Presenting the creation: Dean Acheson and the rhetorical legitimation of NATO

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Volumn 24, Issue 1, 1999, Pages 39-57

  Gusterson, Hugh ^a  

^a MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 27344439728     PISSN: 03043754     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/030437549902400102     Document Type: Article

References (68)

1. See Lawrence Kaplan, NATO and the United States: The Enduring Alliance (Boston: Twayne, 1988), p. 8. In his first inaugural address of 1801, Thomas Jefferson seconded Washington's sentiments, saying famously, "peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations; entangling alliances with none."
2. David Calleo, The Atlantic Fantasy: The U.S., NATO and Europe (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987), p. 3.
3. Kaplan, note 1, p. 1.
4. Wallace, a former presidential candidate for the Progressive Party, opposed the Treaty on the grounds that it abridged Congress' constitutional right to, alone, commit the United States to war; that "it would replace the United Nations concept of one world with two irreconcilable blocs of nations" (New York Times, March 19, 1949, p. 3); and that it would tighten the noose of military encirclement too tightly around Russia's neck. On March 28, 1949, Wallace shared these views with the US people in a half-hour radio broadcast on CBS. Sentaor Taft saw the North Atlantic Treaty, accurately as it turned out, as the first act in a long drama of US military commitments to Europe that he opposed on fiscal as well as diplomatic grounds. George Kennan felt that the Soviet threat toward Western Europe was political rather than military, and that an expensive alliance would just waste money that might be better spent inoculating the war-ravaged economies and societies of Europe against their domestic Communist movements.
5. For more on Kennan's views, see J. L. Gaddis, Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of Postwar American National Security Policy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982);
6. and J. L. Gaddis, "The United States and the Question of a Sphere of Influence in Europe, 1945-9," in Olav Riste, ed., Western Security: The Formative Years (Oslo: Norwegian University Press, 1985).
7. Secretary of State Dean Acheson, for example, gave a "clear and absolute no" when Senator Bourke Hickenlooper of Iowa asked him during the Senate ratification hearings whether US troops would, as a consequence of the North Atlantic Treaty, be stationed permanently or semipermanently in Europe. In his memoirs he claims that his answer was "deplorably wrong" and "stupid," but "not intended to deceive." See Dean Acheson, Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department (New York: W. W. Norton, 1969), p. 285.
8. Calleo, note 2, p. 25.
9. See Paul Edwards, The Closed World (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1996);
10. Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (New York: Pantheon, 1988);
11. and Noam Chomsky, Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in Democratic Societies (Boston: South End Press, 1989).
12. Acheson, note 5, p. 282.
13. For a good introduction to critical security studies, see Keith Krause and Michael C. Williams, eds., Critical Security Studies (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997).
14. Other useful texts include Ken Booth and Steve Smith, eds., International Relations Theory Today (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995);
15. David Campbell, Writing Security: United States Foreign Policy and the Politics of Identity (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1992);
16. Paul Chilton, Security Metaphors: Cold War Discourse from Containment to Common House (New York: P. Lang, 1996);
17. James Der Derian and Michael Shapiro, eds., International/Intertextual Relations: Postmodern Readings of World Politics (Lexington, Mass.: D. C. Heath, 1989);
18. Hugh Gusterson, Nuclear Rites: A Nuclear Weapons Laboratory at the End of the Cold War (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1996);
19. Michael Shapiro, Violent Cartographies: Mapping Cultures of War (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997);
20. R. B. J. Walker, Inside/Outside: International Relations and Political Theory (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992);
21. and Jutta Weldes et al., eds., Cultures of Insecurity: States, Communities, and the Production of Danger (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999).
22. On the importance of these factors in the creation of the NATO alliance, see Walter Lafeber, America, Russia, and the Cold War 1945-1975 (New York: John Wiley, pp. 50-85).
23. On the naturalizing power of ideology, see Louis Althusser, "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses: Notes Towards an Investigation," in Althusser, Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1971), pp. 121-173;
24. Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge (New York: Anchor, 1967);
25. Terry Eagleton, Ideology (New York: Verso, 1991);
26. Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish (New York: Vintage, 1979);
27. Michel Foucault, Power/Knowledge (New York: Pantheon, 1980);
28. Michael Foucault, The History of Sexuality, vol. 1 (New York: Vintage, 1980);
29. Clifford Geertz, "Common Sense as a Cultural System," in Clifford Geertz, Local Knowledge: Further Essays in Interpretive Anthropology (New York: Basic, 1983), pp. 73-93;
30. Anthony Giddens, "Four Theses on Ideology," Canadian Journal of Political and Social Theory 7 (1983), pp. 18-21;
31. and Laura Nader, Harmony Ideology (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990).
32. See Walter Benjamin, "Theses on the Philosophy of History," in Walter Benjamin, Illuminations (New York: Schocken, 1969).
33. See George Kennan, "A Fateful Error," New York Times, February 5, 1997, p. A23.
34. See Calleo, note 2, p. 28; and Gaddis, "Sphere of Influence," note 4.
35. Gaddis, note 4, "Sphere of Influence," p. 66.
36. Quoted in Gaddis, note 4, Strategies of Containment, p. 22.
37. See Gaddis, Strategies of Containment, ibid., pp. 25-88;
38. David Calleo, Beyond American Hegemony: The Future of the Western Alliance (New York: Basic, 1987), pp. 29-30; Kaplan, note 1, p. 14; and Lafeber, note 10, pp. 59-68.
39. Gaddis, note 4, "Sphere of Influence," p. 83.
40. Calleo, note 17, p. 34.
41. Ibid., pp. 34-35.
42. Kaplan, note 1, p. 34.
43. Ibid., chapter 1.
44. Ibid., p. 37.
45. Acheson, note 5, p. 280.
46. Harold Callender, "US Aid Guarantee Hailed by France," New York Times, March 19, 1949, p. 3.
47. "Wallace Urges Protest," New York Times, March 19, 1949, p. 3.
48. Calleo, note 17, pp. 38-39.
49. Gaddis, note 4, "Sphere of Influence," p. 64.
50. Kaplan, note 1, pp. 36-37.
51. Ibid., p. 36.
52. Quoted in James Reston, "New Pact Marks Historic Change in Our Policy," New York Times, March 13, 1949, p. E3.
53. For a discussion of such persuasive techniques in advertising and other contexts, see Robert Cialdini, Influence: Science and Practice (Glenview, Ill.: Scott Foresman, 1988).
54. Kaplan, note 1, p. 36.
55. See article (3) of the North Atlantic Treaty.
56. "Wallace Urges Protest," New York Times, March 19, 1949, p..3.
57. Calleo, note 2, p. 43.
58. On this point, see Anthony Giddens, Central Problems in Social Theory (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979).
59. Acheson, note 5, p. 279.
60. Ibid.
61. For more discussion of the use of "the Other" to construct community, see William Connolly, Identity/Difference: Democratic Negotiations of Political Paradox (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991);
62. and Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage, 1979).
63. Truman used the same device in a speech at the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty, April 4, 1949, saying that efforts to make the United Nations work "have been blocked by one of the major powers." He never names the power explicitly.
64. Calleo, note 3, p. 24.
65. Bertram Halen, "Senator Hails Tie," New York Times, March 20, 1949, pp. 1,20;
66. and W. H. Lawrence, "Pact Itself Hailed," New York Times, March 19, 1949, pp. 1, 4.
67. Kaplan, note 1, p. 37.
68. Acheson, note 5, p. 280.