Part 2 (2/2)

NSC-68 begins with the favorite ploy of many myths, a dualism where innocence and virtue are confronted by unnuanced evil.32 The postwar world is, unqualifiedly, polarized: ”power [has] increasingly gravitated to . . . two centers.”

[While] the fundamental purpose of the U.S. is to a.s.sure the integrity and vitality of our free society, which is founded upon the dignity and worth of the individual . . . the Soviet Union, unlike previous aspirants to hegemony, is animated by a new fanatic faith, ant.i.thetical to our own, and seeks to impose its absolute authority over the rest of the world. Conflict has, therefore, become endemic and is waged, on the part of the Soviet Union, by violent or non-violent methods in accordance with the dictates of expediency. With the development of increasingly terrifying weapons of ma.s.s destruction, every individual faces the ever-present possibility of annihilation should the conflict enter the phase of total war.33 The shape of the power imaginary is dictated not only by the threat posed by the USSR but by the nature of its power dynamic, which is described as ”inescapably militant because it possesses and is possessed by a world-wide revolutionary movement.” It rules by enslaving: ”The system becomes G.o.d and submission to the will of G.o.d becomes submission to the will of the system.”34 Its tactics display ”extraordinary flexibility,” which ”derives from the utterly amoral and opportunistic conduct of Soviet policy” and from the ”secrecy” of its operations.35 At present, its power outstrips that of the United States. Even our advantage in nuclear weapons is temporary. The conclusion is that if a freedom-loving democracy is to survive, it must organize its resources and accept ”the responsibility of world leaders.h.i.+p.”36 This means mustering ”clearly superior overall power in its most inclusive sense.”37 How totalizing a Cold War becomes is suggested in a summary of American strategy: Intensification of affirmative and timely measures and operations by covert means in the fields of economic warfare and political and psychological warfare with a view to fomenting and supporting unrest and revolt in selected strategic satellite countries.38 On occasion the NSC report avowed that the aim of mobilization was limited to ”containment” of Soviet power so as to avoid a shooting war. Given the report's repeated emphasis on the ”dynamic” character of both Soviet and American power, ”containment” served to cloud the main consequence of seeking American global dominance. The United States had adopted the same goals as the Soviets: global supremacy and a regime change by means of subversion. ”We should take dynamic steps to reduce the power and influence of the Kremlin inside the Soviet Union and other areas under its control. . . . In other words, it would be the current Soviet cold war technique used against the Soviet Union.”39 Thus a fanatical, repressive, totalitarian regime sets the standard of power a free society must surpa.s.s if civilization is to be preserved.

At the same time that the report calls for establis.h.i.+ng nuclear superiority and for subverting the Soviet regime, it rea.s.serts American innocence, even antic.i.p.ating April 2003 in Iraq, by repeatedly insisting that our efforts will not hurt the Soviet people, although the doc.u.ment expresses hope that the Soviet people will take the initiative against their government.40 Not least, the new imaginary of global power accompanies an estimate of America's power-its industrial capacity, its nuclear advantage-with a scrutiny of our weaknesses. Some measure of regime change at home will be required to overcome our ”lack of will” and difficulty in pursuing a set purpose.41 ”A large measure of sacrifice and discipline will be demanded of the American people. They will be asked to give up some of the benefits which they have come to a.s.sociate with their freedoms.”42 The demands of ”internal security” include increased taxes, reduced federal spending except for defense, and acceptance of a lower standard of living.43 ”The democratic way” requires a changed civic culture so that citizens are less naive, more discriminating: [In] the search for truth [the individual] knows when he should commit an act of faith; that he distinguish between the necessity for tolerance and the necessity for just suppression. A free society is vulnerable in that it is easy for people to lapse into excesses-the excesses of a permanently open mind wishfully waiting for evidence that evil design may become n.o.ble purpose, the excess of faith becoming prejudice, the excess of tolerance degenerating into indulgence of conspiracy and the excess of suppression when moderate measures are not only more appropriate but more effective.44 The report cautions that a public relations strategy at home must counter ”any adverse psychological effects” of the ”dynamic steps” needed: ”in any announcement of policy and in the character of the measures adopted, emphasis should be given to the essentially defensive character and care should be taken to minimize, so far as possible, unfavorable domestic and foreign reactions.”45

ix

Unquestionably the Soviet Union was a brutal murderous dictators.h.i.+p that sought to expand its influence and power globally by encouraging communist parties in Greece, Western Europe, and Asia, supporting ”satellite regimes” in central Europe, liquidating all opposition at home, and engaging in espionage. There was, then, a significant element of reality to what became the Cold War imaginary.

But why the insistence by American political, economic, and opinion-making elites on declaring a ”war” instead of invoking the notion of, say, ”a Great Power rivalry”? Was it that in combating an evil enemy, ”rivalry” smacked of appeas.e.m.e.nt or, worse, of moral equivalence? Although doubtless there are other possible answers to that question, I would suggest that what attracted decision-makers to choosing ”war” is that Americans of the twentieth century had no direct experience of it and hence were receptive to having warfare imagined for them-and Hollywood happily obliged with ”war movies.” Save for actual combatants sent overseas and economic shortages at home, World War II was unexperienced. After 1945 ”war” was akin to a tabula rasa on which opinion-makers and governmental decision-makers were free to const.i.tute its meaning in terms that pretty much suited their purposes, allowing them to set the character of public debate and to acquire a vastly enlarged range of governmental powers-powers that, when they did not violate the Const.i.tution, deformed it. For almost a half century, from the late 1940s to the early 1990s, war served as the omnipresent background in the imaginary constructed by news- and movie-makers, television producers, and the rhetoric of politicians. The meaning of war was given a plasticity that allowed the new image-makers to set its parameters as they pleased.

”War” also had its effects upon politics, causing a s.h.i.+ft in emphasis from socioeconomic issues to ideological ones where partisans.h.i.+p had far fewer material consequences. During the 1950s the ideological battles were centered on ”loyalty,” ”subversion,” ”communism,” and civil rights. While politics of the decade seemed intense, it was also narrower: socioeconomic problems were subordinated to ideological battles in which anticommunist ideologues did their best to link liberalism, the main force behind socioeconomic reform, with communism.46 Nowhere was this more apparent than when the authors of NSC-68-after first declaring ”that the integrity and vitality of our system is in greater jeopardy than ever before in our history”-then remark: ”Even if there were no Soviet Union we would face the great problem of the free society of reconciling order, security, the need for partic.i.p.ation, with the requirement of freedom. We would face the fact that in a shrinking world the absence of order among nations is becoming less and less tolerable.” We have ”an uneasy equilibrium without order” causing men to doubt ”whether the world will long tolerate this tension without moving toward some kind of order, on somebody's terms.”47 Elsewhere the report acknowledges that at present the Soviets are not planning to actually attack the United States and its allies, although, the authors hasten to add, ”the possibility of such deliberate resort to war cannot be ruled out.”48 In the last a.n.a.lysis the ”fact” of ”the absence of order . . . imposes on us the responsibility of world leaders.h.i.+p.” Even were we to win a ”military victory” over the Soviets, that ”would only partially and perhaps only temporarily affect the fundamental conflict.” There would be ”the resurgence of totalitarian forces and the re-establishment of the Soviet system, or its equivalent. . . . We have no choice but to demonstrate the superiority of the idea of freedom.”49 It was not alone the designation ”war” that mattered but equally its ”cold,” enveloping character. As Hubert Humphrey, Democratic senator and presidential nominee, noted approvingly, ”it is hard to tell . . . where war begins and where it ends.”50 Secretary of State Dulles noted that while ”in the present state of world opinion we could not use an A-bomb, we should make every effort now to dissipate this feeling.”51 Just as terrorism would later become useful to American policy-makers for its ”fear factor,” so during the Cold War the stockpiling of atomic weapons served that same end of normalizing an atmosphere of fear. As then Vice President Nixon explained, ”tactical atomic explosives are now conventional.”52 When the Cold War threatened to become too normal and abstract, deja vu all over again, there would be ”war scares,” including air raid drills during which children practiced protecting themselves from nuclear attacks by huddling under their schoolroom desks.53 Perhaps the most unnerving example of the mentality at work constructing a Cold War power imaginary was the doctrine of ”Mutual a.s.sured Destruction” formulated in the aftermath of the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. Instead of targeting an enemy's military facilities ”each side should target the other's cities” in order to cause the most casualties possible. ”The a.s.sumption behind it,” according to one historian, ”was that if no one could be sure of surviving a nuclear war, there would not be one.”54 If there had been one, incinerated parents could die comforted with the knowledge that, thanks to school desks, their children would have been spared.

x

The development of an extended relations.h.i.+p between the military and the corporate economy began in earnest. National defense was declared inseparable from a strong economy. The fixation upon mobilization and rearmament inspired the gradual disappearance from the national political agenda of the regulation and control of corporations. The defender of the free world needed the power of the globalizing, expanding corporation, not an economy hampered by ”trust-busting.” Moreover, since the enemy was rabidly anticapitalist, every measure that strengthened capitalism was a blow against the enemy. Once the battle lines between communism and the ”free society” were drawn, the economy became untouchable for purposes other than ”strengthening” capitalism. The ultimate merger would be between capitalism and democracy. Once the ident.i.ty and security of democracy were successfully identified with the Cold War and with the methods for waging it, the stage was set for the intimidation of most politics left of right.

Throughout the 1950s there was a steady erosion in the power of various nongovernmental groups and inst.i.tutions. Universities and government initiated what would prove to be an intimate relations.h.i.+p.55 While the political influence of trade unions was strong during the Truman years, a long and seemingly irreversible decline set in even before the Republican victory of 1952. The Taft-Hartley Act (1947) outlawed the closed or union shop. An independent trade union movement, with its disruptive ”weapons” of strike and boycott, was portrayed as a potential threat to the mobilization of America's economic power, especially if, as was frequency alleged, communists had ”penetrated” unions involved in war production.

There was much talk about molding a new type, ”the citizen soldier” who would be a model of discipline, physical fitness, patriotism, and work habits that would carry over and create a more reliable workforce.56 Even before World War II ended, there were repeated efforts to preserve the draft and several attempts to create a system of ”universal military training” (UMT) aimed at requiring all young men, after high school or having reached their eighteenth birthday, to undergo a brief period of military training followed by longer service in the organized reserves or National Guard. The concern was to create a prepared nation, one that would be forever ready and never again caught by surprise. For the first time a totalitarian imaginary emerged, but because traces of the World War II sensibility persisted, critics, especially those in the academy, preferred the euphemism ”garrison state.”57

xi

A crucial element in the imaginary inspired by the Cold War had been absent from the imaginary accompanying World War II. Practically speaking, no significant ideological opposition had developed to a war that began with the j.a.panese attack on Pearl Harbor and with the Germans immediately joining in by declaring war against the United States. There was no internal enemy to fight, no suspected disloyal elements to expose, as there had allegedly been with German Americans during World War I. The glaring exception was the internment of several thousand Americans of j.a.panese descent, most of whom were ”relocated” in Western deserts far from public view. Nationalism and patriotism, rather than ideology, sufficed to control the population and gain its support. Patriotism required no collective self-examination, only the spontaneous response to the simple fact that we had been attacked.58 This changed dramatically with the advent of the Cold War when the power imaginary turned inwards. Communism was depicted as a domestic contagion to be eradicated as well as a foreign threat to be combated. The appearance of a new set of political actors-the FBI, the House Un-American Activities Committee, loyalty and security boards to eliminate the ”disloyal” from government service-marked a new form of governmental power: thought policing to enforce ideological conformity. Disloyalty became a broad-brush category that included communists, alleged communist sympathizers, and those who refused to expose colleagues or acquaintances who were communists. Rouge et noir: ”blacklists” were drawn up by authorities to identify and root out suspected ”reds” and their sympathizers in the entertainment industries, in the media, and among intellectuals. Opposition required unusual courage. For the first time in the nation's history universities became the object of a widespread purge. ”Loyalty oaths” were introduced as a precondition of employment in many state inst.i.tutions of higher learning, while some intellectuals and academics were recruited as government agents to report on the political activities of colleagues.59 The Internal Security Act (1950) established six concentration camps. Police and federal law enforcement authorities undertook the systematic surveillance of suspect political activity. Not surprisingly, h.o.m.os.e.xuals were singled out and were said to be entrenched in the State Department. A 1950 Senate report bore the t.i.tle Employment of h.o.m.os.e.xuals and Other s.e.x Perverts in Government.60 The domestic version of anticommunism was aimed at even larger targets alleged to be connected: social democracy, trade union power, anticapitalist beliefs a.s.sociated with the New Deal, and the political liberalism identified with academia and the media. The targets were (in the language of the times) ”smeared” as being either communist or sympathetic to communism, disloyal, or, at the least, ”soft” on communism. There was much discussion of how educational reform might serve to ”strengthen national security” by instructing the citizenry in the meaning of democracy and the importance of patriotism.61 Certain elements in the domestic side of the Cold War imaginary displayed an uncomfortable similarity to elements of the Soviet regime: purges; loyalty tests; violations of due process; criminalization of a political party for its beliefs rather than its actions; development of an elaborate, largely secretive agency with a global network of spies and a.s.sa.s.sins (CIA), dedicated to subverting regimes deemed unfriendly or uncooperative and installing sympathetic ones. A study group reporting to President Eisenhower urged explicitly that the United States not only follow the Soviet example but seek to surpa.s.s it: We are facing an implacable enemy whose avowed object is world domination by whatever means and at whatever cost. . . . [T]here are no rules in such a game. Hitherto acceptable norms of human conduct do not apply. We must develop effective espionage and counterespionage services and must learn to subvert, sabotage, and destroy our enemies by more clever, more sophisticated, and more effective means than those used against us.62 Thus anticommunism as mimesis: the character of the enemy supplied the norm for the power demands that the democratic defender of the free world chose to impose on itself.

xii

The phenomenon that best captured the transformation of the nation was the pandemic of the 1950s known as McCarthyism. In a short-lived career that began and ended in obscurity, Senator Joseph McCarthy turned anticommunism into a spectacle: thanks to television, a nation watched the drama of disloyalty and betrayal unfolding.

McCarthy was remarkable for a simple but matchless talent: he lied endlessly and spectacularly. No matter how often the lies were brought to light, he plunged on, exposing one after another alleged spy, traitor, red, or pinko, and in the process recklessly damaging or ending careers. His sheer destructiveness did not stop with the charges thrown at obscure officials or hapless academics or Senate colleagues. His accusations of communist or Soviet sympathies extended to cabinet officers and some of the country's most revered icons, including General (later Secretary of State) George Marshall, President Dwight Eisenhower, and the U.S. Army itself. With very few exceptions the media caved in or kowtowed.

The fact that the Soviet regime was dogmatically atheist made it easy for the anticommunist crusade to gain the blessing of the hierarchy of the Catholic Church and its unwavering support. A cardinal and an archbishop attained celebrity status through their fiery sermons and broadcasts in support of McCarthy and denunciation of communism. The pope blessed McCarthy's marriage; even after the senator had died in disgrace, a ”McCarthy Ma.s.s” was celebrated annually at St. Patrick's Cathedral.63 A new messianism and the reaffirmation of a civil religion began to figure in the power imaginary, and it would later register in a wondrous afterglow with which a reputable historian could look back upon the Cold War. He wrote that the triumph of the American vision of ”a society in which universal morality, state morality, and individual morality might all be the same thing” pointed to a superhuman agency at work: ”At which point G.o.d, or at least His agents, intervened to to make that vision an unexpected-and to the Kremlin a profoundly alarming-reality.”64

XIII.

That a political figure as bizarre, crude, and unscrupulous as McCarthy could generate the tidal wave of McCarthyism was no doubt due in part to the support he received from reputable politicians, such as Senator Taft, and from influential intellectuals, such as William Buckley, but it was the Cold War itself that lent resonance to his antics and an inward turn to what seemed primarily a matter of foreign and defense policy. Many of the public officials, trade union leaders, intellectuals, and academics who were villified or purged actually adhered to the social democratic ideals and programs of the New Deal; this suggested that a domestic power struggle was in the making that would redefine American politics for the next half century or more. Put simply: New Deal values of social democracy were effectively purged from the national power imaginary. Notable casualties of that drama were Lyndon Johnson and Hubert Humphrey, both Democrats who believed deeply in social programs but found themselves forced to shoulder a Cold War that had turned hot in Vietnam and left little or no public resources for social spending. The populist surge of the 1930s that had carried over into support for the democratized effort of World War II was reconfigured.

The Cold War effected a radical change in the American political ident.i.ty to accompany the new power imaginary. One of the major themes of Cold War propaganda was that although the American economy far oustripped that of any other nation or combination of nations, Americans would be required to forgo the prospect of substantial and steady improvement in their social, economic, cultural, and political prospects. In confidential discussions public officials pondered how to get ”our people” to recognize ”that the cold war is in fact a real war in which the survival of the free world is at stake.” The effort would require ”sacrifice,” ”unity,” and ”tenacity of purpose.” The meaning of ”sacrifice” was cast in the bureaucratic euphemism of ”significant domestic financial and economic adjustments.”65 Less opaque, one official estimate was that if a nuclear war broke out, it was possible that ten million Americans might die.66 All of the elements aimed at the ”mobilization” of society-from proposals for universal military training to the inst.i.tutionalization of a huge defense economy that represented a business version of a New Deal; from loyalty purges and red scares to government-sponsored propaganda to promote political orthodoxy (”Freedom Trains” displaying the artifacts ill.u.s.trative of the saga of freedom in America)-spelled the transformation of popular partic.i.p.ation, from New Deal experiments in partic.i.p.atory democracy to a populism exchanging socioeconomic power for loyal conformism, hope for fear.67 Two crucial consequences of the Cold War upon domestic politics contributed major elements to the power imaginary evolving from the conflict. One was the shrinking place occupied by politics and the enlargement of state power. The growing dominance of foreign policy and military strategy altered the scope and status of public partic.i.p.ation. Public officials, experts, and pundits were quick to declare these to be privileged subjects where partisan politics should defer to national unity and experts should decide among themselves. The second development was intimately connected with the priority of foreign policy and military preparedness: the emergence and legitimation of elitism, of a political cla.s.s, ”the best and the brightest.” The social science literature of the period was heavy with discussions of elitism, and few questioned its legitimacy.68 That direction was bolstered by the invention of ”voting studies” touted as the social scientific investigation into the behavior of the voter. The electorate was not infrequently portrayed as inattentive to politics, ill-informed, and indifferent-qualities that some academics considered functionally useful.69 The clear implication was that elitism was the antidote to ma.s.s ignorance and essential to victory in the struggle for freedom. Elitism signified a privileged claim to power on the part of those who not only manifested proven intelligence, experience, and sterling character but also, unlike the fantasy-p.r.o.ne ma.s.ses, were ”realists.”70 A whole ideology emerged to legitimate elitism: the ”realists” and ”neoliberals” such as Niebuhr, George Kennan, and Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.

That war was ”cold” only in the sense that the two antagonists did not engage each other in a shooting war. During that era, which lasted until the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1987, the United States fought two very hot wars, first in Korea, then in Vietnam. It suffered a stalemate in one and defeat in the other, both by Soviet proxies. If we add the defeat in Iraq, we might be tempted to redefine superpower as an imaginary of power that emerges from defeat unchastened, more imperious than ever. Nonetheless, with the ”defeat” or collapse of the USSR and the emergence of the United States as the sole standing Superpower, the imaginary constructed after 9/11 perpetuated elements designed during the Cold War. The new imaginary, too, depicted a foe global, without contours or boundaries, shrouded in secrecy. And like the Cold War imaginary, not only would the new form seek imperial dominion; it would turn inwards, applying totalitarian practices, such as sanctioning torture, holding individuals for years without charging them or allowing access to due process, transporting suspects to unknown locations, and conducting warrantless searches into private communications. The system of inverted totalitarianism being formed is not the result of a premeditated plot. It has no Mein Kampf as an inspiration. It is, instead, a set of effects produced by actions or practices undertaken in ignorance of their lasting consequences. This is the achievement of a nation that gave pragmatism, the philosophy of consequences, to the world.

CHAPTER THREE.

Totalitarianism's Inversion, Democracy's Perversion.

I.

By G.o.d, we've killed the Vietnam syndrome once and for all.

-George H. W. Bush (1991).

Our nation stands alone right now in terms of power.

And that is why we have got to be humble.

-Presidential candidate George W. Bush.

Totally united.

-b.u.mper sticker.

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