A Spirit of Enlightened Public Service, Vividly Portrayed

books:


	• The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made Walter Isaacson, Evan Thomas Simon & Schuster, 1997 - 864 pages average customer review:based on 7 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Wisdom Then

In a 1996 interview with David Gergen on NPR, one of this book's central characters makes a case for, what I will hazard to suggest, is one of the authors' central views;

DAVID GERGEN: Let me ask you this in terms of thinking back over then of that period of American foreign policy in the last forty or fifty years, one of the ironies here is that in an age of information you suggest we have too little wisdom.
GEORGE KENNAN: Yes, I do, and one of the things that bothers me about the computer culture of the present age is that one of the things of which it seems to me we have the least need is further information. What we really need is intelligent guidance in what to do with the information we've got.

Thus The Wise Men becomes a paean to, as the authors' admit at the outset, "the twentieth-century tradition of an informal brain trust of internationalists who first served Woodrow Wilson at Versailles and returned home to found the Council on Foreign Relations, " establishing along the way, "a distinguished network connecting Wall Street, Washington, worthy foundations, and proper clubs." The polemics about where one finds wisdom aside, The Wise Men provides a fascinating and uncompromising study of the evolution of U.S. foreign policy vis-à-vis the Soviet Union from the establishment of formal relations during the Roosevelt administration to Vietnam from the perspective of six of it's most significant players; Dean Acheson, Charles "Chip" Bohlen, Averell Harriman, George Kennan, Robert Lovett and John McCloy with side trips into electoral politics and the Middle East. Although I found the authors' fascination with many of these individuals' membership in Harvard's elite Porcellian and Yale's Skull and Bones clubs a bit off-putting (to say nothing of the not-so-veiled apologia for a certain social elitism . . . call me a populist), it would be difficult to find six more pivotal characters. The arguably lesser stars make significant appearances, most notably the Alsop and Bundy brothers, Clark Clifford, James Forrestal and Paul Nitze. I will even forgive the authors' treatment of one of my heroes', George Kennan's, emotional shortcomings. For those of a certain ideological bent, John Foster Dulles and Dean Rusk are not treated sympathetically. It all rings true notwithstanding and The Wise Men makes an excellent post-war study of U.S. foreign policy particularly as a counterpoint to David Halberstam's "Best and the Brightest" for those too busy or cheap to subscribe to Foreign Affairs.

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A Spirit of Enlightened Public Service, Vividly Portrayed

The phrase "foreign policy Establishment" when used today does not necessarily carry a positive connotation, even for those who believe in the concept and also believe there is such a thing today.

Many who today are upset about the war in Iraq, and that is a whole lot of our fellow citizens (me included), obviously, feel let down by the various foreign policy pundits who in the runup to the Iraq war, with very few exceptions, failed to ask the hard questions that desperately needed to be asked. The post-9/11 climate was manipulated by the Bush Administration to demonize dissenting voices as unpatriotic instead of embracing the need to ask and obtain valid information in response to the many valid concerns that were expressed.

In the immediate aftermath of World War II a bipartisan consensus quickly formed in support of the conclusion that the Soviet Union if left unchecked formed a serious threat to US security. The view that attracted bipartisan support on how to provide that check on Soviet power was the policy of containment, which sought primarily to halt the further spread of Soviet influence beyond where it stood at the conclusion of the War. A minority, represented by the John Foster Dulles crowd, wanted aggressively to try to roll back Soviet influence in Eastern Europe in particular, and criticized FDR and Truman heavily for opting not to do so.

Decades later, in hindsight and following the collapse of the Soviet Union and its sphere of influence without a war between the USA and the Soviet Union, the containment policy is seen as an overwhelming success, even as some of the proxy wars that were fought, such as Vietnam, US-supported coups in Iran and Chile, and several of the interventions in Central America, were and are seen by some as unnecessary, unwise, and counter-productive on balance considering the blowback they have led to.

Isaacson gives us a rich portrait of a time when there was a bipartisan critical mass in support of major tenets of US foreign policy, seen through the experiences of six key figures who played key roles in the decades following World War II in developing and implementing those policies. On these issues partisan affiliation meant far less than it appears to today, as we flounder in the midst of a lack of a similar critical mass of agreement on how we should interact with the rest of the world.

There is a lively although limited debate going on amongst mostly foreign policy wonks today as to what that US approach should be. In part because of the internet and the blogosphere these discussions are to at least some degree open to interested citizens to listen in on and attempt to participate in. Examples, in the form of three discussions of recently published books by authors Matthew Yglesias, Peter Scoblic, and Fareed Zakaria, may be found at a site I frequent, at: [...]
What I liked best about this book was the way the public spiritedness, hard work and commitment, and talent of the six people Isaacson profiles came through. Included among them were individuals who inherited great wealth, such as Averill Harriman, and others such as Robert Lovett who easily might have acquired far larger fortunes had they viewed government service as a way to help them do that. Instead these people operated with solid internal moral compasses that led them to act with integrity and resist temptations to financial, intellectual and other kinds of corruption that too many today seem unable to resist.

We could really use more of the values Isaacson's six exemplified in evidence today in how many more people with means and talent view public service--as a sacred trust and a way of giving back something to a society that has provided them with remarkable freedoms and opportunities.

To be sure ours is a different world with different opportunities and dangers. Nostalgia for a different era, without inspired "applications" to our day, can be counter-productive if we mis-apply or over-apply what we think we should learn from the past.

But as a profile of a time when the benefit of the doubt seemed more freely bestowed upon fellow citizens, and where the spirit and ideal of enlightened public service seemed more in evidence, I recommend The Wise Men. Although seemingly more difficult to spot in evidence today, these values and ideals have served us well in the past and could do so again today.

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Where are the next Wise Men?

This is "an excellent read",, but it left me wondering why we have had no such minds in government in the last 30 years. It made me look back to our national leaders and great minds from the Founding Fathers through the short-lived Kennedy administration. From 1970 on, the bottom has fallen out. We have become late Rome.

Essential for understanding WWII to Vietnam

All sorts of things no one knows about how decisions were made after WWII that have affected all of us ever since. Well written too.

Will Change Your View of the World

Not only kept me entertained, but completely changed my views on the post WWII era. A must read for anyone remotely interested in history or politics.

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reviews: page 1, 2

A captivating blend of personal biography and public drama, The Wise Men introduces the original best and brightest, leaders whose outsized personalities and actions brought order to postwar chaos: Averell Harriman, the freewheeling diplomat and Roosevelt's special envoy to Churchill and Stalin; Dean Acheson, the secretary of state who was more responsible for the Truman Doctrine than Truman and for the Marshall Plan than General Marshall; George Kennan, self-cast outsider and intellectual darling of the Washington elite; Robert Lovett, assistant secretary of war, undersecretary of state, and secretary of defense throughout the formative years of the Cold War; John McCloy, one of the nation's most influential private citizens; and Charles Bohlen, adroit diplomat and ambassador to the Soviet Union.

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