Vietnam and the American Political Tradition: The Politics of Dissent

Description

This volume is intended to demonstrate how opposition to the war in Vietnam, the military-industrial complex, and the national security state crystallized in a variety of different and often divergent political traditions. Indeed, for many of the figures discussed, dissent was a decidedly conservative act in that they felt that the war threatened traditional values, mores, and institutions, even though their definitions of what was sacred differed profoundly. To an extent many of the dissenters treated in this volume were at one time Cold War liberals. During the course of the Vietnam War, they came to see the foreign policy which they were supporting, with its willingness to invoke the democratic ideal and at the same time tolerate dictatorships in the cause of anticommunism, as morally and politically corrupt. Most dissenters increasingly came to perceive cold war liberalism as a radical departure that threatened the fundamental ideals of the republic.

• Survey of political, philosophical, and cultural opposition to the war in Vietnam

 • Contributors include many of the most prominent political and diplomatic historians in the country

 • Describes a fundamental redefinition of America’s role in world affairs as a result of its experience in Vietnam

 

Table of Contents

Introduction Randall B. Woods; 1. Anti-imperialism in US foreign relations Frank Ninkovich; 2. World War II, Congress, and the roots of postwar American foreign policy Randall B. Woods; 3. The progressive dissent: Ernest Gruening and Vietnam Robert D. Johnson; 4. ‘Come home, America’: the story of George McGovern Thomas J. Knock; 5. Congress must draw the line: senator Frank Church and the opposition to the Vietnam War and the imperial presidency David F. Schmitz; 6. Dixie’s Dove: J. William Fulbright, the Vietnam War, and the American South Randall B. Woods; 7. Advice and dissent: Mike Mansfield and the Vietnam War Donald A. Ritchie; 8. The reluctant ‘volunteer’: the origins of Senator Albert A. Gore’s opposition to the Vietnam War Kyle Longley; 9. A delicate balance: John Sherman Cooper and the Republican opposition to the Vietnam War Fredrik Logevall; 10. Friendly fire: Lyndon Johnson and the challenge to containment H. W. Brands; 11. Richard Nixon, Congress and the War in Vietnam, 1969–1974 Robert D. Schulzinger.