A Roseate Vision of Global Stability

...As becomes apparent, Rostow deems any essential deviation from U.S...

...Often Rostow is simply inconsistent...

...Greater attention is devoted to the 1961 Bay of Pigs fiasco than to America's tragic decade of involvement in Vietnam...

...Moreover, Rostow concludes with a caveat: "This is not to suggest, however, that mankind is likely soon to achieve and sustain peace, without war to enforce its rules...

...the last three decades are given merely cursory treatment...

...but to imply that the Western powers might have "been able to rescue" Kerensky's republic from Lenin's putsch is to treat history as a piece of clay, to disregard context or causal connections...

...The Soviet Union did not "move into Azerbaijan in 1946...

...That seems, strangely, to bring us back to square one on the question of what kinds of commitments are in America's national security interests...

...There is no weighing of conflicting interpretations, no suggestion that there were any faulty perceptions or policy misjudgments, no presentation of the complexities or dilemmas one associates with scholarly writing on the 19th and 20th centuries...

...Actually, Stalin's acceptance probably would have killed Marshall's baby in its cradle, because Congress would have been far less inclined to appropriate the funds for Western Europe's recovery if the USSR was a designated recipient as well...

...policy from 1776 to 1917, and its adaptation to a world dominated by the European powers...

...Rostow urges reliance on the rule of law and a UN Security Council working harmoniously to maintain international stability...

...Where Wilson is praised for raising "the Concert of Europe from the dead" and infusing it "with new promise," it could be argued that he failed to promote America's national security interests by not exercising the leverage he had over Britain and France to establish the very stability in Europe that supposedly impelled him to take America to war...

...Nor was it the case in 1956 that the United States "publicly sided with the Soviet Union against Britain, France, and Israel...

...He writes, for instance, that in 1945 the Soviet Union, "flushed with victory, its mighty legions intact—had already embarked on an aggressive program of indefinite expansion which was soon to engulf states all around its borders in Europe and in Asia, and to threaten many others far beyond its periphery.' Twenty-odd pages later, he acknowledges that in 1946 Stalin pulled back from northern Iran because "the Soviet Union was in no position for major military adventures...

...foreign policy up to the present, Toward Managed Peace effectively ends with the Cuban missile crisis...

...A chapter on "The Nuclear Dimension" devotes more to the Cuban crisis than to the salt / start negotiations, and there is little guidance on what nuclear weapons mean in a post-Cold War world...

...entered World War I Rostow relies primarily on one source and ignores the rich literature on the bureaucratic, political and personal influences that shaped Woodrow Wilson's behavior...

...The final chapter's brief description of Mikhail S. Gorbachev's reign in the USSR provides no new insights...

...For example, in assessing why the U.S...

...Rostow's central view, expressed in his Preface, is unambiguous and ambitious: "the supreme interest of the United States is the effective functioning of the system of world public order as a system of peace" under the provisions of the United Nations Charter...

...The United States, far from offering the USSR a loan for postwar reconstruction, "lost" the informal request that had been made to Ambassador W. Averell Harriman...

...After World War I we did turn our back on Europe, but in Latin America and the Far East we pursued a policy that was heavily engaged and quasi-imperial...

...Rostow believes Washington's Farewell Address, bidding us to "steer clear of permanent alliances," offered "prudent and realistic" advice to the small and then medium-sized United States...

...Despite its purporting to interpret U.S...

...The case could be made that Wilson's Calvinism ultimately determined his choices and methods, not his understanding of balance of power politics...

...Rostow was often close to the hub of decision making then, yet one would hardly know it...

...In addition, certain inaccuracies, though individually minor, collectively diminish the authoritative-ness of the commentary...

...foreign policy by Eugene V. Rostow, Sterling Professor of Law and Public Affairs Emeritus at Yale University, former Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs in the Lyndon B. Johnson Administration, and Director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency in the early Ronald Reagan years...

...Asked by a friend why the United States could not "live as Switzerland does, peacefully governing itself, and doing business with everybody," the author here "seeks to define the national security interests" we should be prepared to defend...

...An ardent interventionist, the author later laments President Dwight D. Eisenhower's failure in 1954 "to enter the war in French Indochina at a time when France had 500,000 men in the field...

...This is a prescription for Wilsonianism writ large...

...The Monroe Doctrine of December 1823 was an elaboration of Washington's approach, it is noted, not a substitute for balance of power imperatives...

...Further, Tito was more responsible than Stalin for sustaining the civil war in Greece...

...Rostow errs, too, when he says Yugoslavia under Marshal Josip Broz Tito broke away from the Soviet Union...

...it did so in 1942, as part of a wartime agreement with Britain...

...At times Rostow seems disingenuous...

...In looking back, Rostow tends to oversimplify...

...used its assets to pressure the warring parties to agree to a negotiated settlement, the history of the 20th century might have been far different...

...Reviewed by Alvin Z. Rubinstein Professor of political science, University of Pennsylvania This is the first of three projected books on U.S...

...Following his expulsion from the Soviet bloc he needed to effect a reconciliation with the West, and one aspect of that was ending Yugoslavia's support for the Greek Communists...

...He would like the United States to assume "for the indefinite future" the role of preserver of a "reasonably stable balance of power.'' About half of Toward Managed Peace traces the evolution of U.S...

...Indeed, here was a chance to ruminate on the unanticipated consequences of Wilsonian policy...

...Nor does he even consider the possibility that had the U.S...

...Such roseate formulations make us wonder whether we are dealing with the same remembered past and the same understanding of the domestic constraints on any American President of the next decade...

...China, the Middle East, nuclear proliferation, and other key issues of the 1970s and '80s are virtually ignored...

...Implicit in his argument is a readiness to use force in ways that are more reminiscent of John F. Kennedy than Ronald Reagan...

...The Eisenhower guarantee to Southeast Asia Treaty Organization signatories against aggression did not mean that Kennedy "had to honor that commitment in Vietnam a few years later," if only because South Vietnam was not a signatory...

...The Epilogue's equation of Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin's dilemmas and need for Western support with the situation that faced Aleksandr F. Kerensky in the spring and summer of 1917 is an interesting yet unexplored conception...

...Occasionally exaggerations lead to error, as when Rostow writes: "In the grip of its isolationist fantasies, [the United States] refused to join the League of Nations and to participate in world politics...

...The Spanish-American War is defended in contemporary terms: It was a "humanitarian intervention to terminate a long and increasingly cruel civil war in Cuba and a response to a major attack on a United States naval vessel...

...In fact, most of the aid consisted of surplus food, not equipment or expertise for industrial and entrepreneurial development...

...With respect to fostering the advancement of Third World nations, he says "a massive effort was made...

...In his treatment of the Marshall Plan he maintains that the United States did all it could to bring the Soviet Union on board...

...it was excommunicated from the Comin-form on June 28, 1948, for "anti-Party and anti-Soviet views...

...and that if, as Rostow contends, Wilson's conception of the League of Nations was central to his foreign policy, then tragically his inability to compromise, his lack of "political" good sense in dealing with the Senate, undermined the very structure he sought to create...

...policy pursued during the Cold War an "American retreat...

...The final 100 pages, dealing with the post-1945 period, are most disappointing...

...Moscow followed Washington's lead, issuing its nuclear warning—as the book itself correctly observes in another context—only after Eisenhower's position was known and the crisis had ended...

...The offer of Marshall Plan aid was made in June 1947, not 1948...

...He never questions the wisdom of Wilson' s actions...