Spear Carriers for Empire: The Alliance for American Militarism after the Vietnam War, 1967-1988 By John M. Rosenberg B.A., The University of Kansas, 2007 M.A., The University of Kansas, 2009 A.M., Brown University, 2010 A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the Requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy In the Department of History at Brown University Providence, Rhode Island May 2015 © Copyright 2015 by John M. Rosenberg This dissertation by John M. Rosenberg is accepted in its present form by the Department of History as satisfying the dissertation requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Date__________________ ____________________________ Naoko Shibusawa, Advisor Recommended to the Graduate Council Date_________________ ___________________________ Robert O. Self, Reader Date_________________ ___________________________ Samuel Zipp, Reader Approved by the Graduate School Date________________ ____________________________ Peter M. Weber, Dean of the Graduate School iii Curriculum Vitae John Rosenberg was born in Joplin, Missouri on August 27, 1984. He attended the University of Kansas, earning a degree in Bachelor of Arts and Sciences in History with highest distinction, as well as a Master’s degree in history with honors. In 2009, he entered the graduate program in American history at Brown University where he has served as a teaching assistant for courses in U.S. history. He published his first article, “Barbarian Virtues in a Bottle: Patent Indian Medicines and the Commodification of Primitivism in the United States, 1870-1900,” with Gender & History . He has two forthcoming publications. The first, “The Quest against Detente: Eugene Rostow, the October War, and the Origins of the Anti-Détente Movement, 1969 –1976,” will appear in Diplomatic History . His second forthcoming article, To Arms for the Western Alliance: The Committee on the Present Danger, Defense Spending, and the Perception of American Power Abroad, 1973-1980,” will be published as a book chapter in the edited volume, Selling America in an Age of Uncertainty , being published by Bloomsbury Press. iv Acknowledgements As I began researching this project, a Ph.D. friend told me that she day dreamed of writing acknowledgements during the long days spent hovering over documents in the archive or hunched over her computer at home. At the time I thought she meant merely that the acknowledgements were the last thing one writes for a dissertation, the last step of an uphill climb years in the making. There is some truth to that, but only now do I take her full meaning. It was not until I began to research and write the dissertation that I realized how truly collaborative the process is, and how lost I would have been without the aid of colleagues and friends. Each time one of them lent me a helping hand or offered an insightful critique, I thought of the acknowledgements, my one opportunity to publicly thank them. I am glad the moment has finally come to express my gratitude to the many people who helped me along the way. First thanks must go to my advisor Naoko Shibusawa. Naoko perfectly balanced the roles an advisor must play: supportive when I need it, and demanding when I need that, too. She has encouraged the best work from me and been my tireless defender. I could not have asked for a better mentor. Robert Self and Samuel Zipp were ideal in their role as dissertation committee members. Both were generous with their time, providing me with stimulating comments on my work. Thomas Zeiler was kind enough to read the chapter on William Casey, and gave me excellent feedback for revisions. I am of the opinion that the best part of graduate school are the graduate students. I have been lucky enough at Brown to develop friendships that I value as highly as anything in my life. I want to thank Ania Borejsza-Wysocka, Patrick Chung, Brian v Druchniak, Sam Franklin, Benjamin Holtzman, Katie Kalafut, Brooke Lamperd, Sara Matthiesen, Laura Perille, Dan Polifka, Lindsay Schakenbach, and Liz Searcy. All have celebrated with me, commiserated with me, and have been generous enough to call me their friend. While at Brown, I was fortunate enough to become a member of the K-Team writing group, started by my advisor. These people read through every chapter of this dissertation, offered excellent advice on how to improve the prose and sharpen the analysis, and only rarely complained. Thank you Marc Briz, Sarah Day Dayon, Kevin Hoskins, Aimie Kawai, Wen Jin, Emilio Leanza, Heather Lee, Ronaldo Noche, Stoni Thompson, Jonathan Tollefson, Kyle Trenshaw, Bee Vang, and Ida Yalzadeh. I received generous support for the researching and writing of this dissertation, including the Albert Beveridge Grant of the American Historical Association, the Silas Palmer Research Fellowship at the Hoover Institution, the Peter Green Doctoral Fellowship in the History department at Brown University, and a year spent as a Graduate Fellow at the Watson Institute for International Studies. I must also take this opportunity to acknowledge Sheyda Jahanbani, who first encouraged me to pursue a Ph.D. in history, and who has remained a close friend ever since. She and Jonathan Hagel bring much needed levity into my life. Special thanks must also go to Dara and Daniel Igersheim, who were kind enough to open their home, and pantry, to me for three months while I conducted research in Washington, D.C. Finally, I want to thank my family. My dad Benjamin and my mom Patty have always supported my career, even as they sometimes wondered what this “history thing” was all about. My sisters Erin and Sarah keep me grounded by reminding me that no vi matter where I go in life, I will always be their little brother. And I must thank my brother Eli for reminding me that there is more to life than work. Namely, Bruce Springsteen. This is for them. vii Table of Contents Curriculum Vitae iv Acknowledgements v Table of Contents viii Introduction 1 Chapter 1: “To be Free, Secure, and Influential”: 23 Eugene Rostow, the October War, OPEC, and the Committee on the Present Danger. Chapter 2: Unleashing” Finance on the World: 87 William Casey’s Pursuit of a New Global Economy in the 1970s. Chapter 3: “Without Allies We Can Accomplish Nothing”: 143 Bayard Rustin, a Cold Warrior Abroad Pursues Social Justice at Home. Chapter 4: Jeane Kirkpatrick Offers an Intellectual Defense for 206 Rightwing Dictatorships: Race and Totalitarianism in the Global South. Chapter 5: The Spear Carriers go on the Offensive during the Reagan Years. 257 Epilogue 307 Bibliography 317 Abbreviations 328 viii Introduction The political campaign to reassert American power abroad after the Vietnam War made for some strange bedfellows. Eugene Rostow was a Democrat, Dean of Yale Law School, and a veteran of Lyndon Johnson’s foreign policy team. William Casey was a conservative Republican and venture capitalist who spent most of the 1970s in the Nixon- Ford administration. Bayard Rustin was a leader of both the civil rights and peace movements dedicated to the fight for racial and economic equality at home. Jeane Kirkpatrick was a political scientist and Cold War liberal best known most for her opposition to the “New Class ” of political elites within the Democratic Party. While coming from diverse backgrounds and representing often divergent interests, these four individuals would come together in 1976 as founding members of the Committee on the Present Danger (CPD). The brainchild of Eugene Rostow, the CPD was a bipartisan group of foreign policy hawks who came together to warn the American public of an unprecedented Soviet military buildup that threatened the world with nuclear annihilation. America, they argued, needed to respond with strength by greatly increasing the U.S. military budget and reestablishing an aggressive, interventionist foreign policy. Their efforts proved remarkably successful. In 1980, they celebrated the election of one of their own to the White House. More than thirty members of the CPD followed Ronald Reagan into the executive branch. Their first order of business: the largest peacetime military buildup in American history, ultimately doubling the defense budget by the end of the 1980s.1 1 On the history of the CPD see Justin Vaïsse, Neoconservatism: The Biography of a Movement , trans. 1 Uniting this diverse group of individuals was the fear that the challenges to American power emanating from the Global South during the 1970s presaged a fundamental threat to their varied interests. The challenges facing the future CPD members included the Arab-Israeli War of October 1973, which revealed the deepening fissures between the United States and its Cold War allies in Europe and Japan. The subsequent oil embargo imposed by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) exposed the vulnerability of western dependent economies to the collective action of raw material “producer ” nations. In 1974, the Group of 77 (G-77)—an alliance of “developing” nations at the United Nations —announced plans for a “New International Economic Order” (NIEO) to insure a greater share of global wealth for the decolonized world. Their demands included the right to nationalize the assets of western multinationals, the establishment of “just and equitable terms of trade,” and the right to form “raw material cartels ” like OPEC for other commodities. 2 And stateside, American activists on the Left began to espouse a Third World nationalist ideology that openly aligned the interests Americans of color with those of the Global South. In response, the future members of the CPD independently came to the conclusion that the challenge of the “Third World” must be beaten back by the projection of US power abroad and attacking Third Worldism at home. Arthur Goldhammer (Cambridge, Mass: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2010), 149-179; Jerry W.