Abstract
This chapter examines Morgenthau’s growing opposition to the Vietnam War as part of his broader criticisms of the national security state and the threats it posed to republican constitutional order. In advancing its case for the relevance of Morgenthau’s insights today, the chapter begins by situating several of Morgenthau’s views within contemporary scholarship on the national security state. The next two sections focus on his general critique of American policy in the Vietnam War and the perceived pathologies in the policymaking process. The fourth section shows how Morgenthau’s views converged with Noam Chomsky in several important respects. The fifth section examines his concern over the decline of the ethic of responsibility among policymakers. The final section examines his criticisms of Henry Kissinger’s conduct as statesman.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsNotes
- 1.
- 2.
This neglect is especially noteworthy when one recalls that Harold Lasswell (1937, 1941) had been publishing influential studies analyzing the emerging clash between the ‘civilian state’ and ‘garrison state.’ The fear that the United States might become a garrison state influenced postwar American national security (Hogan 1998: 28–29, 67, 72, 79, 112, 138, 150–151, 289, 335, 351–352, 464, 467). For a compelling monograph seeking to explain how the United States avoided this outcome in institutional and economic terms, see: Friedberg (2000). For a counterview emphasizing how militarization has shaped postwar culture and ideology, see Sherry 1995; Bacevich 2005.
- 3.
Zimmer (2011) has written (by far) the most comprehensive overview of Morgenthau’s role in opposing the Vietnam War.
- 4.
Bacevich (2007) has reached similar conclusions.
- 5.
- 6.
For Morgenthau’s view of Watergate, see Morgenthau 1973b.
- 7.
This formulation is strikingly similar to Arendt’s analysis of Eichmann’s thoughtlessness. See Arendt (2006: 48–49, 52–53).
- 8.
- 9.
Although Arendt makes no reference to George Orwell (1968), her point here shares strong affinities with the argument in his classic 1946 essay.
- 10.
For example, Kissinger (2003: 44) focuses on this point in his comment on Morgenthau’s opposition.
- 11.
See, e.g., Scheuerman (2009: 78–100), Navari, In Defense of the National Interest, in this volume.
- 12.
For a cogent counterpoint, see Smith 1997.
- 13.
Morgenthau (1963) defended Arendt’s controversial study of Eichmann.
- 14.
In his history of postwar policy experts, Bruce Kuklick (2006: 229) concludes, ‘They did their best work in constructing ways of thinking that absolved leadership of liability, deserved or not…the culture paid a pretty penny for the expertise, especially when so many intellectuals disdained a democratic public.’ He does not exclude Morgenthau from this censure but bases his interpretation of his views primarily on his immediate postwar writings.
- 15.
Morgenthau (1974b: 61) makes this relationship explicit in his assessment of Henry Kissinger’s performance in office, observing: ‘That ability to be “lucky” requires a quality of character rather than that of mind or of manipulative finesse. For the statesman, in order to be endowed with that ability, must be capable of separating his ego from his task, subordinating both to objective laws that govern the political universe.’
- 16.
- 17.
For example, historians have found that the patterns of collaboration between academic scholars and the national security state were much more complex than Morgenthau had recognized. These historians have also emphasized that by the late 1960s, many universities had begun to sever formal relationships with government agencies in the face of mounting criticisms from the anti-war movement. As a result, policymakers have come to rely increasingly on in-house social science research or that of private consulting firms. Most of this research is not vetted by academic scholars and is not available to public scrutiny, which raises new questions which have only begun to be investigated (Rohde 2013).
- 18.
In the last public assessment of presidential power in foreign affairs, Morgenthau (1983: 1–35) ignores his entire structural critique in returning to reflect on the timeless factors that shape its exercise in foreign policy.
- 19.
He also ignores Arendt’s contributions to it.
- 20.
‘There is the possibility, of course,’ Mearsheimer (2011: 16) acknowledges, ‘that a person who thinks that he is telling a lie has his facts wrong and is inadvertently telling the truth. The reverse might also be true as well: a person who believes he is telling the truth might have his facts wrong. This problem, however, is irrelevant for my purposes.’
- 21.
References
Ackerman, Bruce. 2010. The Decline and Fall of the American Republic. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Allen, Scott. 2006. Vietnam-Era Aides Cite the Lessons of a U.S. Defeat. Boston Globe, B5, March 12.
Arendt, Hannah. 1972. Lying in Politics. In Crises of the Republic, 3–47. New York: Harcourt Brace.
———. 2003. Home to Roost. In Responsibility and Judgment, ed. Jerome Kohn, 257–275. New York: Schocken Books.
———. 2006. Eichmann in Jerusalem. New York: Penguin Books.
Avalon. Military-Industrial Complex Speech, Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1961. http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/eisenhower001.asp. Accessed 14 Mar 2017.
Bacevich, Andrew J. 2005. The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced by War. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
———. 2007. Elusive Bargain: The Pattern of U.S. Civil-Military Relations since World War II. In The Long Cold War: A New History of National Security Policy since World War II, ed. Andrew J. Bacevich, 207–264. New York: Columbia University Press.
———. 2010. Washington Rules: America’s Path to Permanent War. New York: Metropolitan Books.
Chomsky, Noam. 1969. The Responsibility of Intellectuals. In American Power and the New Mandarins, 323–366. New York: Pantheon Books.
———. 2002. “Containing” the Soviet Union in the Cold War (April 15–16, 1989). In Understanding Power: The Indispensable Chomsky, ed. Peter R. Mitchell and John Schoeffel, 37–41. New York: New Press.
———. 2003. On National Interest (January 28, 1977). In Chomsky on Democracy and Education, ed. C.P. Otero, 147–149. New York: Routledge Falmer.
Ciepley, David. 2006. Liberalism in the Shadow of Totalitarianism. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Craig, Campbell. 2007. Glimmer of a New Leviathan: Total War in the Realism of Niebuhr, Morgenthau, and Waltz. New York: Columbia University Press.
Curley, Tyler M. 2015. Models of Emergency State-Building in the United States. Perspectives on Politics 13 (3): 697–713.
Epp, Roger. 1997. The Limits of Remorse: McNamara, Kissinger and the Ethics of Responsibility. Global Society 11 (1): 45–59.
Fisher, Louis. 2006. In the Name of National Security: Unchecked Presidential Power and the Reynolds Case. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas.
Friedberg, Aaron L. 2000. In the Shadow of the Garrison State: America’s Anti-Statism and Its Cold War Strategy. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Gilbert, Alan. 1999. Must Global Politics Constrain Democracy? Great-Power Realism, Democratic Peace, and Democratic Internationalism. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Gismondi, Mark. 2007. Tragedy, Realism, and Postmodernity: Kulturpessismus in the Theories of Max Weber, E.H. Carr, Hans J. Morgenthau, and Henry Kissinger. Diplomacy & Statecraft 15 (3): 435–464.
Glennon, Michael J. 2015. National Security and Double Government. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Goodwin, Richard N. 1966. Triumph or Tragedy: Reflections on Vietnam. New York: Random House.
Hogan, Michael J. 1998. A Cross of Iron: Harry S. Truman and the Origins of the National Security State, 1945–1954. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Holmes, Stephen. 2009. In Case of Emergency: Misunderstanding Tradeoffs in the War on Terror. California Law Review 97 (2): 301–355.
Horton, Scott. 2015. Lords of Secrecy: The National Security Elite and America’s Stealth Warfare. New York: Perseus Books.
Horwitz, Morton J. 1992. The Transformation of American Law, 1870–1960. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Kissinger, Henry. 1957. A World Restored: Metternich, Castlereagh, and the Problems of Peace, 1812–22. Boston: Houghton Miffin.
———. 2003. A History of America’s Involvement in and Extraction from the Vietnam War. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Klusmeyer, Douglas B. 2009. Beyond Tragedy: Hannah Arendt and Hans Morgenthau on Responsibility, Evil and Political Ethics. International Studies Review 11 (2): 332–351.
———. 2011a. The American Republic, Executive Power and the National Security State: Hannah Arendt’s and Hans Morgenthau’s Critiques of the Vietnam War. Journal of International Political Theory 7 (1): 63–94.
———. 2011b. Contesting Thucydides’ Legacy: Comparing Hannah Arendt and Hans Morgenthau on Imperialism, History, and Theory. International History Review 33 (1): 1–25.
Kornhauser, Anne M. 2015. Debating the American State. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Kuklick, Bruce. 2006. Blind Oracles: Intellectuals and War from Kennan to Kissinger. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Lasswell, Harold D. 1937. Sino-Japanese Crisis: The Garrison State Versus the Civilian State. China Quarterly 11: 643–649.
———. 1941. The Garrison State. American Journal of Sociology 46 (4): 455–468.
Lears, Jackson. 1989. A Matter of Taste: Corporate Cultural Hegemony in a Mass-Consumption Society. In Recasting America: Culture and Politics in the Age of Cold War, ed. Lary May, 38–57. Chicago: Chicago University Press.
Mearsheimer, John J. 2011. Why Leaders Lie: The Truth About Lying in International Politics. New York: Oxford University Press.
Mill, C. Wright. 1956. The Power Elite. New York: Oxford University Press.
Morgenthau, Hans J. 1946. Scientific Man vs. Power Politics. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
———. 1948. Politics Among Nations. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
———. 1951. In Defense of the National Interest. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
———. 1952. Another ‘Great Debate’: The National Interest of the United States. American Political Science Review 46 (4): 961–988.
———. 1955. The Impact of Loyalty-Security Measures on the State Department. Bulletin of Atomic Scientists 11 (4): 134–140.
———. 1956. The Immaturity of Our Asian Policy II: Military Illusions. New Republic 134 (12): 14–16.
———. 1957. The Decline of America II: The Decline of American Government. New Republic 137 (26): 7–11.
———. 1960. The Purpose of American Politics. New York: Alfred A Knopf.
———. 1962a. The Commitments of Political Science. The Decline of Democratic Politics, 36–52. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
———. 1962b. International Relations. In The Restoration of American Politics, 167–175. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
———. 1963. Review of Eichmann in Jerusalem. Chicago Tribune, May 26.
———. 1964. Modern Science and Political Power. Columbia Law Review 64 (8): 1386–1409.
———. 1965. Vietnam and the United States. Washington, DC: Public Affairs Press.
———. 1967. What Ails America? New Republic 157 (18): 17–21.
———. 1969. A New Foreign Policy for the United States. New York: Frederick A. Praeger.
———. 1970a. Prologue. In Truth and Power, 3–9. New York: Praeger Publishers.
———. 1970b. Truth and Power (November, 1966). In Truth and Power, 13–28. New York: Praeger Publishers.
———. 1970c. The Right to Dissent (August 1968). In Truth and Power, 40–44. New York: Praeger Publishers.
———. 1970d. How Totalitarianism Starts: The Domestic Involvement of the C.I.A (March 1967). In Truth and Power: Essays of a Decade, 1960–1970, 51–55. New York: Praeger.
———. 1970e. The Summit of Power (March 1966). In Truth and Power, 163–169. New York: Praeger Publishers.
———. 1970f. Johnson’s Dilemma: The Alternatives in Vietnam (May 1966). In Truth and Power, 398–407. New York: Praeger Publishers.
———. 1970g. Room at the Top (June 23, 1966). In Truth and Power, 407–411. New York: Praeger Publishers.
———. 1970h. The Doctrine of War Without End (November, 1968). In Truth and Power, 416–425. New York: Praeger Publishers.
———. 1972. The Web of Falsehood. The New Leader 55 (24): 15–16.
———. 1973a. Politics Among Nations. 5th ed. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
———. 1973b. Nixon’s Aborted Revolution. New Republic 169 (6): 17–19.
———. 1974a. Power and Powerlessness: Decline in Democratic Government. New Republic 171 (19): 13–18.
———. 1974b. Henry Kissinger, Secretary of State. Encounters 43 (6): 57–61.
———. 1977. Defining the National Interest—Again: Old Superstitions, New Realities. New Republic 176 (4): 50–55.
———. 1983. Constraints on Presidential Leadership in Foreign Policy. In Problems and Prospects of Presidential Leadership in the Nine-Eighties, ed. James Sterling Young, 1–35. Lanham: University of Press of America.
Morgenthau, Hans J., and Noam Chomsky. 1972. National Interest and the Pentagon Papers. Partisan Review 39 (3): 336–375.
Moynihan, Daniel P. 1998. Secrecy: The American Experience. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Navari, Cornelia. 2017. In Defense of the National Interest. In Hans Morgenthau and the American Experience, ed. Cornelia Narvari. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Nelson, Anna Kasten. 2007. The Evolution of the National Security State: Ubiquitous and Endless. In The Long Cold War: A New History of National Security Policy since World War II, ed. Andrew J. Bacevich, 265–301. New York: Columbia University Press.
Noble, David W. 1989. The Reconstruction of Progress: Charles Beard, Richard Hofstadter, and Post-war Historical Thought. In Recasting America: Culture and Politics in the Age of Cold War, ed. Larry May, 61–75. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Novick, Peter. 1988. The Noble Dream: The Objectivity Question and the American Historical Profession. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
NSC 68: United States Objectives and Programs for National Security (April 14, 1950). 1993. In American Cold War Strategy: Interpreting NSC 68, ed. Ernest R. May, 23–82. Boston: Bedford Books.
Olmstead, Kathryn S. 1996. Challenging Secret Government: The Post-Watergate Investigations of the CIA and FBI. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
Orwell, George. 1968. Politics and the English Language. In The Collected Essays, Journalism Letters of George Orwell, Volume IV: In Front of Your Nose, 1945–1950, ed. Sonia Orwell and Ian Angus, 127–140. New York: Harcourt Brace and Jovanovich.
Paget, Karen M. 2015. Patriotic Betrayal. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Pallitto, Robert M., and William G. Weaver. 2007. Presidential Secrecy and the Law. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press.
Pells, Richard H. 1985. The Liberal Mind in a Conservative Age: American Intellectuals in the 1940s and 1950s. New York: Harper & Row.
Posner, Eric A., and Adrian Vermeule. 2010. The Executive Unbound: After the Madisonian Republic. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Purcell, Edward A. 1973. The Crisis of Democratic Theory: Scientific Naturalism & the Problem of Value. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky.
Rafshoon, Ellen Glaser. 2001. A Realist’s Moral Opposition to War: Hans J. Morgenthau and Vietnam. Peace & Change 26 (1): 55–77.
Rohde, Joy. 2013. Armed with Expertise: The Militarization of Social Research During the Cold War. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Rösch, Felix. 2013. Realism as Social Criticism: The Thinking Partnership of Hannah Arendt and Hans Morgenthau. International Politics 50 (6): 815–829.
———. 2015. Power, Knowledge, and Dissent in Morgenthau’s Worldview. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Rosenberg, Emily S. 1993. The Cold War and the Discourse of National Security. Diplomatic History 17 (2): 277–284.
Rosenfeld, Seth. 2012. Subversives: The FBI’s War on Student Radicals and Reagan’s Rise to Power. New York: Faux, Strauss and Giroux.
Rudalevige, Andrew. 2005. The New Imperial Presidency. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Scheuerman, William E. 2009. Morgenthau: Realism and Beyond. Malden: Polity Press.
Schlesinger, Arthur M., Jr. 1973. The Imperial Presidency. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
Schrecker, Ellen. 2008. ‘Mere Shadows’: Security v. Liberty: The Early Cold War. In Conflicts Between Civil Liberties and National Security in American History, ed. Daniel Farber, 67–94. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.
See, Jennifer W. 2001. A Prophet Without Honor: Hans Morgenthau and the War in Vietnam, 1955–1965. Pacific Historical Review 70 (3): 419–448.
Shane, Peter M. 2009. Madison’s Nightmare: How Executive Power Threatens American Democracy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Sherry, Michael S. 1995. In the Shadow of War: The United States since 1930s. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Silverstein, Gordon. 1997. Imbalance of Powers: Constitutional Interpretation and the Making of American Foreign Policy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Skowronek, Stephen. 2009. The Conservative Insurgency and Presidential Power: A Developmental Perspective on the Unitary Executive. Harvard Law Review 122 (8): 2070–2103.
———. 2011. The Imperial Presidency Thesis Revisited: George W. Bush at the Point of No Return. In Presidential Leadership in Political Time, 2nd ed., 150–166. Lawrence: University of Kansas Press.
Smith, Michael Joseph. 1986. Realist Thought from Weber to Kissinger. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press.
Smith, Rogers M. 1997. Civic Ideals: Conflicting Visions of Citizenship in U.S. History. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Stone, Geoffrey R. 2004. Perilous Times: Free Speech in Wartime. New York: W.W. Norton.
———. 2008. The Vietnam War: Spying on Americans. In Conflicts Between Civil Liberties and National Security in American History, ed. Daniel Farber, 95–114. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.
Stuart, Douglas T. 2008. Creating the National Security State: A History of the Law that Transformed America. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Tatalovich, Raymond, and Thomas S. Engeman, eds. 2003. The Presidency and Political Science: Two Hundred Years of Constitutional Debate. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Thucydides. 1998. The Peloponnesian War. Trans. Walter Blanco, ed. Walter Blanco and Jennifer Tolbert Roberts. New York: W.W. Norton & Company.
Tomes, Robert R. 1998. Apocalypse Then: American Intellectuals and the Vietnam War, 1954–1975. New York: New York University Press.
Villa, Dana. 2008. Public Liberty. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Wall, Wendy L. 2008. Inventing the “American Way”: The Politics of Consensus from the New Deal to the Civil Rights Movement. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Warner, Daniel. 1991. An Ethic of Responsibility in International Relations. Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers.
Weiner, Tim. 2012. Enemies: A History of the FBI. New York: Random House.
Wolfe, Audra J. 2015. The Military-Academic-Industrial Complex and the Path Not Taken. In Origins of the National Security State and the Legacy of Harry S. Truman, ed. Mary Ann Heiss and Michael J. Hogan, 143–164. Kirksville: Truman State University Press.
Zambernadi, Lorenzo. 2011. The Impotence of Power: Morgenthau’s Critique of American Intervention in Vietnam. Review of International Studies 37 (3): 1335–1356.
Zimmer, Louis B. 2011. The Vietnam War Debate. Lanham: Lexington Books.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Klusmeyer, D.B. (2018). Vietnam Writings and the National Security State. In: Navari, C. (eds) Hans J. Morgenthau and the American Experience. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-67498-8_6
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-67498-8_6
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-67497-1
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-67498-8
eBook Packages: Political Science and International StudiesPolitical Science and International Studies (R0)