overlooked or discounted for two reasons: it was not the dramatic and increasingly fundamental kind of dissent later generated by the intervention in Vietnam, and it was successful in the short run without changing the essentials of traditional policy. It encouraged and enabled President Dwight David Eisenhower to end the war, and it served as a persistent warning to Dulles that he needed to move carefully lest he revive such antagonism.

Even though the war in Korea was ended, and the critics stilled on that issue, Dulles sustained the hard core of opposition (and periodically roused a larger coalition) with his fervent rhetoric about striding to the brink of nuclear war in order to convince the communists and other revolutionaries that he meant what he said. However much they opposed what they had been told was communism, most Americans drew back, for moral as well as pragmatic reasons, from a policy that stressed a willingness to risk catastrophe. Such a policy seemed pointless in dealing with revolutions in small countries and, though it might be effective for a time against China (then a weak nation trying to reorganize itself to achieve its own objectives), few people wanted to live with an ultimatum to Russia. In an ironic sense, therefore, Dulles was limited by the effectiveness of the long campaign by policy-makers to picture the Soviets as totally evil. Such people could not be trusted, after all, not to use whatever nuclear weapons they possessed when they were challenged—even though they knew they would lose.

A third element that limited Dulles involved the continuing upsurge of revolutionary activity around the world. For, if nuclear weapons were irrelevant and immoral in dealing with such events, traditional military intervention required an expansion of conventional forces. And that was politically risky for Republicans who held the White House for the first time in two decades, as well as expensive for conservatives who opposed large budget deficits. Thus Dulles had to rely very largely on economic weapons and political pressure. When those proved to be of limited effectiveness, and the revolutions consolidated their power without causing dire consequences for the United States, Dulles and his supporters lost some credibility.

Finally, and despite various appearances to the contrary, Dulles was limited by Eisenhower’s deep reluctance to involve the United States in another major military intervention. The President was not a true cold war crusader. And while he accepted a large role for America in the world, he was not an active expansionist. He had an honest, informed concern for the security of the United States. He understood that the economy required a routine relationship with the world marketplace. And he was advised—pushed—by men who advocated the orthodox answers to those problems. That factor is the key to Eisenhower as President. He had assembled and trained, as Supreme Commander in the European Theater during World War II, one of the best staffs in the history of warfare. He mistakenly assumed that the civilian elite around him was intellectually as tough (and as self-critical), and on that basis he delegated too much authority.

Even so, had he been as weak as his critics charge, then the United States would have been at war several times during the eight years he served as President. But Eisenhower did control Dulles and he did slow the momentum of the interventionist “total diplomacy” evolved by Truman and Acheson. His personal traits and philosophical outlook combined to give the United States a breathing space from the burdens of empire. World War II clearly deepened his inherent aversion to organized violence, and his approach stressed the idea of giving Americans a chance to explore their individual capacities, and to act together to improve their society.

Eisenhower emerges as a true conservative in the traditional sense. He clearly seems to have sensed that the era of American expansion was coming to an end. He did not fully comprehend what that meant, let alone understand how to act as a civilian general on the insight he enjoyed, but he was not mesmerized by the vision of a New Frontier and he did not think that the United States could determine the future of the world. His greatest mistake in foreign policy was the failure to follow through on his decision against a massive air strike to help the French avoid defeat in Vietnam.

After the French were driven from the country, the peace settlement negotiated in Geneva included a provision to hold national elections in Vietnam in 1956. But the anticommunist clique that took control of the southern part of the country (below the 17th parallel) became increasingly reluctant to honor that commitment. The United States chose not to intervene to force those men to comply with the Geneva Agreement. That decision could be—and can be—defended by citing the principle of self-determination: men make their decisions and take the consequences. And American policy-makers had given the South Vietnamese elite an opportunity to make such a choice. If Eisenhower had at that point ceased all active and covert involvement in Vietnam, he would have avoided any responsibility for the terror that followed. Indeed, he might have rejuvenated the principle of self-determination. He did not. He acquiesced as Dulles maneuvered to transform the South Vietnamese elite into a viable government. And so continued the tailspin to disaster.

Yet even then a new President could have said no. But John Fitzgerald Kennedy was only a powerful man. He was not strong in the sense of breaking with tradition. More exactly, he was a Lochinvar who revived orthodoxy. Kennedy charted his course by the star of empire and generated the confidence that sustained the interventionist momentum. No one will ever know if he was gaining a stronger grasp on reality at the time he was murdered. If so, he would have needed much time and great will to counter the imperial thrust he generated between his inauguration and his assassination. For the aura of terror about American foreign policy, created both by what was done and by how it was done, increased sharply under Kennedy. He was an elitist with great elan and charming style. Both characteristics served to mask the continuing and serious reduction of general—or even limited—involvement in decision making during his reign.

First came his campaign for election, in which he stressed the need to cast aside Eisenhower’s caution and move boldly to realize America’s destiny as the leader of the world (first by terminating the threat posed by Castro’s Cuba, and next by overcoming what he publicly claimed to be a dangerous Russian lead in intercontinental missiles—though he knew that such a crisis did not exist). Then he approved the disgraceful (and absurd) invasion of Cuba. And out of that action came a fateful escalation of the terror.

The Kennedy Administration concluded that the failure to topple Castro did not represent a basic flaw in outlook and policy, but was only the result of mistakes in execution. Kennedy further insisted that he had to recover the lost ground to avoid losing power at home, and concluded that he could not retain office through a candid discussion of the need to recognize and adapt to the waning of the American empire. Most of what followed between 1963 and 1971 emerged from that frightening logic.

Thus, for example, the decision to invest great resources (and many lives) in counter-revolutionary warfare. That represented a full acceptance of Winston Churchill’s recommendation for dealing with the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917: strangle the baby at birth. And that outlook led directly to crossing the threshold of major intervention in Vietnam. It may even be, for that matter, that the Kennedy logic and actions played a significant role in causing the Cuban missile crisis. No one outside Russia knows the full story of that grisly moment of terror for all mankind. Perhaps we shall never have the true account. But the standard explanations leave one with the uneasiness that demands further inquiry.

One analysis stresses the causal importance of Kennedy’s weak performance during his encounter with Soviet leader Nikita S. Khrushchev in Vienna. That is supposed to have led Khrushchev to believe that he could overawe the young president in confrontations involving Berlin and Cuba. A more sophisticated interpretation adds that Khrushchev was in serious political trouble at home because of the failure of his domestic programs, and argues that both motives combined to produce the Cuban missile ploy.

Those explanations arise from the skepticism that is ingrained in all serious historians and political scientists: they strongly discount contemporary public explanations of any action offered by the protagonists. There is sound reason for such caution. But there are exceptions. For in times of great crisis, men often speak much of the truth about their thoughts and actions. If we approach the Cuban missile crisis with that awareness, we find a different history that must be considered.

It begins with Cuba and Russia deeply concerned about another invasion, or a projected assassination of top Cuban leaders. It truly makes no difference whether or not such actions were planned (though there is evidence that they were being considered). One acts on what one believes to be reality. Russian leaders are also fearful, knowing full well their inferior nuclear striking power, that Kennedy means to act upon his imperial rhetoric because he knows the United States enjoys a great relative advantage.

The Soviets conclude, in those circumstances, that placing missiles in Cuba offers a way of dealing with both problems. (And, if the strategy succeeds, of gaining resources for domestic programs.) Such weapons say two things: “No second invasion,” and “You must realize that we will use what weapons we have, even if we know we will lose, so give up the idea of a nuclear Pax Americana for the world.” There are many clues, indirect as well as overt, in the published documents and other comments by the protagonists, that support such an analysis of the confrontation. And so, of course, does the openness of the Russian operation in creating the missile sites in Cuba. Perhaps therein lies the key to the mystery—it seems probable that the Russians miscalculated because they assumed that the Kennedy Administration would respond rationally by opening negotiations about all such foreign bases for nuclear weapons.

And there was, it appears, a moment when that was considered the proper course of action. Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara (and perhaps others) pointed out, almost by reflex, that Russian missiles in Cuba did not in any way change the existing balance of nuclear power. There was a corner, a turning point in history, which was recognized, and yet no one moved the wheel. Instead, Kennedy alerted all Americans to the possibility of being ready to die for their traditional policies. And therein lies the final question about the crisis. No one has offered a convincing explanation of why the Kennedy Administration declined, at least initially, to deal with the issue in private discussions.

And therein more terror. For the elite refused, even after the event, to explain and accept responsibility for its actions. One thinks of the anchor on a battleship: once it begins running free into the sea there is nothing one can do until it hits bottom. And so it was with American foreign policy. From “victory” over Khrushchev—he did withdraw the missiles—Kennedy moved on to take a crucial step in Vietnam. The trail was there, blazed by Truman and kept open by Dulles, but Kennedy committed a significant number of American troops to a situation in which they would be exposed to enemy action. That was the fateful decision. Then he acted, through involvement in a coup that ended in the murder of President Ngo Dinh Diem, to make sure that the South Vietnamese government self-determined itself according to America’s conception of America’s self-interest.

Thus all the elements of the terror inherent in the tragedy of American diplomacy had appeared before Kennedy was assassinated. First, the elitism that led to life-and-death decisions being made by a tiny group of leaders without any pretence of engaging in debate about actions that involved military operations. Second, the passivity and even indifference of most elected representatives. Third, the loss of the capacity to think critically about reality, and about individual actions. And, finally, the application of traditional attitudes and analyses in a situation that called for a drastically different approach.

The murder of Kennedy, an act that dramatized the terror and the related rush toward disaster, jarred many Americans into a greater awareness of their predicament than they had exhibited since the end of World War II. It served to heighten their recognition of the weaknesses of domestic society, as well as to arouse their concern about the consequences of a foreign policy that stressed counter-revolutionary interventions around the globe. The election campaign of 1964 was marked, in consequence, by a general (if also vague) opposition to further involvement in Vietnam. The elite was forced to speak to the issue, and Lyndon Baines Johnson did so with the touch of a master.

Johnson talked peace, but at the same time he unequivocally reasserted the necessity of acting forcefully to honor America’s traditional policies. He was perfectly sincere. He simply did not comprehend the contradiction involved: for him, as for countless others, American policy was peace. There could be no true peace until historic American principles were honored by all.

And so, quite naturally, once again to war to uphold the principle of self-determination, to secure the necessary access to the world marketplace, and to help the poor and the weak.^* And, again quite naturally, to war covertly without any dialogue with the citizenry and without any Congressional declaration of war. Intervention had become a way of life, as President Johnson underscored in April and May 1964 by dispatching more than 20,000 troops to overturn a revolutionary government in Santo Domingo.

Perhaps such terror and disaster were necessary in order to change the tragic course of American diplomacy. Perhaps the American people were too deeply enmeshed in the traditional policy that had become a belief (and hence too easily and too effectively manipulated by an elite that used that same faith as its primary instrument of control) to break free of the dead past until the dead themselves became omnipresent. One would prefer to think not, but that is the way it finally became possible to talk with some measure of hope about the transcendence of the tragedy.

For it was the horrible reality of the ever increasing death and devastation in Vietnam that galvanized growing numbers of Americans to demand an end to the terror. The pulverizing destruction of a tiny nation in the name of self-determination, and the related barbarization of the once proud American Army, were gruesome and shameful ways to learn the nature of disaster. The final terror would come to be if ending the war did not lead to fundamental changes in the American out-look, in American society, and hence in American foreign policy.

* See, for example, the following documents in The Pentagon Papers (New York: The New York Times, 1971): National Security Council Statement (1952), “United States Objectives and Courses of Action With Respect to Southeast Asia,” p. 27; Eisenhower’s Instructions of May 12, 1954, p. 42; Joint Chiefs of Staff Memo on “U.S. Forces in South Vietnam,” May 10, 1961, p. 125; L. B. Johnson, “Mission to Southeast Asia, India, and Pakistan,” May 23, 1961, p. 127; and R. S. McNamara, “South Vietnam,” March 16, 1964, p. 278.