As I’m spending my retirement years doing what I like best; historical/political/legal/military research, and have virtually done all my life in various forms, formally, and informally, I am constantly coming across interesting materials which if read, give us a more expansive understanding of the present, by informing us of the actual past, not the mythological past. Which may mean reading Regnery books, but only for the purpose of seeing how they engage in creating the myths that Conservatives now pass on to younger generations. I once read them, like James Burnham’s, thinking they contained some valuable “dissident thought” on US foreign policy until all their prognostications fell apart, and I attained an understanding of the “political theory” actually motivating people like Burnham. And his one-time CIA colleagues who founded National Review as what was transparently intended as an “influence” operation, as Frank S. Meyer recognized (and was in favor of it), just like they had done as CIA officers in “cultural warfare” of the time in Europe and Latin America. Now I realize they were writing as Burnham, and his fellow CIA propagandist for Latin America, did, as the most extreme, hard-core, militarists the US has ever produced (but none would call them “fascist”). And with greater knowledge of CIA history, and the importation of Nazi intelligence leaders into that embryonic organization, with aforementioned officers necessarily involved with that, at least as policy, in the support they would give to extreme right-wing countries/leaders/movements, thereafter, it is impossible to avert one’s eyes from how it originated with a heavy “fascist” influence. Consequently, I believe the attached article by Stephen M. Walt from 1989 is valuable for what it says of the times, just before the collapse of the USSR, and before “hubris” overwhelmed the US with the 1st Gulf War. It must be kept in mind that within each “school” of thought described by Walt, there are “sub-schools,” so to speak, or different “departments” as in a college to maintain the analogy, so that there are nuances and overlaps in the “schools,” and not necessarily such sharp divisions. As I’ve no doubt he would agree, so that one can see the value of Richard Falk’s views, for example, while simultaneously sharing some Walt’s/Mearsheimer’s “realism." But not Huntington’s, Burnham’s, and the other “advocates of rollback,” which is what the Conservative Movement they founded in the 1950s was founded upon, while all the time denouncing “Liberals” like Eisenhower and George Kennan, and therefore, William R. Polk, who was actively involved in foreign policy then. And I take my stand, with William R. Polk, against the “loony" advocates of “rollback,” then, and it's equivalent in both parties today. While I always keep in mind the existence of the USSR, having what we were told publicly was such a massive, powerful military, as we were told the same of Iraq, and certainly each made efforts to substantiate that belief, so that I don’t mean to take “beliefs” out of that context. But I share this article for its general value but more specifically for what it says of the “roll-back proponents,” as against their sane critics like Walt here, with an implication in saying it that way. But this footnote puts Burnham in the proper company, and vice versa: 10. The classic statement of the rollback strategy is James Burnham, Containment or Liberation?
An Inquiry into the Aims of United States Foreign Policy (New York: John Day, 1952). For more
recent versions, see Joseph Churba, Soviet Breakout: Strategies to Meet It (Washington, D.C.:
Pergamon-Brassey's, 1988); Irving Kristol, "Foreign Policy in an Age of Ideology," The National
Interest, No. 1 (Fall 1985), pp. 6-15; Charles Krauthammer, "The Poverty of Realism," The New
Republic, February 17, 1986, pp. 14-22; and Norman Podhoretz, The Present Danger (New York:
Simon and Schuster, 1980). With this, p. 23, further explaining Burnham, and necessarily therefore, the “Conservative Movement” as it was founded: "Throughout the Cold War, for example, communist subversion has been seen as an offensive threat that required and justified an expanded U.S. commitment to distant regions.51 Advocates of rollback have also argued that the Soviet empire is vulnerable to subversion, propaganda, and other forms of "political warfare."52 Taking this belief a step further, writers like James Burnham claimed that rollback was necesssary because the United States and the Soviet Union represented antithetical political values whose very existence threatened each other's legitimacy.53 By this logic, both superpowers were vulnerable to ideological subversion, so it was rational for the United States to undermine communist regimes before their subversive efforts could succeed." Unfortunately, Walt was panglossian, not a “realist” in his recommendation’s aspirations, which I would aver is due to failing to recognize the inherent extremism in the “political theory” of the successors to Burnham, et al., particularly in the Republican Party as seen in its constant demand for even more military aggression/spending than the extremists of the Democratic Party could ever get their party to go along with, as evident in Gingrich’s demanding US military expansion under the guise of NATO expansion in the Contract for America in 1994, and right-wing oligarchs funding that “Political/Cognitive warfare” against the US population, as openly called for in RAND Corporation, Heritage Foundation, AEI, events to name a few examples. "Because they do not have entrenched interests to defend, experts outside official circles-in universities, foundations, independent "think tanks" and the media-must take a leading role in this "war of ideas." By participating actively in the debate on U.S. grand strategy, and in particular, by performing rigorous and critical analysis of the assumptions that underlie competing proposals, independent analysts can provide the intellectual ammunition that meaningful reform will require. Without a lively and serious debate, the United States is likely to repeat past errors, postpone the necessary adjustments, or adopt misguided and excessive reforms. But if the debate on grand strategy attains reasonable standards of scholarship and rigor, then U.S. strategy in the 1990s is more likely to be consistent with U.S. interests and better suited to the evolving international system." We know how that turned out, and then exacerbated under Bush II with “you’re either with us or you’re with the terrorists,” very broadly defined, as “Putin’s Puppets” is today. But it was Bush II and the Republicans routinely pulling out of every treaty with Russia that they could, and when Obama got an agreement with Iran, we know what Trump did with that. So “advocates of rollback” is an awkward term so any suggestions of another identifier that could be used to describe a national system with an addiction for war so great that we call it "Perpetual War,” knowing our “addiction” won’t let us quit waging wars of aggression, and supporting outright, self-declared fascists, as always advocated by Burnham/Kendall?
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