Manhood, reason, and American foreign policy: The social construction of masculinity and the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. Item Type text; Dissertation-Reproduction (electronic) Authors Dean, Robert Dale. Publisher The University of Arizona. Rights Copyright © is held by the author. Digital access to this material is made possible by the University Libraries, University of Arizona. Further transmission, reproduction or presentation (such as public display or performance) of protected items is prohibited except with permission of the author. Download date 09/10/2021 21:54:11 Link to Item http://hdl.handle.net/10150/187268 INFORMATION TO USERS This manuscript ,has been reproduced from the microfilm master. UMI fiIms the text directly from the original or copy submitted. Thus, some thesis and dissertation copies are in typewriter face, while others may be from any type of computer printer. The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality or the copy submitted. 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Contact UMI directly to order. UMI A Bell & Howell Information Company 300 North Zeeb Road. Ann Arbor. MI481Q6-1346 USA 313/761-4700 800:521-0600 MANHOOD, REASON, AND AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY: THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF MASCULINITY AND THE KENNEDY AND JOHNSON ADMINISTRATIONS by Robert Dale Dean Copyright © Robert Dale Dean 1995 A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY In the Graduate College THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA 1 9 9 5 OM! Number: 9603716 Copyright 1995 by Dean, Robert Dale A11 rights reserved. UMI Microform 9603716 Copyright 1995, by UMI Company. All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. UMI 300 North Zeeb Road Ann Arbor, MI 48103 2 THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA GRADUATE COLLEGE As members of the Final Examination Committee, we certify that we have read the dissertation prepared by Robert Dale Dean entitled Manhood, Reason, and American Foreign Policy: The Social Construction of Masculinity and the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations and recommend that it be accepted as fulfilling the dissertation r:qUiremen llV:_O_f_D_o_c_t_o_r_ of PhilOSOPhY/HipMs_ ~±Chael Achaller .. Date' tL~~ ~ ~"- ::--(=+,I!~/9.='S__ Karen Anderson , Dat~ ;A'AAA~ Laura Tabili Date Date Final approval and acceptance of this dissertation is contingent upon the candidate's submission of the final copy of the dissertation to the Graduate College. that I have read this dissertation prepared under my ~~fo~~end that it be accepted as fulfilling the dissertation D~te 3 STATEMENT BY AUTHOR This dissertation has been submitted in partial fulfillment of requirements for an advanced degree at The University of Arizona and is deposited in the University Library to be made available to borrowers under rules of the Library. Brief quotations from this dissertation are allowable without special permission, provided that accurate acknowledgment source is made. Requests for permission for extended quotation from or reproduction of this manuscript in whole or in part may be granted by the copyright holder. SIGNED: 4 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS lowe thanks to many who helped make this work possible. My parents, Jack and Norma Dean, provided generous material and emotional support during my entire course of study. Their unstinting help was invaluable. They set an example that I shall try to emulate with my own children. The members of my dissertation committee, Michael Schaller, Karen Anderson, and Laura Tabili, taught me much, and offered essential support, encouragement, and criticism during the long process of research and writing. Others, too, provided important models of rigor and imagination in scholarship. Early in my graduate career Hermann Rebel considerably widened my understanding of what history can be, and showed me that asking the right questions is central to the task of an engaged historian. Robert Buffington gave not only friendship, but intellectual stimulation, insight, and valuable criticism; our ongoing dialogue over several years helped shape the direction of the study. Patrick Miller gave encouragement and pointed me toward important scholarship on masculinity. Archivists at the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library, the John F. Kennedy Library, and the Library of Congress offered important assistance. I especially appreciate the help, competence, and good cheer of the staff at the Johnson Library. Finally I must express my thanks to Riva, my wife, and my children Ben and Hannah for their patience and support during my work on this project. 5 To Riva, with love. 6 TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ................. 8 I. INTRODUCTION: CULTURE, GENDER AND FOREIGN POLICY REASON . 10 A Brief Digression into Theory 21 Ideologies of Masculinity: Anthropological Perspectives . 27 II. A Short Prefatory Chapter: IMPERIAL BROTHERHOOD; THE FOREIGN POLICY "ESTABLISHMENT" . .. 38 III. THE CONSTRUCTION OF IMPERIAL MANHOOD: PATTERNS . .. 54 Boarding School Masculinity: Constructing the Identity Narrative 64 School, Sports, and War: The Imagination of Heroism . 82 IV. WAR STORIES: HEROISM, BODIES, AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF ELITE MASCULINITY . 91 "Tex" Hilsman and the Narrative of the Guerrilla Hero 126 V. " LAVENDER LADS" ~.ND THE FOREIGN POLI CY ESTABLISHMENT: SUBVERSION, "PERVERSION," ~~ THE RED SCARE POLITICS OF GENDER AND SEXUALITY . 150 The Contested Politics of Elite Masculinity: "Perversion" and the Security Purges . 164 "Sex Deviates" and the Secret Police: J. Edgar Hoover and FBI Sexual Espionage . 199 VI. MASCULINITY AS IDEOLOGY: JOHN F. KENNEDY AND THE DOMESTIC POLITICS OF FOREIGN POLICY . 215 Cold War Politics and Masculinity of Popular Culture: the "Organization Man" and the Decline of Empire . 219 Aristocratic Masculinity: Kennedy and the Rhetoric of Empire . .. 238 The Bureaucrat as Warrior- Intellectual: Counterinsurgency 248 7 Exemplary Masculinity: "Service,1I ll "Sacrifice," and IIStamina : Shriver and the Peace Corps 255 VII. VIETNAM: MANHOOD, REASON, AND THE IMPERIAL BROTHERHOOD 280 "Go Out There and Nail that Coonskin to the Wall": Lyndon Johnson and the Politics of Imperial Manhood . 297 The Social Reason of the Imperial Brotherhood: George Ball as "Devil's Advocate" in the decision to Escalate, 1965 316 REFERENCES 341 8 ABSTRACT This dissertation explores the ways that specific constructions of "masculinity" and related "gendered" discourses of political power helped shape the foreign policy decisions of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. I argue that both prescriptive and proscriptive aspects of an elite "ideology of masculinity" played an important role in Kennedy administration innovations like counterinsurgency programs or the Peace Corps. The u.S. intervention in Vietnam under both Presidents was shaped in significant ways by a decision-making process embedded in a gendered discourse that equated negotiation with "appeasement," "softness," feminized weakness, and the collapse of boundaries; the use of force was construed as "tough­ minded," a pragmatic "hardness" to buttress vital imperial and domestic political boundaries. This study places analytical and interpretive emphasis on the heretofore largely unexamined role of gender and culture in American foreign policy of the Cold War. The study has two aspects. The first focuses on the creation of elite masculine "identity-narratives"; I examine the patterns of masculine socialization common to Kennedy and the elite "establishment" figures he recruited to staff his national security bureaucracy. I discuss patterns of 9 experience in sex-segregated educational, fraternal, and military institutions, and the ritual ordeals employed by those institutions to create overlapping brotherhoods of privilege and power. I examine their experience of the gendered and sexualized political discourse of the nineteen­ fifties, and the lessons they learned from the government purges which equated "subversion" and "sex perversion" when targeting victims. The second aspect of the study examines the "real world" consequences of the prescriptive and proscriptive ideology of masculinity shared by the national security staff of Kennedy and Johnson. I look at the ways that programs like counterinsurgency or the Peace Corps were shaped by ideals of masculine strenuousness and heroism, and in turn used as a political theater of masculinity for domestic political purposes. Decision-making about Vietnam was inextricably bound up with "private" identity-narratives of masculine power, and a public political discourse