CHAPTER 7Using Power against Communism
The themes of power and struggle were central in Burnham's next three books: The Struggle for the World (1947), The Coming Defeat of Communism (1950), and Containment or Liberation (1953). This trilogy was the foundation of Burnham's geopolitical strategy. These works were also partly responsible for America's Cold War success. One writer called Burnham the “intellectual architect” of America's Cold War victory.1 Another deemed him “Reagan's Geopolitical Genius.”2 George Nash, a historian of conservatism, wrote, “More than any other single person, Burnham supplied the conservative intellectual movement with the theoretical formulation for victory in the cold war.”3 A host of figures shaped US foreign policy during the Cold War, but Burnham has a crucial place among these writers.
During World War II, Burnham joined the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) where he specialized in analyzing geopolitical issues.4 He wrote three important pieces during this time, partly in preparation for the Yalta conference.5 Each drew attention to Stalin's grand designs. The first, titled the “The Sixth Turn of the Communist Screw,” was published in Partisan Review in the summer of 1944. It describes fluctuations in Soviet policy that moved not from left to right like a pendulum, but rather in a spiral path like a screw. With each turn, the power of the Soviet's ruling managerial elite expanded. The current phase—what Burnham called the Tehran Phase—saw Soviet power encroach into Europe, leading to the “de facto Stalinist domination of the Continent.”6 This turn produced a clash in Greece between the Communist-directed Elam and the British.7 Burnham was already imagining a divided Europe.
Where could the next turn lead? Dangerous omens whirled in Asia, where the Soviets had earlier concluded a neutrality treaty with Japan. Burnham mused, what if Stalin did not want a total defeat of Japan? What if he sought to utilize Japan to expand Soviet influence into China? In the essay's final paragraph, Burnham asks: “What then will the communist policy in the United States be? It can all be—perhaps has all been—mapped in advance. The 7th, the new leftist period, will have its made-to-order propaganda, slogans and tactics. And woe then to the war-mongers! We Want Our Boys Home Again! Don’t Let Our Daddies Die in the Jungles!”8 The future anticommunist hardliner anticipated clashes between Americans and communists in the East. He feared Soviet propaganda would weaken American resolve.
His second piece, titled “Stalin and the Junkers,” appeared in The Commonweal, a Catholic journal (Burnham's brother Phillip was an editor for the journal). Published in September 1944 as Soviet troops marched West, Burnham maintains that Stalin and his collaborators knew that war is a military and political enterprise; as the Soviet army advanced, so did communism. Burnham contends that Stalin was already preparing for a Soviet-controlled Eastern Europe: “Eurasia must be made, under Soviet leadership, an impregnable fortress.”9 To help accomplish this, the native Georgian shrewdly obtained support from some important former Prussian nobles, the Junkers. Stalin convinced this group that they should support a communist-led Free Germany Committee because the Junkers were enemies of Hitler, too. For them, anything had to be better than the Nazi regime. Collaboration served the interests of both sides (some Junkers would become leaders in the communist German Democratic Republic). Burnham swore that the future of Eastern Europe—and possibly even the whole world—depended on the fate of this Free Germany Committee. Who controlled it could control the world.10
By early 1945, Allied victory over Germany was virtually assured. Burnham used the occasion to suggest (possibly tongue-in-cheek) in a Partisan Review article that attitudes toward the general secretary of the Communist Party needed to be revised. His “Lenin's Heir” piece should not be interpreted so much as a hagiography of Stalin as a rejection of Trotsky's version of Stalin, and by extension, Trotsky himself. Trotsky argued that Stalin betrayed the Bolshevik Revolution. Burnham argued that from a Marxist perspective, Stalin should be considered a man who fulfilled the 1917 revolution.11 Stalin, not Trotsky, was the perfect Bolshevik.12
Trotsky's biography, written at the end of his life and published posthumously, painted a portrait of Stalin as a man bereft of redeeming features, not just personally, but critically for any Marxist, historically. Portrayed as crude, ignorant, and lacking any sort of imagination, Trotsky insisted that his fellow Bolshevik rose because of his unscrupulous behavior. In “Lenin's Heir,” Burnham opines that the post–World War II era required a fresh look at the Soviet generalissimo. Stalin must be regarded as a great military leader. Despite inferior resources, he initiated action. His assumption of power in the USSR showed he was a master political strategist, too. According to Burnham, Stalin's crushing of political opponents—not all at once, but over an extended period—further attested to his genius.13 Free from external restraints and traditional customs, Burnham suggests that Stalin was Nietzsche's ubermensch. Parts of this work may have been hyperbolic. Burnham was often sardonic.14
Nonetheless, the article paints a portrait of Stalin as a man who should not be underestimated, particularly diplomatically. The piece's most significant part was Burnham's analysis of Stalin's geopolitical vision: domination of Eurasia. A specialist on nationalism, Stalin has brilliantly made communism patriotic: “Free Poland, Free China, ELAS, Maquis, Partisans, Chou En lai, Browder, Tito, Thorez, Toledano, Togliatti.”15 Burnham writes of Stalin's grand design: “So does Soviet power emanating from the integrally totalitarian center, proceed outward by Absorption (the Baltics, Bessarabia, Bukovina, East Poland), Domination (Finland, the Balkans, Mongolia, North China and tomorrow Germany), Orienting Influence (Italy, France, Turkey, Iran and South China.”16 Beginning a theme that would soon dominate his writings, Burnham even suggests that the boundaries could extend to the United States. He associates this with “Appeasement.”17
Just as the term “Cold War”—war between the United States and Stalin's communist empire—was entering the American lexicon in 1947, Burnham analyzed the communist mind and its relation to art and film with a review of Sergei Eisenstein's works on Ivan the Terrible, or part I given that Stalin had banned part II.18 Relatedly, in 1946, the Zhdanov Doctrine emerged. Named after Stalin's henchman, Andrei Zhdanov, it sought to purify Soviet film, art, and writings from foreign or imperialist influence. Many writers and artists were censored. Burnham used the occasion to write that communism's moral shortcomings were not the problem because if it were just that, communism would easily dissolve when confronted with the good. But like Satan—the one-time angel—communism craftily deceived people by appearing to be good.19 Like Satan, it seduced people into thinking it was good, partly because it was related to the good: “Its chains for the human spirit have been twisted from the most splendid of man's feelings and hopes—his cry for justice, his sense of brotherhood, his longing for freedom.”20 Burnham contends that these powerful ideals will always move men. And they are good. The former Marxist admits that he agreed with communists that art is the highest expression of good; the artist must be esteemed because he or she shapes human souls. Communism, however, distorts everything by making the artist a propagandist for communism.21 Communism prevents artists from being what they need to be: a truth teller. The artist becomes enslaved instead of being the free agent he or she was meant to be.22
“The Sixth Turn of the Communist Screw,” “Stalin and the Junkers,” “Lenin's Heir,” and the review of Eisenstein's works reveal Burnham's disdain with communism. Like most Americans during World War II, while never extolling the virtues of communism, Burnham at least accepted the existence of the Soviet Union. His Managerial Revolution even predicted its persistence. This evaporated at the end of war. For the next thirty years, Burnham would apply his ideas about power to the international arena by proclaiming that a power struggle raged between the United States and the Soviet Empire. The fate of humanity rested on the outcome. The United States had to use power, or it would be used to destroy her.23
And the United States must help liberate the people of Eastern Europe. This audacious notion was partly inspired by Victor Kravchenko's I Chose Freedom (1946), a book Burnham called one of the most absorbing that he had ever read about the Soviet Union.24 The Ukrainian author served as a captain in the Soviet army during World War IIand came to the United States to help administer Lend-Lease aid. He defected soon after. I Chose Freedom provides dramatic firsthand accounts of Soviet atrocities. It condemns naive US foreign policymakers who sympathized with Stalin. What could be done? Kravchenko demands liberation: “The next step toward world security lies not in a world organization—though that must come—but in the liberation of the Russian masses from their tyrants…. The liberation of Russia from its totalitarian yoke, I may be told, is a matter that concerns only the Russians. Those who think so are profoundly wrong. In many ways the safety of all civilization and the chance for enduring peace depend on that liberation.”25 This idea became the hallmark of Burnham's writings, and it made him one of the most important geopolitical writers in the second half of the twentieth century. His World War II writings alerted readers to Soviet expansion. His post-1945 writings were bolder: they argued for liberation.
In the aftermath of World War II, Burnham's attitudes toward freedom and democracy continued to evolve. Whereas in The Managerial Revolution he questioned the nature and future of these concepts, and in The Machiavellians he denied the possibility of true democracy whatsoever, the horrors of Nazism and its unequivocal defeat showed Burnham that some political values were genuine. Democracy was good. It could win. It must win. And now, for the new Cold Warrior, democracy began to be defined by what actually existed in the United States. At least here—in contrast to the Soviet Union—totalitarianism was thwarted by different branches of the government holding power. And people could voice their displeasure without fearing deportation. Freedom and democracy became more than just words for Burnham. They had to be preserved, fought for, and maybe even spread.
These ideas provide the foundation for Burnham's The Struggle for the World (1947). A postwar analysis of foreign affairs in the burgeoning Cold War era, the book opens by announcing that the Third World War began in April 1944 when Greek soldiers, under the direction of Moscow, mutinied against the British Empire.26 Two years later, the clashes became more extreme in the Greek Civil War. This new war pitted the United States against another totalitarian system, except this one was communist. Burnham insists that the United States had to participate. The rest of the book explains how and why.
Like The Managerial Revolution, The Struggle for the World begins with “The Problem.” Burnham argues that the United States was still an immature, provincial nation.27 For the past two centuries, she has focused her energies on expanding westward and clearing the wilderness that curbed her growth.28 Now, says Burnham, the United States needs to recognize her adulthood by shouldering the responsibilities that came with it. Her young men must stand up. They might be tempted to return home from the battlefields of World War II to a life of peace and quiet; young men are naturally provincial. But Burnham insists that they have to continue to fight.29
Burnham bristles at America's leaders. He argues that they consistently vacillated: “The United States forces Argentina into the United Nations, then takes the lead against Argentina by publishing the Blue Book on Peron; the public is compelled to accept Tito, then the effort is made to help [Yugoslavian General Draža] Mihailović at his trial and thereby injure Tito; in China there is a flip-flop every few months.”30 The United States accepted Soviet occupied Poland, and then aided the anticommunist Polish resistance. This could not continue.
To protect freedom and democracy, resolute American leaders must emerge. They needed to recognize that totalitarian leaders inherently differed from democratic ones. Burnham insists, “These totalitarian movements, with their steel discipline, their monolithic structure, their cement of terror, their rigid and total ideology, their pervasion of every aspect of the lives of their members, are of a species totally different from what we are accustomed to think of as ‘political parties.’”31 Western leaders tragically allowed communist parties to participate in democratic politics, seemingly unaware that the goal of communists was to destroy democratic politics.32
Continuing the Machiavellian distrust of words, Burnham insists that when it came to rhetorical battles, the United States was losing. Despite the fact that the Soviets were weaker throughout World War II, the USSR gained more at the conferences. Burnham suggests that meeting and bargaining with communists would prove to be as effective as dealing with Hitler in Munich in 1938. The world must be examined how it really is, not how we wish it to be. The Machiavellian blames this naivete on the US tradition of “democratic-idealism” preached by Thomas Jefferson.33 Burnham advocates a realistic view of international relations; abstract morality should not guide foreign policy. He contends that the real nature of geopolitics could never be understood in a civics class or by studying the Constitution—those were meaningless words.34 In reality, Burnham writes, we live in turbulent times characterized by communist desires for world conquest.
The author seeks to educate his reader about the true nature of communism because one must know the enemy to successfully confront him. Continuing more ideas from The Machiavellians, The Struggle for the World affirms that the supreme objective of communism is power.35 The communist desire to eliminate private property stemmed from their desire to limit everyone else's power. Although communists preach liberation, they seek social totalitarianism when they monopolize power (e.g., all private property).36 Burnham argues that once they achieve power, terror is employed to maintain power. This could not just be reduced to Stalin. Invoking a debate that still rages, Burnham maintains that there was no essential difference between Lenin and Stalin. Terror had been part Bolshevism experience even before 1917.37 Stalin merely continued what Lenin started. Using terror to acquire power was inherent in the communist experience.
Burnham asserts in The Struggle for the World that no group uses more means to acquire power than communists. One example is a “united front,” when communists cooperate with noncommunists by joining noncommunist organizations like committees, societies, newspapers, magazines, and leagues to promote communism. The noncommunist may be aware of communist activity but ignores it because the communist helps them advance a cause: “The non-communist sees a certain task to be done—an arrested Negro to be defended, Chinese children to feed, trade unions to organize, colonial independence to further.”38 The noncommunist eagerly works with everyone willing to advance his or her cause. The communist sees things differently: he or she just wants to spread communism. The “united front” also provides the communists with new opportunities to weaken noncommunist institutions and exploit them for their own purposes, such as when funds raised for Spanish loyalists instead go to the Soviet secret police. Collaboration with communists is never benign.
In The Struggle for the World, Burnham tells the reader that communists do not participate in national politics and government to improve the condition of the nation. Communists want to destroy every nation and all political parties so they can rule over them. An example occurred in the Soviet-controlled sector of Germany (East and West Germany had not yet been declared), where separate socialist and communist parties existed. Under the guise of “unity,” the parties came together to form the Socialist Unity Party.39 Next, socialists were either exiled from the party or were executed. What emerged from the wake of the merger was the German Communist Party, which monopolized all power. In communist fashion, this was progress and the next stage of social development.40 Therefore, it was good.
Practices like these could be applied to the United States. Burnham believed that communists did not try to solve political problems in the United States; they sought to exacerbate them by employing the divide-and-conquer strategy. He contends, “Within the United States, the communists arouse and exploit every decisive possibility. Labor against capital, big business against little business, C.I.O. against A.F. ofL., farmers against business, Negros against Whites, Christians against Jews, Protestants against Catholics, landlords against tenants, foreign against native born, South against North, unemployed against employed: wherever there is a rift in national life, the communist tactic is to deepen and tear that rift.”41 Burnham acknowledges that many of these rifts would occur even without communism, but communists did not try to solve the problems, they exploited them for their own political advantage. They exaggerated class conflict and other conflicts between groups.42 Those who worked with the communists might not recognize that the communist goal was not to amend the United States, but rather to smash it because the communists knew that the United States was the greatest obstacle to the communist world empire.43 Weakening and demoralizing the United States would enable the communists to win the struggle, possibly even before a shot was fired.44
Resembling a religion for Burnham, he asserts in The Struggle for the World that the communist movement gains followers because of the myths it espoused, such as the belief of a kingdom of heaven on Earth.45 It provided hope for the downtrodden, a utopia where all men are free and equal, a world free of exploitation, hunger, and war. The moral dreamer would gain certainty about the imminent coming of this world, albeit after bloodshed. Burnham theorizes that communism soothed Western man's despair that emerged in the post-Renaissance era as secularism and liberal democracy failed to provide security. The former sympathizer says that communist myths were believed more frequently outside the Soviet Union than within it. Although American journalists and French poets might believe communist myths, workers living within the Soviet Union knew that they were slaves.46
In The Struggle for the World, Burnham takes time to explore the question: is a Soviet world empire desirable? Like a good Machiavellian, everything should be examined, not passively accepted, even the possibility of a communist empire. Burnham writes that Americans working for the Communist Party believed that it was desirable.47 And in some respects, this seemed rational. After all, a communist empire would end nations, therefore wars between them, and subsequently the need to use the atomic bomb.48 But the cons of the Soviet Empire outweighed everything else. First, communism seemed to lead to a lower standard of living.49 Possibly influenced by some of the responses by economists to The Managerial Revolution, Burnham states that certain matters could not be centrally planned for the economy to run efficiently.50 According to Communist propaganda, its society had no unemployment and enjoyed complete job security. The anticommunist reminds the reader that prisoners have no unemployment and complete job security, too.51
Communism denied economic freedom, too. Of course, Burnham notes that capitalism also sometimes failed in this respect, but at least the deficient American economic system allowed workers the freedom to select or reject their job, or even start their own business.52 Burnham asserts that under communism, these rights vanish.
More generally, communism subordinates the cherished Western ideal of the individual.53 Burnham argues that Christianity had made individualism central to the Western tradition by emphasizing individual morality, responsibility, guilt, and personal immortality. Individual freedoms and liberties—which are best promoted by democracy—have continued these ideas in a more secular form. But communism eradicates all sacred traditions. Everything becomes subordinated to the party, the state, the revolution, and even the historical process; these transcend the individual.54 Insisting that the collectivizing economic process in the USSR that took the lives of millions of people was inherent in communism, Burnham writes that collectivization applied what communists preach: the subordination of the individual to the collective good.
The author contends that even truth gets subordinated to the advancement of communism. In traditional Western thought, truth came from the eternal mind of God. In the more secular Western tradition that emerged after the Renaissance, truth came through the scientific method. Communism viewed truth differently. Truth only becomes truth when it advances class struggle and the interests of the communist party.55 Scientific truth becomes scientific truth only if it conforms to Marxism.56 The same is true of statistics. And history. The dialectical method determines all truth.
Burnham ends the chapter “Is a Communist World Empire Desirable?” in typical Burnham fashion. The final paragraph is pithy and direct: although there may be some advantages to communism, the costs are too high.
Part II of The Struggle for the World is titled “What Ought to Be Done,” part III is titled “What Could Be Done,” and part IV is titled “What Will Be Done.” All are obvious plays on the title of Lenin's work What Is to Be Done. Communists extolled Lenin's work, and it even shaped some contemporary left-wing thought. Rejecting an evolutionary road to socialism preached by Marxists such as Eduard Bernstein, What Is to Be Done is a call to action.
Burnham demands action, too. He tries to abolish the notion that peace had to be the goal of foreign policy in “What Ought to Be Done.” The international realist had condemned pacificism as a Marxist and a Machiavellian. Now, he denounces pacificism as a Cold Warrior. Burnham insists that those who preached peace were naïve because no nation can have peace as a primary goal. This would mean suicide.57 That does not mean that war was required. Nations must simply be prepared to wage war, at all times, at all costs. Their existence depended on it. If a group stops defending its institutions, it will collapse, either from internal decay or external invasion. France came dangerously close to this scenario when in the years between the two world wars she theorized that it was better to lose a war than fight one.58 Burnham argues that pacifists, despite their pretensions, were not moral, at least in the Cold War context. By calling on their own nations to disarm when communism sought to conquer, they endangered the lives of their people. This was not a moral act.59
Given the Soviet desire for world conquest, Burnham maintains that the individual had only three moral options regarding communism: (1) They can be apathetic and completely remove themselves from politics and its “moral significance.”60 In this example, they will be overrun by communists, but these will have no moral consequences because their morality bears no relation to political events. (2) They can believe that communism provides the best answers for world problems. In this example, they should try to ensure communist victory as quickly and painlessly as possible. (3) They can do everything possible to prevent the spread of communism, by whatever means necessary.61 For the rest of his work, Burnham speaks only to those interested in the third option. These people had consciousness of the raging struggle. Burnham rejected passivity. Something had to be done.
For the Machiavellian, realistic attitudes are a prerequisite for morality. Acting morally means seeing the world as it really is, and then acting accordingly. Naiveite about world affairs only leads to communist conquest, hardly a moral phenomenon. During the emerging Cold War era Burnham's moral person was an anticommunist hardliner.
For those who did recognize the morality of struggle, Burnham demands an offensive strategy. The Soviets sought world conquest, and a defensive strategy would not suffice: “A defensive strategy can never win; all it can do is prolong loss: defensive strategy, because it is negative, is never enough. The defensive policy stated in the previous chapter would be able to halt and even reverse for a time communist Eurasian advance. It would make more difficult the communists’ path toward their final goal and would delay their arrival. Communist victory, however, still would be the end result.”62 The United States had to adopt an offensive strategy against an opponent bent on world domination. Burnham insists that “power must be there, with the known readiness to use it, whether in the indirect form of paralyzing economic sanctions or in the direct explosion of bomb.”63 Communists proceed irrespective of the human cost in the hope of achieving a world empire. The United States must respond with power. Military strength was critical because it demonstrated power.64
Propaganda provides another way for the United States to exercise power. Burnham argues that a fundamental difference existed between Soviet and potential American propaganda: American propaganda could actually be true.65 Instead of discerning between eastern and western conceptions of democracy, the United States should expose to the world the totalitarian system that existed on the other side of the Iron Curtain. The propaganda should penetrate Soviet borders and let the captured citizens know that the United States is willing to condemn their oppressors.66
Only what Burnham called an “American empire” could prevent more communist conquest. He did not mean a world in which the United States placed foreign nations under her yoke. Burnham's empire was a soft empire, one in which the United States provided leadership and guidance in the struggle against communism.67 It resembles what actually existed in the Cold War era. He writes: “By world empire I mean a state, not necessarily world-wide in a literal extent but world dominating in political power, set up at least in part through coercion (quite probably including war, but certainly threat of war), and in which one group of peoples (its nucleus being one of the existing nations) would hold more than its equal share of power.”68 Burnham counters isolationist arguments by arguing that the United States was already involved in parts of the world; a soft American empire existed in Europe, Japan, and the Philippines. Moreover, empires by themselves are not necessarily antidemocratic. Burnham asks, were not two of the most famous democracies in history, ancient Athens and nineteenth-century England, also imperialist, with subjects?69 Empires do not have to have to be totalitarian; they can be compatible with democracy. A loss of some independence does not mean a loss of freedom for the population.70
Burnham rejects the idea that the United States should use power to promote democracy everywhere:
It would be fatally wrong for the United States to adopt officially the feeling of many of its citizens that all nations ought to model their political institutions after the United States pattern. Others may not like the pattern and may still be neither barbarians nor menaces to world security…. If the United States wants to be first among nations, it will not succeed most easily by insisting that all other nations humble themselves before the Bald Eagle. On the contrary, it will do best if it demonstrates that other nations, through friendship with the United States, increase and guard their political dignity and honor.71
Nations need not follow the American political model to be part of this grand empire. The United States must understand the local languages and traditions of the world's nations because this breeds respect for the dominant power.72
Some Burnham biographers like Christopher Hitchens and Binoy Kampmark have cited Burnham as an early neoconservative, at least geopolitically.73 And later neoconservatives did appropriate parts of Burnham's thought. But Burnham's passage above suggests that he would not have agreed with some neoconservative assumptions. The Cold War hardliner does advocate an aggressive foreign policy that undermined communism and liberated Eastern Europeans; he does believe that democracy could prevail there. In The Struggle for the World, Burnham calls for a “democratic world order.” This, however, must be understood in the context of the Cold War: Burnham sought an empire or world order of existing democratic countries that agitated communism. This was a strategic empire based on relationships designed to combat communism in the late 1940s, not a prescription to improve the future world. The mature Burnham was not an idealogue or a universalist. As chapters 10 and 11 reveal, Burnham questioned whether parts of the non-Western world were even capable of Western-style democracy.
His anticommunism was not ideological, but practical. Communists sought to enslave humanity. Power had to be used against communists not because they were godless or even totalitarian, but because they sought to expand their totalitarian system around the world. Burnham believed that the United States had to react against Soviet aggression by using power to defend herself. Burnham was an “America Firster.” Unlike pre– and post–Cold War “America Firsters,” his prioritizing the United States meant US engagement with the world. The haunting specter of communism required this. Isolationism would not suffice because one of the ways to prevent war—to prevent Soviet encroachment—was achieved through an American-centered empire that confronted communism.74 Anything else would lead to the destruction of the United States. How could any patriot support this?
War was not the best option for Burnham, at least not now. He ordered a robust American empire because it made the Soviets fear war; if the Soviets believed they could not win a war, they would not start a war.75 An engaged, vigilant American empire limited Soviet initiative, throwing a cog into their grand design.76 External pressure would weaken the whole structure: “The walls of their strategic Eurasian fortress, so apparently firm now as much because of the absence of pressure without as from strength within, would begin to crumble.”77 External pressure could bust the Soviet system. This was what an American empire could provide.
It was not a reverence for Americana that inspired any of this because Burnham thought American culture lacked depth. He asks: “Who, listening to a few hours to the American radio, could repress a shudder if he thought that the price of survival would be the Americanization of the world?”78 He recognizes American geopolitical strength, but culturally he was a Europhile. For example, Burnham believed that European art was the only art worth studying.79 He just preferred an American empire to a communist one, and in his mind, only one could prevail.
Burnham relates his ideas about civilization and empire with Arnold Toynbee's. Toynbee, a fellow alumnus of Balliol College, penned one of the seminal works of twentieth-century history, A Study of History (1934–1961). Running to a staggering 3.5 million words, the work is twelve volumes and took decades to complete. It compares more than two dozen civilizations, most of which were extinct. Toynbee insists that civilizations may not die from murder, but from suicide. And unlike Oswald Spengler who viewed civilizations as organic phenomena—they all lived, then died—Toynbee believes that while all civilizations struggled, descent was not inevitable. He writes that successful civilizations thrive under the dynamic leadership of elite, creative minorities, during periods of crisis. As long as these great figures exist, a civilization can meet any challenge. This demand for an elite leadership was music to Burnham's ears. For him, the Cold War was the crisis that determined whether the United States would live or die. Resolute individuals must arise.
The Struggle for the World is pessimistic. If judged by the evidence, Burnham reasons that it seems unlikely that the United States would adopt a consistent, long-term strategy aimed at defeating communism.80 Rather, the United States will continue to practice a policy of “vacillation.” American politicians who preferred winning elections over defeating communism were the main culprits. Instead of projecting strength against communism, they look at every geopolitical issue individually, seeking to maximize the issue for political advantage.81 Eras of “toughness, appeasement, isolationism, internationalism and chauvinism” characterize US foreign policy.82 According to Burnham, this is the worst of all strategies because everything adds up to nothing, effectively making it no policy whatsoever.83 Demoralizing followers and disheartening friends, the battle was lost before it had begun.84
Burnham ends the book in the darkest way possible: with a vivid description of nuclear war. In a chapter titled “The Outcome,” Burnham asks the reader to imagine two scenarios: the first in which the Soviet Union had an atomic arsenal. Given the American policy of containment, and the Soviet policy of world conquest, if nuclear war broke out, the USSR would probably launch first.85 The United States will survive the initial attack. However, because the American social structure is more dependent on industry, the damage inflicted by a Soviet atomic bomb could not be matched with US retaliation. The pessimist writes that American vacillation would enable the Soviets to quickly neutralize non-Western countries and Western Europe.86 Thriving communist agents within the United States would engage in “material and psychological sabotage.”87 For all of these reasons, American defeat was certain.88
It did not have to be this way. Burnham presents a more optimistic alternative by demanding an American monopoly on atomic weapons. The nature of the war—and hence the fate of the world—hinged on whether the Soviets had nuclear power.89 Denying the Soviets these weapons would change everything, he believed. Under this theoretical scenario, a first strike by the United States would devastate the Soviet Union. Burnham argues: “The strategic plan must be, it would seem, to strike an immediate, paralyzing blow with atomic weapons at the Caucasian oil fields, Moscow, and a dozen or more of the chief Soviet and Soviet-controlled cities and industrial concentrations.”90 Coupled with an adequate subsequent foreign policy, the war would be over.91 The world would see that the United States had the will and means to stop communism.
This scenario was premised on what Burnham describes as a “positive” foreign policy after America's first strike, one in which the United States did not vacillate. Instead, the United States would relentlessly use political means to eliminate communism, such as directly thwarting communist activists.92 The hardliner theorizes that if the United States vacillated after the successful first strike—if she showed any weakness—all that was gained by the successful first strike would be lost. Communists might lose some cities in the Soviet Empire, but they would continue to politically maneuver against the United States.93 Exploiting racial and social divisions, the communists will simply wear down the United States.94 If a “positive” political strategy did not follow a first strike, communism would persist. International opinion would turn against the United States. It would be seen as a brutal murderer.95
The critic of US foreign policy in some respects anticipated America's biggest Cold War debacle by a generation by writing that when the battle eventually occurred, the United States may not fully use her strength. Americans would be too sickened and conscience-ridden by what would seem to them a never-ending senseless slaughter, leading nowhere.96 Burnham predicts: “The military leadership would be disoriented by the inability of their plans based on technical superiority to effect a decision…. From the standpoint of the United States, the entire world would have turned into an ambush and a desert. In the long night, nerves would finally crack, the sentries would fire their last shots into the darkness, and it would all be over.”97 This path could best be avoided by immediately using power, maybe even nuclear power.98
The apocalyptic thinker feared that war between communists and the West could begin at any time, even before this book had been published.99 The future of Western civilization hung in the balance. As Toynbee suggested, great civilizations can survive difficult times. The United States had a choice. And she had to choose wisely.
Daniel Kelly downplayed the significance of The Struggle for the World by distinguishing between “what it predicted and what actually happened.”100 The biographer notes that Burnham's apocalyptic visions never materialized. And this is true. But the book was not just prophecy; it was intended to shape policy: Burnham wanted to raise awareness of communism's threat during a critical era in history. Active US participation in the Cold War was not inevitable just two years after more than four hundred thousand Americans had perished in World War II.101 Many Americans including important politicians, such Robert A. Taft, favored isolationism, believing entry into European affairs would lead to a less prosperous United States. And possibly to another war. Why should Americans die for Europeans? Burnham argues in The Struggle for the World that Americans must be willing to die because communists did not merely threaten Europeans. They desired global conquest.
Many of the themes propounded in the book were not original.102 In 1945–1946, other books, speeches, memorandum, letters, long telegrams, and articles were crafted that desired some sort of American response to communism. But from a historical perspective, The Struggle for the World may be the first important geopolitical book of the Cold War era. It was the richest analysis of Soviet communism—and none demanded US involvement more dramatically. It did shape opinion, both inside and outside the beltway.
The Struggle for the World appeared the same week President Truman announced that the United States would support Greek and Turkish forces against communism. Truman's press secretary, Charlie Ross, said he recommended that Truman read the book.103 Insisting that US security depended on thwarting the spread of totalitarian regimes, Truman pledged support for any nation resisting communist aggression. Unlike Franklin D. Roosevelt and his vice president predecessor, Henry Wallace, Truman resisted cooperating with the Soviet Union. He pledged economic assistance to war-torn Europe. The United Kingdom, France, and West Germany received most of the aid. As the United States rejected isolationism, Burnham did something rare for him: he approved.
According to the Christian Century, a strong parallel existed between Burnham's and Truman's ideas. An editorial reads: “There is reason to fear it more than a coincidence that the Truman Doctrine was announced and the Burnham book published in the same week. It is certainly no coincidence at all that Mr. Burnham is now, on the radio and otherwise, one of the most vehement champions of the Truman policy.”104 The article continues that Burnham's and Truman's aims were indistinguishable because both wish to contain and weaken the Soviet Union. Would Truman literally follow all of Burnham's ideas? The editorial suggests that Americans should hope not. It would probably lead to another world war.
Publishing magnate Henry Luce helped spread Burnham's ideas. Life magazine popularized The Struggle for the World by producing a thirteen-page condensed version. Its title read: “Struggle for the World: Western Civilization Is Doomed by Communism, Says Controversial New Book, Unless U.S. Stops Vacillating, Bids for World Empire.”105 Luce's Time magazine argued in its summary, “Only one defense of Burnham's book can be made: it is—appallingly—true.”106 With the help of this public attention, The Struggle for the World appeared on the New York Times best seller list.107
The book resonated with a significant former classmate. George Kennan was two years ahead of Burnham at Princeton, and like Burnham, Kennan was an elitist who opposed unbridled popular democracy.108 Kennan and Burnham both recognized some America capitalist deficiencies, but both still favored the American system, particularly because of the freedom of thought it protected.109 The details of their personal and intellectual relationship are murky. The two men worked for the Office of Policy Coordination in the late 1940s under the direction of Frank Wisner. Kennan's “long telegram” appeared a year before The Struggle for the World. Burnham certainly read the memorandum that outlined the diplomat's views on Soviet designs. He continued some of the subjects it propounded, such as the importance of educating Americans about the Soviet threat. In his essay, Kennan writes: “We must see that our public is educated to the realities of the Russian situation. I cannot over-emphasize [the] importance of this.”110 The telegram also contains details about Soviet propaganda efforts, their desire to disrupt the “internal harmony of our society,” and the impossibility of peaceful coexistence.
Kennan lauded The Struggle for the World, writing that it “contains as masterly an analysis of the world communist movement as I have ever seen.”111 He sent two copies to Charles “Chip” Bohlen, requesting that one be sent to John Paton Davies in March 1947.112 Kennan's initially anonymous “The Sources of Soviet Conduct” was published several months after The Struggle for the World. One of the differences between Kennan's “long telegram” of 1946 and his “Sources of Soviet Conduct” of 1947 is the emphasis the latter places on the Soviet quest for power. Kennan's seven-thousand-word essay uses the word power about seventy times. Most paragraphs make multiple references to the concept, usually in the context of describing the Soviet desires. Kennan's anonymous article appeared in July 1947, although according to John Lewis Gaddis, Kennan wrote most of it between January and early March (The Struggle for the World appeared in mid-March).113 The future ambassador's conceptions of the Soviet Union may have developed independently of Burnham's. Nonetheless, both men agreed that the Soviet state inherently expands. They agreed that the United States had to act. But they differed over the appropriate course of action, specifically over how aggressive and confrontational US foreign policy needed to be. This divide would erupt publicly in several years.
George Orwell reviewed The Struggle for the World and called the book “a product of the atomic bomb.”114 He summarizes Burnham's book as follows: soon the world would be composed of two superpowers with atomic weapons, each ready to annihilate the other. The Soviet Union had the geographical advantage because it controlled the Eurasian heartland. The two superpowers are ruled by unscrupulous men who seek only power. What can be done? Burnham scoffs at pacifism. Instead, the United States should recognize its own strength and be willing to use it. An American empire must emerge. Orwell writes that that although Burnham may be called a warmonger, he had “intellectual courage.”115 If Burnham correctly depicts the situation, his course of action would probably be correct. The English author maintains, however, “Burnham, as usual, sees everything in the darkest colours and allows us only five years, or at the most ten.”116 He overestimates the political deftness of Soviet leaders because according to Orwell, they often bumbled, too. The review contends that Burnham's “realist” position meant that he underestimated the historical role played by sheer force. Burnham believed that because something was happening, nothing else could happen.117 Therefore, because Germany was winning the war, she had to win the war. Continuing arguments he made in “Second Thoughts of James Burnham,” Orwell asserts that the author of The Struggle for the World was too obsessed with power. For Burnham, communism was big, so although it was evil, it still deserved some admiration.118 But Burnham exaggerates; he always thought in terms of “monsters and cataclysms.”119 The future author of 1984 concludes that history is never as melodramatic as the apocalyptic Cold Warrior suggested.
Other reviews of The Struggle for the World would have done little to dissuade Burnham about the naiveté of the American public. Arthur Schlesinger Jr. describes Burnham's apocalyptic thinking in a book review for The Nation. He compared The Struggle for the World to Tom Paine's Common Sense because it was clear, passionate, and dramatic. Schlesinger concedes that Burnham accurately notes the Soviet desire for global conquest, but that did not mean they were on the verge of accomplishing it. Schlesinger maintains that Burnham could more easily take extreme positions from afar, but those working in government like George Marshall had to deal with a more complex reality. Burnham's black-and-white vision cannot work in real life. Schlesinger asserts, “Even for a writer with Burnham's talent for the apocalyptic, The Struggle for the World is quite a mouthful.”120 The Harvard historian worried that the book's ideas might lead to a reckless foreign policy, one in which the United States may “fight first, then reconstruct afterward.”121 Schlesinger concludes that we should be thankful that Burnham was not secretary of state.
Schlesinger's The Vital Center: The Politics of Freedom (1949) replies to Burnham's ideas directly. Schlesinger agrees with Burnham that a new era in US foreign policy must emerge. They also agree that the United States must adopt a position of global leadership because the nation had matured; she must leave naïve adolescence behind. Both recognize the United States’ natural isolationist tendencies. Both favor the reconstruction of Western Europe through aid programs, such as the Marshall Plan. Schlesinger, however, rejects Burnham's hyperaggressive foreign policy by arguing that “today a policy of Western intimidation, with the flourish of guided missiles and atomic bombs, would … allow the Communist regime to hide its totalitarian purposes behind a cloak of self-defense.”122 Nothing would do more to bring Soviet people together in defense of their government than war with the West. Schlesinger believes that containment avoids the extremes of intimidation and appeasement.123 Disagreeing with Democrats like Henry Wallace who merely wanted to diffuse the Cold War through cooperation, Schlesinger advocates a general military buildup in Western Europe, but only as a means to deter Soviet attack.124 He suggests that “internal contradictions” would eventually bring down the Soviet Union.125 Schlesinger wanted to win the Cold War. He just preferred playing a waiting game.
By the late 1940s, Burnham's aggressive anticommunist reputation was rising in France. The Managerial Revolution had initially earned him some notoriety there after it was reviewed by Raymond Aron.126 Like Orwell, Aron was captivated by the book, although he questioned Burnham's predictions.127 Writing about The Managerial Revolution in 1943, Aron disagrees with Burnham that capitalism was moribund and that planned economies ruled the future.128 After World War II, the anticommunist philosophers became friends.129 In his review of The Struggle for the World—a book that was immediately translated into French in 1947—Aron supports Burnham's basic view that two irreconcilable superpowers ruled the world. He questions, however, whether American hegemony was the best possible future outcome.130 This would be a common theme among French anticommunist intellectuals.
In 1948, a brief dialogue between Burnham and Andre Malraux was published under the title The Case for De Gaulle. Also a former leftist, Malraux was appointed Charles De Gaulle's minister of information after World War II. Agreeing that the world was in a state of crisis, Burnham and Malraux worried that the Third Force—a self-proclaimed middle way between Gaullism and communism—could not successfully thwart the challenges of the age. In this exchange, Burnham tells Malraux that he sought a strong, economically prosperous France that would work with the United States against communism. Burnham worries that Frenchmen were too concerned with “American imperialism” when it was the Soviets who sought to enslave them.131 The American Cold Warrior says France should fear the United States’ reluctance for the responsibility of world leadership, not her imperialist ambitions.132 Burnham notes that Europe and the United States needed each other in the struggle against communism. To strengthen Europe, he advocates a European Confederation that would consist of common currency, banking, credit, transport, and electric power.133 Malraux replies that Frenchmen would resist such a course if it strengthened Germany. He favors a European confederation that would be led by France.134 Consisted with Gaullism, Malraux, while opposing communism, preferred a more independent course.
Right around the time this dialogue appeared, Burnham published an academic article titled “What Is the Purpose of the United Nations?” It begins with his typical criticism of verbiage; humans ascribe far more power to words than they actually have. Historians will say that a certain treaty ended a certain war, but that is not really true because words do not end wars.135 Burnham writes that contracts and treaties describe only what the minds had already agreed upon. This explains why the League of Nations—a body that emphasized words and treaties—could not stop World War II. Nations pursue their own interests and will agree to certain words when it benefits them. France loved the League of Nations because it was in her self-interest to limit German armaments.136 The United States saw little advantage in joining the League, so it refused.
Burnham argues that the newly formed United Nations was useless because it provides cover for the communists.137 Continuing Trotsky's assumption that international governing bodies are just pawns on a chessboard and that the real work goes on behind the scenes, Burnham maintains that the United Nations becomes a “smokescreen, behind which world communism can proceed with a minimum of hindrance in carrying out its own communist policy.”138 This argument turns Trotsky's idea that the League of Nations promotes the interests of the imperialist nations on its head. Now, the international governing body protects the communists, such as their efforts to advance in Germany and the Far East.139 Burnham insists that the goal of diplomats should not be to reach agreement with Soviet foreign minister Andrei Gromyko, but instead should prevent him from destroying democracies.140
The critic of the international diplomacy was called to testify before Congress in February 1948, ostensibly over the issue of legislation designed to thwart the Communist Party in the United States. It gave Burnham another platform to express his anticommunism. He stated that “communism is a world movement, which operates within all nations, andalready holds full power over a vast area comprising the former Russian Empire together with the territories and peoples conquered since 1939.”141 He demanded that the United States take the proper steps to curb its influence. Continuing themes from The Struggle for the World, Burnham testified that these measures should include the following:
Education: The American people must be educated about the nature and threat of communism. Consciousness must be raised.
Exposure: Too often, communists dupe the public by appearing as liberals, progressives, and even patriots and humanitarians. Masks must be stripped from their faces. At the same time, Burnham recognized the difference between honest liberals and communists. The government needed to make this distinction, too, because falsely accusing liberals benefited the communists.
Illegalization: The communist party must be banned. Its stated goal was to overthrow the government of the United States using violence and terror. What about constitutional protections? Burnham argues that these guarantees had never been applied in an absolute sense. And a democratic government should never interpret its laws in such a way that democracy becomes impossible. For the Machiavellian hardliner, sometimes democracy had to be limited so it could survive. The committee members (including Richard Nixon) were impressed. One even stated that he wished Burnham was a member of their committee.142
Burnham's testimony followed on the heels of a famous actor who testified before Congress about the involvement of communists in Hollywood. Communists had extended their influence into parts of the film industry, including the Screen Actors Guild. Stating that he abhorred communism and its tactics, this self-described New Deal liberal disagreed with Burnham over the need for banning the Communist Party. He stated: “As a citizen I would hesitate, or not like, to see any political party outlawed on the basis of its political ideology. We have spent a hundred and seventy years in this country on the basis that democracy is strong enough to stand up and fight against the inroads of any ideology.”143 His views about communism and its tactics never changed, but his political ideology would, partly thanks to Burnham. His name was Ronald Reagan.