War and Politics Books

Taking a cultural studies approach, Roman shines a bright light on Bishop's life and poems. She argues that Bishop was alienated from aspects of mainstream American culture--its militarism and social injustices. She shows that Bishop was a far more politically-engaged poet than one might think. The interpretation of such poems as "Roosters," "View of the Capitol from the Library of Congress," and "12 O'Clock News" are eye-opening and thought-provoking.

This is now an essential book for anyone interested in the ways Elizabeth Bishop's poems intersect with American cultural and political history.

Also, given our history as well as the challenges we presently face in various parts of the world, it offers us an opportunity to reflect once again on the values we claim to hold as a nation and on how we might live by them in our complex and conflictive world. Likewise, it has relevance for the serious revelations that are still surfacing about our involvement in the civil wars of Guatemala and El Salvador and our former support of the ex-Chilian dictator, Gen. Pinochet.

The author is a retired major general of the US Army. After graduating from West Point, he saw combat experience as a platoon leader and company commander in the Korean War. He is also a graduate of the Army Command and General Staff College and the Army War College. In 1979 he was appointed Chief of Chaplains with the rank of major general. As such he was a member of the staff of the Chief of Staff of the US Army.

His military career enables him to give detailed analyses of conversations with fellow general staff officers and even of discussions in general staff meetings of the Army Chief of Staff. (However, Johnson makes no use of classified materials.) On some substantive issues, he finds many in agreement with him. But even when they are not, he bends over backward to respect and put the best face on their views before criticizing them. Johnson has been writing on military ethical issues since 1969, most in military journals. This is his second book since retiring in the early eighties. His first was "Realism and Hope in a Nuclear Age."

Johnson believes that revolutions will continue to challenge US foreign policy. For, "revolutions are not dead because their root causes [extreme poverty and violent repressions of people on the part of their own governments] still exist."

Nonetheless, his thesis is "that the US need not and should not be involved in revolution." It "SHOULD NOT", because US involvement has invariably resulted in the support of client governments that seriously and deliberately violate the most basic rights of their own people. It "NEED NOT", because such governments do not serve US long-term security interests.

Among the rights often violated by our participation in counterrevolutions, Johnson argues, are the self-evident truths we proclaim and treasure in our "Declaration of Independence", "that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness [and that] "whenever any form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it and to institute new Government...But when a long train of abuses and usurpations...evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government."

The author thoroughly examines the history of US military interventions. He cites, for example, the 1940 "Small Wars Manual" of the Marine Corps which affirms that between 1800 and 1934 the Marines landed 180 times in 34 countries and that they engaged in small wars "during about 85 of the last 100 years" (1840-1940. The Manual then adds "it may be anticipated that the same general procedure will be followed in the future." And so it has been. Johnson demonstrates how this policy has almost inevitably ended up in the support of military and elite classes who violently repress their own people and exacerbate the social and economic root causes of revolution.

The book analyses with remarkable sensitivity and nuance the views of many US civilian and military experts. Johnson finds that various technological, ideological and essentially amoral assmptions lead many to abandon our democratic and human values and to accept any means that may achieve the "successful" results they desire for the US. But John counters that "no US involvement in revolutionary war can be judged successful if the United States sets aside or repudiates its own values."

As examples he cites manuals used in the US Army School of the Americas and with Mobile Training Teams in Latin America. These manuals advocated the use of blackmail, threats, extortion, false arrest and imprisonment, torture and execution in intelligence and counterintelligence operations. He observes that when the School of the Americas was moved from Panama to Georgia in 1984, the then president of Panama described it as "the biggest base of destabilization in Latin America." One of Johnson's suggestions for changing the direction of U.S. policy is the closing of this School.

In a somewhat surprising and very lengthy chapter, Johnson examines US and foreign documents that allege that Christian liberation theology promotes violence, communism, Marxism and socialism. Johnson finds that the author of these documents seem to want to descredit liberation theology in the hope that they can create a counter-theology that favors counterrevolutionary activity.

Thoughout, Johnson supports his analyses by quoting directly from numerous documents and statements of US civilian and miliary leaders. Thus, Johnson's conlusions seem to be not so much interpretations of US policies and practices, but more like statements of what those policies have often been and still are.

However, "Ethics and Counterrevolution" is NOT a polemic against US policy or its military and civilian advocates. Johnson is clearly proud of his military career and loyal to the nation and military institution he served for 35 years. But he firmly believes we should do unto others what we want done to ourselves, not just in the context of individual and interpersonal relationships, but also in the international context.

In brief, "Ethics and Revolution" summons us not only as individuals, but also as a nation, to answer to a higher loyalty -- one that transcends our own nation -- as well as all other particular lands, peoples and nations.

Let's start with the award. I was so impressed with this book that it received one of the ten Golden Candle Awards for most constructive and innovative work in the Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) field. It represents the second book in a body of work that may eventually be worthy of a Nobel Peace Prize. The citation reads:

To Dr. Douglas M. Johnston, president and founder of the International Center for Religion and Diplomacy, for his path-finding efforts with regard to Preventive Diplomacy as well as Religion and Conflict Resolution. Among his many works, two stand out for defining a critical missing element in modern diplomacy: Religion, the Missing Dimension of Statecraft (Oxford University Press, 1994), and Faith-based Diplomacy: Trumping Realpolitik (Oxford University Press, 2003). He has restored the proper meaning of faith qua earnestness instead of faith qua zealotry, and this is a contribution of great importance.

With a foreword by no less than The Honorable Lee H. Hamilton, today a leader of the 9-11 Commission, the book drives a stake in the heart of secular "objective" negotiation and focuses on how faith (not zealotry, but earnest faith) can alter the spiral of violence in such places as Sudan, Kashmir, and the Middle East.

The editor and contributing author has assembled a multi-national and multi-religion cast of experts whose work in the aggregate completely supports the premise of the book: that the 21st Century will be about religion instead of ideology, and that what hopes we might have for reconciling "irreconcilable differences" lie in the balanced integration of religious dialog and conflict prevention, rather than in pre-emptive military action and unilateralist bullying.

I found two core concepts especially relevant to national security: the first is that we need an Office of Religious and Cultural Intelligence within the Central Intelligence Agency, and we need, as the authors suggest, to put religious attaches into every Embassy. The second, and this is a truly core concept, is "The price of freedom is cultural engagement--taking the time to learn how others view the world, to understand what is important to them, and to determine what can realistically be done to help them realize their legitimate aspirations."

This is a brilliant, scholarly, practical, world-changing book. It joins Max Manwaring's various books, but especially "The Search for Security," Joe Nye's earlier books on understanding the world and engaging the world with soft power, and George Soros as well as the several other books on my standard national security reading list. The conclusion of the book lists a number of means by which religion can impact on diplomacy and state-craft, and I for one have become a believer--this book completely altered my perspective on the role of religion as a peacemaker of substance and day-to-day practicality.

Adair took his own life in 1968, after years of struggle with academic culture's emphasis on writing books. His friends and colleagues gathered his best essays and published them in FAME AND THE FOUNDING FATHERS as a memorial to him.

The essays collected in this volume are dazzling explorations in the history of ideas and politics. In the now-classic "The Authorship of the Disputed FEDERALIST PAPERS", Adair not only solved a historical puzzle that had perplexed generations of Americans -- he provided a model of deft historical detective work. Similarly, his two essays on THE FEDERALIST No. 10 -- "The Tenth FEDERALIST Revisited" and "'That Politics May Be Reduced to a Science:' Hume, Madison, and the Tenth FEDERALIST" -- are indispensable to anyone who would understand the FEDERALIST or James Madison. Among the other important essays collected here are Adair's superb brief biography of Madison, his trio of essays exploring knotty puzzles in the life and career of Alexander Hamilton, and his still-controversial essay on Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings -- though this last essay has been exploded by the work of Annette Gordon-Reed in her pathbreaking THOMAS JEFFERSON AND SALLY HEMINGS: AN AMERICAN CONTROVERSY (University Press of Virginia, 1997).

In 1974, when this book first appeared, I had just completed my freshman year of college. I read it eagerly, and it opened my eyes to the value of writing about difficult historical issues in an elegant and accessible way. Anyone who is interested in American history between the 1770s and the 1830s must read this fine book. Anyone who cares about writing about history for a wide general audience will find this book to be a treasured model.

I owe Douglass Adair, who died when I was 12, a debt that I can never repay. I hope that others will read this book and contract similar debts.

-- Richard B. Bernstein, Adjunct Professor of Law, New York Law School

Adair is one of the great tragic figures in the history of American history. He became the editor of the WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY and transformed that musty journal into the leading scholarly journal on American history and culture to 1815. His essays, mostly published there but also in other widely scattered venues, turned the writing of history of the Founding upside down. Not for Adair was stale economic determinism or patriotic hero-worship. Rather, Adair took ideas seriously, and took seriously the idea that human beings shape and are shaped by the ideas that capture their imaginations and move them to action.

Adair took his own life in 1968, after years of struggle with academic culture's emphasis on writing books. His friends and colleagues gathered his best essays and published them in FAME AND THE FOUNDING FATHERS as a memorial to him.

The essays collected in this volume are dazzling explorations in the history of ideas and politics. In the now-classic "The Authorship of the Disputed FEDERALIST PAPERS", Adair not only solved a historical puzzle that had perplexed generations of Americans -- he provided a model of deft historical detective work. Similarly, his two essays on THE FEDERALIST No. 10 -- "The Tenth FEDERALIST Revisited" and "'That Politics May Be Reduced to a Science:' Hume, Madison, and the Tenth FEDERALIST" -- are indispensable to anyone who would understand the FEDERALIST or James Madison. Among the other important essays collected here are Adair's superb brief biography of Madison, his trio of essays exploring knotty puzzles in the life and career of Alexander Hamilton, and his still-controversial essay on Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings -- though this last essay has been exploded by the work of Annette Gordon-Reed in her pathbreaking THOMAS JEFFERSON AND SALLY HEMINGS: AN AMERICAN CONTROVERSY (University Press of Virginia, 1997).

In 1974, when this book first appeared, I had just completed my freshman year of college. I read it eagerly, and it opened my eyes to the value of writing about difficult historical issues in an elegant and accessible way. Anyone who is interested in American history between the 1770s and the 1830s must read this fine book. Anyone who cares about writing about history for a wide general audience will find this book to be a treasured model.

I owe Douglass Adair, who died when I was 12, a debt that I can never repay. I hope that others will read this book and contract similar debts.

-- Richard B. Bernstein, Adjunct Professor of Law, New York Law School

[N.B.: This review was originally written for the paperback edition of this book and submitted to amazon.com on 12 October 1998. It accompanies the Amazon listing for the paperback edition and should also accompany the simultaneously-published hardcover edition from the same publisher. -- RBB]