CHAPTER 11Vietnam Failure and the Non-Western World

The last fifteen years of James Burnham's writing career were dominated by war in Vietnam. In his analysis of the conflict, the geopolitical strategist usually employed themes that by now had been part of his writings for decades, such as the importance of force, power, and will. These had to be exercised, even if it meant using violence. Leaving the region was not an option because this showed passivity. The fate of Western civilization depended on the United States doing what needed to be done.

As the war escalated in the mid-1960s, public sentiment against it waxed, and so too did calls for withdrawal. Walter Lippman, for example, had opposed US intervention in the region since the days of the Eisenhower administration. Demanding a realist perspective, the journalist did not believe that American interests depended on Vietnam. He sought negations and an honorable American exit because the war seemed unwinnable. Burnham responded to these sentiments by writing: “The alleged impossibility of winning the war seems an article of faith rather than of reason; it is merely asserted without evidence or proof. But it is asserted with so much confidence by the Softs as to affect many of those who want to be Hards. Everyone begins to assume that the war could not be won.”¹ Burnham wrote that the Vietnam War was a guerrilla or “irregular” war, but democratic forces had defeated communists in irregular battles quite recently. He provided the examples of Greece, Malaya, the Philippines, Guatemala, and Angola. The hardliner insisted that the Vietnam War could be won.

Burnham proclaimed that US national interests were at stake in Vietnam because the United States had made it so. Using the analogy of a roulette wheel in Monte Carlo, he insists in a National Review article that the spinning wheel has no impact on us, until we placed our chips on it. Once the wheel began to spin with our chips in play, our interests were at stake. And we could not simply stop the wheel to cancel our interests, no matter how foolish our original bet had been. He argues, in the same piece, that “the present conflict in Vietnam has become, by our acts, a major test of our will.”² Either we pass, or we flunk. And flunking would mean suffering “a staggering defeat with immense, inescapable and cumulative global repercussions precisely because it would prove that our will was weaker.”³ For Burnham, the United States had to demonstrate will in Vietnam.

George Kennan disagreed. His views on Vietnam evolved with the conflict; as involvement escalated, so too did his concern. Considering the war to be a misapplication of containment, the former ambassador testified before the Senate that Southeast Asia was not vital to US interests. He deemed the conflict a Vietnamese civil war. In a 1967 Harvard speech, Kennan declared, “Following the logic of our present policy in Vietnam, it is difficult to conceive to date of an outcome that would be less than disastrous.”⁴ He sought a gradual withdrawal and an end to the bombing. This was America's best strategic move.

Hans Morgenthau, another geopolitical strategist, also averred that US national interest was served by leaving Vietnam. In Defense of the National Interest (1951) he asserts that it is “a moral duty for a nation to always follow in its dealings with other nations but one guiding star, one standard for thought, one rule for action: The National Interest.”⁵ Power struggles characterized the international arena for Morgenthau, too. But like Kennan and Lipman, Morgenthau fashioned himself a realist opponent of the war. His A New Foreign Policy for the United States (1969) seeks to study the basic US foreign policy assumptions that led to the “Vietnam disaster.”⁶ According to Morgenthau, the United States had remained beholden to past foreign policy principles that no longer served her national interest. For example, Morgenthau argues that anticommunist crusaders failed to recognize that communists were not a monolithic bloc. Soviet, Vietnamese, Yugoslavian, and Chinese communists each pursued their own national interests, not a common one. And they were not all inherently antithetical to the US national interests.

In his review of Morgenthau's book, Burnham questions the author's commitment to the national interest. Although Morgenthau had the reputation as “tough, realistic, no-nonsense, even Machiavellian,” Burnham asserts that he was really a liberal.⁷ The review contends that the author confused his own (liberal) values with the national interest. This meant confronting Hitler, Franco, and the South Africans while also negotiating with the Soviet Union and leaving Vietnam. Responding to Morgenthau's contention that not all communists threatened the United States, Burnham complains that Morgenthau never tells the reader which communists threaten US interests, which ones do not, and why—except that the Vietnamese do not threaten us.⁸ According to Burnham, this argument was based not on national interest, but on the fact that the United States could not win a war against them. Worst of all, this pseudo-Machiavellian had lent his respectable name to “irresponsibility, sentimental pacificism, demagogy, anti-Americanism and disloyalty.”⁹

Burnham referred to the Lippman-Kennan-Morgenthau triumvirate in his writings. He agreed with them that the war was not going well. In 1965, Burnham wrote: “Meanwhile the Vietnam vortex has its own dynamics. Day by day it sucks in American men, ships, planes, weapons, supplies and money.”¹⁰ He just disagreed on the remedy: Burnham believed more power was needed to win the war because Ho would not be moved by token military measures. The hardliner reasoned, “the stronger the American action, the weaker the communist reply.”¹¹ Characteristic of the first James Burnham, he could only optimistically imagine a future for some semblance of democracy in Southeast Asia if more force was employed, including more violence.

Nuclear weapons were an option. Maintaining that President Johnson's reluctance to use nuclear weapons in Southeast Asia was irrational, Burnham contended that Americans should not feel guilty for having or using them. Given the fact that the United States was currently involved in war in Vietnam, what weapons was it supposed to use? Given that the United States wanted to win the war (if it did not, then why fight?), it must take the required steps to do so. What were the United States’ advantages? Burnham believed that they were not superior manpower because Americans were outnumbered in Southeast Asia. Nor was it—nor had it even been—US tactics and strategy. The North during the Civil War as well as the United States in World War I and World War II had not demonstrated a flair for tactical or strategic brilliance. Instead, the United States steamrolled her opponents using “overwhelming firepower to flatten the opposition.”¹² George Marshall and Dwight D. Eisenhower waited an extra year to ensure that they had enough firepower to defeat Nazism in Western Europe.¹³ Harry S. Truman continued this tradition when he used atomic bombs. So did US soldiers when they wiped out houses from which came enemy fire. To win, Americans had to fight in Vietnam under American terms.¹⁴ This meant using overwhelming hard power, maybe even nuclear weapons.¹⁵ As National Review's second-in-command, Burnham suggested that this would possibly excise the taboo against deploying them, a taboo that worked only against Americans.¹⁶

Why did Burnham advance such aggressive positions in Vietnam? How could his conception of “national interest” differ from other self-professed realists, such as Kennan, Morgenthau, and Lippman? The Marxist-Leninist-Trotskyite heritage that Burnham never fully abandoned provides an explanation. Unlike Kennan, Morgenthau, and Lippman, Burnham's world was governed by inexorable historical trends that were usually blowing the world somewhere. In the Cold War era, it had to be hurtling toward communism or democracy. And the former disciple of V. I. Lenin and Leon Trotsky believed that determined individuals could alter its course. Vietnam had become a test of will. The times required resolute leaders and force. Something had to be done. Passivity and patience never sufficed for Burnham.

Burnham also still used Marxist-Trotskyite holism to understand the world: everything was interrelated. Vietnamese, Soviet, and Chinese communists could not be distinct, just as capitalist nations could not be distinct for Trotsky. In “Permanent Revolution” (1929) Burnham's former Marxist mentor argued against Stalin that independent (nationalist) capitalist economies did not exist; they were all part of a whole.¹⁷ Burnham interpreted communism similarly: Vietnam, the Soviet Union, and China were not distinct, meaning ignoring communism in Southeast Asia and successfully fighting it in Eastern Europe was impossible. A constant struggle must occur everywhere.

American struggles in Vietnam (and the antiwar writings of Kennan, Lippman, and Morgenthau) helped provoke student peace protests, which naturally earned Burnham's ire.¹⁸ As a Marxist, he condemned pacificism by arguing it benefited the imperialist powers that waged war against the working classes. Now, he condemned pacificism by claiming it abetted communism in its war against the free world. He argued that peace was just an abstraction that everyone loved, like Truth, Mother, Home, or Freedom.¹⁹ But again, everything must be contextualized, related to time and place. Burnham maintained that a genuine pacifist opposed all war of all kinds, not by whom and against whom.²⁰ Pacificism in the context of Vietnam was not pure; it had become a mode of political and social struggle. Pacifist movements had merged with social movements, so now Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) preached peace. Burnham believed that its advocates had been deceived; they were actually teaching communist propaganda.²¹ Liberal pacifists had become “unwitting or heedless dupes.”²² Under the guise of peace, communism advanced. The antipacifist contends that if a liberal merely examined the pamphlets passed out at their protests, he or she would see that.

Burnham insisted that communist propaganda helped foment these protests. He claimed as early as 1960 that communist cadres—inspired by professional French revolutionary and crowd organizer Louis Blanqui—were fomenting anti-war protests.²³ He begins a 1966 piece titled “From Ho, With Love” by quoting a greeting from Ho Chi Minh to the American people on New Year's Eve. Ho wished the American people “peace, prosperity and happiness” while demanding that “American imperialists halt their aggression” so that they could “save American boys from a useless death in an unjust war.”²⁴ Burnham notes how all of this meshed perfectly with the words of the war's domestic opponents. Asserting that this could not be a coincidence, he argues that for Ho and all of Lenin's disciples, revolutionary war is fought on two fronts: military operations on the battlefields and the psychological operations on the enemy's rear. “Psywar operations” were designed to weaken the opponents resolve. Burnham feared it was succeeding.

Even as US foreign policy began shifting its focus to Southeast Asia, Burnham pleaded that Cuba remain on America's radar. He argued that history did not work like television, where everything focused on one point at one time. The hardliner asserted that the most out-of-focus area was Cuba.²⁵ Unlike South Vietnam, Cuba was actually in enemy hands. And it was not on the other side of the world, but on our doorstep. Given that, why were we investing so much in Vietnam and so little in Cuba? Our only efforts in Cuba included an occasional U2 spy plane, a little help for exiles, and half-hearted economic sanctions. This did not suffice. Burnham maintained that America's reluctance to remove Castro during the Bay of Pigs may have been a “turning point” that started our difficulties in Southeast Asia. He claimed to have been in Southeast Asia at the time of the debacle, and US reluctance to use more hard power shook the nerves of the people there.²⁶ Toppling Castro in Cuba would show America resolve when it came to defeating the communists.

Burnham's advocacy of American action in places like Cuba and Vietnam should be interpreted as internationalism, not “globalism.” He distinguished between the two concepts by maintaining that internationalism was good and natural. Today, we are all internationalists. Technology has made political, cultural, and social isolationism impossible. But this must be distinguished from globalism, which Burnham claimed was based on “abstractions of humanitarian, Liberal, and diluted Marxist ideology.”²⁷ Globalists are “ideological hucksters” who emphasized concepts like “Humanity,” “Peace,” “Progress,” “Equality,” and “World Government.”²⁸ They are not guided by social and historical reality, but rather by ideology. According to Burnham, there is no “Humanity” because in real life men are joined by diverse groupings like family, community, club, and party.²⁹ The United Nations had become a “playground” for globalists, and their new mantra was “disarmament.”³⁰

The internationalist believed that the United States must use power in the international arena—both hard or soft—or it would be used against her. The United States was a hegemony, after all, whether she liked it or not. Burnham recognized that this was a double-edged sword. On one hand, Americans wanted it all: free travel, free markets to export their goods, the ability to use the dollar anywhere, the opportunity to speak their language everywhere, and procure art from every corner of the globe. But what Americans did not realize was that nothing came free. Being rich and powerful had a price. Americans had duties, or what Burnham called “imperial responsibilities.” These included maintaining the health and prosperity not just of her citizens, but of her “allies, associates and clients.”³¹ Occasionally, the hegemony must kill, without falling into a “paroxysm of guilt.”³² Following World War II, the United States initially succeeded in performing her duties thanks to policies like the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan. Her efforts in the Greek Civil War and Korea were also noble. But, in “Joys and Sorrows of Empire,” Burnham complains that she was shirking in Indochina, her latest test, where she had become too consumed with “guilt” and “pious rhetoric.”³³ Couldn’t the United States renounce her duties, maybe if she promised to limit her privileges? No, she could not. Burnham concludes this article by telling a story from his schoolboy days. The strongest kid on the block did not want to be the champ; he preferred the role of chump. Consequently, he got abused by everyone, even the weakest boy.³⁴

The United States could show strength and power by investing in arms, a position that was becoming more controversial as the Vietnam War escalated. Criticizing disarmament was one of Burnham's favorite intellectual exercises. In one article, Burnham asks, what is wrong with an arms race and nuclear proliferation? “Everyone assumes,” he suggests that “having it drilled into them by atomic ideologists for a decade—that it is a dangerous threat to peace (and therefore bad) if additional countries get nuclear weapons. The Treaty of Moscow will tend to inhibit their spread.³⁵ Therefore, etc. But is it really true that in every case it would be bad if another country became nuclear armed?”³⁶ Burnham reasons that if a nation like France acquired nuclear weapons, this would deter a Soviet attack on Western Europe.³⁷ The Soviet appetite for territory was deterred by their opponents’ strength, so strengthening the West prevented war.

Moreover, a nuclear arms race would place strain on Soviet society. Burnham maintains, “We can take the most enormous armament building in stride; the Soviet bloc cannot.”³⁸ He reasons in another article that “an ‘arms race’ is probably our most effective form of political-economic warfare we can conduct against our enemy.”³⁹ It burdens the Soviet economy, thereby weakening the regime. Disarmament we lose; an arms race, we win.

The lifelong proponent of arms could not have foreseen what began to occur during the Vietnam War: the violence became televised. Burnham lamented the fact that some acts of violence were open for all to see, such as the Mỹ Lai massacre. In a New York Times article entitled “A War Distorted,” he acknowledges moral wrongs were committed at Mỹ Lai, but insists that “what happened in the Mỹ Lai episode is a different matter from what happened and is happening to the Mỹ Lai episode—in myriad news dispatches, the hour upon hour of TV shots and radio-TV commentary, the thousands of articles, speeches, sermons, the scores of books, the meetings, conferences and now the seemingly endless—and relentlessly publicized—session of one, two … and how many more trials.”⁴⁰ He calls it a “a trivial incident within a large and complex whole,” a whole included the even greater atrocities committed by the Viet Cong.⁴¹ Moreover, the number of innocent people killed at Mỹ Lai was far fewer than the number of innocent people killed by US bombs in North Vietnam, and this number was even fewer than the number of innocent people killed by US bombs in World War II. Burnham reasons that horrible things happen in war, and they must be contextualized. After all, “Human existence bears no resemblance to the projections of sentimentalists and utopians. But to dwell exclusively on the horrors and obscenities is the road not to vision but to madness. Nor is it necessary that everything be brought at all times into the open for everyone to see. Not every diner need keep always in mind the horrors of the slaughterhouse.”⁴² The larger picture, the benefits, the ends must be examined, too.

Burnham's beliefs about an arms race and the need to use more power in Vietnam did not mean he was a registered Republican.⁴³ He preferred political independence. Consistent with his critiques of ideology, he resisted the doctrinaire laissez-faire capitalism promoted by conservatives at National Review. Stating that he generally favored the free market against government interventionism, the pragmatic anti-ideologue distinguished between what he called the “real world” and the “theoretical world of von Misean abstractions.”⁴⁴ He disagreed with most conservative attacks on Medicare, calling them a “routine Pavlovian exercise.”⁴⁵ His tendency toward favoring trends that existed can be seen in his acceptance of social security and Medicare, something that rankled his colleagues at National Review. More so than his fellow editors, Burnham supported the Great Society and resisted attempts to roll back the welfare state.

Burnham demonstrated orthodox conservative (not necessarily Republican) opinions in the 1950s and 1960s when it came to civil rights. The landmark Brown v. Board of Education (1954) decision held that racially segregated schools violated the Constitution's Equal Protection Clause. It was denounced in parts of the South. The “Southern Manifesto” (1956)—a document signed by roughly one hundred Southern congressmen and senators—asserted that “states’ rights” should supersede judicial authority. Siding with these segregationist arguments, Burnham stated that the issue must be settled locally and politically, and not by the courts. He maintained that the Supreme Court had taken the right away from people to run their own schools.⁴⁶ Brown v. Board even restricted the freedom of Black people because they no longer had the freedom to attend segregated schools; thus, their power was usurped by the courts, too.⁴⁷ Insisting that the Constitution restricted the power of the courts, Burnham pined for the superiority of Congress when it came to creating and enforcing federal laws in the Civil Rights era.⁴⁸ The Burkean called Chief Justice Earl Warren “an ideologue” who had turned the Supreme Court into a “political weapon fighting for statist goals.”⁴⁹

The Court's decision did inspire more federal action. In 1957, President Eisenhower signed the Civil Rights Act. The final Senate bill removed some enforcement provisions from the original House version. Burnham applauded this. Conceding that Black people's right to vote had been restricted in the South, he condemned the House version as “utopian” and “ideological,” in the tradition of Plato, Rousseau, and Marx.⁵⁰ Reformers wanted to remake society—with no regard for human nature. And for them, the ends always justified the means.⁵¹ Burnham's attitude toward Black Americans can best be described as paternalistic. A National Review editorial titled “Why the South Must Prevail” summarized his views by maintaining that “the problem in the South is not how to get the vote for the Negro, but how to equip the Negro—and a great many Whites—to cast an enlightened and responsible vote.”⁵² The article continues that the South should not exploit Black people but should work with them to help them achieve cultural equality. It contends that until this was achieved, the White South had a duty to impose its higher civilized standard because “for the time being, it is the advanced race.”⁵³

Whereas Burnham clamored for immediate action against communism, he did the opposite when he came to equality: he preached patience. Burnham was a Leninist against communism, a Burkean when it came to equality. He demanded consistent direct action against communism, but criticized any domestic social reformer who did the same because Burnham never believed that all people, nations, races, cultures, or civilizations were always equal. For him, a hierarchy of everything and everyone existed. Groups and people could rise and fall, but only slowly. And White America did not reign atop his hierarchy. Europe did. The elitist routinely disparaged the American people and their culture. Of course, because the United States was part of Western Civilization, it was still superior to the non-West (which for Burnham was relevant only in the context of the Cold War). Burnham could be savage when depicting foreign people. Daniel Kelly accurately called him the living embodiment of political incorrectness.⁵⁴

His most unpolitically correct remarks—maybe even racism—were reserved for India. Upon arriving for the first time, Burnham explains in a National Review article that “the plane door was Alice's mirror: and on the other side, the inverse wonderland of the West.”⁵⁵ Calling the whole experience one malicious attack on each of his senses, he describes how India's beggars “arise out of the ground at the approach of a stranger, like the damned before Dante and Virgil in the wildest chasms of hell.”⁵⁶ The trip made him cherish America's “acholic Irishmen” beggars who merely sinned by using your spare quarter to buy a shot of bad whiskey.⁵⁷ He compares leaving India to leaving an August New York sidewalk for an air-conditioned room.⁵⁸ Burnham extolls the cleanliness of the airliner's “blonde, bronzed Dutch stewardess,” who would help him return home. This at least insinuated a relationship between race and cleanliness.

Burnham could praise non-Westerners. India's harshest critic was giddy over neighboring Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) and its prime minister, John Kotelawala. Burnham stated that the press may call him “pro-Western,” but in reality, he was merely anticommunist and he recognized that associations with Western nations were in the best interest of his country.⁵⁹ Kotelawala told people the truth: that the communists imposed an imperialism far more wretched than anything favored by Americans. Yes, he collaborated with communist China by selling her rubber, but this was just because no Western country would buy it.⁶⁰ And he asked Western powers such as the United States for permission.⁶¹ Burnham liked this. Kotelawala recognized his place among the hierarchy of nations.

The pessimistic proponent of hierarchy analyzed the decolonization movement accordingly. Contending that under no conditions could all of the people of Asia, Latin America, and Africa achieve the same economic status as the West, Burnham wrote, “Most—not all, but most—of these underdeveloped nations of Asia, Africa and Latin America are underdeveloped for good and sufficient reasons—of soil, climate, rainfall, paucity of sources (especially sources of energy), not to speak of the nature of the human groups that inhabit them.”⁶² He expressed little optimism for Latin America's future because of surging population growth, describing the whole situation in one article as “Malthusian.”⁶³ Policymakers and social reformers must recognize that any program that treats the people of all nations as equal is doomed to fail.⁶⁴ Distinctions between groups must be made.⁶⁵

Burnham was familiar with colonized perspectives since he read Frantz Fanon, a writer who analyzed the impact of colonization on colonizer and colonized. Like Burnham, Fanon theorized about violence. The first chapter of The Wretched of the Earth is titled “On Violence” and it begins: “National liberation, national reawakening, restoration of the nation to the people or Commonwealth, whatever the name used, whatever the latest expression, decolonization is always a violent event.”⁶⁶ Consistent with ideas that Burnham presented in The Machiavellians, Fanon argues that the ruling classes feign revulsion at violence only to protect their privilege. He demanded that the exploited colonized masses revolt. Burnham believed that Fanon's book offered valuable “insights, often embodied in wonderfully concrete observations or images, that open up compelling perspectives on complicated events; a ruthless stripping of sham and self-delusions.”⁶⁷ Burnham lauded Fanon's ability to describe the Algerian revolution “psychically as well as politically and strategically.”⁶⁸

Fanon demanded immediate change in colonized regions whereas Burnham was skeptical of Africa's future as decolonization gained momentum in the aftermath of World War II. In 1960, for example, more than a dozen African nations gained independence from European colonial rule. Burnham challenged this. He wrote that democracy, in a Western sense, was out of the question there.⁶⁹ He believed that African nations could not rule themselves, at least not as well as they could be ruled by Whites, at least not yet. Recognizing that the imperialist system was “abused,” he said at the same time, it accomplished much.⁷⁰ He called it a “reasonable solution for a transition to civilization.”⁷¹ Decolonialization conformed to liberal ideology, but for Burnham, ideology was never a good guide for political policy and action: “Western ideologues and politicians interpret the current African events in terms of their own ideas of ‘nationalism’ ‘self-determinism’ ‘democracy’ and so on. But for most Africans—whatever their origin—these are just ritual words without content.”⁷² He blamed “ideologues” for trying to compel the world to conform to a preconceived set of ideas.⁷³ Burnham contended that the idea of a nation presupposed the historical continuity of a people linked by some sort of language, religion, art, law, heroes, and shared experiences of triumphs and failures. Egypt, Ethiopia, and Morocco qualified. Liberia and the Union of South Africa might qualify. The rest of Africa did not. It was organized tribally. How could nationalism succeed on a continent where nations were such artificial constructs?⁷⁴

American policy in Rhodesia particularly disheartened the critic of decolonization. In 1965, the White-run African nation led by Prime Minister Ian Smith announced its independence from Britain. Fearing White minority rule over the African nation, the United Nations, the United States, and Britain deemed it illegal. A standoff ensued. For the first time in its history, the United Nations imposed sanctions. Burnham argued that these actions had only made a difficult situation worse. Highlighting the positive gains made in Rhodesia under White-rule, he wrote that even the New York Times—“the purest fountain of un-racism”—published a dispatch that described how the region of “savage tribal warfare, disease, hunger and superstition” had been transformed into “a land of flourishing mining, agricultural and industrial activity.”⁷⁵ Yes, there was racism in Rhodesia. And Burnham declared that racism was “evil.”⁷⁶ He speculated that a Black-run Rhodesia would be racist against the Whites who had founded the country.⁷⁷ Moreover, by isolating the country, the West risked wrecking everything that had been accomplished under White rule, to the detriment of all.⁷⁸ There may be more freedom, democracy, and equality in a majority-ruled Rhodesia—particularly for Blacks—yet that did not make it immediately desirable for Burnham.

He chided Western leaders for demanding majority rule in Africa by arguing that few African governments actually represented the majority of the people.⁷⁹ He asked, who chose Houari Boumédiène to rule over Algeria?⁸⁰ What about Ghana?⁸¹ Burnham wondered why Western powers accepted the reign of Black despots, but not Whites who brought more prosperity and progress to their regions. The Western chauvinist tried to explain the conflict in a neo-Spenglerian manner: Burnham argued that, for centuries, the people of Europe and subsequently the United States were “historically active,” while Asia, Africa, and Latin America remained “historically inert.”⁸² Recognizing the racial significance of this statement, he wrote that he was not sure if the West's “activity” was due to “accident or fate.”⁸³ Regardless, now Asians and Africans had become historical actors.⁸⁴ This sparked a struggle with the West.

To consolidate their control over the country, White settlers passed a constitution that established Rhodesia as a republic in 1969. And it enshrined White political power at the expense of Blacks. The move was denounced around the world. Burnham even followed suit. He called the new constitution “racist and fundamentally despotic,” arguing that it created a situation in which Africans were permanently subject to Europeans, “no matter what their increase in literacy, income, virtue or any other quality.”⁸⁵ This suggested that Burnham did not believe that any group was indefatigably inferior; they could achieve equality, but only gradually.

Again, Burnham demanded immediate action (even violence) to undermine communism, yet he resisted quick, dramatic change (even violence) when it came to decolonization and attempts to spread equality. He did not oppose an Africa where Blacks participated equally with Whites; he just preferred one that occurred organically. He questioned any change produced by the human mind or ideology—change inspired by concepts such as democracy, freedom, or equality. The Burkean insinuated that events in Africa could emulate the French Revolution; he feared that in their quest for equality, Africans may resort to violence.⁸⁶ It may be too much change too fast.

Burnham blamed Western powers for the fiasco by contending that Rhodesian settlers acted rationally: knowing that the West would leave them to the wolves, they tended toward self-preservation. What would come next? He wrote that it was now beyond the United States’ ability to influence events in Africa because she should not intervene in the affairs of other countries unless her security was at risk. He regretted that the whole situation had become “immoral.”⁸⁷ This implied too much ideology—reliance on concepts like freedom, democracy, and equality—caused immorality. Only by understanding the true nature of humanity could one act morally.

Burnham also employed ideas that he pronounced in The Machiavellians when analyzing decolonization, specifically the importance of power. Africans used words like “liberty” and “equality” merely to acquire power.⁸⁸ Events in Africa should be interpreted as an attempt by Black men to usurp power.⁸⁹ The careers, homes, possessions, and even the lives of Whites in Africa existed tenuously. Burnham theorized that maybe some economic benefits could emerge if a Black-run Africa became integrated into the Western economy, but that was little consolation for the White settlers.⁹⁰ He compared their position to that of Jews in Palestine. Possibly through some courage and political skill, the Whites in Africa could survive, except that Jewish settlers at least had the backing of all Jews. White settlers in Africa were condemned by most of the Whites in the Western world.⁹¹

Burnham may have lamented decolonization in practice, but he recognized it was inevitable. He viewed America's changing relationship with China similarly; he knew a metamorphosis in Sino-US relations was imminent during the Nixon administration. Lest anyone forget what US formal recognition of Taipei at the expense of China earned the world, however, he wrote a piece in 1971 defending US policy in Asia. Burnham wanted history to remember that rejecting the Peoples Republic of China saved Taiwan from communism. And this saved South Korea because the Chinese delegate would have prevented UN intervention in the Korean War, and thus, the United States would have been unable to act. Africa would have next fallen to Chinese expansion, particularly Western Africa. The United States shielded Japan from Chinese aggression, too. According to Burnham, America's enemy in World War II recovered so quickly because she did not have to protect herself against an invasion from the “Camp of Socialism and Peace.”⁹² Reversing her position on China did not make America's previous one wrong.

Two months after Burnham wrote “The Balance Sheet,” President Richard Nixon visited China. The president believed that establishing cordial relations with the Asian giant would increase American leverage against the Soviets because he knew something that Burnham did not: the Soviet Union and China were not a monolithic bloc. Burnham had minimized the Sino-Soviet split by calling it “verbal only.”⁹³ He stressed the “continuing commitment of the global communist enterprise” to destroy Western civilization.⁹⁴ This simplistic holist view of communism prevented him from seeing some crucial nuances, such as the fact that the Soviet Union and China genuinely feared one another, at times even more than they feared the United States. John Lewis Gaddis contended, “Wars among communists … were all too real a possibility: the ideological schism between the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China had become so intense during the Khrushchev years that as they ended his representatives were discussing with the Americans plans for a joint preventative military action against Chinese nuclear facilities in the Gobi desert.”⁹⁵ Although China and the Soviet Union were both pursuing communism, they were not unified.⁹⁶

In his analysis of the two communist giants, Burnham made the same mistake that he made in The Managerial Revolution when he conflated the USSR and Nazi Germany. Just as managerial societies may conflict, so too might communist societies. Lost on Burnham was the fact that powerful individuals could transcend the system. In the case of the managerial Nazi Germany, it was Hitler and his need for conquest, even if it meant conquering other managerial societies. During the subsequent Cold War, Burnham failed to recognize that personal rifts between Soviet leaders and Mao could divide communist societies. His worldview remained too holistic.

Nixon's overtures to China surprised most of the world. Not Burnham. He had been rankled by Nixon's chess-like statesmanship since he had been vice president. For the hardliner, strategic moves would not win the Cold War. It would be won only by using power. The president, in contrast, sought dialogue and friendly relations. In doing so, he flouted National Review's ideas about conferences and treaties; he dared to negotiate with communists. The editors were furious.

The Nixon administration was concerned. In an effort to pacify them, William F. Buckley, Burnham, and other editors were invited to the White House to discuss the China situation. Nixon aid Pat Buchanan believed Buckley could be persuaded to support the president, but he called Burnham an “anti-Nixon hawk.”⁹⁷ Buchanan feared National Review would promote a conservative challenger to Nixon, and in fact, several months before the 1972 presidential election, National Review suspended its support for Nixon.⁹⁸ The angry president deemed the editors at National Review “shortsighted,” “dumb,” and “unimaginative.”⁹⁹ Nixon demanded that Henry Kissinger “see some of the gurus of the bunch. See Burnham.”¹⁰⁰

Burnham had a personal relationship with Kissinger, as they had met on several occasions while Kissinger served Nixon as secretary of state. After one such meeting in 1973, Burnham wrote to him: “as I continue to reflect on what you explained, I feel that I do now see more clearly both the objectives you keep in mind…. If I occasionally have doubts about some of those steps … it may quite possibly be, I realize, because my ideas, unlike yours, do not have to meet the daily and pitiless test of action.”¹⁰¹ It seems Burnham recognized that he could more easily preach hardline ideas from afar. At some level, he knew the difference between postulating ideas about nuclear weapons and actually using them. The alleged Machiavellian conceded his ideas were not always practical; his words should not always be taken at face value.

In January 1973, with the support of the Nixon administration, the Paris Peace Accords were signed. US power in Vietnam soon vanished. In January 1975, the communists showed little regard for written treaties that brought peace; North Vietnam sent one hundred and sixty thousand soldiers and four hundred armored vehicles into South Vietnam. Saigon fell several months later. Burnham tries to assign culpability for US failure in Vietnam in an article called “It's All Your Fault.” The piece could have been called “It Wasn’t My Fault. I Told You So.” He recognizes that everyone wanted to blame everyone else. But he asks, blame whom for what? For sending aid to South Vietnam? For sending soldiers there? For ordering aerial bombardment? For not destroying Hanoi and Haiphong? For not using nuclear weapons? For inappropriate military tactics? For permitting disgruntled citizens to sabotage the war effort? For withdrawing too soon? For signing peace accords with an enemy that lies? For being too stingy with support after withdrawal?¹⁰²

Burnham denied any culpability. The Vietnam hardliner declared himself prophetic. Knowing he was occasionally read by Nixon and Kissinger, he reminds his readers what he wrote in 1973:

To the North Vietnamese, the ceasefire agreement means, in essence, getting rid of the Americans, as before they got rid of the French…. With U.S. forces withdrawn from the theater, the strategic position of the Communists in relation to South Vietnam, in fact to Indochina as a whole, would seem to be overwhelming…. When U.S. power is gone, Communist power will be predominant in the Indochinese equilibrium…. The Communists will not keep their terms of the ceasefire…. It will soon become psychologically and politically impossible for the U.S. to shift back to direct military intervention.¹⁰³

Nixon and Kissinger ignored National Review's advice at their peril.

Burnham did fault the president and his secretary of state for Vietnam failure. At the same time, he maintained that they—along with Congress—were carrying out the will of the American people. Does that mean that the American people were to blame? He claimed that in one sense, yes. The United States grew weary of war. In “It's All Your Fault,” Burnham also laments that no US political leader galvanized the public by reviving courage and discipline. In fact, politicians unwittingly encouraged weakness. He concludes the article by bemoaning, “‘The President's trips to Peking and Moscow,’ I noted in 1973, ‘destroyed the political as well as moral foundation for the American anticommunist policy in Indochina.’”¹⁰⁴ He suggests that the United States lost Vietnam because she ignored the primary recommendations of his Cold War polemics: she lacked the will to win. Establishing cordial relations with China demonstrated vacillation. One day, the United States dropped bombs on communists, the next, she shook their hands. By sending mixed messages, US foreign policymakers weakened the resolve of her citizens in the crusade against communism. Inspiring leaders never emerged. America did not do what needed to be done.

In “Go East, Old Man,” Burnham interprets the post-Vietnam era by using concepts that he had been advocating for decades, namely that the United States must use power, or it would be used against her. He opines in 1975 that because the United States stopped using power in Vietnam, the world no longer feared US power. This had consequences. Had the United States not quit Vietnam, there would have been no oil embargo, no expropriations of US property, and fewer “gang-up anti-U.S. votes in the UN.”¹⁰⁵ The worst could be yet to come. After all, US history for three and a half centuries had been characterized by westward expansion. This culminated in World War II with victory over Japan. But Korea was a stalemate, Vietnam a loss. Now, according to Burnham, the United States was beginning to retreat eastward: “The flag was lowered in Okinawa; the troops began their retreat from South Korea, and Japan, and Taiwan; the fleet vanished from the Formosa Strait and moved back from China. Then the withdrawal swelled with the half-million soldiers, the planes and ships, from Vietnam, and the following thousands from Laos and Thailand.”¹⁰⁶ How long would this retreat continue? The fate of America rested in the balance.

The geopolitical strategist tried to place Vietnam in its proper historical context by showing that it did have to be catastrophic—maybe historical trends were not favoring communism. He tried to curb pessimism (partly his own) by noting that all powerful nations lose wars. Persia lost wars to Greece but remained a regional power for centuries. Rome lost plenty of wars. France, Germany, and Russia had all lost multiple wars, and had done so relatively recently. In “Reflections on Defeat,” Burnham maintains that when put in its appropriate historical context, Vietnam was a “minor affair.”¹⁰⁷ Casualties were roughly equal to those on US highways each year, and the $150 billion cost was less than two years of health, education, and welfare expenditures.¹⁰⁸ What did America's future hold? Burnham uses principles to predict the future: once a small retreat occurs, all holdings become threatened. The process had already begun. The jettisoning of military bases in Thailand proved this. Burnham reasoned that US military bases in Korea and Japan may soon follow. He contends that Vietnam was a small, trivial battle with consequences that could lead to the decline of the United States.¹⁰⁹

Burnham predictably rejected any sort of “peaceful coexistence” and the détente policy that emerged during Vietnam because he maintained that this primarily benefited the communists. He insisted that the Cold War had never really been “cold” in the first place, so peaceful coexistence was impossible. Détente was another immoral utopian illusion because fighting always raged somewhere, whether it be in Greece, China, Korea, Cuba, Hungary, Venezuela, Indonesia, Burundi, Vietnam, or the Congo. And peaceful coexistence was one-sided: it was violated when Americans promoted anticommunism abroad yet accepted when one preached communism in the United States.¹¹⁰ If practiced in the long run, it would inevitably culminate in a final struggle, “that is, in general war, when the time is ripe, that will involve nuclear arms. The general war would most probably be initiated by a communist nuclear strike against decisive noncommunist targets.”¹¹¹ In The War We Are In, he sarcastically suggests that peaceful coexistence would climax when the peace-loving people conquered the militaristic, warmongering people, leading to a zone of peace around the world.¹¹²

Burnham initially had high hopes that the Ford administration would “imbue détente with more realism and even a dash of skepticism.”¹¹³ In a National Review article, he reminds his readers that during his time in the House, Ford had become an expert on military systems and strategy. In his first address to Congress, Ford had noted that “weakness invites war” and “a strong defense is the surest way to peace.”¹¹⁴ Whereas Nixon spent too much time wooing China and the USSR with gifts, Burnham hoped that the new administration would actually get something in return for bargaining. Thus far, détente had been “a one-way street with traffic permitted to move only in the Soviet direction.”¹¹⁵ Burnham closes another National Review article by asking what benefits the United States got from détente. The American people deserved to know.

His hopes were dashed when Ford signed the Helsinki Accords in August 1975. These recognized Eastern Europe as part of the Soviet sphere and allowed the USSR more access to Western technology. For their part, the Soviets affirmed the importance of human rights. Worrying about the psychological effects more than the practical ones, Burnham maintained that the accords enhanced Soviet prestige and legitimized their control over Eastern Europe.¹¹⁶ And it was fraught with irony: the clause allowing free movement of people and ideas was signed two weeks after the Soviets denied access to Western journalists and photographers who sought to witness the launching of the Soviet half of a joint manned space mission. Burnham urged the Ford administration to oppose any deal, as least until the Soviet Union stopped trying to export communism to Western Europe.¹¹⁷

Burnham argued that by seeking rapprochement with the USSR, the Ford administration effectively colluded against the citizens and nations under Soviet control.¹¹⁸ He compared it to the era of 1944–1947 when the West gave two million people who had found themselves in Western hands to Stalin.¹¹⁹ Détente meant that as communists assaulted the borders of Portugal, the United States accepted the new borders of Eastern Europe. Communism expands, and the United States acquiesces. This was the “logic of détente.”¹²⁰ The Americans perceived it as a trade-off since war was averted. In a piece titled the “Dialectics of Détente,” the former philosophy professor theorizes that for communists, the US “mode of conceiving détente is what Communists call bourgeois, Aristotelian, abstract and static. The Communist mode is (they say) proletarian, dialectical, concrete, and dynamic.”¹²¹ Applied to current affairs, the dialectical clash was occurring between US imperialists and Soviet workers. The United States must accept détente on Soviet terms because the United States—as a reactionary force—was weakening. America's retreat in Indochina, the oil squeeze, growing dissatisfaction with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and increased communist influence in Western Europe revealed US weakness. He laments in the article that détente became a green light for Soviet development of Multiple Independent Reentry Vehicle warheads, and a red light for the development of the United States’ antimissile defenses. Her politicians complied because they did not have to provide real, courageous leadership; they just preached reducing tensions. What seemed like a win-win for the Americans was actually a no-lose for the Soviets.¹²² While communism advanced, American leaders used nice-sounding words.

Burnham declared that Jimmy Carter did not understand the true nature of communism and the Cold War any more than Nixon or Ford. Shortly after his election as president in 1976, Burnham analyzed the new president's professed love for morality. Carter called himself a disciple of Protestant theologian Reinhold Niebuhr's political philosophy. Niebuhr defined politics as “the sad art of establishing justice in a sinful world,” a quote Carter liked to use. Carter said government ought to be moral, like people. Even relations with other governments should be based on moral standards. In a piece called “Politics and Morality,” Burnham writes that the president's belief that governments must be moral and honest could never have come from Niebuhr. Under the subtitle “Danger Ahead,” the international realist calls Carter's delusions “dangerous” and “absurd,” especially when it came to foreign policy.¹²³ Burnham argues that terms like “justice” were emotional, yet empty. Consequently, they would lead to political action, but mistaken political action. If the United States was about to embark on a foreign policy based on love and compassion, it would be a lonely road, and one fraught with peril. Burnham concludes the piece by stating that Carter's “government-is-love” philosophy could not be his real foreign policy, or at least Niebuhr would have hoped so.¹²⁴

Even at the end of his writing career, Burnham maintained that morality must be based on seeing things how they really are. All nations pursue their own interests. The Soviets seek to spread communism. Deniers such as President Carter could not claim the “moral” moniker because they cannot act properly. They ended up appeasing communism, hardly a moral act.

Although the next US president may not have shared Burnham's conception of morality, he did share—partly because of Burnham's influence—his conception of the Cold War: it was a struggle for the world that had to be fought and won. And it could be won, if the United States properly displayed force. Despite some popular misconceptions, Ronald Reagan was an avid reader from a young age.¹²⁵ He even carried with him a personal library of books about political philosophy when he traveled.¹²⁶ Many biographers have noted his photographic memory. Reagan was so passionate about politics in the late 1940s, his ex-wife cited it as a reason for their failed marriage. National Review was one of his favorite periodicals. Even before National Review, Reagan certainly read some of Burnham's popular Cold War polemics. It is not a matter of whether Reagan read and was influenced by Burnham, but rather how much.

Some of Burnham's influence on Reagan can be directly traced in the mid-to-late 1970s. During this time, the future president hosted a radio show that gave him the opportunity to express his political views. The content occasionally mimicked Burnham's articles in National Review. For example, in “The Resonance Differential,” Burnham analyzes the leftist Portuguese coup d’état against an oppressive right-wing regime in 1974 known as the Carnation Revolution. He attempts to show how left-wing dictatorships were treated differently by the left and the media than right-wing dictatorships.¹²⁷ Burnham creates an imaginary nation called Ruritania where officers staged a coup not against an oppressive right-wing regime, but against a Marxist one. Burnham contends that the world would respond with thousands of meetings, demonstrations, speeches, sit-ins, and sermons denouncing the “fascists.”¹²⁸ In an August 1975 radio address, Reagan does the same. He explicates Burnham's imaginary scenario by stating: “Imagine military officers stage a successful coup d’état in a mythical land called Ruritania. It frees people from an oppressive Soviet-like regime.”¹²⁹ How would the world respond? Reagan states: “Student sit-ins would follow, editorials, petitions and TV specials denouncing the fascist, military dictators. Of course the U.N. would get in the act with eloquent speeches thundering through the hall protesting the violation of ‘human, civil and political rights of the Ruritanian workers and peasants’ … Burnham describes the Ad-Hoc committees that would spring up in a dozen countries demanding sanctions and severance of diplomatic relations.”¹³⁰ Reagan believed the media would follow suit, showing their left-wing bias.

In January 1978, Burnham wrote a piece titled “SALT-Verifiability=0.” It contends that Strategic Arms Limitations Talks sounded nice, assuming the limitations were “fair.” But what did fair mean? No one, including experts on both sides, could comprehend all of the details concerning nuclear arsenals. And no one on the US side really knew the intentions of Soviet policy. Burnham argues that what mattered about SALT was verifiability: “Granted the general murkiness shrouding strategic arms, there would nevertheless seem to be an essential feature of an acceptable SALT about which even all senators could agree: verifiability. No matter what the terms of SALT are, they are meaningless unless their fulfillment can be verified beyond reasonable doubt.”¹³¹ SALT was pointless unless the results could be verified.

Two months later, Reagan wrote an address criticizing SALT. It seemed SALT was one-sided: “We have made concessions such as canceling the B-1 Bomber without waiting for the negotiations.”¹³² Reagan emphasized verifiability, too: “Then there is the matter of verification. Yes, our reconnaissance satellites can keep a reasonable count on how many missiles the Soviets have on hand. But there is no way without on site inspection (which the Russians would never agree to) to verify whether the Soviets are indeed complying with the treaty.”¹³³ The idea became part of the fortieth president's manta toward the Soviet Union: Doveryai no proveryai (trust but verify). He used the phrase on multiple occasions to General Secretary Gorbachev during their summit meetings, much to Gorbachev's chagrin.¹³⁴

In November 1978, Burnham suffered a serious stroke. It did not incapacitate him, but it did prevent him from writing seriously again. A year later, the Soviets invaded Afghanistan. President Carter called it the greatest threat to peace since World War II. He acknowledged that the Soviets had lied to him. Had he followed Burnham, he would have known that communists were liars who only wanted to spread communism.

President Reagan recognized this. He became one of the determined men whom the optimistic Burnham predicted would emerge in the struggle against communism. In his first official press conference as president, Reagan cribbed Burnham: “Well, so far détente's been a one-way street that the Soviet Union has used to pursue its own aims. I don’t have to think of an answer as to what I think their intentions are; they have repeated it.”¹³⁵ Reagan continued that the Soviets only sought to conquer the world and establish a socialist or communist state. And their only morality involved spreading their system; they would use any means. Reagan noted that communists were guided by a “different set of standards” than everyone else and anyone who negotiates with communists must keep all of this in mind.¹³⁶ Consistent with Burnham's prescriptions, over the next several years billions of dollars were spent on new defense projects because Reagan believed the Soviets could not keep up in an arms race. In a 1981 interview, he insisted: “Up until now, we have been making unilateral concessions, allowing our forces to deteriorate, and they have been building the greatest military machine the world has even seen. But now they could be faced with [the fact] that we could go forward with an arms race and they can’t keep up.”¹³⁷ Reagan showed power by flexing American muscles.

Reagan did not, however, share Burnham's belief that victory required some form of violence. The fortieth president insisted in his “evil empire” speech that “while America's military strength is important, let me add here that I’ve always maintained that the struggle now going on for the world will never be decided by bombs or rockets, by armies or military might.”¹³⁸ Reagan feared hard power more than apocalyptic Burnham. And the president even dared to negotiate with communists.

Reagan did employ soft power against the Soviet Union because consistent with the first James Burnham, he optimistically believed that—with the proper use of power—democracy could prevail there. Like the author of The Coming Defeat of Communism, Reagan proclaimed the existence of inexorable historical trends. He turned Marxism on its head by declaring in a famous 1982 speech that “it is the Soviet Union that runs against the tide of history by denying human freedom and human dignity to its citizens.”¹³⁹ The president suggested that the Soviets were experiencing insurmountable economic crises that would lead to the collapse of their system. This should be interpreted as a form of political or psychological warfare intended to promote fear and fertilize the Soviet leaders’ seeds of doubt. Reagan's denouncement of the USSR as an “evil empire” and his demand that Gorbachev tear down the Berlin Wall should also be understood as forms of soft power that aimed at promoting democracy.

Two weeks before calling the Soviet Union an “evil empire,” Reagan awarded Burnham the Presidential Medal of Freedom. He said to Burnham, “As a scholar, writer, historian and philosopher, James Burnham has profoundly affected the way America views itself and the world. Since the 1930s, Mr. Burnham has shaped the thinking of world leaders. His observations have changed society and his writings have become guiding lights in mankind's quest for truth. Freedom, reason and decency have had few greater champions in this century than James Burnham. And I owe him a personal debt, because throughout the years traveling the mash-potato circuit I have quoted you widely.”¹⁴⁰