From the WSJ Opinion Archives
BOOKSHELF
The War of Ideas
A look at the men and women who shape Bush's bold foreign policy.
No one ever accused George W. Bush of trying to create a war cabinet that "looks like America," even though it does in certain ways. As James Mann shows in "Rise of the Vulcans," the racial and ethnic mix of Mr. Bush's foreign-policy coterie is merely incidental. Far more important is its professional and intellectual pedigree.
"Vulcans" was the name given to a group of thinkers and advisers who teamed up with Gov. Bush during the 2000 campaign and who, after electoral victory, assumed top posts in his administration: Condoleezza Rice, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Armitage, Colin Powell, Donald Rumsfeld and, of course, Dick Cheney. Today no public debate can avoid making reference to these figures, and little wonder: They have helped Mr. Bush pursue the most ambitious and controversial foreign policy of any president since World War II.
In its group portrait, Mr. Mann's book is reminiscent of "The Wise Men" (1988), Walter Isaacson and Evan Thomas's study of Dean Acheson, Averell Harriman, John McCloy Jr. and the other architects of post-World War II foreign policy. But there is a difference in the subjects themselves.
The Wise Men were products of the American establishment, public servants whose professional lives were shaped by Wall Street and the Ivy League. In a spirit of noblesse oblige, most of them entered government as a second career, eager to create international institutions that would secure peace.
By contrast, the Vulcans made their reputations inside the machinery of government. Messrs. Powell and Armitage were soldiers and, later, advisers to presidents. Messrs. Cheney and Rumsfeld had both been White House chiefs of staff and defense secretaries. Mr. Wolfowitz had taken part in interagency policy debates since the 1960s. Ms. Rice was a key player in the national-security deliberations of the first Bush administration.
And they shaped policy very differently from the cautious, legalistic Wise Men who preceded them. In one of the book's best chapters, Mr. Mann describes how, when working for President Ford in the mid-1970s, Messrs. Cheney and Rumsfeld challenged Henry Kissinger's single-minded pursuit of détente with the Soviet Union. They argued, as did Mr. Wolfowitz, that the spread of freedom, not balance-of-power politics, ought to animate American internationalism. Describing these battles, Mr. Mann achieves what many thought impossible: making the Ford administration fascinating.
The result of these intellectual disputes was a schism in the ranks of the foreign-policy elite that persists today. On one side are what might be called the gloomy realists. These are the heirs to Mr. Kissinger who retain a faith in multilateral cooperation, international organizations and the primacy of diplomacy and who worry over whether America has the will and resources for an ambitious foreign policy. On the other side are the Vulcans, who focus on U.S. military strength and urge its use to deter or roll back threats to national security. The arguments of the Vulcans clearly informed Ronald Reagan's administration--with its emphasis on a military buildup and its confidence in America's purpose in the world. That same confidence--and the willingness to use force--have obviously been critical to George W. Bush's response to 9/11.
Of course, the Vulcans do not agree on everything. The Powell-Armitage State Department, Mr. Mann notes, often finds itself at odds with the Rumsfeld-Wolfowitz Pentagon. But he is careful not to overplay this theme. As Mr. Mann makes plain, the alleged "moderates" in the debate over Iraq--Messrs. Powell and Armitage--are by any historical measure unapologetic hawks. Mr. Powell, after all, was Mr. Reagan's national security adviser and a fervent advocate, in the 1980s, of funding the contras in Nicaragua. Mr. Armitage was one of the last Americans to leave Vietnam, a true believer who never doubted that the cause of that war was just.
Mr. Wolfowitz, for his part, emerges from Mr. Mann's narrative as the deepest and most iconoclastic thinker of them all. His critics depict him as a trigger-happy neoconservative, desperate for any excuse to depose Saddam Hussein. Mr. Mann puts the lie to such vaporings. Although he takes issue with some of Mr. Wolfowitz's reasoning, Mr. Mann clearly recognizes that, for decades, the deputy defense secretary has made the case for an aggressive foreign policy built on the optimistic view that America will use its military strength as a force for good. Although Mr. Wolfowitz issued warnings about Iraq as far back as the late 1970s, Mr. Mann argues that they should not be read as signs of ideological obsession. Mr. Wolfowitz's idealism, he notes, is "usually followed along behind hard-nosed judgments about American interests."
The subtheme of "Rise of the Vulcans" is that the war in Iraq is not merely a response to the terror of 9/11 but, above all, a logical outgrowth of ideas and themes that these inside advisers have been testing since the end of the Vietnam War. Even with all the recent problems in Iraq, Mr. Mann writes, the ousting of Hussein displayed "virtually all the key elements in the Vulcans' views of the world": a faith in spreading American ideals and in the efficacy of American military power, and a willingness to act without allied support. Thirty years ago our foreign-policy leaders dismissed such ideas. Mr. Bush has made them the hallmark of his national-security policy.
At a time when political reporting seems intent on shrinking every story about foreign affairs into a battle of hawks and doves, "Rise of the Vulcans" is a much-needed antidote: a work of serious intellectual history and a nuanced analysis of the debates that will continue to shape American foreign policy long after the Vulcans themselves have left the stage.
Mr. Casse, a senior director of the White House Writers Group, served as a special assistant for cabinet affairs to President George H.W. Bush. You can buy "Rise of the Vulcans" at the OpinionJournal bookstore.
