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The impotence of power: Morgenthau's critique of American intervention in Vietnam

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2011

Abstract

While a superb scholarship on Morgenthau as a political theorist has literally exploded over the past ten years, his analysis of foreign policy has been generally neglected, overlooking the intimate relationship between theory and policy in his practical philosophy. This article presents Morgenthau's public opposition to the Vietnam War by placing it in the broader framework of his theoretical work. In doing so, I illustrate and clarify the meaning of three theses that are at the very centre of his political reflection: the critique to any type of universalistic understanding of world politics; his claim about the intangible roots and social bases of political order; and, finally, the dangers of the ‘military displacement of politics’. Writing about Morgenthau's critique of American intervention in Vietnam today is neither a purely academic exercise, nor a mere historical reconstruction of a great scholar's position on one of the most important military conflicts of the twentieth century. In fact, this article aims to shed light on some intellectual categories which seem to be useful in order to understand current political phenomena, and to criticise philosophies and faulty modes of thought that still enjoy a predominant but unjustified political status.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © British International Studies Association 2010

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References

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59 The principal supporter of this strategy was Walt Rostow, Special Assistant for National Security Affairs, who thought that Hanoi would surrender in order to protect the industrial and transport systems it had heavily invested in, see Schultz, Richard, ‘Breaking the Will of the Enemy during the Vietnam War: The Operationalization of the Cost-Benefit Model of Counterinsurgency Warfare’, Journal of Peace Research, 15:2 (1978), p. 116Google Scholar . For a study of the effects of the air warfare see Clodfelter, Mark, The Limits of Air Power: The American Bombing of North Vietnam (New York: Free Press, 1989)Google Scholar .

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88 Morgenthau, ‘Bernard Johnson's interview with Hans J. Morgenthau’, p. 383. A detailed examination of Morgenthau's CBS debate with McGeorge Bundy can be found in Rafshoon, ‘A Realist's Moral Opposition to War’, pp. 65–7.

89 Morgenthau, Hans, ‘The Case Against Further Involvement’, in Vietnam and the US, pp. 3842Google Scholar ; originally published in the Washington Post (15 March 1964).

90 Morgenthau, ‘Bernard Johnson's interview with Hans J. Morgenthau’, pp. 375–6. In 1966, Walt Rostow replaced Bundy as National Security Advisor. In 1968, as president of the Ford Foundation, Bundy began to call for a gradual de-escalation of the Vietnam War. Morgenthau described Bundy's departure from his previous position with the following sarcastic metaphor: ‘the Vietnam ship is obviously sinking, and in consequence many members of the crew jump overboard and frantically swim to shore, making it appear that either they were never aboard or were only doubting and unwilling mates’, Morgenthau, , ‘The Doctrine of War Without End’, Truth and Power, p. 416Google Scholar .

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99 In 1967 he was still claiming that: ‘Intervene we must where our national interest requires it and where our power gives us a chance to succeed. The choice of these occasions will be determined not by sweeping ideological commitments nor by blind reliance upon American power but by a careful calculation of the interests involved and the power available. If the US applies this standard, it will intervene less and succeed more’, Morgenthau, ‘To Intervene or Not to Intervene’, p. 436. For a different interpretation of Morgenthau's critique, which stresses its moral component, see Rafshoon, ‘A Realist's Moral Opposition to War’, pp. 55–77 and Lebow, , The Tragic Vision of Politics, pp. 240242Google Scholar .

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103 Ibid., p. 73.

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