JAMES BURNHAM, WILLIAM HENRY CHAMBERLIN, AND THE CONSERVATIVE FOREIGN POLICY DIALECTIC Thesis for the Degree of M. A. MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY THOMAS BENJAMIN 1976 ABSTRACT JAMES BURNHAM, WILLIAM HENRY CHAMBERLIN, AND THE CONSERVATIVE FOREIGN POLICY DIALECTIC by Thomas Benjamin James Burnham and William Henry Chamberlin were the most prominent, articulate, and prolific anti-Soviet writers during the years of the Truman administration. Their most lasting impact was to author a body of work on Soviet-American relations which was widely accepted by American conservatives. A sustained commentary on the views of Burnham and Chamberlin allows the historian to review the Cold War from their perspec- tive and from the perspective of those who commented on them. One can trace the shift within conservative ranks from isolation- ism and Anglophobia to world-wide interventionism, support of the British Empire as a bulwark to Soviet expansionism and a conspiratorial view of international politics. The conservative foreign policy dialectic of Burnham and Chamberlin assumed that there could be no peace while the Soviet Union existed. They had come to this conclusion by accepting at face value the Soviet understanding of the relationship be- tween communism and capitalism. Like Lenin before them, they Thomas Benjamin foresaw the eventual triumph of one system and the destruction of the other. Seeking to preserve America's free society, Burnham and Chamberlin adopted communist assumptions and methods, would not have tolerated opposing points of View in their struggle I with the enemy, would have totally mobilized the nation's material and intellectual resources which.would have to be directed by a central authority, and would have required the subordination of America's allies to American foreign policy objectives and tactics. Following Burnham's and Chamberlin's prescription, the United States would have to subvert its own freedom to save it. This is the dialectic's greatest con- tradiction. JAMES BURNHAM, WILLIAM HENRY CHAMBERLIN, AND THE CONSERVATIVE FOREIGN POLICY DIALECTIC by Thomas Benjamin A THESIS Submitted to Michigan State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF ARTS Department of History 1976 The thesis of Thomas Benjamin is approved: 72W“ /(17”ZL((LQé/9¢L, Committee Chairman Dean May 1976 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank Professors Warren I. Cohen, Madison Kuhn, and Douglas Miller at Michigan State University, and Professor Robert Bowers at Hanover College, Indiana for taking the time to read and comment on this thesis. Their numerous suggestions were very helpful. To Professor Cohen, I am very grateful, for his guidance and encouragement. I would also like to thank Mr. James Burnham for graciously sharing some thoughts with me. Margaret Gentilcore at the Chicago Tribune was helpful in looking up and sending me copies of articles on Burnham and Chamberlin. Devin A. Garrity of Devin Adair sent me some interesting publishing figures. Mildred Benjamin improved countless sentences, often to no avail. Christina Johns lent me her typewriter and provided a sane retreat from the library. And finally, Royal Benjamin has always helped. ii CONTENTS Introduction. Chapter One: Apostasy and War. Chapter Two: The Struggle for Recognition. .30 Chapter Three: Ascendancy Within Conservatism. .46 Chapter Four: Conclusion. .73 Bibliography. .80 iii INTRODUCTION James Burnham and William Henry Chamberlin were the most prominent, articulate, and prolific anti-Soviet writers during the years of the Truman administration. Only one other anti- Soviet publicist, David J. Dallin, a professor at Yale University, wrote as well and as much. Burnham and Chamberlin stirred up some controversy in the Truman years, found some liberal (anti- communist) allies, and far more anti-communist conservative admirers. Their most lasting impact was to author a body of work on Soviet-American relations which was widely accepted by American conservatives. Formerly sympathetic to the Left, Burnham and Chamberlin in the 1930's and 1940's became staunch conservatives. Chamberlin's Rightward move was a reaction to Soviet tyranny and secret American diplomacy. Burnham was an elitist before and after his apostasy and was always less libertarian than Chamberlin. He advocated anti-Soviet policies that could be effected only by a highly centralized state yet simultaneously he paid lip service to the conservative ideal of decentrali- zation. “He also supported Senator Joseph McCarthy's right to attack, investigate, and immobilize the Democratic administra- tion. Burnham's and Chamberlin's intellectual journeys from Left to Right, from sympathy to great antagonism for the Soviet Union were similar to those of many intellectuals in the l 1930's and 1940's and comprises an interesting and important corner of recent history. This study focuses on Burnham and Chamberlin because of their prominence among anti-Soviet intellectuals and because of the undivided attention they gave Soviet-American relations. Unlike many other anti-Soviet critics, it is possible to review the attitudes of these two writers in detail over the seven and a half years of the Truman administration. These years were crucial for it was then that basic attitudes concerning the nature of the Soviet menace were formed by conservatives and liberals. Conservatives, in part because of the influence of Burnham and Chamberlin, attached themselves to a new kind of antiécommunism. This new brand no longer included Anglophobia and isolationism but embraced world wide American intervention- ism, the British Empire as a bulwark to Soviet expansion, and a conspiratorial View of international politics. These views can still be found today in the pages of the most influential conservative publication in America, the National Review. A sustained commentary on the views of Burnham and Chamberlin furthermore allows the historian to review the Cold War from their perspective and from the perspective of those who commented on them. Other anti-Soviet intellectuals and opinion makers such as Eugene Lyons, Max Eastman, William C. Bullitt, and John Foster Dulles contributed to the postwar Right-wing viewpoint and are given some attention here. The interpretations of professional historians are also discussed. However, unlike the present New Left revisionist historians of the Cold War, the diplomatic histor- ians writing immediately after the Second World War did not usually start controversy since by and large they departed little from the internationalist "establishment" interpre- tation.1 This role was filled by the non-professionals, Burnham and Chamberlin. The vehement anti-Soviet vision of the Cold War is virtu- ally ignored today (1976) in the popular and academic press. Historical judgement has moderated with the reduction of tension' and overt hostility between the United States and the USSR. By the late 1960's a number of historians had published many pop- ular articles and books critical of American diplomacy in the postwar era. These new critics believed not that United States foreign policy was appeasing, soft, and defensive during the Truman Administration but just the opposite. The Dean of the New Left, William Appleman Williams contends that American policy makers after World War II "...rapidly embarked upon a program to force the Soviet Union to accept America's tradi- tional conception of itself and the world." 2 Students of theirs lost the older vision of the Cold War, written from a perspective of uncertainty and crisis. From that other per- spective of America was neither an informal empire nor a defender 1The controversial revisionists of the Second World War; Beard, Tansill, Morgenstern, are primarily concerned with America's entry into the war, not American diplomacy during the war or the consequences of the war. 2William Appleman Williams, The Tragedy of American Diplomacy (New York: Dell Publishing Co., 1972?: p. 206. of the status quo but a war weary nation trying to maintain peace and yet at the same time, stop Soviet aggression. A study of the writings of the two men who believed they understood communism and the Soviet Union better than most of the writers of their time accentuates the contours of American opinion and images of the Soviet Union and American policy toward it. It takes note of serious, alternative policies, some which were accepted by the American government, some which were politicized by the party out of power, and many which were damned. This introduction would be incomplete without the inclusion of-a short critique of the history of the Cold War as James Burnham and William Henry Chamberlin saw it in 1953, the con- cluding point of this paper. Burnham and Chamberlin, of course, did not agree on everything yet if they could sit down together today they would both accept this very general composite outline of the Cold War: Communism is an ideology that calls for world conquest and is sustained by the power of the Soviet Union through propa- ganda, military strength and a vast, world-wide web of espionage and infiltration. Prior to 1945, the Soviet Union was not powerful enough to expand overtly through violence and conquest; Instead, the goal of world domination was pursued by the less visible, conspiratorial fifth columns, seeking in- fluence and power in foreign governments. Within Russia, the Soviet government sought to build up the military strength needed for the "inevitable" war with the capitalist nations. Throughout the 1930's the Soviet Union lessened its verbal abuse of the West while continuing to infiltrate govern- ments and public opinion organizations. The liberal Roosevelt administration blindly facilitated the Communists in the United States by allowing Soviet sympathizers, fellow travelers, and Soviet agents to infiltrate every important public institution, including government. The State Department, a most important target, was effectively corrupted. When the European war erupted and Germany attacked the Soviet Union, the United States, under the influence of the pro-Soviet State Department and a pro-Soviet mass media, un- wisely choose to aid and ally with a state as totalitarian and potentially dangerous as Hitler's Germany.