In this trenchant analysis, historian Bruce Kuklick examines the
role of intellectuals in foreign policymaking. He recounts the
history of the development of ideas about strategy and foreign
policy during a critical period in American history: the era of the
nuclear standoff between the United States and the Soviet
Union.
The book looks at how the country's foremost thinkers advanced
their ideas during this time of United States expansionism, a
period that culminated in the Vietnam War and detente with the
Soviets. Beginning with George Kennan after World War II, and
concluding with Henry Kissinger and the Vietnam War, Kuklick
examines the role of both institutional policymakers such as those
at The Rand Corporation and Harvard's Kennedy School, and
individual thinkers including Paul Nitze, McGeorge Bundy, and Walt
Rostow.
Kuklick contends that the figures having the most influence on
American strategy--Kissinger, for example--clearly understood the
way politics and the exercise of power affects policymaking. Other
brilliant thinkers, on the other hand, often played a minor role,
providing, at best, a rationale for policies adopted for political
reasons. At a time when the role of the neoconservatives' influence
over American foreign policy is a subject of intense debate, this
book offers important insight into the function of intellectuals in
foreign policymaking."
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