The Wisconsin School

After an exhausting session with Victoria's Secret Police, Chris Mark
blurted out:

I was discussing with a friend the Gar Alperovitz episode and remarking on how
regrettable it was that even in a military-oriented newsgroup visited by people
with an interest in Cold War history and whose lives have been directly
affected by his views, he is an unknown.

I remember reading stuff by him and Kolko in college.

Note that the timeframe of their publication encompasses the 1960s and the
birth of the "New Left."

I don't recall ever hearing of the "New Left."

Alperovitz argued that the bomb had been dropped on Japan to warn
Stalin against interfering with American plans for the postwar world.

We were trying to keep nuke secrets away from the DRPCBs from the
gitgo. Ike foreign policy of massive retaliation and containment were
pretty good indicators that we didn't want the DRPCBs interfering.

In 1975 came Paul Warnke's famous 1975 "Apes on a Treadmill"
essay in Foreign Policy, in which he called for global downsizing
of American power and an end to efforts to match Soviet military
strength--if we quit the arms race, the Soviets would, too.

FWIW, in 1960 just before Ike "shook the stick" for JFK's change of
command, he warned against the efforts of the military-industrial
complex trying to stay ahead of the soviets...for the economic health
of our nation.

Of course, the result of all this was defeat in Vietnam,

Mark Clodfelter's book, "The Limits of Air Power," wouldn't put the
blame on the "New Left."

Juvat

From: Juvat

Mark Clodfelter's book, "The Limits of Air Power," wouldn't put the
blame on the "New Left."

Some of his peers have problems with Clodfelter's rundown of the air war. He
teaches at the AF academy and is a graduate of the School for Advanced
Airpower Studies, so he is no tyro. I don't know enough about the air war to
have a useful opinion. It is certainly an interesting book.
What the Wisconsin School did was not direct but insidious-- to sow moral
doubt, sap political will. Loss of the will to win led to defeat, whatever the
tactical military details.
(Incidentally, I don't mind "revisionist" historians; there is no one truth
about history, and it behooves new generations to take a fresh look at things.
What the Wisconsin School did was take the State Department "received" version
of the origins of the Cold War and its development and giving it a good, hard
cross-examination. However, they did not admit their own biases, some of which
were quite extreme. This led them, among other sins, to a quite selective use
of sources and to assume that their beliefs and points of view were equivalent
to facts. Robert J. Maddox's "The New Left and the Origins of the Cold War,"
Princeton, 1972, gives an excellent rundown.)

A good column revealing the lasting influence of the Wisconsin School
(although the author makes no reference to it) on American political will when
it comes to fighting a war to win is in a column published Sunday in the LA
Times by David Gelernter, the Yale computer scientist (and victim of the
Unabomber...lost most of one of his arms in the blast). About the current
controversy over Iraq, it is titled, "Don't Quit as We Did in Vietnam." You can
read it he

http://weeklystandard.com/Content/Pu...3/369kgcua.asp

Gelernter mentions a book review without naming the book. That book is "A
Better War : The Unexamined Victories and the Final Tragedy of America's Last
Years in Vietnam" by Lewis Sorely. An excellent review of the book (with links
to many other reviews of it) is at:

http://www.brothersjudd.com/index.cf...ail/book_id/82
9/Better%20War.htm

BTW this is among the best books on the Vietnam War. Sorely, West Point grad,
tank battalion commander, Johns Hopkins Ph.D, CIA Chief of Policy and Plans
Div., does a very thorough job of sifting through the whole sorry mess,
political and military, US and Vietnamese.


Chris Mark