Isaacson, Walter and Evan Thomas. The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made . Harvard University Press: Cambridge Massachusetts, 1996. 346 pp.

Many people have said that The United States of America is not, in fact, a democracy. Instead, based arguably on the fact that in the United States corporate and Wall Street “men” have tended to make all of the government policy decisions that really matter, they view the United States as a corporation, ruled by its owners. There is no doubt that such critics will find good evidence to support their claim in this book.

As a welcome addition to the historiography of the Cold War, The Wise Men deals with such “owners”: Dean Acheson, Averell Harriman, George Kennan, John McCloy Jr., Charles Bohlen, and Robert Lovett, men who greatly influenced the policies of the United States government in an historical transition period. All of these men, of largely different personalities and opinions about their “times,” jointly came to be known as “The Establishment”-- a term which attributes to them the personification of the United States government and its policies before, after, and during the fifty years of the Cold War.

The book's authors are prestigious career reporters and, but some might say that they are also representatives of the elite class that they have written about. Walter Isaacson, a native of New Orleans, Louisiana, is a graduate of Harvard and Oxford University and is the managing editor of Time Magazine. Evan Thomas, also a journalist affiliated with Time, is the grandson of Norman Thomas, who was an American Socialist politician and Isolationist who co-founded the America First Committee (AFC), and was strongly opposed to Soviet Communism. It is likely due to this connection, as members of the of the “Harvard leadership establishment,” that their narrative reads as one of admiration for a “club” of men, the elite of the United States, who decided (at least for a few decades) how U.S. Americans would think about the Cold War. This “club,” comprised of white men only, displayed a stalk of privilege running through the lineage of all its members-- something that that the authors discuss frankly and even seem to romantically relish.1

For instance, they mention that Harriman believed that there was nothing mystical about “history,” that it was simply the decisions of “great men”: “At the juncture of historic forces are people in rooms making decisions” (Isaacson and Thomas, p. 286). Additionally, Isaacson and Thomas point out, “It was characteristic of the old foreign policy Establishment that its members could come and go between government and their bank or law firms” (Isaacson and Thomas, p. 428). For the authors, this is something that is nostalgic and noble; noble despite the inherent difficulties a modern reader might have with thinking of Ivy League educated, Wall Street businessmen as suitable moral guides. Nevertheless, Isaacson and Thomas point out that in the days of the Establishment no one worried about such things as “conflict of interest” when it came to working in the government. A true statement without a doubt, because the period covered in the book, at least in the early chapters, is a period of cronyism, racism, and flat out social elitism-- it certainly takes two of their own progeny, Isaacson and Thomas, to paint such a laudable picture of the false nobility which hides the graft and wide sweeping social disparities of the times.

The irresponsible actions of Senator McCarthy and his mob are explained in detail as it relates to the Establishment leaders. Largely because of the anti-Communist hysteria and their work with Roosevelt during the war years, the Establishment fell out of favor during this period. What is striking about the way that Isaacson and Thomas present this part of the story is how blatantly partisan they are in an underhanded way. The authors' position here is that the policies that the “non-partisan” Establishment created were rigidly militarized under Eisenhower and Dulles. Additionally, Isaacson and Thomas, in another chapter, point out that Johnson said: “Look, George, it's not those punks in the street that worry me, it's the right wing. That's the real beast if it ever gets unleashed” (Isaacson and Thomasm, p. 643). This quote, while interesting, ignores the fact that Johnson (along with perhaps the rest of the established power in Washington DC) did consider the New Left movement to be dangerous, and in context it simply shores up the authors' apparent biases concerning the Right.2

Even though the text does have its biases, The Wise Men should cannot be underestimated as a book immense historiographical impact. Right or wrong, the men of The Establishment wielded an uncanny influence on U.S. foreign policy during the period covered and the author of the philosophical underpinnings of this influence was George Kennan. Kennan, for the most part, was not of the same personality and disposition as the rest of the “Wise Men.” He was not a Wall Street banker or a lawyer, but instead a tortured academic, looking for a “niche” in a world of “great men.” His niche turned out to be the policy of Containment laid out in his Long Telegram (Isaacson and Thomas, p. 353).

In The Long Telegram, not only did Kennan define the policy of Containment but he also thoroughly explained what has become a widely popular view of the real influence driving the Soviet foreign policy beneath the veneer of Communism: “At the bottom of the Kremlin's neurotic view of world affairs is a traditional and instinctive Russian sense of insecurity” and “Marxism was mainly a 'fig leaf' for Russia's current rulers, one that served to justify police-state tactics, a closed society, and expansionist ambitions” (Isaacson and Thomas, p. 353).

This interpretation of Kennan's, and assumed by Isaacson and Thomas, is still in debate. For instance, in John Lewis Gaddis' We Now Know, more emphasis is placed on Communist ideology (before the Cuban Missile Crisis) than Kennan would have been comfortable with, at least according to the previous quote from Isaacson and Thomas. Furthermore, many of the “Wise Men” were not convinced of Kennan's view until well into the coldest years of the Cold War. Interestingly though, even though it is Kennan's Long Telegram that Isaacson and Thomas blame for the Red Scare activities of the Truman administration, they note that Kennan never intended his recommended stance against the Communists to create such a frenzied and militarized response in the United States but held out the possibility that Kennan might have been a kind of insecure academic who would constantly hedge his views no matter which way they were interpreted for policy.

Nevertheless, Kennan did not hedge his view when it came to the creation of a Jewish state, nor did any of Truman's other foreign policy advisors. This is discussed by Isaacson and Thomas in a chapter entitled “Crisis.” Given the contemporary debate relating to the war in Iraq the words on page four hundred and fifty two of the text are extremely interesting. Isaacson and Thomas quote James V. Forrestal as saying, “You just don't understand. There are four hundred thousand Jews and forty million Arabs. Forty million Arabs are going to push four hundred thousand Jews into the sea. And that's all there is to it. Oil-- that is the side we ought to be on” (Isaacson and Thomas, p. 452). In this light, it seems fairly clear that there is a U.S. foreign policy precedent for interest in other nations' oil. But oil aside, President Truman did recognize Israel, despite the lobbying efforts of his Wall Street advisors and their unique sense of “bipartisanism”: a centrist love for money.

Despite the fact that the Wise Men largely disagreed with Truman on the Israel issues, the “club” did side with him on the use of force in Korea without Congressional approval, something that Isaacson and Thomas point out set a bad precedence for future administrations-- the culprit: Dean Acheson. This bad precedent manifested itself, of course, in the actions of LBJ, who had “...subscribed to all the maxims that Acheson had made 'clearer than the truth' and John Foster Dulles had hardened into dogma” (Isaacson and Thomas, p. 642). Isaacson and Thomas further note that LBJ remembered the “loss of China” and apparently did not want to make the same mistake in Vietnam. Nevertheless, whatever blame can be tossed at LBJ, the real foreign policy makers were back on center stage and influencing the President when it came to action in Vietnam. It truly was, at the time, action based on Dulles' interpretation of Kennan's Containment policy. Sadly, the precedent of unilateral Presidential military action continues today, thanks to the corporate elites who were called “Wise Men.”

Isaacson and Thomas have written an important book which adds significantly to the historiography of the Cold War. Despite the fact that the authors attempt to paint a vividly optimistic and nostalgic picture of the six “great men” they write about, it will be self-evident to most readers the inherent contradictions of such a viewpoint. When Isaacson and Thomas cite that most of the Establishment is bi-partisan, one gets the impression that this is only true because their allegiance is to strong drink, power, and wealth. When Isaacson and Thomas go on preening about the little personality quirks of their heroes it is easy to imagine them as imperious, snobbish elitists with only the interest of their ilk in mind as they make decisions that effect the whole world. This is not to say that the men that Isaacson and Thomas write about were not interesting or incredibly important, they were-- but one might suggest that the “iconization” of a rude age of elites does not reveal the entire story.

That real story is not told in The Wise Men because the Wise men were seemingly uninterested in what their foreign policies did to the common person both in the Soviet Union and in the United States. Perhaps the only true hero in the book is George Kennan, who from the very beginning understood the futility of meeting Soviet blustering with strong arm tactics and was, early on, very concerned about the militarized response of the United States towards the Soviet Union. It is this gem from the book that perhaps the authors did not intend, namely, that of the valid position of the Revisionist historian revisited: the Cold War was perpetuated, and largely started, by the militaristic and capitalist expansionism promoted by the United States in Europe and in Asia. Indeed, even the two hot wars in Asia, Korea and Vietnam, can be seen as an American corporate advance in the light of having read The Wise Men because of the influence of corporate America on foreign policy.