Campbell, Fred, Welcome to the Lake.

Jeremi, Thank you for Hosting today’s Book Salon.

Greetings from Ithaca. Good to here again.

hello all from sunny Britain

Thanks to Jeremi for his thoughtful intro. Much to discuss here. It’s a judgment call certainly, whether the system worked better during the Cold War than we allow in the book. Jeremi, based on his introduction here and his writings in general, takes a more benign view than we do. But it’s worth noting that we give high marks to US statesmen at various points in the story—including, e.g., FDR in World War II, Kennedy during and after the Missile Crisis, and Reagan in his second term.

Thanks, Fred and Campbell. Great book! Why do you guys think it is safe to say that America was “objectively” safe after 1949?

Fred, Campbell, and Jeremi welcome to FDL this afternoon.

Fred and/or Campbell, I have not had a chance to read your book but did in fact live through (and pay attention to the politics during) the “Cold War.” In fact, I remember “duck and cover” from my grade school days and served in the USAF 10 Dec ’76 to 9 Sept ’82.

My guess (and please correct me if this is off the wall) but the “strong on national security” theme seems to me to go back to the pre-US entry to WWII and before as a response to Neville Chamberlin’s “Peace in our times”

It sure seems like Chamberlin’s name and quotes gets thrown around a lot leading to the “we must be strong” themes

yes, and in a more general sense we endorse Roosevelt’s and Truman’s decision to contain the USSR in Europe. As many have mentioned to us, while our book is certainly ‘revisionist’ in one sense it fundamentally departs from the old revisionist school on this central issue.

Welcome to Firedoglake!

Yes, Campbell, but your book is deeply revisionist in claiming that the sources of continued COld War conflict after 1949 were driven by the US. Correct?

sorry, delayed response. Jeremi you touch on a key point. When we say ‘objectively safe,’ we mean that the US had done all it could, and very effectively at that, to complete the containment strategy that George Kennan and others had developed for Truman earlier. Obviously, nothing was going to protect the US from being hit by a meteor or something, but in the context of the Cold War the US had successfully completed a security strategy.

Well, you’re certainly right the Chamberlain is invoked all the time, including in our foreign policy discourse today! One can speak of an “appeasement complex” in this country, in which negotiations with adversaries have often come to be seen a priori as “another Munich,” or “Chamberlain Redux.” In reality, Chamberlain’s mistake was not in going to Munich, it’s what he did when he got there.

As a technical note, there is a “Reply” button in the lower right hand of each comment. Pressing the Reply will pre-fill the name and comment to which you are replying making it easier for everyone to follow the conversation.

Note: Some browsers do not work properly with the Reply unless you wait for the entire page to finish loading if you have refreshed the browser

That’s not quite what we argue, because we do not seek to provide an account of USSR behaviour during most of the Cold War. Rather, we want to ask why the US perpetuated the politics of insecurity after it had achieved an objective that meant to make the US secure. It’s entirely possible that the US could have acted quite differently and the USSR would have stoked the conflict for its own purposes, but we don’t try to engage with that possibility.

Greetings Fred, Campbell and Jeremi!

To the authors – do you form in the book, or otherwise have opinions about Bill Donovan’s foundation of the OSS turning into the CIA, and the effects of intelligence gathering rightly and wrongly playing into Cold War era strategies, mistakes and fears?

Why should we believe the US had done all that it could in 1949, as the Soviet Union tested its first atomic bomb, continued to expand its conventional forces, and began supporting the spread of pro-SOviet regimes in Asia — especially after Mao’s December 1949 visit to Moscow? Wasn’t it perfectly appropriate for American citizens to believe their government should do more in this context, in 1949?

Some delays on my end too, sorry. Plus it’s a little tricky when you have co-authors on at the same time–and a continent apart! But we’ll get the hang of it soon. Obviously, the Soviets had something to do with the continuation of the CW after 1949-50. But it’s certainly the case, in our argument, that the US had much to do with its perpetuation, and that many powerful entities in the US had a vested interest in its continuation.

Kelly, we don’t deal too much with intelligence in the book, to the dismay of a few colleagues here at Aberystwyth…

Jeremi: as you know we set up our third chapter to deal with Truman’s response to the dramatic events you detail above. None of them undermined the logic of containment, as Kennan himself insisted in 1949 and 1950 before he was eased out of power. One of the major arguments in our book is to show why US leaders found it difficult to maintain containment in the face of the above setbacks.

Well said, Fred. Let’s take your comment a step further. What should the US have done in July 1950? What should Truman have done differently after the Soviet A-bomb test, the successful Chinese Communist Revolution, and the North Korean invasion (and near destruction) of South Korea?

My browser is all of a sudden VERY slow. The OSS-CIA connection is not one we give close attention to in the book, but certainly it’s the case that intelligence gathering proved very important at key points in the Cold War. Overall, though, there’s an interesting and historically important question here: how important was intelligence ultimately in the conduct and resolution of the conflict?

we’re pretty clear on that. we accept the US decision to build the H-Bomb in response to the Soviet atomic test. We suggest that a limited response to the north Korean invasion in order to restore the status quo ante was justifiable. Why did the US go much further?

Take all the time you need. We tend to be a pretty patient lot. :})

well, one possibility is the one pushed by none other than Winston Churchill (hero to many Cold War triumphalists) starting already in 1951, i.e. to enter negotiations with the Soviets for lasting political settlement in Europe. Lippmann too argued for negotiations, and found it inexplicable that it did not seem to be a key part of the containment policy as it evolved. Kennan said likewise. Note that this does not mean throwing up the white flag in 1950, doesn’t mean “giving up.” But there occurred a globalization of the CW after 1949 that was hardly preordained, and that in our view had much to do with domestic political imperatives.

Wow.

Well, for example Henry Kissinger is surely a “vector” so to say in the development of the cold war, particularly given his intelligence and translating role from the near-end of WWII, and then his influence later in Viet Nam and so forth.

He’s not the only player who developed from say ’45 to ’75 and all those folks have political tracks that develop from inside intelligence or diplomatic knowledge. How could they be separate from the topic your book is about?

1) Jeremy’s intro notes that the US apparently had made some aggressive moves in the Korean peninsula prior to the outbreak of the war. Can you flesh this out a bit? Just a few months before the NK invasion of the South, Truman’s SecState had said that the Korean area really wasn’t a geopolitically important region for the US.

2) Ike’s failure to meet with the new Soviet leader after Stalin’s death. Were you able to find out why Ike seemed so bullheadedly determined not to explore a new beginning with the new Moscow leadership, despite just coming off a solid election win over Adlai and being in a politically safe position to do so given his general status, and despite PM Churchill wiring him to strongly advise Ike meet with the new leader and himself and strike while the iron is hot?

Well, Campbell, I do NOT think that part of the book is very clear. You show how the US was involved in provocative action in Korea before June 1950. Then you criticize the US for crossing the 38th Parallel. You do not say very much more about what overall policy should have looked like.

What was a limited response in Korea?
What about Chinese threats to Taiwan? Sending the 7th fleet okay?
What about Vietnam in the context of increased Chinese aid to Ho Chi Minh?
What about fears that Soviet support for aggression in Korea would also trigger the same in Berlin?
What about accurate evidence of the Soviet H-bomb?

Is it reasonable to say Truman should have ignored all of the above? That sounds like a strategic judgment that only looks good (if it does at all) in retrospect.

I’m not quite sure I follow you. Could you restate? Kissinger is a key figure in our book, but that’s very separate from a discussion of “intelligence gathering” per se.

Fair enough.

Many of the folks in WWII OSS activities, as junior type folks, then became major “establishment” players in the unfolding of the cold war. They didn’t necessarily remain in intelligence gathering activities, but as diplomats or policy makers, surely had to have been influenced by their previous associations or sympathies with their early OSS lives.

My point is, isn’t the creation of establishment thinking, by the creation of these establishment players important to how the politics of the cold war plays out?

we touch on various US provocative operations in Korea before June 1950, something covered in much greater depth by Bruce Cumings and William Stueck. Eisenhower almost certainly believed that an overture to the USSR while McCarthy ruled Washington was political insanity, even though as you say he had just won an election handily. Like many presidents he wanted to win two elections.

We certainly don’t argue that Truman should have ignored all of the above; the question concerns the response. Going across the 38th parallel was strategically unwise in the context of the time (and resulted in part from electoral considerations); aiding the French in Vietnam was perceived by many at the time as putting the US on the wrong side of history. Re the Chinese threat to Taiwan, I’m not sure what you mean. As for “only in retrospect,” Kennan and Lippmann would disagree with you. For that matter, why shouldn’t historians use the advantage of hindsight?

Jeremi, could we not turn this question on its head and say did not the Soviet Union do all it could to answer the threats imposed upon it by the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which U.S. documents at the time show were made, in part, to send a message to Moscow?

I look forward to reading your book, Campbell and Fred. Do you touch on the Operation Gladio left-behind armies in Europe and the role they played in the fight over influence, and how the “Cold War” unfolded in terms of U.S. intervention in Greece, Italy and France in the late 1940s?

I haven’t read your book, but I imagine that if Western Europe had been stabilized re going Soviet right after World War II (a real possibility, given that the traditional elites had been hopelessly compromised by their alliance with fascism, and the resistance heavily run by leftists), i.e., by 1949, that one could conceptualize the rest as an aggressive stance of rollback by the West towards the Soviets, with the main conflict being over the speed of such a policy. Do you discuss how the U.S. bankrolled KMT armies in Burma to invade China? Or the use of White Russian and other fascistic elements to try and infiltrate the Soviet Union in the late 1940s and early 1950s?

Jeremi, our book would not have worked had we developed lengthy arguments about what the US should have done during the dozens of pivotal moments of the Cold War. What we try to do is flesh out why the US drifted away from Kennan’s sparse strategy of containment from as dispassionate a position as we can, rather than saying that Truman or Johnson or whoever ‘should have done’ something in response to a particular event.

I want to put another issue on the table. How intentionally manipulative were US presidents. Campbell and Fred say on a number of occasions that the exaggeration of foreign threats was intentional to mobilize people, and serve various interests in the military-industrial complex.

Let’s take one example. Pages 80-81 quote and describe a November 1947 Clark Clifford-James Rowe memo to Truman. The memo allegedly encouraged threat inflation for political purposes. Campbell and Fred write: “It would be necessary to generate Cold War tensions in Washington.”

I want to question the evidence in this case and others. In addition to citing only a secondary source (Mel Small) you do NOT show that the president or his advisors devised an intentional strategy to manipulate and prevaricate. As I see it, the only evidence of intentional manipulation is in the Nixon years.

Why shouldn’t we accept that Presidents were really scared of foreign threats, and they chose “worse case” scenarios because of their fears. Domestic politics encouraged that kind of thinking, but that is actually a reasonable democratic position.

But wasn’t a lot of that due to the actions of MacArthur more than Truman?

I agree, and I like the term “establishment thinking.” I think it’s key, both in the Cold War and today. And when I interviewed McGeorge Bundy not long before his death, he had interesting (and candid) things to say about this, and about how it hampered thinking on Vietnam inside the LBJ administration. Of course, that’s not perhaps what you had in mind!

an interesting counterfactual. I think it entirely likely that if the USSR had quickly overrun all of Europe (Britain?) the US would have returned to a hemispheric strategy.

I don’t know about the aggressive moves by North Korea. Certainly they wanted unification with the South under a communist regime. But many did then, including in the south, where Rhee’s forces with U.S. backing killed 100,000s prior to the invasion from the north. I didn’t make this up, but is info coming out of Truth commissions in South Korea, as documented in a great 2008 AP series on this.

I’ll quote my own article on this at the time, so I don’t have to worry about fair use:

The latest news continues the grisly tale of uncovering mass graves, and unearthing formerly classified documents. The number of leftists, political opponents, and just plain innocent citizens killed at the orders of then South Korean President Syngman Rhee, shortly after North Korean troops invaded the south. The number killed is estimated to be from 100,000 to 200,000 people, many of them lined up above hastily-dug trenches and shot by military police. Some apparently were buried still alive.

There were no charges or trials for these victims. Furthermore, though U.S. officials definitely knew about the killings, and maybe condoned or even ordered some, a number of U.S. military personnel seem to have had foreknowledge of the killings. The full story of U.S. involvement awaits the declassification and study of hundreds of previously classified documents.

The bulk of the evidence thus far shows that while some U.S. commanders on-site had qualms about the killings, General Douglas MacArthur, in charge of U.S. forces there, saw the killings as an “internal matter”. Other officers appeared to approve, at least conditionally.

They argue that, in the wake of the Second World War, defining grave foreign threats and showing muscular toughness to domestic constituents became the recipe for political victory.

I would challenge that. Despite the propaganda efforts of our betters to convince us, the U.S. public, that we suffer from grave dangers from abroad, surveys of what the actual public thinks have shown much less willingness for aggression, much less fear, and much greater willingness to try diplomacy, work within international organizations and favor a much more cooperative, less intrusive on other countries, more ‘humble’ foreign policy.

I think it is the hubris of empire that makes U.S. leaders exert all that destructive power abroad. Because they can. Has nothing to do with domestic politics.

Au contraire, mon frere! Your McBundy example is what I was expecting as a potential outcome.

Establishment thinking, or institutional thinking, often blurs what is really happening beyond the view of said establishment in my opinion.

Jeremi, our statement that ‘it would be necessary to generate CW tensions in Washington’ represents our summary of the Clifford Rowe memorandum’s central argument as we read it. We suggest that it nicely illustrates the kind of political logic that was growing in Washington, and that in turn can explain Truman’s growing hawkishness.

A comment in response to Fred on historical hindsight. Of course we should use subsequent knowledge and insights. Nonetheless, we must be careful not to assume that policy-makers knew what we know now. Of course, the Soviet Union looks less threatening in retrospect. But boy oh boy did it look very monstrous in 1949, in 1957, in 1961, in 1962, in 1979. We need to take that seriously and not condemn policy-makers for fear, panic, and even a little hedging through military strength.

Ah, very good question, Jeremi. The evidence here is of course hard to come by, as politicians are always allergic to admitting this kind of thing, certainly on paper. The Clifford-Rowe memo is very powerful for just this reason–it’s not often that we see it, especially in this period. But I have no doubt that politicians throughout the Cold War exaggerated the threat for political purposes. It’s certainly true of LBJ and Nixon re Vietnam, but it’s true throughout the CW. Free Security did not end at PEarl Harbor, it turns out; to an important degree, it continued to 1989, and to 2010. As we say in our intro: From an early point, leaders had the luxury of blurring the distinction between policy and politics, so that governing became less about the common good and more about achieving partisan and personal goals.

Did you read the original Clifford-Rowe document or just rely on Small? You do not cite the original document. I ask this question because your summary statement is quite strong — quite explosive, in fact. Are you sure that you are reading this document fairly?

right Jeremi, but our point is: why did it look monstrous to Americans in those years, when the US was far far more powerful than the USSR in each of them?

check out Fred’s ‘critique of containment’ in DH

The problem with your view here, Jeremi, is that it will make you sympathetic with all policymakers at all times. George Kennan did not think the Soviets were all that threatening in 1957 or 1979, e.g., that they were not about to invade anyone, and that therefore the shrill alarmism in the United States was both sophomoric and counterproductive. Others felt differently, of course, but the point is that he and many other informed observers held to this view. Why should we dismiss it?

Was the US really more powerful than the USSR?

Who had the larger conventional army in Europe throughout the Cold War?
Who had more allies in Asia in the 1950s and 1960s?
Who had more appeal to the postcolonial states in the 1960s?
Who had the larger nuclear arsenal in the 1970s?

Again, the US only looks more powerful from the safety of a post-Cold War professor’s study. I remember the early 1980s very well. There were serious reasons to fear the growth of the Soviet military, especially in the context of the Afghanistan invasion and the Iranian revolution.

I’ve read the entire memo several times, and I’m confident we represent it fairly. I sure hope so! We should have cited it in the footnote, though, I agree.

we might also point to Kennan in 1949, Eisenhower in 1957, Kennedy in 1963, Kissinger in 1979… these are not fellow travelers.

I personally believe that the US was far more powerful during the entire Cold War, given its exceedingly strong and global alliance system and its vastly superior economy. This was borne out by the rapid collapse of the USSR in the 1980s, larger nuclear arsenal in the 1970s notwithstanding.

Was the US really more powerful than the USSR? Yes. I doubt you’d find many strategic analysts at the time who would have traded the US strategic position for the Soviet one.

I have to comment then run, but the subtitle The Politics of Insecurity” reminds me of a book years ago by Alan Watts, a Zen Methodist (IIRC) priest, who wrote a book called “The Wisdom of Insecurity”. He has much to say about the drive for security, again IIRC.

Would be an interesting re-read.

Thanks for the tip!

For either author, but especially Prof Logevall: Do you have any new insights about why LBJ decided to escalate and reverse his predecessor’s no-combat unit policy in VN — especially after coming off a massive election win where the war hawks — Goldwater, Nixon et al — had their VN positions repudiated by the public. In my view, the moment Johnson took over in Dallas that day, the US was bound to massively intervene, once he got past his own 64 election. This is due to his “Texas Texan’s Alamo” mentality (a descriptive phrase from Mike Mansfield), his seeming obsession with not being the first president to lose a war, Munich, and his track record in Congress of fairly consistently hawkish positions.

In other words, I think even if JFK had left him with 50% more dovish national security advisers with non-intervention attitudes like Ball and Mansfield and his own VP Humphrey, LBJ still would have found a way to send our troops in given his nature and personality and unsophisticated foreign policy mind.

To interpose here, do you authors agree that perhaps our most “unstable” period was the collapse of the old cold war to the new warm war on terror, call it 1991 till 2001?

And isn’t it true that the new warm war is more unstable than the cold war?

Question for Jeremi: You’ve written an important book on Kissinger. Would you agree with our view that Nixon/Kissinger, even more than other US leaders during the Cold War, framed all foreign policy choices in terms of their likely domestic political impact? I find the evidence on this score quite striking, breathtaking.

I disagree, Fred. Most serious strategic analysts in 1957, 1961, and 1979 thought the US was in a position declining security and increasing vulnerability. They also saw distinct strategic advantages for the USSR in Asia, Middle East, Africa. They would not have “traded” with USSR because of the internal nature of the regimes, not because of a necessary US strategic advantage.

Take 1979, for example. As you recognize in the book, US access to oil resources looked far more imperiled than Soviet access. The Soviets had many strategic advantages at the time. Carter’s recognition of that fact was not motivated by domestic pressures primarily, as you argue.

as for the safety of my professor’s study: are you suggesting that we professors should never question the responses of leaders at the time?

Good question, Fred. I agree with 50% of your proposition. Yes, Kissinger looked closely (perhaps obsessively) at domestic political impacts. As I try to show in my book, however, he also had a consistent and coherent strategic vision that drew on experiences and “lessons” of WWII. That was not about domestic politics. It was about personal experience and memory of the last war. That might hasve been Kissinger’s greatest problem in the case of Vietnam — where the conditions were so different.

Some would argue that after WWII, US intelligence became dominated by Nazi sympathizers and this played a role in the anti-communist hysteria that followed.

As an example of Nazi sympathizing, there is Operation Paperclip — where CIA helped shield and relocate ex-Nazi officers, bringing many of them to the US with new identities, and actually giving them jobs at CIA.

No, Campbell. Of course professors should question the judgments of leaders. We all do that. We should, however, take the judgments of leaders seriously and examine the multiple sources of their prejudices and expectations.

We must be careful not to read history backwards. We know the USSR was weak and collapsed. We know Americans overestimated SOviet power at times. That is all clear after 1989.

Many honest leaders at the time did not know that, they had reason not to know that, and we should take their strategic judgments seriously. Domestic politics mattered, but they were one of many inputs on strategy.

I think you’re right to point to the 1964 election and its importance. Goldwater’s hawkishness on Vietnam was completely and utterly repudiated during the campaign, yet here we find LBJ in the months thereafter escalating the war in much the way Goldwater advocated. Privately, meanwhile, LBJ is telling aides that the outcome in Vietnam doesn’t really matter. So why does he do it? It’s complicated, of course, and it must be said that he was dealt a bad hand by his predecessors, and that his advisers bear partial responsibility. His advisory system did not work well. I tend to agree with you that it has much to do with who he was, and with his perceived domestic political needs. I’d put geopolitical considerations much further down in the causal hierarchy. As you suggest, he was the biggest hawk in his administration, from Nov 23, 1963 to the end.

I would agree yes that the post cold-war era is less stable in many respects, but also more peaceful at the interstate level, which may be a unique international situation.

Can you elaborate on that?

Well said, Kelly. Campbell and Fred argue that there are strong “continuities” between the American threat exaggeration of the Cold War and the post-Cold War? Do others agree?

yes. We simply argue that domestic politics mattered -more- in the US and that many leaders at the time, while perhaps ‘honest,’ would have not have been politicians had they failed to be influenced by this. Truman in my view is a perfect example.

Yeah, the voters were just clamoring & demonstrating in the streets for Truman to nuke the Japs. /s

Privately, meanwhile, LBJ is telling aides that the outcome in Vietnam doesn’t really matter. So why does he do it? It’s complicated, of course

Not all that complicated. LBJ had been taking payoffs from defense contractors since he arrived in Washington. That’s why he wanted the Vietnam war. Simple corruption.

in deference to the chat rules I would rather avoid getting into a big discussion about contemporary international politics. we do show in our conclusion though how much of the war on terror rhetoric uncannily resembles alarmist rhetoric during especially the late Cold War.

no, Truman after 1949.

Let’s devote some of our remaining time to the second half of the Cold War — very well covered in the book.

2 questions:
1. If Nixon and Kissinger were driven by domestic pressures above all, why did they expand the war into Cambodia? That was a political disaster — opposed by even some of the most extreme hawks.

2. If Reagan was driven by domestic pressures above all, why did he abandon his own hardline with Gorbachev in Reykjavik? You point to Reagan’s anti-nuclear sentiment in the book. Is that evidence of strategic judgment that trumped domestic politics? Problem for your thesis?

late to the thread, I hope I am not redundant;

Why did Americans consistently overreach?

the answer is simple, it’s power over the masses, you need to keep fear among the masses to control them

this is why there is a military complex, it’s why there are religous zealouts, it’s why there is ever war

when the masses won’t put up with the loss of life and treasure associated with grand war they substitute other wars that cannot be won, the war on drugs, the war on terror, etc

Question for everyone, in response to Jeremi in 64: would people agree that Obama’s recent decision to expand US involvement in Adghanistan is hard to comprehend in geostrategic terms, but makes much more sense when one thinks also about this domestic political needs and calculations, re his legislative agenda as well as the 2010 and 2012 elections? We won’t find evidence for this in the documents–for the reason I noted above–but that doesn’t mean it ain’t there. We touched on this in the discussion of Julian Zelizer’s book a few weeks back, but I’m curious to know what people think.

Then see my 37, which no one responded to.

Re Campbell in 68: here’s the proof that we can disagree! Bring on the contemporary politics! :)

answering #2. Yes. Strategic judgement did trump politics here, as it did for Eisenhower in the late 1950s and maybe also Obama right now. Nuclear weapons sometimes had that effect. Our thesis is that domestic politics mattered a lot in the making of US Cold War policy, more than most have acknowledged, not that it was the only thing.

I think this is probably right. But what matters in not what the polls say, it’s what politicians think will work on the day. Look how far Kucinich or Ron Paul got in 2008.

Okay, Campbell. Why are Republican presidents who believe in military strength able to escape what you describe as the usual pressures of domestic politics? Why were Eisenhower and Reagan able to emphasize strategy over domestic politics, as you admit?

Powerful point in 37. I agree with you, to a degree. But political candidates learned early on in the CW that the safest posture in electoral terms was to be tough, to preach vigilance, to not allow yourself to be hammered from the right, to always use “appeasement” as a pejorative. The operating principle is: Why take the chance of preaching conciliation? So there’s no necessary contradiction here. And I would argue it ultimately has a lot to do with party politics and careerism–not everything, but a lot.

Which brings me back to my “manufacturing establishment politics” point.

Isn’t it the point for the “professionals” to have some sort of existential threat, or risk their very professional-ness?

I think you’re incorrect as to Reagan.

Reagan managed to introduce the cognitive dissonance that government was the “problem” as regards domestic policy, but the “answer” as regards foreign policy.

Is that true for professional historians too?

I don’t know if it is necessariy due to their being Republican. For Eisenhower, it was the emergence of the nuclear revolution and the importance of preventing Americans from believing that major war could still be won. For Reagan, a lot of it had to do with responding to Gorbachev and scratching his head at the crazies who wanted to turn down Cold War victory on a platter. For both of them it was their second term.

nice

Many seem to think the US has had its best days/years. With so much loss of credibility (Iraq,ex.), would you agree? And what does all the escalation say about Obama?

I think it had something to do with their being Republican. Democrats were (are?) always more vulnerable, or perceived themselves to be. The GOP proved very adept at using the “soft on communism” club.

Great points, Campbell. Your first book makes a gret case for your analysis of Eisenhower.

Do you think presidents are more strategic in their second terms?

We would argue that our thesis in America’s Cold War is pretty helpful in explaining the Iraq War and in Obama’s surprising maintenance of much of Bush II’s foreign policies.

We should discuss the “military industrial complex.”

Fred and Campbell — how powerful is it in American society? Is it monolithic? When is it most significant? Every foreign policy decision? Particular places and issues?

How should we describe the military industrial complex to undergraduates?

I’m an optimist–better days are ahead! For me the escalation (I assume you mean in Afghanistan) says that Obama is a smart and ambitious politician. A top general recently told me that he has great respect for how Obama handled this decision, meeting at least ten times with his advisory team, usually for at least 2-3 hours at a time. He considered all the angles, according to this general, and he’s acutely aware of the obstacles ahead. Of course, that was also true of LBJ in 1965.

I would say that they can be, because domestic political considerations recede. Didn’t happen with Clinton though…

In other words, our US political system is such that it doesn’t function well without a bogeyman.

Pardon me, but this acceptance of such a political condition is utter crap, however true it is.

I think given the opportunity to reject it on a factual basis, most people would. However it’s always thrown up as an emotional factor, and people cannot imagine NOT “defending” their homes or way of life.

This false choice is deleterious at best.

Sounds like we should all sing “When will we ever Learn?” or make some comment about Insanity = doing the same thing over & over….I guess I am wondering if you see anything corrective? Obviously this thesis in practice has cost us terribly.

(sorry–this is reply to Jeremi 88) I’d introduce it to undergraduates by showing how Eisenhower came to make his quite stunning speech. How was it that a departing war hero and two-term Republican president could be moved to issue a a farewell address that in places reads as though it were written by Chomsky?

On page 217 you write: “there was the special burden borne by all Democrats during the Cold War: to demonstrate at all times the proper anti-communist bona fides, to show unyielding toughness and determination…”

Does this mean Democrats are more likely to cave into domestic politics than Republicans? Does that explain Eisenhower and Reagan both breaking the mold, both Republicans?

Should we vote Republican — particularly for second term Republican presidents — if we want real strategic thinking about foreign policy?

I agree on all counts. Deleterious indeed.

Do either of you authors have a view about whether it would have been politically possible for a US president to have undertaken affirmative steps to end the CW well before it finally petered out in 89? Certainly Ike after the 1954 demise of McCarthy and his 56 re-elect was well-positioned to do so. Sadly, he didn’t act courageously or quickly enough to make that happen. And who knows whether the CIA leadership quietly scuttled his Paris talks with NK with that U-2 fiasco exactly at the wrong time. Curious timing for sure.

I think Kennedy was trying to make things happen starting with his vastly improved relationship with Khrushchev post-Missile Crisis, certain moves he was making such as the Test Ban Treaty and the Peace Speech, and quiet overtures to Castro in 1963 using 3d party emissaries, all with the goal of ending the CW by the end of his 2d term. Alas, we know what happened there, and when LBJ came in, all that momentum to end the CW that JFK had just begun ended quietly, and it took Nixon to pick up that baton again.

I am tempted to say yes, until I remember our last Republican president.

I guess I’ve missed something…would you please elaborate on your optimism?

I agree on all counts. Hard to see how the CIA could have manipulated the Soviets to shoot down a U-2 flight though.

More browser problems. Love the concluding question. Looking at historically, i.e. in the Cold War, I would say yes, maybe one should have voted GOP, particularly when it was a re-election.

As we come to the end of this interesting Book Salon,

Campbell, Fred, Thank you for stopping by the Lake and discussing your new book and the Cold War with us.

Jeremi, Thank you very much for Hosting this great Book Salon.

Thanks all.

I graduated in 8th grade as valedictorian, from this little podunk school in Poston, Arizona in 1976. It’s on the Colorado River Indian Tribes reservation.

One of the secrets the school kept as close to the vest as possible, was that it was one of the Japanese Interment sites during WWII. Of course, those secrets are never kept well, but they’re also not widely known.

I saw pictures, and they were just awful. They weren’t Dachau, but they certainly weren’t American, as we’d like to think of ourselves.

We were still doing “duck and cover” exercises at that time there.

And I’ll just say this; what the “professionals” are doing today to instill fear and complicity bugs me way more than back then.

thanks for initiating it Bev. And for the unsurprisingly probing and cogent questions Jeremi

My last question for today: what role should scholars play in foreign policy debates? Should we simply rail against our “deleterious” politics? Should we offer alternatives? Should we try to match the realities of politics and international threats with efforts at selective innovation and creativity?

I agree with you here. I’m especially interested in JFK in the final year of his life, after the CMC. We deal with this at some length in the book. It’s interesting to consider how JFK’s speeches changed in the final months, especially on his swing through Western states in fall 1963. Much more conciliatory vis-a-vis the Soviets, much more willing to ask large questions about the superpower conflict and whether it had to be. And he was very encouraged, btw, by the response of his audience to these speeches, not least the one in Salt Lake City.

Thank you, Bev, Fred, and Campbell. This was a great discussion for a wonderful book!!! I encourage everyone to buy it, read it, and give it to your friends…

Jeremi perhaps we can take up this volatile question another time..

Thanks, Bev, and thanks Jeremi. And thanks to everyone who chimed in. Jeremi’s concluding question is a good one, but as my daughter’s Sweet 16 birthday party is about to begin I’ll be brief: we should do all these things. And we should certainly enter the debate, not stay holed up at all times in the ivory tower–lovely though that place can be.

Thanks again.

Unless you have another engagement or duty, what’s wrong with now?

Yes, Campbell. We need to continue this great conversation in person, with a few beverages…

Thanks so much!

Sorry to all – was just very engaged in the conversation, and sorry to see it end as all good things must.

Another time… !

it’s midnight here in the UK…

cheers Jeremi and I’m sure I’ll see you soon

Oooo, Thanks for your time and conversation…Good Night;)