¹ Adorno, T. W., Frenkel-Brunswick, Else, Levinson, D. J., and Sanford, R. N., The Authoritarian Personality (New York: Harper, 1950)Google Scholar; Christie, R. and Jahoda, Marie, eds., Studies in the Scope and Method of “The Authoritarian Personality” (New York: Free Press, 1954)Google Scholar; Rokeach, Milton, The Open and Closed Mind (New York: Basic Books, 1960)Google Scholar; Bunzel, John H., Anti-Politics in America (New York: Knopf, Inc., 1967)Google Scholar. For a summary, see Brown, Roger, Social Psychology (New York: Free Press, 1965), pp. 542–544 Google ScholarPubMed.

² Owing to this emphasis on recent international politics, works focused on earlier periods—for example, Williams, W. A., American-Russian Relations, 1781-1947 (New York: Rinehart, 1952)Google Scholar; or Williams, W. A., The Roots of the Modern American Empire (New York: Random House, 1969)Google Scholar—receive little attention in this essay.

³ In a private communication Barton Bernstein suggested that some of the authors included in this essay do not merit the label “scholar.” By some definitions (e.g. that scholarship involves original research in primary materials) Professor Bernstein is quite correct, but perhaps one should not apply excessively restrictive criteria to works focused on such recent events as the Cold War. There is also a danger that dismissing a work or an author as “unscholarly” is merely an invidious form of academic one-upmanship by which the reviewer excuses himself from having to deal seriously with some ideas. The reader who feels that my criteria have been too loose in this matter should determine for hitaself whether the basic thesis of my essay would require substantial modification were some of the authors under review dropped from consideration.

This survey has “oversampled” books and under-sampled articles, on the premise that the former represent the more considered views of their authors.

⁴ Beichman, Arnold, Nine Lies About America (New York: Library Press, 1972), pp. 77–99 Google Scholar.

⁵ Orbis, published by the Foreign Policy Research Institute, University of Pennsylvania. In recent years, however, Orbis has opened its pages to a much more representative group of scholars.

⁶ See, for example, Bernstein, Barton J., ed., Toward a New Past (New York: Pantheon, 1968)Google Scholar. For excellent reviews of the revisionist literature on the cold war, see Pachter, Henry, “Revisionist Historians and the Cold War,” Dissent, 15 (Nov.-Dec. 1968), 505–518 Google Scholar; Maier, Charles S., “Revisionism and the Interpretation of Cold War Origins,” Perspectives in American History, 4 (1970), 313–347 Google Scholar; and Tucker, Robert W., The Radical Left and American Foreign Policy (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1971)Google Scholar. Other review articles that came to my attention only after early drafts of this essay were completed include: Richardson, J. L., “Cold War Revisionism: A Critique,” World Politics, 24 (July, 1972), 579–612 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Laqueur, Walter, “Rewriting History,” Commentary, 55 (March, 1973), 53–69 Google Scholar; and Stover, Robert, “Responsibility for the Cold War—A Case Study in Historical Responsibility,” History and Theory, 11 (No. 2, 1972), 145–178 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁷ The term “radical” presents serious difficulties as it means different things to different people, but it seems preferable to such alternatives as “extremist,” which has rather odious connotations. “Radical” is not used here in a pejorative sense. It does indicate that both groups of writers are intensely critical of American liberalism—both as reflected in scholarship and in the conduct of foreign policy—and seek fundamental rather than incremental changes in American society and diplomacy. It does not follow, of course, that all who are dissatisfied with some aspect of the status quo would fall into one of these two groups.

⁸ Kintner, William R. and Kornfeder, Joseph Z., The New Frontier of War: Political Warfare, Present and Future (Chicago: Regnery, 1962), p. 161 Google Scholar. See also, Strausz-Hupé, Robert, Kintner, William R., Dougherty, James E., and Cottrell, Alvin J., Protracted Conflict (New York: Harper, 1959), pp. 10–11 Google Scholar. In a private communication Professor Kintner indicated that his present views are not necessarily the same as those expressed in earlier publications.

⁹ Although liberals are not explicitly charged with treason in this literature, one is left with little doubt that their naiveté and ignorance (or worse) have been instrumental in ensuring Communist successes since 1945. Liberals are linked with pacifists, socialists, and neutralists in a single category. Other authors remind us that liberals “use American power to contrive evanescence of American power,” and the “enemy whose power is growing throughout the globe is also in our midst.” Strausz-Hupé et al., 19–20; Evans, M. Stanton, The Politics of Surrender (New York: Devin-Adair, 1966), pp. 12–13 Google Scholar; and Kintner and Kornfeder, p. 82.

¹⁰ Strausz-Hupé et al, pp. 109, 118. See also Kintner, William R. and Possony, Stefan T., “Strategic Asymmetries,” Orbis, 9 (Spring, 1965), pp. 40–41 Google Scholar.

¹¹ Strausz-Hupé et al., pp. 7–8.

¹² Strausz-Hupé et al., p. 6.

¹³ Kintner and Kornfeder, p. xvi. See also Kintner, William R. and Scott, Harriet Fast, trans, and eds., The Nuclear Revolution in Soviet Military Affairs (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1968), pp. 5, 395 Google Scholar.

¹⁴ Strausz-Hupé et al., p. 67; Niemeyer, Gerhart, Deceitful Peace: A New Look at the Soviet Threat (New Rochelle, N.Y.: Arlington, 1971), p. 133 Google Scholar.

¹⁵ Kolko, Gabriel, The Roots of American Foreign Policy: An Analysis of Power and Purpose (Boston: Beacon, 1969), p. 135 Google Scholar.

“If the United States' foreign policy is set in its historical framework and analyzed in terms of the Marxist theory of imperialism, however, these developments hardly appear obscure and unintelligible, or even of recent origin.” Horowitz, David, Empire and Revolution (New York: Random House, 1969), p. 54 Google Scholar.

¹⁶ “The notion of American leadership's errors or mis-perceptions is reassuring to those who believe the society can be redeemed by abler, superior men. But that species of liberal theory ignores the reasons for the constancy [of American policy] and also the justifications and explanations for action …” Joyce, and Kolko, Gabriel, The Limits of Power: The World and United States Foreign Policy, 1945–1954 (New York: Harper & Row 1972), p. 7 Google Scholar. This point receives a somewhat different emphasis from Gar Alperovitz. “Men make mistakes in deciding issues—but the ‘system’ sets the terms of the issues they decide; and, as we shall ultimately have to conclude, it is the ‘system’ and its traditions which must therefore be challenged.” Cold War Essays (Garden City, New York: Anchor, 1970), p. 91 Google Scholar.

¹⁷ Kolko, p. xvii. See also Kolko and Kolko, pp. 7, 19.

¹⁸ These models are described in Allison, Graham, Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis (Boston: Little Brown, 1971)Google Scholar. Many nonradical scholars also prefer Model I to Models II and III.

¹⁹ “A society's goals, in the last analysis, reflect its objective needs—economic, strategic, and political—in the light of the requirements of its very specific structure of power. Since this power structure in America has existed over many decades in a capitalist form, its demands are the common premises for the application of American power—one that theorists attribute to social consensus and sanction, but which in reality has always reflected the class structure and class needs. With time, such structural imperatives and limits appear to take on independent characteristics, so that whether academics or businessmen administer it, the state invariably responds in nearly identical ways to similar challenges. Apart from the fact that no bureaucrat, however chosen, could rise to a position of responsibility without continuous and proven conformity to norms of conduct and goals defined by the society's economic power structure which is, in the last analysis, the source of national goals, there is little intrinsic significance in the nature of the bureaucratic selection process and administrative elite.” Kolko and Kolko, p. 19.

²⁰ Evans, p. 17. See also pp. 521–522.

²¹ Michael, Franz, “The Stakes in Vietnam,” Orbis, 12 (Spring, 1968), 129 Google Scholar.

²² Possony, Stefan T., “Mao's Strategic Initiative of 1965 and the U.S. Response,” Orbis, 11 (Spring, 1967), 159 Google Scholar.

²³ Kolko and Kolko, p. 8. “That [American] policy and practice has been deliberative and quite consistent because the goals, structure, and requirements of the United States' social system have remained durable throughout the period” (Kolko and Kolko, p. 7).

²⁴ Chomsky, Noam, American Power and the New Mandarins (New York: Pantheon, 1967), p. 311 Google Scholar. Radical left analysts concentrate their fire less on the fully committed supporters of American policy in Vietnam—for example, the radical right theorists whose views are examined in this essay—than on the liberal critics of that policy, such as Arthur Schlesinger and Ronald Steel. See, for example, Chomsky, pp. 207, 220, and 298.

²⁵ Kolko, p. xi-xii. See also Kolko, , The Politics of War: The World and United States Foreign Policy, 1943–1945 (New York: Random House, 1968), p. 625 Google Scholar; and Horowitz, p. 71.

²⁶ “Indeed, even if the Soviet Union had not existed, the condition of the Third World and America's response toward it after 1945 would scarcely have been different—for Washington's goals predated the war and even 1917 itself.” Kolko and Kolko, p. 714. See also, Williams, William Appleman, The Contours of American History (Cleveland: World, 1961)Google Scholar; Oglesby, Carl and Shaull, Richard, Containment and Change (New York: Macmillan, 1967)Google Scholar; and Lens, Sidney, The Forging of the American Empire (New York: Crowell, 1971)Google Scholar.

²⁷ Magdoff, Harry, The Age of Imperialism: The Economics of U.S. Foreign Policy (New York: Monthly Review, 1969), p. 26 Google Scholar.

²⁸ Kintner and Kornfeder, p. 295.

²⁹ Burke, Arleigh, “Power and Peace,” Orbis, 6 (Summer, 1962), 198 Google Scholar. See also, Strausz-Hupé, Robert, Kintner, William R., and Possony, Stefan T., A Forward Strategy for America (New York: Harper, 1961), p. 265 Google Scholar.

³⁰ “The ‘cold war,’ which is really pure political warfare, results from the expansionist techniques which the USSR initiated and with which the United States has been more and more compelled to cope.” Kintner and Kornfeder, p. 1.

“So long as [Communist] totalitarianism survives, so long the danger of total war will persist. It is as simple as that.” Stefan T. Possony, “The Challenge of Soviet Totalitarianism” Orbis, 8 (Winter, 1965), 788 Google Scholar.

³¹ “The contemporary world crisis, in brief, is a by product of United States' response to Third World-change and its own definitions of what it must do to preserve and expand its vital national interests.” Kolko, , Roots, p. 85 Google Scholar. See also Kolko and Kolko, pp. 7, 714.

The cold war is “a calculated response to the global crisis in the capitalist system itself.” Horowitz, p. 71. Emphasis in the original.

³² Waltz, Kenneth, Man, The State, and War (New York: Columbia University Press, 1959)Google Scholar.

³³ Kintner and Kornfeder, p. 82.

³⁴ Strausz-Hupé, et al., Protracted Conflict, p. 19 Google Scholar.

³⁵ Crane, Robert D., “The Cuban Crisis: A Strategic Analysis of American and Soviet Policy,” Orbis, 6 (Winter, 1963), 549 Google Scholar.

³⁶ “It is only in this context [of global revolution] that Soviet-American relations should be placed, and it is here that the limits of the notion of the Cold War become most apparent. For that static concept conditions us not to probe further the real character of the forces of intervention and expansion—and therefore violenœ—in our times. It minimizes the nature and causes of mankind's fate today, leading us to believe that conflict and violence are accidental rather than inevitable consequences of the objectives of American foreign policy and the imperatives it has imposed on movements of social transformation throughout the world.” Kolko and Kolko, pp. 6–7.

Oglesby and Schaull, p. 72, define imperialism as free enterprise applied to international politics.

³⁷ Boulding, Kenneth, Douglas, William O., Jaffa, Harry V., Rossiter, Clinton, Shannon, William V., and Wheeler, Harvey, The U.S. and Revolution (Santa Barbara: Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions, 1961), P. 5 Google Scholar.

³⁸ Evans, p. 16; Strausz-Hupé, et al., Protracted Conflict, p. 143 Google Scholar; and Kintner, William R., Peace and the Strategy Conflict (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1967), p. 11 Google Scholar.

³⁹ Evans, p. 133; Bouscaren, Anthony Trawick, Soviet Foreign Policy: A Pattern of Persistence (New York: Fordham University Press, 1962), p. 4 Google Scholar; cf. Niemeyer, p. 39. For a counterpart of this argument on the left, see Roszak, Theodore R., “The Disease Called Politics,” Seeds of Liberation, ed. Goodman, Paul (New York: Brazilier, 1964)Google Scholar.

⁴⁰ Resnick, Philip, “Canadian Defense Policy and the American Empire,” Critical Issues in Canadian Society, eds. Boydell, Craig L., Grindstaff, Carl F., and Whitehead, Paul C., (Toronto: Holt, 1971), p. 379 Google Scholar. Resnick, p. 388, establishes his credentials as a student of imperialism with his observation that Canada's role in “the American empire” is equal to that of Czechoslovakia vis-à-vis the U.S.S.R.

⁴¹ Kolko and Kolko, pp. 398, 703, and 503.

⁴² Strausz-Hupé, et al., Protracted Conflict, p. 10 Google Scholar.

⁴³ Possony, , “Mao's Strategic Initiative,” p. 171 Google Scholar.

⁴⁴ Goff, Fred and Locker, Michael, “The Violence of Domination: U.S. Power and the Dominican Republic,” in Latin American Radicalism, ed. Horowitz, Irving L., Castro, Josué de, and Gerassi, John (New York: Random House, 1969)Google Scholar. For a useful corrective to this article, see Slater, Jerome, Intervention and Negotiation: The United States and the Dominican Revolution (New York: Harper & Row, 1970)Google Scholar.

⁴⁵ Ahmad, Aijaz, “The United States Responsibility in Bengal,” Canadian Dimension, 8 (Nov. 1971), 17 ff.Google Scholar See also the Canadian left publication, Our Generation.

⁴⁶ Kolko, Roots, p. 49. See also Kolko and Kolko, P. 7.

⁴⁷ See, Kolko, , Politics of War, p. 446 Google Scholar; Horowitz, David, The Free World Colossus (New York: Hill & Wang, 1965)Google Scholar; Alperovitz; Resnick; and Kolko and Kolko, p. 332.

⁴⁸ The protracted conflict school is somewhat less than consistent on this point. It is argued, on the one hand, that the more internal stability Communist societies achieve, the more aggressive their foreign policies. On the other hand, troubles within Communist nations are supposed to spur them into seeking diversionary adventures abroad. Compare Robert Strausz-Hupé, , “The Sino-Soviet Tangle and U.S. Policy,” Orbis, 6 (Spring, 1962), 37 Google Scholar; and Possony, Stefan T., “The Chinese Communist Cauldron,” Orbis, 13 (Fall, 1969), 788 Google Scholar.

⁴⁹ Kintner and Kornfeder, p. 318. American complicity in the defeat of the Nationalist government in China is a standard part of radical right recounting of history. OSS assistance to Mao during World War II, the critical role of the American Communist Party, the machinations of Harry Dexter White and his Communist colleagues in the Treasury Department, and the UNRRA program are described as “indispensable” to Mao's victory. Possony, , “The Chinese Communist Cauldron,” p. 817 Google Scholar; Possony, , A Century of Conflict: Communist Techniques of World Revolution (Chicago: Regnery, 1953), p. 317 Google Scholar; and Kintner and Kornfeder, p. 79. One wonders what role if any, Mao played in the defeat of the Nationalists.

Needless to say, the radical left interpretation of the same events is that America was guilty of intervention in support of the Nationalists. Indeed, Kolko and Kolko assert, p. 549, that American backing of the Kuomintang government was “the major cause of the prolonged civil war.” See also Kolko, , Politics, pp. 611–617 Google Scholar.

⁵⁰ “[R]aw materials guided every aspect of American policy toward the Third World, and the kevstone of the Point Four program from 1950 onward was the accelerated expansion of world raw materials supplies and sources.” Kolko, , Roots, p. 64 Google Scholar. See also, Magdoff; and Kolko and Kolko, p. 8.

For a partial corrective to these arguments, consult Tucker, pp. 121–131; and Waltz, Kenneth N., “The Myth of National Interdependence,” The International Corporation, ed. Kindleberger, Charles P. (Cambridge: M.I.T. Press), 1970 Google Scholar.

⁵¹ Kolko, , Roots, p. xvii Google Scholar. See also, Barnet, Richard J., Roots of War (New York: Atheneum, 1972), p. 337 Google Scholar, and Kolko and Kolko, p. 5.

⁵² Lasch, Christopher, “Introduction” to Alperovitz, p. 15 Google Scholar.

⁵³ Kolko, , Roots, p. 9 Google Scholar. Alperovitz, p. 120, writes of the “situational logic” created by American institutions that “traps Presidents, whatever their personal views, repeatedly into antirevolutionary decisions.” See also, Kolko and Kolko, p. 19.

⁵⁴ American Security Council, USSR vs. USA: The ABM and the Changed Strategic Military Balance (Washington: Acropolis, 1969), p. 30 Google Scholar.

Radicals of the right repeatedly profess a devotion to democratic institutions, but at the same time they propose: limiting criticism of the executive (even with respect to the Watergate scandal, according to Possony), greater responsibility for military experts, creation of “cold war academies,” vastly greater arms spending, and the development of sufficient “political maturity” to stop playing into Communist hands. These steps would seem to represent a reasonably important leap toward a garrison state, if not 1984.

⁵⁵ Strausz-Hupé, et al., Protracted Conflict, p. 123 Google Scholar.

⁵⁶ Ibid., p. 103. As evidence on this point the authors cite an interview with Strausz-Hupé, published in U.S. News and World Report, April 11, 1958 Google Scholar. Writings of the protracted conflict school abound with citations to earlier assertions by the same authors. One has the illusion of documented evidence, but often the citations merely lead to an undocumented assertion which, presumably, gains the status of evidence with the passage of time. Confusing citations may also be found in the works of Gabriel Kolko.

⁵⁷ Kintner, p. 7. Explanations of the arms race by those on the left are scarcely more convincing. One theory is that sometime in 1951 or 1952 Washington triggered the arms race in order to “overload” the Soviet economy, to “delay” its recovery from World War II, and ultimately to force its collapse. Horowitz, , Empire and Revolution, p. 78 Google Scholar. Kolko and Kolko, pp. 508–509, assert that Washington started the arms race with the NSC-68 study in 1950.

⁵⁸ Kolko, , Roots, p. 10 Google Scholar. New Left historians generally take a harsh view of American reform movements, not excluding the muckraker and “Progressive” periods or the New Deal. Some of the literature is effectively summarized in Unger, Irwin, “The ‘New Left’ and American History: Some Recent Trends in United States Historiography,” American Historical Review, 72 (July, 1967), 1237–1263 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁵⁹ Kolko, , Roots, p. 7 Google Scholar. This argument can, of course, sustain more than a single interpretation. It is not incompatible, for example, with the view that the pressures of Soviet imperialism have left American leaders with few options, and that any reasonable person would have resisted the more overt signs of Snviet hostility toward the West. Indeed, radicals of the right would accept Kolko's thesis, arguing that irrespeclive of who has formed the government, leaders in Washington have followed the same policy of appeasing Moscow. The latter interpretation is quite similar to that of Evans.

Given his premise that social background is irrelevant, it is odd that the only systematic evidence in Kolko's work consists of data on the background of American foreign policy elites, showing that they have been recruited from a fairly narrow stratum of society. Roots, p. 18.

⁶⁰ Kolko and Kolko, p. 333. See also, Kolko, , Roots, pp. 15, 12Google Scholar. Williams, W. A., The Contours of American History (Cleveland: World Publishing Co., 1961)Google Scholar, provides an alternative explanation—that all strata of American society have supported imperialism because they believe that all benefit from it.

⁶¹ Kolko and Kolko, pp. 50–51. This quotation refers specifically to the Truman Administration in 1946!

⁶² Ibid., p. 651.

⁶³ Ibid., pp. 4, 31, 56, 477–478. The radical right agrees with this diagnosis of relative capabilities, but uses it to argue that American “waffling” served to invite Communist advances during the immediate postwar period. See, for example, Evans, pp. 522–523.

⁶⁴ “Ultimately, the United States' greatest protection in Europe was the Soviet Union's intentions and capabilities, which post-war history had repeatedly proved were both quite modest.” Kolko and Kolko, p. 670; see also pp. 4, 55, 58, 330, 358, 482, and 694; and Kolko, , Politics, p. 450 Google Scholar.

⁶⁵ Alperovitz, p. 101; Kolko, , Politics, p. 622 Google Scholar; Horowitz, Free World Colossus.

⁶⁶ Oglesby and Shaull, p. 42; Horowitz, , Empire and Revolution, p. 50 Google Scholar; and Kolko and Kolko, pp. 4, 54–58, 482–483.

⁶⁷ Kolko and Kolko, p. 671. “Indeed, to American leaders the value of the Soviet Union was precisely in the carefully contrived appearance of bolshevik ferociousness which they might employ to mobilize Congress and the public to sustain expansive policies for other areas of the world where Russia or its allied parties were docile or irrelevant.” Kolko and Kolko, p. 483.

⁶⁸ “In the Soviet Union, the strategy recommended to the Politburo is made by military professionals and not by a comparable cortege of economists, sociologists, psychiatrists, and comptrollers, the groups that have sought to monopolize strategic thinking in the United States.” Kintner, p. 51. Presumably the protracted conflict group, which has never been reticent about offering strategic advice, falls into another category.

⁶⁹ “In the spring of 1950, NSC-68 revealed that the civilians were far more martial than the generals when containment doctrine was failing to tum the political tide in Asia and sustain military mastery in Europe. The desire also to spend money as a tool of foreign economic policy as well was scarcely comprehensible to the docile military men. But now, galvanized by its own fears and needs, frustrations and ambitions, seeking tools for politically and economically managing Europe and the world, Washington had only to find the excuse [Korea] to embark on that tortured, endless, and infinitely costly and dangerous arms race which terrorizes our civilization.” Kolko and Kolko, pp. 508–509.

⁷⁰ Kolko, , Roots, pp. 27–37 Google Scholar. See also Alperovitz, p. 76.

⁷¹ “The United States, which alone among the great nations was founded upon a rational set of political and legal ideals, must bear the prime responsibility for the creation of such an order … in which the rule of .liberty under law enters into the possession of a great majority of mankind, instead of remaining the exclusive heritage of the Western peoples.” Strausz-Hupé, et al., Protracted Conflict, p. 150 Google Scholar. See also Crane, p. 549; and Burke, p. 203.

⁷² Kolko, , Roots, p. 87 Google Scholar.

⁷³ In his monumental study of modern war, Quincy Wright found that socialist economies “have produced the most warlike states of history.” He goes on to point out that, “States at war have tended to become socialistic, and socialistic states have tended to be at war.” Wright, Quincy, A “Study of War, 2nd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965), pp. 831, 1172 Google Scholar. Whether or not Wright's conclusions also apply to contemporary socialist states, they at least suggest that a simple equation between socialism and peace can scarcely be assumed.

⁷⁴ Kolko, , Roots, p. 58 Google Scholar.

⁷⁵ Thus, Stalin did not enjoy “dooming the Poles or Czechs to servitude.” He did so because “(1) he wanted to secure the Soviet Union from collapse, and (2) because the peculiar configuration of Soviet and Western weaknesses and strengths limited his possibilities to that one course.” Oglesby and Shaull, p. 42. See also Kolko and Kolko, pp. 56, 58.

⁷⁶ Jean-Paul Sartre, quoted in Beichman, , Nine Lies, p. 208 Google Scholar. Herbert Marcuse is another member in good standing of the double-standard school of ethics. See footnote 95 below.

⁷⁷ An exception is Evans, pp. 197–198, 209, who argues that our overestimates of Soviet military strength stem from unverified Russian claims and unjustified Western assumptions.

⁷⁸ See, for example, Possony, , Century, p. 419 Google Scholar.

⁷⁹ Bouscaren, p. 4. The same sentence appears in a number of other books, including Strausz-Hupé et al., Protracted Conflict.

⁸⁰ Protracted Conflict, p. 132; and Niemeyer.

⁸¹ Kolko, , Roots, pp. 137, xviiiGoogle Scholar.

⁸² Possony, , “Mao's Strategic Initiative,” Orbis 11 (Spring, 1967)Google Scholar.

⁸³ “… Vietnam is the most important single embodiment of the power and purposes of American foreign policy since the Second World War. …” Kolko, , Roots, p. 88 Google Scholar. See also Oglesby and Shaull, pp. 112–113.

⁸⁴ “For the United States to fail in Vietnam would be to make the point that even the massive intervention of the most powerful nation in the history of the world was insufficient to stem profoundly popular social and national revolutions throughout the world.” Kolko, , Roots, p. 90 Google Scholar.

⁸⁵ Kolko, , Roots, p. 132 Google Scholar.

⁸⁶ “The defeat of the communist purpose will be our victory; their success will be our defeat. … There is no middle ground between communist takeover and communist defeat.” Michael, , “The Stakes in Vietnam,” p. 122 Google Scholar.

“We cannot be secure until freedom reigns in all of the decisive areas of the globe. Nor can Khrushchev and Mao end their warfare against us until freedom is obliterated from this earth.” Kintner and Kornfeder, p. 348.

⁸⁷ Kintner and Kornfeder, p. 345.

⁸⁸ Strausz-Hupé, et al., Protracted Conflict, p. 5 Google Scholar. “Violence is the focus of bolshevik operational thinking.” Possony, , Century, pp. xvii–xviii Google Scholar.

⁸⁹ Strausz-Hupé, et al., Protracted Conflict, p. 19 Google Scholar.

⁹⁰ Ibid., p. 125; Teller, Edward, “Planning for Peace,” Orbis, 10 (Summer, 1966)Google Scholar; Evans, p. 247; and Crane, p. 549. Teller used this argument to attack the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty of 1963.

⁹¹ Burke, 198. See also, Evans, pp. 522–523, 409; Strausz-Hupé, et al., Protracted Conflict, pp. 17, 48, 89 and 137 Google Scholar; Possony, “Mao's Strategic Initiative.”

⁹² See, for example, writings by Lars Dencik, Martin Jarvad, Ole Jess Olsen, and Herman Schmid. This literature is reviewed in Newcombe, Hanna and Newcombe, Alan G., “Approaches to Peace Research,” Peace Research Reviews, 4 (No. 4, 1972), 1–23 Google Scholar; and Wallace, Michael D., “The Radical Critique of Peace Research: An Exposition and Interpretation,” Peace Research Reviews, 4 (No. 4, 1972), 24–51 Google Scholar. On “the rising mystique of violence on the left,” see American Violence: A Documentary History, ed. Hofstadter, Richard and Wallace, Michael (New York: Macmillan, 1967), pp. 29–43 Google Scholar; and Lowenthal, Richard, “Unreason and Revolution,” Encounter, 23 (Nov. 1969), pp. 22–34 Google Scholar.

⁹³ An especially ill-conceived effort of this type may be found in the recent work of William Eckhardt. His research instruments are well-suited to “discover” that favorable qualities (personal choice, freedom, insight, and conscience) are associated with the radical left, whereas bad ones (“unfreedom” and “inequality”) are attributed to conservatism and positivism. This effort would merely be bad social science were it not for Eckhardt's claim of policy relevance for his findings. Arguing that peace researchers must “rethink” their position on nonviolence, he goes on to assert that we now know those against whom the use of violence is justified. Comments to the Western Region meeting of the Peace Research Society, Vancouver, Canada, February 14, 1972. See also his “Research and Education as Approaches to Peace and Justice,” Peace Research Reviews, 4 (No. 4, 1972), pp. 70–101 Google Scholar.

⁹⁴ The work of Johan Galtung is an important exception in this respect.

⁹⁵ Marcuse, Herbert, Five Lectures: Psychoanalysis, Politics and Utopia (Boston: Beacon, 1970), p. 103 Google Scholar.

⁹⁶ To be more precise, the radical right tends to argue that no activity undertaken by Communist nations can be considered “normal,” owing to the nature of Communist ideology and practice. This line of reasoning underlies the radical right argument against policies that contain any suggestion of détente. See, for example, Strausz-Hupé, et al., Protracted Conflict, p. 119 Google Scholar.

⁹⁷ Possony, , “Mao's Strategic Initiative,” p. 181 Google Scholar.

⁹⁸ For further development of this point, see Tucker, , The Radical Left and American Foreign Policy, pp. 75–82 Google Scholar.

⁹⁹ Kolko and Kolko, pp. 76, 427.

¹⁰⁰ In order to explore these problems in some detail, my comment will focus on just a few works, with special attention to those of the most prolific writer on recent American diplomacy, Gabriel Kolko.

Two historians have criticized their New Left colleagues for being methodologically “reactionary.” Unger, pp. 1241, 1262–63; and Fischer, David Hackett, Historians' Fallacies: Toward a Logic of Historical Thought (New York: Harper and Row, 1970), p. 314 Google Scholar. The former suggests that leftist hostility toward more systemic research methods such as quantification may arise from a fear that “the figures will not bear them out.” Unger, p. 1241. For an analysis of other methodological deficiencies, see Holsti, Ole R., “The Abuse of Statistics: Examples from Studies of American Public Policy” (Center for Advanced Study in The Behavioral Sciences: Mimeo, 1972)Google Scholar.

¹⁰¹ Alperovitz, Gar, Atomic Diplomacy: Hiroshima and Potsdam: The Use of the Atomic Bomb and American Confrontation with Soviet Power (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1965)Google Scholar.

¹⁰² Maddox, Robert James, “Atomic Diplomacy: A Study in Creative Writing,” Journal of American History, 59 (March, 1973), 925–934 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁰³ Consult Tucker, pp. 60–61, for a further discussion of this point.

¹⁰⁴ Kolko, , Roots, p. 65 Google Scholar and elsewhere.

¹⁰⁵ Kolko and Kolko, p. 23. Ellipses in the original. Two of my favorite examples are statements attributed to James F. Byrnes and William L. Clayton, respectively: “Our international policies and our domestic policies are inseparable …;” and “let us admit right off that our objective [in foreign economic policy] has as its background the needs and interests of the people of the United States.” Kolko and Kolko, p. 21. What is most telling about these examples is not that they have been shamelessly torn out of the context of Byrnes' and Clayton's statements, but that a historian could seriously attribute any significance to such meaningless clichés.

¹⁰⁶ Kolko, , Politics, pp. 104–106 Google Scholar. By his wording Kolko suggests that perhaps the Soviets were not guilty. British documents released on July 4, 1972 reveal that during the war London had excellent evidence that the massacre was perpetrated by the Russians rather than the Nazis. For the sake of Allied unity, the British covered up the facts at the time. The number of Poles killed varies according to the source. Kolko reports the figure as 10,000.

¹⁰⁷ Kolko, , Politics, pp. 115–119 Google Scholar. It may seem unfair to attach too much importance to these examples, but the Polish question was important to the development of Anglo-American relations with the U.S.S.R. Britain had entered World War II in honor of its commitment to support Poland against a Nazi attack, and the Polish community in the United States is not a negligible political factor.

More generally, these examples might seem to raise questions about the quality of historiography in the entire study.

¹⁰⁸ Kolko and Kolko.

¹⁰⁹ Ibid., p. 578.

¹¹⁰ Ibid., pp. 575, 599.

¹¹¹ Ibid., p. 39. On the role of American aid to Russia, compare Patterson, Thomas G., “The Abortive American Loan to Russia and the Origins of the Cold War, 1943–1946,” Journal of American History, 56 (June, 1969), 70–92 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Herring, George C. Jr., “Lend-Lease to Russia and the Origins of the Cold War, 1944–1945,” Journal of American History, 56 (June, 1969), 93–114 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹¹² Kolko and Kolko, p. 55.

¹¹³ Ibid., pp. 397–398, 692. Nor did the Soviets or Czech Communists engage in any untoward activities against the other political parties: “For the Soviet Union, the Czech bourgeois parties conveniently committed political suicide.” Needless to say, Jan Masaryk's death is also attributed to suicide. Kolko and Kolko, pp. 396, 398.

On rare occasions the Kolkos seem to criticize the domestic policies of Communist nations as “autocratic and exploitive”; but even this criticism is tempered: “One cannot accuse the Communist of betraying the working class, for such policies and priorities were perfectly consistent with bolshevik ideology.” Kolko and Kolko, p. 401. One might use a similar line of reasoning to excuse Hitler. Liquidation of Jews and the invasion of Russia were perfectly consistent with Nazi ideology.

¹¹⁴ Kolko and Kolko, pp. 585, 670.

¹¹⁵ Ibid., p. 35.

¹¹⁶ Ibid., pp. 35, 490.

¹¹⁷ Ibid., p. 560.

¹¹⁸ Strausz-Hupé, et al., Protracted Conflict, p. 72 Google Scholar. This school places great emphasis on Soviet use of Pavlov and Freud to create psychological disturbances in the West. Strausz-Hupé et al., p. 23, and the Appendix.

¹¹⁹ Possony, , “The Chinese Communist Cauldron,” p. 792 Google Scholar.

¹²⁰ The Evans book is a classic in the art of ad hominem reasoning. On the radical left, the Goff-Locker analysis of the Dominican intervention is equally dependent on “evidence” adduced by this method; see especially p. 281.

¹²¹ Rollins, John W., “The Anti-Imperialist and Twentieth Century American Foreign Policy,” Studies on the Left, 3 (No. 1, 1962), 22 Google Scholar; and Resnick. See also, McCormick, Thomas J., “Commentaries,” Studies on the Left, 3 (No. 1, 1962), pp. 28–33 Google Scholar.

¹²² Resnick; and Kolko and Kolko, p. 570.

¹²³ See, for example, Morgenthau's, Hans J. review of Kolko, , Politics of War, in New York Review of Books, July 10, 1969, p. 10 ff.Google Scholar

¹²⁴ The absence of archival materials has not, however, prevented most American Sovietologists from moving toward much more sophisticated models of Soviet politics. See, for example, Welsh, William, American Images of Soviet Foreign Policy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1971)Google Scholar. For a skillful and imaginative effort to reconstruct the Soviet foreign policy process, see Allison.

¹²⁵ For a further development of this point, see Holsti, K. J., “Retreat from Utopia: International Relations Theory, 1945–1970,” Canadian Journal of Political Science, 4 (June, 1971), 165–177 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and McClelland, Charles A., “On the Fourth Wave: Past and Future in the Study of International Systems,” in The Analysis of International Politics, ed. Rosenau, James N., Davis, Vincent, and East, Maurice (New York: Free Press, 1972), pp. 15–40 Google Scholar.