More than a half century ago, and in sobriety, totalitarianism was imagined in a form that seemed plausible despite a political setting where there was virtual unanimity that totalitarianism was the exact ant.i.thesis of the nation"s understanding of itself. More than a half century ago, in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, a war in which our main enemies were understood to be totalitarian regimes, Edward Corwin, a distinguished const.i.tutional scholar of his day and no sci-fi enthusiast or radical, published a short book t.i.tled Total War and the Const.i.tution (1947). Like many of his contemporaries Corwin was responding to the novel possibility of nuclear war. He tried to imagine the kind of national transformation likely to occur in the event of a nuclear threat. There would be, he speculated, a streamlining of the system of const.i.tutional government into a "functional totality": the politically ordered partic.i.p.ation in the war effort of all personal and social forces, the scientific, the mechanical, the commercial, the economic, the moral, the literary and artistic, and the psychological.2 Corwin depicted total mobilization of all "forces" as an instinctive reaction to a threat of annihilation emanating from "outside." In short, not a totalitarianism taking shape gradually but one mobilized as an immediate reaction setting off a radical transformation of the old structure of governance and the imposition of a new and, one would hope, temporary political ident.i.ty. Corwin had depicted a totalitarian system resulting from a series of deliberate, self-conscious actions, a deviation provoked by an emergency of uncertain duration rather than an inversion evolving from a succession of seemingly unrelated, heedless decisions.
III.
Why should a sober and highly respected const.i.tutional authority indulge in this particular flight of fancy? In depicting a state of war in the nuclear age, Corwin ventured beyond the actual mobilization of American society during the Second World War, beyond what Americans had experienced but not beyond what was known. Corwin"s formulation could be described as an act of political imagination, a self-conscious projection of a state of affairs that did not in fact exist, involving an unidentified enemy at a time when no other nation possessed nuclear weapons. Yet he also extrapolated some elements (e.g., nuclear bombs) that did exist. Above all, looking backwards, he a.s.sumed that the recent wartime mobilization const.i.tuted the meaning of "total."
I want to pause over the idea of "political imagination" and its product, the "political imaginary." My concern is not so much with an individual thinker"s formulation as with the consequences when a particular political imaginary gains a hold on ruling groups and becomes a staple of the general culture; and when the political actors and even the citizens become habituated to that imaginary, identified with it.
Bearing in mind that totalitarianism is first and foremost about power, we can see that the ideas of imagination and of the imaginary, while pointing toward the fanciful, are power-laden terms, striking because they seem to join power, fantasy, and unreality. Consider the following standard dictionary definitions: imagination: The power which the mind has of forming concepts beyond those derived from external objects . . . a scheme, plot; a fanciful project.
imaginary: existing only in imagination . . . not really existing.3 The idea of an imaginary has special relevance to a society where continuous technological advances encourage elaborate fantasies of individual prowess, eternal youthfulness, beauty through surgery, action measured in nanoseconds: a dream-laden culture of ever-expanding control and possibility, whose denizens are p.r.o.ne to fantasies because the vast majority have imagination but little scientific knowledge.
A political imaginary involves going beyond and challenging current capabilities, inhibitions, and constraints regarding power and its proper limits and improper uses. It envisions an organization of resources, ideal as well as material, in which a potential attributed to them becomes a challenge to realize it. What is conceived by the imagination is not a mere improvement but a quantum leap that nonetheless preserves elements of the familiar. For example, in his imaginary, The Secret of Future Victories (1992), a four-star general imagined an attack by the Soviet bloc which would be met by an American force that "draws adroitly on advanced technology, concentrates forces from unprecedented distances with overwhelming suddenness and violence, and blinds and bewilders the foe."4 As the quotation suggests, while a strong element of fantasy may figure the imaginary, there is likely to be a significant "real," verifiable element as well. Postmodern weaponry has in fact demonstrated its "Star Wars" potential, and suicide bombers do blow up schoolchildren.
IV.
I want to sketch two contrasting types of imaginary. One I shall call the "power imaginary," the other the "const.i.tutional imaginary." On the face of it, the two seem mutually exclusive; I shall treat them as cohabiting uneasily. The const.i.tutional imaginary prescribes the means by which power is legitimated, accountable, and constrained (e.g., popular elections, legal authorization). It emphasizes stability and limits. A const.i.tution partakes of the imaginary because it is wholly dependent on what public officials, politicians in power, and, lastly, citizens conceive it to be, such that there is a reasonable continuity between the original formulations and the present interpretations. The power imaginary seeks constantly to expand present capabilities. Hobbes, the theorist par excellence of the power imaginary and a favorite among neocons, had envisioned a dynamic rooted in human nature and driven by a "restless" quest for "power after power" that "ceaseth only in death." But, according to Hobbes, unlike the individual whose power drives cease with death, a society can avoid collective mortality by rationalizing the quest for power and giving it a political form. Hobbes proposed to combine a const.i.tutional with a power imaginary. It took the form of a permanent contract, a const.i.tutional imaginary, which provided the basis for the power imaginary. The individual members of society, driven by fear and insecurity, agree to be ruled by an absolute sovereign or chief executive in exchange for a.s.surances of protection and domestic peace.5 He becomes the custodian of the power imaginary, "the great Leviathan," as well as the final interpreter of the const.i.tutional imaginary.
The main problem is that pursuit of the power imaginary may undermine or override the boundaries mandated in the const.i.tutional imaginary. A power imaginary is usually accompanied by a justifying mission ("to defeat communism" or "to hunt out terrorists wherever they may hide") that requires capabilities measured against an enemy whose powers are dynamic but whose exact location is indeterminate. The enemy"s aims and powers may have some verifiable basis, but they are typically exaggerated, thereby justifying a greater claim on society"s resources, sacrifices by society"s members, and challenges to the safeguards prescribed in the const.i.tutional imaginary.6 One consequence of the pursuit of an expansive power imaginary is the blurring of the lines separating reality from fancy and truth telling from self-deception and lying. In its imaginary, power is not so much justified as sanctified, excused by the lofty ends it proclaims, ends that commonly are ant.i.thetical to the power legitimated by the const.i.tutional imaginary. At present, according to one apologist, "empire has become a precondition for democracy." The United States, he continues, should "use imperial power to strengthen respect for self-determination [and] give states back to abused, oppressed people who deserve to rule them for themselves."7 Thus, instead of imperial domination as the ant.i.thesis of democracy or of imposed government as the opposite of self-government, we have a fantasy of benevolence, of opposites harmonized through the largesse of a superpower.
I want to suggest that an American imaginary, centered on the nation"s projection of unprecedented power, began to emerge during World War II (194145). However, that shift was as significant for the imaginary it displaced as for the one it established. Before the war, during the first two terms of FDR"s presidency (193341), a substantial attempt was made to establish a liberal version of social democracy. Looking back upon that experience, one has difficulty recognizing an America in which, unapologetically, public debate and discussion centered on matters such as planning; focusing resources on the poor and unemployed; bringing radical changes to agriculture by limiting production; regulating business and banking practices while not fearing to castigate the rich and powerful; raising the standard of living of whole regions of the country; introducing public works projects that created employment for millions and left valuable public improvements (libraries, schools, conservation practices, subsidies to the arts); and promoting all manner of partic.i.p.atory schemes for including the citizenry in economic decision-making processes.
However, the combination of expanded state power and genuine ma.s.s enthusiasm for the new president gave pause to some observers.8 At FDR"s inaugural address in 1933 Eleanor Roosevelt found the enthusiasm of the crowd "a little terrifying because when Franklin got to that part of the speech when he said it might become necessary for him to a.s.sume powers ordinarily granted to a president in war time, he received his biggest demonstration."9 At the time the country"s economy was in desperate straits. Millions were unemployed and hungry; agricultural prices had fallen so low that products were not marketed and countless farms were being foreclosed, sparking violent protests; manufacturing had come to a virtual halt and the fortunate few who were employed received meager wages. In the background, Hitler had a.s.sumed office, while Mussolini was firmly ensconced in power. A distinctive power vocabulary began to take hold suggesting that the world was witnessing the emergence of a novel, more expansive power imaginary. Usages such as "dictatorship," "totalitarianism," and "mobilization" were not uncommon. Although the carnage of the First World War remained a fresh memory, there arose a spontaneous belief, shared among politicians, pundits, business leaders, and the public, that the nation"s economic crisis qualified as the equivalent of a state of war which justified an unprecedented expansion of state power in peacetime.
Early in the New Deal in what some Americans saw as "economic nihilism" threatening the nation, there was a clamor for a different imaginary that was clearly at odds with the const.i.tutional imaginary. Congressman Hamilton Fish referred approvingly to FDR"s administration as "an American dictatorship." Al Smith, a former Democratic presidential candidate, seemed to be appealing to experience when he demanded hyperbolically, "What does a democracy do in a war? It becomes a tyrant, a despot, a real monarch. In the [First] World War we took our Const.i.tution, wrapped it up and laid it on the shelf and left it there until it was over." The Republican presidential nominee in 1936, Governor Alf Landon, declared: "Even the hand of a national dictator is in preference to a paralytic stroke. . . . If there is any way . . . a Republican governor in a mid-western state can aid [the president] in the fight, I now enlist for the duration of the war."10 What was unusual or perhaps naive about such reactions was that the United States had not experienced the actuality of war at home since 1865. For the vast majority of Americans modern warfare was, in large measure, imagined rather than actually felt or observed firsthand. Similarly, dictatorship had never been established. In 1933 there was not yet a common awareness of the brutality of Mussolini"s regime or of the deadly effects of the liquidation of the kulaks and forced collectivization in the Soviet Union.11 Although the Roosevelt administration was granted exceptional powers to deal with the crisis, and although it attempted to raise wages and to control manufacturing, retailing, and agricultural output, many of its programs were voluntary or required the cooperation of trade a.s.sociations and agricultural groups. There was certainly far more chaos, improvisation, and haphazard enforcement than regimentation, yet it was also clear that a new power imaginary had come into existence. The everyday vocabulary of government officials, politicians, publicists, and academics bandied expansive power terms and envisioned new scales of operation: national planning, mobilization of labor, controls over agricultural production, consumer protection.12 In some official circles there was even talk of "socialism." The vision of power was, however, strictly domestic and mostly involved economic relations; the influential economists favored economic nationalism rather than globalism.13 There was no attempt to control education, culture, newspapers, or radio broadcasting. There was no foreign enemy. Although capitalist greed was often attacked,14 FDR and most of his closest advisers believed that the aim of the New Deal was to save the capitalist system from unreconstructed capitalists. Government regulation, instead of being the enemy of capitalism, was conceived as the means of saving it by promoting employment, decent wages, education, and a cushion against the cyclical swings endemic to capitalism.
V.
But while the New Deal imaginary stimulated hopes of fundamental social and economic reforms within the framework of capitalism, it also aroused panic among business and financial leaders and provoked a counterimaginary. Once the economy appeared to be recovering, a powerful public relations campaign was mounted. The New Deal was depicted as the creature of leftist forces bent on transforming the country"s economy.
The alarums sounded by business and financial leaders were not without foundation. The 1930s were years of extraordinary political ferment, most of it directed against the economic status quo. There were substantial numbers of communists as well as socialist followers of Norman Thomas, but perhaps more important were the popular political movements that openly challenged the political and economic power of capital.
The most important of these was the Share-the-Wealth movement of Huey Long, the Townsend movement for old-age pensions, and the National Union for Social Justice, galvanized by the Catholic priest Father Coughlin, that called for a guaranteed annual wage, the nationalization of public utilities, and the protection of labor unions. The striking feature of the three movements was their success in mobilizing the support of the poor, the unemployed, the workers, small-business owners, and members of the middle cla.s.s, and accomplishing much of this mobilization through the new medium of national radio.15 The fact that millions of citizens were stirred to support leaders and become emotionally and practically involved in movements outside the main political parties lent a different, potentially more populist meaning to "mobilization." An American version of a demos, demagogic warts and all, had emerged. Huey Long"s movement centered its protests on the maldistribution of wealth. He called for taxation that would eliminate all income over a million dollars and inheritances over five million. There were to be homestead allowances of five thousand dollars to every family and a guaranteed annual income of at least two thousand, old-age pensions, limitations on the hours of labor, and college education for the qualified. In a few short years he succeeded in actually changing and improving the lives of poor people, but primarily by means of corruption, intimidation, and personal charisma.16 A plausible case could be, and has been, made that he had created, if briefly, a thin form of fascism. But it might also be argued that all three movements were versions of a "fugitive" democracy which, while destined to be short-lived because of its reliance on the limited resources of ordinary people, succeeded nonetheless in challenging the democratic credentials of a system that legitimates the economic oppression and culturally stunted lives of millions of citizens while, for all practical purposes, excluding them from political power.17 Each movement was received coolly by the New Deal leadership and kept at arm"s length, despite agreement with many of the proposals put forward by the dissidents. The lesson for the political establishments of the major parties was that "mobilization" should be carefully controlled so as to preclude its becoming a challenge to the far narrower notions of popular partic.i.p.ation represented by the two major party organizations.
By the late 1930s the question beginning to emerge was whether liberalism with a primarily domestic focus would survive and flourish once the New Deal was suspended by World War II; and whether its counterimaginary of a state-regulated capitalism would survive after the shooting war ended or, instead, give way to a radically altered power imaginary for a new kind of war that followed, and for the kind of demos needed for its support.18
VI.
A clue to the modest influence of foreign affairs in the political imaginary before World War II was suggested in some remarks of 1941 by Senator Robert Taft, a major Republican spokesman for isolationism and a constrictive view of American power: Frankly, the American people don"t want to rule the world, and we are not equipped to do it. Such imperialism is wholly foreign to our ideals of democracy and freedom. It is not our manifest destiny or our national destiny.19 Before the end of the twentieth century Taft"s insular vision would be abandoned by conservative elites. President Reagan a.s.sured the nation that it had the "power to begin the world over again."20 The old imaginary, confined to a continent, was defeated by World War II when the global reach of American power was first explored, and the New Deal dream of a planned and more equitable economy was temporarily, if unintentionally, realized by wartime austerity. American military power was engaged on every continent, save for Latin America. Its economic resources were expanded to support not only American forces but those of its allies.
On the "home front" of World War II the entire society was, for the first time, mobilized for a lengthy period. The government sought to organize all of society"s resources under central control and direct them toward the single purpose of defeating the enemy. It represented the break as a change from peacetime "normalcy" to wartime "emergency," although what was pa.s.sed off as "normal" had been the New Deal regulatory state of the 1930s. Censorship and a military draft were introduced. Resources were allocated and a.s.signed priorities, not by the market but by the government. Cla.s.s distinctions seemed suspended as a wartime egalitarianism was imposed. Wages, profits, and prices were controlled, and all citizens were subjected to food rationing. Nonetheless, domestically the formal const.i.tution of the system remained largely untransformed.
While an impressive systematization of governmental regulatory power had been introduced and executive authority expanded, the enlarged scope of government"s legal powers was understood as temporary, confined to the duration of the "wartime emergency." With the possible exception of a somewhat deferential judiciary, the const.i.tutional order functioned more or less normally. Congress met uninterruptedly and did not refrain from criticizing the conduct of the war; the two political parties continued their contests for office; and elections remained free. Except for the shameful "relocation" of Americans of j.a.panese ancestry, very few governmental actions could be described as dictatorial. Although an enlarged power imaginary had clearly taken hold, it lacked mythological status. Perhaps this was due to the fact that at the time the nature of the enemy was not truly comprehended.21 The n.a.z.i concentration camps and the murder of millions of Jews, Gypsies, h.o.m.os.e.xuals, and Jehovah"s Witnesses were not major themes of wartime propaganda.
Or perhaps the imaginary was restrained by an inhibition that could be relaxed only after the war was over. The wartime American imaginary had been incomplete, not only because it was a.s.sembled hastily in response to a war that the United States had not instigated, and which, before December 7, 1941, was strongly opposed, but also because wartime expediency dictated the suppression of hostility toward a major ally whom many politicians and pundits considered to be at least as evil as the n.a.z.is.
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For the imaginary sp.a.w.ned by World War II contained one embarra.s.sment: the alliance with the communist dictatorship of the Soviet Union, without whose contributions and horrific sacrifices the Allied victory would have been highly problematic. Distrust of this ally had its beginnings as far back as the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 and the "red scare" of the 1920s.22 The motive at that time was not solely geopolitical worries about the Bolshevik regime but that regime"s candidacy as an alternative to capitalism.23 The wartime imaginary was not abandoned after 1945 but reconceived as a "Cold War" between the United States and the Soviet Union, a showdown between capitalism and anticapitalism. The undeclared stake concerned domestic policy. Would the egalitarian tendencies encouraged by the New Deal and its accompanying faith in governmental regulation of the economy be resumed after World War II? The policy-makers of the Cold War would decide that issue by a.s.signing a huge proportion of the nation"s resources to defense rather than welfare.
The Cold War consolidated the power of capital and began the reaction against the welfare state but without abandoning the strong state. What was abandoned was all talk of partic.i.p.atory democracy. "Mobilization" was partic.i.p.ation"s sublimation. The propaganda of business interests depicted the combination of social democracy and political regulation of the economy as simple socialism and therefore the blood relative of communism.24 The new state would continue to promote business but without requiring it to be socially responsible. Rearmament would be financed to an important extent by cuts in social spending, while the costs of national security would be largely borne by the less well-off.25 The lasting effects of the Cold War encounter included not only the elimination of the USSR but also the containment and rollback of the social and political ideals of the New Deal. The unifying ideology for the ma.s.ses was a "dematerialized" one, a combination of patriotism, anticommunism, and-in the new nuclear era-fear.
The Democrats, the party most closely identified with New Deal social and economic reforms, were the original, most enthusiastic cold warriors. A new species of liberalism came into being: the "Cold War liberal" who was resolutely anticommunist and convinced that "national security" const.i.tuted the nation"s highest priority.26 The Cold War liberal even discovered the political utility of a civil religion. He was prepared to put aside the secularism and rationalism that, historically, had been among liberalism"s defining elements and to seek validation for liberal anticommunism abroad and at home by appealing to theology, most notably that of Reinhold Niebuhr"s Christian realism. Niebuhr was notoriously pessimistic, subscribing to a view that stressed the dark side of human nature. Sobered by Niebuhr"s pessimism, the Cold War liberals set about to scale down liberalism by relocating it in what an admirer of Niebuhr christened "the vital center." "The old liberal," according to one of the leading neoliberals, viewed "man as perfectible, as endowed with sufficient wisdom and selflessness to endure power and to use it infallibly for the general good," while the new liberal has been "reminded" by totalitarian regimes "that man was, indeed, imperfect and that the corruptions of power could unleash great evil in the world. We discovered a new dimension of experience in the dimension of anxiety, guilt, and corruption." The new liberal was fired less by hopes for socioeconomic reform than by the wish to distance himself from "the Left" and populist democracy and to celebrate a new, more clear-eyed elite, one committed to the Cold War, lukewarm or indifferent toward social democracy, and increasingly unreceptive to egalitarian ideals. "I am persuaded, too," wrote the theorist of the "vital center," "that liberals have values in common with most members of the business community-in particular a belief in a free society."27 The bonds between liberalism and democracy began to unravel.
The Cold War (194791) provided the framework for a radically new imaginary of a war that was "cold" in the sense of being calibrated to stop short of actual battle. To champion that oxymoron required hyperbole. Its proponents proclaimed it a "total war" of global dimensions and of uncertain but prolonged duration.28 Rearmament was inst.i.tutionalized as a huge, albeit controversial, and permanent part of the nation"s economy and annual budget. A "defense establishment," comprising the economy, the military, and the state, came into being. It would alter the political ident.i.ty of the society for decades to come. For the first time, too, "war," for the most part, would be fought without actual battles and against an enemy who operated secretively, "undercover." Although few Americans encountered the enemy, they were a.s.sured by politicians, publicists, preachers, and the FBI that he was "hidden" and had to be confronted abroad and rooted out at home. New categories of "loyalty," "internal security," and "subversion" were introduced and given the status of legal standards.
The const.i.tutional imaginary underwent profound changes as it adapted to the new power imaginary and its totalizing categories. For almost a half century the new war was defined in starkly Manichaean terms, as an epical struggle for the fate of the world between totalitarian dictatorship promoting atheism and communism, and the freedom-loving, G.o.d-fearing capitalist democracy of the United States and its Western European allies.29 Public officials insisted that the Cold War was "in fact a real war" against an enemy bent on "world domination." One high-ranking official declared that the United States was "in a war worse than any we have experienced . . . not a cold war but a hot war." Henceforth the nation must disavow the "sharp line between democratic principles and immoral actions" and be ready to fight "with no holds barred."30
viii
The prime example of a power imaginary and the best indicator of the turning point from a politics of social reform to the pursuit of a global politics is an official report to President Truman by the National Security Council in April 1950. A leading scholar has described NSC-68: United States Objectives and Programs for National Security as "the bible of American national security and the fullest statement of the new ideology that guided American leaders" during the Cold War.31 It was also prophetic of how "mobilization" would provide the form by which totalizing power would become normalized.
The highly charged language of NSC-68 seems out of character for a cla.s.sified "top secret" policy paper composed by and for policy-making elites. One expects a doc.u.ment for the sober. While there are plenty of economic statistics and military strategies, the report contains myth making of epical proportions and high melodrama as well. "The issues that face us," the doc.u.ment announced sweepingly, "are momentous, involving the fulfillment or destruction not only of this Republic but of civilization itself."
NSC-68 begins with the favorite ploy of many myths, a dualism where innocence and virtue are confronted by unnuanced evil.32 The postwar world is, unqualifiedly, polarized: "power [has] increasingly gravitated to . . . two centers."
[While] the fundamental purpose of the U.S. is to a.s.sure the integrity and vitality of our free society, which is founded upon the dignity and worth of the individual . . . the Soviet Union, unlike previous aspirants to hegemony, is animated by a new fanatic faith, ant.i.thetical to our own, and seeks to impose its absolute authority over the rest of the world. Conflict has, therefore, become endemic and is waged, on the part of the Soviet Union, by violent or non-violent methods in accordance with the dictates of expediency. With the development of increasingly terrifying weapons of ma.s.s destruction, every individual faces the ever-present possibility of annihilation should the conflict enter the phase of total war.33 The shape of the power imaginary is dictated not only by the threat posed by the USSR but by the nature of its power dynamic, which is described as "inescapably militant because it possesses and is possessed by a world-wide revolutionary movement." It rules by enslaving: "The system becomes G.o.d and submission to the will of G.o.d becomes submission to the will of the system."34 Its tactics display "extraordinary flexibility," which "derives from the utterly amoral and opportunistic conduct of Soviet policy" and from the "secrecy" of its operations.35 At present, its power outstrips that of the United States. Even our advantage in nuclear weapons is temporary. The conclusion is that if a freedom-loving democracy is to survive, it must organize its resources and accept "the responsibility of world leadership."36 This means mustering "clearly superior overall power in its most inclusive sense."37 How totalizing a Cold War becomes is suggested in a summary of American strategy: Intensification of affirmative and timely measures and operations by covert means in the fields of economic warfare and political and psychological warfare with a view to fomenting and supporting unrest and revolt in selected strategic satellite countries.38 On occasion the NSC report avowed that the aim of mobilization was limited to "containment" of Soviet power so as to avoid a shooting war. Given the report"s repeated emphasis on the "dynamic" character of both Soviet and American power, "containment" served to cloud the main consequence of seeking American global dominance. The United States had adopted the same goals as the Soviets: global supremacy and a regime change by means of subversion. "We should take dynamic steps to reduce the power and influence of the Kremlin inside the Soviet Union and other areas under its control. . . . In other words, it would be the current Soviet cold war technique used against the Soviet Union."39 Thus a fanatical, repressive, totalitarian regime sets the standard of power a free society must surpa.s.s if civilization is to be preserved.
At the same time that the report calls for establishing nuclear superiority and for subverting the Soviet regime, it rea.s.serts American innocence, even antic.i.p.ating April 2003 in Iraq, by repeatedly insisting that our efforts will not hurt the Soviet people, although the doc.u.ment expresses hope that the Soviet people will take the initiative against their government.40 Not least, the new imaginary of global power accompanies an estimate of America"s power-its industrial capacity, its nuclear advantage-with a scrutiny of our weaknesses. Some measure of regime change at home will be required to overcome our "lack of will" and difficulty in pursuing a set purpose.41 "A large measure of sacrifice and discipline will be demanded of the American people. They will be asked to give up some of the benefits which they have come to a.s.sociate with their freedoms."42 The demands of "internal security" include increased taxes, reduced federal spending except for defense, and acceptance of a lower standard of living.43 "The democratic way" requires a changed civic culture so that citizens are less naive, more discriminating: [In] the search for truth [the individual] knows when he should commit an act of faith; that he distinguish between the necessity for tolerance and the necessity for just suppression. A free society is vulnerable in that it is easy for people to lapse into excesses-the excesses of a permanently open mind wishfully waiting for evidence that evil design may become n.o.ble purpose, the excess of faith becoming prejudice, the excess of tolerance degenerating into indulgence of conspiracy and the excess of suppression when moderate measures are not only more appropriate but more effective.44 The report cautions that a public relations strategy at home must counter "any adverse psychological effects" of the "dynamic steps" needed: "in any announcement of policy and in the character of the measures adopted, emphasis should be given to the essentially defensive character and care should be taken to minimize, so far as possible, unfavorable domestic and foreign reactions."45
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Unquestionably the Soviet Union was a brutal murderous dictatorship that sought to expand its influence and power globally by encouraging communist parties in Greece, Western Europe, and Asia, supporting "satellite regimes" in central Europe, liquidating all opposition at home, and engaging in espionage. There was, then, a significant element of reality to what became the Cold War imaginary.
But why the insistence by American political, economic, and opinion-making elites on declaring a "war" instead of invoking the notion of, say, "a Great Power rivalry"? Was it that in combating an evil enemy, "rivalry" smacked of appeas.e.m.e.nt or, worse, of moral equivalence? Although doubtless there are other possible answers to that question, I would suggest that what attracted decision-makers to choosing "war" is that Americans of the twentieth century had no direct experience of it and hence were receptive to having warfare imagined for them-and Hollywood happily obliged with "war movies." Save for actual combatants sent overseas and economic shortages at home, World War II was unexperienced. After 1945 "war" was akin to a tabula rasa on which opinion-makers and governmental decision-makers were free to const.i.tute its meaning in terms that pretty much suited their purposes, allowing them to set the character of public debate and to acquire a vastly enlarged range of governmental powers-powers that, when they did not violate the Const.i.tution, deformed it. For almost a half century, from the late 1940s to the early 1990s, war served as the omnipresent background in the imaginary constructed by news- and movie-makers, television producers, and the rhetoric of politicians. The meaning of war was given a plasticity that allowed the new image-makers to set its parameters as they pleased.
"War" also had its effects upon politics, causing a shift in emphasis from socioeconomic issues to ideological ones where partisanship had far fewer material consequences. During the 1950s the ideological battles were centered on "loyalty," "subversion," "communism," and civil rights. While politics of the decade seemed intense, it was also narrower: socioeconomic problems were subordinated to ideological battles in which anticommunist ideologues did their best to link liberalism, the main force behind socioeconomic reform, with communism.46 Nowhere was this more apparent than when the authors of NSC-68-after first declaring "that the integrity and vitality of our system is in greater jeopardy than ever before in our history"-then remark: "Even if there were no Soviet Union we would face the great problem of the free society of reconciling order, security, the need for partic.i.p.ation, with the requirement of freedom. We would face the fact that in a shrinking world the absence of order among nations is becoming less and less tolerable." We have "an uneasy equilibrium without order" causing men to doubt "whether the world will long tolerate this tension without moving toward some kind of order, on somebody"s terms."47 Elsewhere the report acknowledges that at present the Soviets are not planning to actually attack the United States and its allies, although, the authors hasten to add, "the possibility of such deliberate resort to war cannot be ruled out."48 In the last a.n.a.lysis the "fact" of "the absence of order . . . imposes on us the responsibility of world leadership." Even were we to win a "military victory" over the Soviets, that "would only partially and perhaps only temporarily affect the fundamental conflict." There would be "the resurgence of totalitarian forces and the re-establishment of the Soviet system, or its equivalent. . . . We have no choice but to demonstrate the superiority of the idea of freedom."49 It was not alone the designation "war" that mattered but equally its "cold," enveloping character. As Hubert Humphrey, Democratic senator and presidential nominee, noted approvingly, "it is hard to tell . . . where war begins and where it ends."50 Secretary of State Dulles noted that while "in the present state of world opinion we could not use an A-bomb, we should make every effort now to dissipate this feeling."51 Just as terrorism would later become useful to American policy-makers for its "fear factor," so during the Cold War the stockpiling of atomic weapons served that same end of normalizing an atmosphere of fear. As then Vice President Nixon explained, "tactical atomic explosives are now conventional."52 When the Cold War threatened to become too normal and abstract, deja vu all over again, there would be "war scares," including air raid drills during which children practiced protecting themselves from nuclear attacks by huddling under their schoolroom desks.53 Perhaps the most unnerving example of the mentality at work constructing a Cold War power imaginary was the doctrine of "Mutual a.s.sured Destruction" formulated in the aftermath of the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. Instead of targeting an enemy"s military facilities "each side should target the other"s cities" in order to cause the most casualties possible. "The a.s.sumption behind it," according to one historian, "was that if no one could be sure of surviving a nuclear war, there would not be one."54 If there had been one, incinerated parents could die comforted with the knowledge that, thanks to school desks, their children would have been spared.
x
The development of an extended relationship between the military and the corporate economy began in earnest. National defense was declared inseparable from a strong economy. The fixation upon mobilization and rearmament inspired the gradual disappearance from the national political agenda of the regulation and control of corporations. The defender of the free world needed the power of the globalizing, expanding corporation, not an economy hampered by "trust-busting." Moreover, since the enemy was rabidly anticapitalist, every measure that strengthened capitalism was a blow against the enemy. Once the battle lines between communism and the "free society" were drawn, the economy became untouchable for purposes other than "strengthening" capitalism. The ultimate merger would be between capitalism and democracy. Once the ident.i.ty and security of democracy were successfully identified with the Cold War and with the methods for waging it, the stage was set for the intimidation of most politics left of right.
Throughout the 1950s there was a steady erosion in the power of various nongovernmental groups and inst.i.tutions. Universities and government initiated what would prove to be an intimate relationship.55 While the political influence of trade unions was strong during the Truman years, a long and seemingly irreversible decline set in even before the Republican victory of 1952. The Taft-Hartley Act (1947) outlawed the closed or union shop. An independent trade union movement, with its disruptive "weapons" of strike and boycott, was portrayed as a potential threat to the mobilization of America"s economic power, especially if, as was frequency alleged, communists had "penetrated" unions involved in war production.
There was much talk about molding a new type, "the citizen soldier" who would be a model of discipline, physical fitness, patriotism, and work habits that would carry over and create a more reliable workforce.56 Even before World War II ended, there were repeated efforts to preserve the draft and several attempts to create a system of "universal military training" (UMT) aimed at requiring all young men, after high school or having reached their eighteenth birthday, to undergo a brief period of military training followed by longer service in the organized reserves or National Guard. The concern was to create a prepared nation, one that would be forever ready and never again caught by surprise. For the first time a totalitarian imaginary emerged, but because traces of the World War II sensibility persisted, critics, especially those in the academy, preferred the euphemism "garrison state."57
xi
A crucial element in the imaginary inspired by the Cold War had been absent from the imaginary accompanying World War II. Practically speaking, no significant ideological opposition had developed to a war that began with the j.a.panese attack on Pearl Harbor and with the Germans immediately joining in by declaring war against the United States. There was no internal enemy to fight, no suspected disloyal elements to expose, as there had allegedly been with German Americans during World War I. The glaring exception was the internment of several thousand Americans of j.a.panese descent, most of whom were "relocated" in Western deserts far from public view. Nationalism and patriotism, rather than ideology, sufficed to control the population and gain its support. Patriotism required no collective self-examination, only the spontaneous response to the simple fact that we had been attacked.58 This changed dramatically with the advent of the Cold War when the power imaginary turned inwards. Communism was depicted as a domestic contagion to be eradicated as well as a foreign threat to be combated. The appearance of a new set of political actors-the FBI, the House Un-American Activities Committee, loyalty and security boards to eliminate the "disloyal" from government service-marked a new form of governmental power: thought policing to enforce ideological conformity. Disloyalty became a broad-brush category that included communists, alleged communist sympathizers, and those who refused to expose colleagues or acquaintances who were communists. Rouge et noir: "blacklists" were drawn up by authorities to identify and root out suspected "reds" and their sympathizers in the entertainment industries, in the media, and among intellectuals. Opposition required unusual courage. For the first time in the nation"s history universities became the object of a widespread purge. "Loyalty oaths" were introduced as a precondition of employment in many state inst.i.tutions of higher learning, while some intellectuals and academics were recruited as government agents to report on the political activities of colleagues.59 The Internal Security Act (1950) established six concentration camps. Police and federal law enforcement authorities undertook the systematic surveillance of suspect political activity. Not surprisingly, h.o.m.os.e.xuals were singled out and were said to be entrenched in the State Department. A 1950 Senate report bore the t.i.tle Employment of h.o.m.os.e.xuals and Other s.e.x Perverts in Government.60 The domestic version of anticommunism was aimed at even larger targets alleged to be connected: social democracy, trade union power, anticapitalist beliefs a.s.sociated with the New Deal, and the political liberalism identified with academia and the media. The targets were (in the language of the times) "smeared" as being either communist or sympathetic to communism, disloyal, or, at the least, "soft" on communism. There was much discussion of how educational reform might serve to "strengthen national security" by instructing the citizenry in the meaning of democracy and the importance of patriotism.61 Certain elements in the domestic side of the Cold War imaginary displayed an uncomfortable similarity to elements of the Soviet regime: purges; loyalty tests; violations of due process; criminalization of a political party for its beliefs rather than its actions; development of an elaborate, largely secretive agency with a global network of spies and a.s.sa.s.sins (CIA), dedicated to subverting regimes deemed unfriendly or uncooperative and installing sympathetic ones. A study group reporting to President Eisenhower urged explicitly that the United States not only follow the Soviet example but seek to surpa.s.s it: We are facing an implacable enemy whose avowed object is world domination by whatever means and at whatever cost. . . . [T]here are no rules in such a game. Hitherto acceptable norms of human conduct do not apply. We must develop effective espionage and counterespionage services and must learn to subvert, sabotage, and destroy our enemies by more clever, more sophisticated, and more effective means than those used against us.62 Thus anticommunism as mimesis: the character of the enemy supplied the norm for the power demands that the democratic defender of the free world chose to impose on itself.
xii
The phenomenon that best captured the transformation of the nation was the pandemic of the 1950s known as McCarthyism. In a short-lived career that began and ended in obscurity, Senator Joseph McCarthy turned anticommunism into a spectacle: thanks to television, a nation watched the drama of disloyalty and betrayal unfolding.
McCarthy was remarkable for a simple but matchless talent: he lied endlessly and spectacularly. No matter how often the lies were brought to light, he plunged on, exposing one after another alleged spy, traitor, red, or pinko, and in the process recklessly damaging or ending careers. His sheer destructiveness did not stop with the charges thrown at obscure officials or hapless academics or Senate colleagues. His accusations of communist or Soviet sympathies extended to cabinet officers and some of the country"s most revered icons, including General (later Secretary of State) George Marshall, President Dwight Eisenhower, and the U.S. Army itself. With very few exceptions the media caved in or kowtowed.
The fact that the Soviet regime was dogmatically atheist made it easy for the anticommunist crusade to gain the blessing of the hierarchy of the Catholic Church and its unwavering support. A cardinal and an archbishop attained celebrity status through their fiery sermons and broadcasts in support of McCarthy and denunciation of communism. The pope blessed McCarthy"s marriage; even after the senator had died in disgrace, a "McCarthy Ma.s.s" was celebrated annually at St. Patrick"s Cathedral.63 A new messianism and the reaffirmation of a civil religion began to figure in the power imaginary, and it would later register in a wondrous afterglow with which a reputable historian could look back upon the Cold War. He wrote that the triumph of the American vision of "a society in which universal morality, state morality, and individual morality might all be the same thing" pointed to a superhuman agency at work: "At which point G.o.d, or at least His agents, intervened to to make that vision an unexpected-and to the Kremlin a profoundly alarming-reality."64
XIII.
That a political figure as bizarre, crude, and unscrupulous as McCarthy could generate the tidal wave of McCarthyism was no doubt due in part to the support he received from reputable politicians, such as Senator Taft, and from influential intellectuals, such as William Buckley, but it was the Cold War itself that lent resonance to his antics and an inward turn to what seemed primarily a matter of foreign and defense policy. Many of the public officials, trade union leaders, intellectuals, and academics who were villified or purged actually adhered to the social democratic ideals and programs of the New Deal; this suggested that a domestic power struggle was in the making that would redefine American politics for the next half century or more. Put simply: New Deal values of social democracy were effectively purged from the national power imaginary. Notable casualties of that drama were Lyndon Johnson and Hubert Humphrey, both Democrats who believed deeply in social programs but found themselves forced to shoulder a Cold War that had turned hot in Vietnam and left little or no public resources for social spending. The populist surge of the 1930s that had carried over into support for the democratized effort of World War II was reconfigured.
The Cold War effected a radical change in the American political ident.i.ty to accompany the new power imaginary. One of the major themes of Cold War propaganda was that although the American economy far oustripped that of any other nation or combination of nations, Americans would be required to forgo the prospect of substantial and steady improvement in their social, economic, cultural, and political prospects. In confidential discussions public officials pondered how to get "our people" to recognize "that the cold war is in fact a real war in which the survival of the free world is at stake." The effort would require "sacrifice," "unity," and "tenacity of purpose." The meaning of "sacrifice" was cast in the bureaucratic euphemism of "significant domestic financial and economic adjustments."65 Less opaque, one official estimate was that if a nuclear war broke out, it was possible that ten million Americans might die.66 All of the elements aimed at the "mobilization" of society-from proposals for universal military training to the inst.i.tutionalization of a huge defense economy that represented a business version of a New Deal; from loyalty purges and red scares to government-sponsored propaganda to promote political orthodoxy ("Freedom Trains" displaying the artifacts ill.u.s.trative of the saga of freedom in America)-spelled the transformation of popular partic.i.p.ation, from New Deal experiments in partic.i.p.atory democracy to a populism exchanging socioeconomic power for loyal conformism, hope for fear.67 Two crucial consequences of the Cold War upon domestic politics contributed major elements to the power imaginary evolving from the conflict. One was the shrinking place occupied by politics and the enlargement of state power. The growing dominance of foreign policy and military strategy altered the scope and status of public partic.i.p.ation. Public officials, experts, and pundits were quick to declare these to be privileged subjects where partisan politics should defer to national unity and experts should decide among themselves. The second development was intimately connected with the priority of foreign policy and military preparedness: the emergence and legitimation of elitism, of a political cla.s.s, "the best and the brightest." The social science literature of the period was heavy with discussions of elitism, and few questioned its legitimacy.68 That direction was bolstered by the invention of "voting studies" touted as the social scientific investigation into the behavior of the voter. The electorate was not infrequently portrayed as inattentive to politics, ill-informed, and indifferent-qualities that some academics considered functionally useful.69 The clear implication was that elitism was the antidote to ma.s.s ignorance and essential to victory in the struggle for freedom. Elitism signified a privileged claim to power on the part of those who not only manifested proven intelligence, experience, and sterling character but also, unlike the fantasy-p.r.o.ne ma.s.ses, were "realists."70 A whole ideology emerged to legitimate elitism: the "realists" and "neoliberals" such as Niebuhr, George Kennan, and Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.
That war was "cold" only in the sense that the two antagonists did not engage each other in a shooting war. During that era, which lasted until the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1987, the United States fought two very hot wars, first in Korea, then in Vietnam. It suffered a stalemate in one and defeat in the other, both by Soviet proxies. If we add the defeat in Iraq, we might be tempted to redefine superpower as an imaginary of power that emerges from defeat unchastened, more imperious than ever. Nonetheless, with the "defeat" or collapse of the USSR and the emergence of the United States as the sole standing Superpower, the imaginary constructed after 9/11 perpetuated elements designed during the Cold War. The new imaginary, too, depicted a foe global, without contours or boundaries, shrouded in secrecy. And like the Cold War imaginary, not only would the new form seek imperial dominion; it would turn inwards, applying totalitarian practices, such as sanctioning torture, holding individuals for years without charging them or allowing access to due process, transporting suspects to unknown locations, and conducting warrantless searches into private communications. The system of inverted totalitarianism being formed is not the result of a premeditated plot. It has no Mein Kampf as an inspiration. It is, instead, a set of effects produced by actions or practices undertaken in ignorance of their lasting consequences. This is the achievement of a nation that gave pragmatism, the philosophy of consequences, to the world.
CHAPTER THREE.
Totalitarianism"s Inversion, Democracy"s Perversion.
I.
By G.o.d, we"ve killed the Vietnam syndrome once and for all.
-George H. W. Bush (1991).
Our nation stands alone right now in terms of power.
And that is why we have got to be humble.
-Presidential candidate George W. Bush.
Totally united.
-b.u.mper sticker.