Peace in the Balance: The Future of U.S. Foreign Policy, by Eugene V. Rostow (Good Man, Wrong Premise)

Peace in the Balance. The Future of U.S. Foreign Policy By Eugene V. Rostow Simon & Schuster, 352 pp., $8.95 The Rostow brothers, in the Johnson Administration, played a role comparable to that of the Bundy brothers under Kennedy. Walt Rostow in the White House and Eugene Rostow in the State Department held key positions in shaping this country’s policy, particularly regarding Vietnam.

This book might have been a major source of inside information on moments of crucial decision. Alas, it is not. Rather, the bulk of its pages are devoted to an intellectual’s debate with other intellectuals: Carl Oglesby, Noam Chomsky, William Fulbright, Kenneth Galbraith, Hans Morgenthau, and several others. These pages resemble a good brief. The opponent’s arguments are fully represented and then effectively refuted, exposing their underlying biases, fallacies, or confusions. Personally, I have no quarrel with an ongoing “great debate” but find it curious that this would be the main content of a book dedicated to Eyre Crowe and Robert Vansittart, two great British statesmen who succeeded chiefly through their unerring instinct for political imponderables and great gift for intuitive judgment on courses of action.

GN

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Gerhart Niemeyer

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Peace in the Balance. The Future of U.S. Foreign Policy By Eugene V. Rostow Simon & Schuster, 352 pp., $8.95 The Rostow brothers, in the Johnson Administration, played a role comparable to that of the Bundy brothers under Kennedy. Walt Rostow in the White House and Eugene Rostow in the State Department held key positions in shaping this country’s policy, particularly regarding Vietnam.

This book might have been a major source of inside information on moments of crucial decision. Alas, it is not. Rather, the bulk of its pages are devoted to an intellectual’s debate with other intellectuals: Carl Oglesby, Noam Chomsky, William Fulbright, Kenneth Galbraith, Hans Morgenthau, and several others. These pages resemble a good brief. The opponent’s arguments are fully represented and then effectively refuted, exposing their underlying biases, fallacies, or confusions. Personally, I have no quarrel with an ongoing “great debate” but find it curious that this would be the main content of a book dedicated to Eyre Crowe and Robert Vansittart, two great British statesmen who succeeded chiefly through their unerring instinct for political imponderables and great gift for intuitive judgment on courses of action.