Foundations of the American Century

by Inderjeet Parmar

  The modern foundation mediated between the modern university and the state and between universities and big business.4 The foundation organized crucial state agencies, international corporations, and the universities behind a hegemonic project of domestic federal-state building and U.S global expansion: Progressivism and imperialism went hand in hand.5

  This chapter explores the roles of Carnegie and Rockefeller philanthropy in producing an influential, dominant Realist tradition in IR, but a Realism that took into account social, economic, and ideological factors in projecting national state power. It is difficult, however, to disentangle CC and RF’s work in the complex area of promoting U.S. globalism as a political-economic-military project; undermining isolationism’s politics, morality, economics, and worldview; and simultaneously assisting the rise of Realism. This process involved proliferating university IR courses and foreign area studies programs but much more as well, and it is important to see philanthropy’s role in IR’s and Realism’s rise in a broader context that included university research and teaching, enhancing and facilitating elite foreign policy think tanks’ advisory roles, building and amplifying the state’s foreign policy research capacities, promoting public-opinion study and attentive public-opinion mobilization, and encouraging particular approaches and marginalizing others.

  The foundations witnessed with obvious satisfaction and some anxiety the obvious decline of British and French global influence and played significant roles in raising American elites’ awareness of the potential opportunities for their country to play a greatly expanded role in world affairs. Despite the failure to join the League of Nations, America’s postwar isolationism, and economic protectionism during the 1930s, East Coast liberal internationalists actively built a dense network of think tanks, policy research institutes, publicity organizations, and so on to combat isolationism and build globalism. They constructed globalist counterhegemonic networks within an “isolationist” hegemony, using the networks to counter the “immorality” of aloofness, the economic “irresponsibility” of protectionism, and the “parochialism” and “backwardness” of “insularity” in the modern age of “high-tech” military capacities.6 They mobilized to dilute neutrality legislation in the 1930s, promote freer trade, support the League of Nations, and further transform public opinion, the major political parties, the press, strategic elites, and intellectuals. They worked with state agencies most amenable to globalist thought, especially the State Department.

  In addition, foundations played a strategic role in strengthening formal and informal international cooperation between its funded think tanks, scholars, and so on as well as in constructing new international organizations. By the 1920s, such groups believed the American elite was fit to lead the world: America was more advanced, democratic, and dynamic; opposed to moribund empires and atheistic communism; and a new way forward for a world of peace.7 American internationalism, embedded in American-led international organizations, was that way forward.8 By building state-oriented networks of scholars, think tanks, corporations, and labor unions, among others, the foundations believed they would generate a powerful domestic coalition for globalism, allied with like-minded internationalists in Britain, the British Empire, and Europe, which, in the long run, would lead to American hegemony. Network building as a socializing instrument did not, by itself, generate U.S. “hegemony,” though it was a precondition of it. The flows of material incentives—grants, jobs, fellowships—integral to network building clearly played a role. However, both foundation network building and the rise of America to globalism were symbiotically connected to catalytic global events: the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941 was particularly significant, for example. Such catalytic events afforded precious opportunities to those forces best prepared to take advantage of the spaces opened up for “new” thinking, often considered “unthinkable” before the “crisis.”

  The scale of the task facing East Coast liberal internationalists required a comprehensive strategy that emphasized different things to different groups of people at different times. The banner of “internationalism” transmitted a range of messages, of which the main thrust was that America had global interests and, therefore, global responsibilities and obligations. A mature power needed to pull its weight and not live off others to underwrite their and the world’s security.

  This chapter examines three specific but interconnected foundation-led programs to promote Realism and globalism and undermine isolationism: their roles in university IR (and area studies) programs; in increasing the advisory capabilities of elite experts and the research capacities of the state; and in elite, attentive, and mass public-opinion formation and mobilization.

  FOUNDATIONS AND UNIVERSITY IR (AND AREA STUDIES) COURSES AND PROGRAMS

  Foundations played a key role in establishing IR and area studies as academic disciplines in the United States.9 Below are considered two programs—one each at Yale and Princeton—that were highly significant in promoting globalism and developing Realism as the dominant tendency in IR.

  THE ROCKEFELLER FOUNDATION AND THE YALE INSTITUTE OF INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

  From the 1930s, the Rockefeller Foundation played a leading role in financing university programs of research in international affairs and in “non-Western” studies. Foundation officials were early to recognize the changing position of the United States in world affairs. This required, they believed, a new foreign policy, which in turn required trained experts who spoke foreign languages and knew the history, politics, and culture of societies that would enter the orbit of America’s “national interest.” University IR courses were important for educating future leaders of opinion expected to secure general acceptance of the United States in world affairs.10

  The Yale Institute of International Studies (YIIS) represents an excellent example of early Rockefeller Foundation intervention. It was created in 1935 with a Rockefeller grant of $100,000 disbursed over five years.11 From its inception, the YIIS focused upon “the subject of power in international relations”—an area neglected by American scholars.12 It aimed to take a “realistic” view of world affairs, to be useful to makers of foreign policy, to produce scholarly but accessible publications, and to train academics for governmental service.13 That it was later nicknamed “The Power School” by IR insiders is adequate testimony to Yale’s successful institutionalization of realpolitik.14 What decided the question within the foundation was that Yale had such senior academics as Frederick Dunn, Arnold Wolfers, and Samuel F. Bemis.15 In addition to the initial $100,000 in 1935, the foundation provided a further $51,500 in 1941 (to run over three years) and $125,000 in 1944 (to run over five years), a total of $276,500.16

  The realpolitik approaches of those who directed the YIIS (Nicholas Spykman, 1935–1940; and Frederick Dunn, from 1940 until after the war) were a source of obvious satisfaction to Rockefeller officials.17 YIIS’s annual report for 1942 stressed that the drafting of “abstract schemes of a new world order” and “ivory tower speculation” were not on the agenda. Instead, the YIIS focused upon “basic research” to fill conceptual gaps in current thinking and knowledge of international relations.18 By 1944, the institute focused even more on issues “likely to cause the most trouble” for American foreign policy, such as Anglo-American and Western-Soviet relations.19

  The memoranda and records of the YIIS bear out its Realism. One document reports the outcome of a conference in March 1945, which argued that the United States could no longer “take a free ride” in the conduct of European affairs. While Britain’s international hegemony had effectively ended, it still constituted a key “bridgehead” to Western Europe. Consequently, Britain’s continued survival was in America’s national interest, to the point of war if necessary. Europe, the conference noted, had to be kept “in balance,” and a new Napoleon or Hitler had to be prevented from dominating the continent. To avoid being dragged into another foreign war, America had to engage in the “dirty game of power politics.” The c
onference recognized the dangers of Soviet expansionism while acknowledging the USSR’s legitimate security concerns. Although the Soviets ought to be decisively checked territorially, it would be a mistake to oppose them by countering every movement for social reform. That would only convince Western liberals and radicals of the “reactionary” character of Anglo-American policy and “drive [them]… into the arms of the doctrinaire Bolsheviks.” Finally, the memorandum argued that the American economy had become the major factor in global prosperity. Not only must future U.S. economic policies assist the regeneration of Europe (and so keep Britain and France “going concerns”), but they must also run the American economy “responsibly.” American domestic prosperity would create a stable market for the world’s products and thereby add to global security.20 This imperialistic posture was endorsed by an internal foundation review of key books from the YIIS during the war.21

  Despite its desire to be useful to government, the YIIS made a virtue of its “private” character. “The Place of University Research Agencies in International Relations,” a 1943 memorandum written by Frederick Dunn for the foundation’s officers, argued that private status gave more flexibility in research and an “opportunity to provide intellectual leadership.” The institute could, for example, take up subjects of concern to the State Department that were also politically sensitive. Dunn argued that it was “dangerous” for a democracy if all its researchers were drawn into government service, as this tended to silence “able personnel” and diminish public discussion of important issues. Dunn argued that no one group of researchers, however “omniscient and benevolently inclined,” could possibly approach issues from a variety of angles using different techniques and assumptions.22

  However much the YIIS cherished its “independence,” usefulness to government was its first priority. In August 1944, Dunn told Willits that the institute had set up a committee (with State Department representation) to consider how universities might “produce good decision-makers.”23 Two years earlier, the YIIS’s annual report noted the first of several meetings with U.S. War Department officials concerning Near Eastern policy. “It was intended,” the report stressed, “as a test of the possibility of quick mobilization of academic knowledge and its application to practical questions of policy.” The 1941–1942 report further noted that numerous “foreign area courses” had been established at Yale, to increase the awareness of foreign societies; that the institute was sending information to the U.S. government “on demand”; and that YIIS graduates were performing valuable roles within several government departments, notably the State and War departments, the Board of Economic Warfare, and the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs, led by Nelson Rockefeller.24

  The War Department asked the Yale Institute to establish a School of Asiatic Studies for army staff officers, which it duly did in the summer of 1945. Meanwhile, the State Department and YIIS established a joint committee, with Dunn as chairman, to improve the training of foreign-service officers. The impact of such government connections was felt within the broader political science community by the formation of a “politicomilitary relations” panel by the American Political Science Association, under the chairmanship of Bernard Brodie (a YIIS member).25 Even when the institute was, apparently, not being useful to government and therefore demonstrating its independence, it seemed to approach problems from a perspective not dissimilar to that of the State Department. One of the most telling examples appeared in its 1943 annual report, in a discussion of the importance of the Middle East to the United States. Security, the report noted, was not merely a military question: it also required a watchful eye on the peoples and resources that bordered strategic sea routes and military bases. The institute proposed an investigation of industrial development, the “rise of nationalism,” and “race and population pressures as they affect the stability of these regions,” with a view to early remedial action by the United States.26 This was an early indication of the importance of national security–oriented area studies programs.27

  The YIIS produced many books on the Far East, Anglo-American relations, and the place of Africa in American security policy. Over a half-century later, two stand out: William T. R. Fox’s The Superpowers: The United States, Britain, and the Soviet Union—Their Responsibility for Peace (1944), which introduced the term “superpower” into the language;28 and Nicholas J. Spykman’s America’s Strategy in World Politics: The United States and the Balance of Power (1942). According to the historian John Thompson, Spykman’s study was the “most thorough analysis of America’s strategic position made in these [war] years,” the thrust of which was “that American interests demanded intervention in the war to restore the balance of power in Eurasia.” (It was written before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor).29 Spykman argued that the United States had to prepare a global strategy combining and integrating the key factors of power: military preparedness, economic vitality, political efficiency and mobilization, and ideological clarity. Spykman also abolished the distinctions between peacetime and war, as “total war is permanent war.” Finally, and most profoundly, he argued that there is “no region of the globe [that] is too distant to be without strategic significance, too remote to be neglected in the calculations of power politics.” Permanent war on a global scale: here is Yale’s contribution to U.S. grand strategy.30

  Both books received considerable praise and sold well. According to its publisher, Spykman’s book, which sold almost ten thousand copies within three months, “may be considered one of the really influential books of our decade.”31 A foundation reviewer suggested that it sold well in Washington, D.C.,32 and the foundation’s social sciences director wrote that it was a “great” book that deserved “prayerful study.” Olson and Groom argue that Spykman’s book “held great appeal for Pentagon post-war planners.”33

  The influence of YIIS was also extended through the teaching of IR at the undergraduate and postgraduate levels, mainly through the establishment of an undergraduate major in IR in 1935. The IR major was built principally around the theme of national security and war. The course guide summarized it thus: “War as an instrument of national policy. Preparation for war in peacetime: mobilization of national resources. The conduct of war and its problems of social control. Military, economic, political, and propaganda instruments of war.”34

  During the 1940s, the U.S. Navy ran courses at Yale on war strategy and the “Foundations of National Power,” coordinated by Princeton’s Edward Mead Earle. This particular course was also offered at five other universities, including UCLA, Northwestern, Princeton, the University of North Carolina, and the University of Pennsylvania, indicating the further dissemination of this line of thought and enquiry across the United States. Inevitably, there was some student resistance to the attachment to “power,” “force,” and “war” in these programs at Yale, especially from students who saw IR as a means of Christian peace-building work. As Spykman reported to the Rockefeller Foundation in 1939, “the rather realistic approach to the subject at Yale sometimes shocked their [Christians’] youthful idealism but… did not deter them from recommending the treatment to others.” As Paulo Ramos writes, “the conversion to realism was taking place.”35

  Student numbers in IR at Yale were modest before the war (seventeen in 1937–1938, rising to fifty-two in 1939–1940) but increased to eighty-eight in 1942–1943, stabilizing at about eighty after 1945. In total, Ramos estimates that approximately eight hundred students in total took the major in IR at Yale from 1935 to 1951.36 Between 1935 and 1945, Yale graduated twenty-seven MA and doctoral candidates. Well-known IR alumni include Bernard C. Cohen, Lucian Pye, and William C. Olson.37 Other alumni went on to join important U.S. foreign policy–related institutions such as the Council on Foreign Relations, the Foreign Policy Association, the Foreign Service, and the State Department.38

  That the influence of YIIS reached much farther than the academic world was important to its foundation sponsors. Its work was res
pected by other foreign policy “influentials” and by policy makers. The State Department showed by their regular liaisons how important they believed its work to be. External advisers, such as Jacob Viner and Isaiah Bowman, continued to enthuse about the institute whenever the foundation asked for an assessment. Its research center and seminars attracted well-known academics, such as the political scientist Harold Lasswell, journalists such as Hanson Baldwin of the New York Times, and State Department–connected men such as Grayson Kirk, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations’ War-Peace Studies Project. By 1945, the institute was broadcasting on the radio on the “problems of peace” prior to the San Francisco Conference, with the former undersecretary of state Summer Welles presiding.39 With area studies funding from Rockefeller, Carnegie, and Ford foundations, the YIIS contributed significantly to the diffusion of the Realist paradigm and helped to generate a new “consensus of power” in the discipline of international relations.40

  The institute’s “independent” status helped legitimize its views. Specifically, there was little public acknowledgment of its continuous connections with either the foundation or with the state. It trained hundreds of undergraduates and dozens of graduate students for state service or academia—furthering the influence of its Realist approach. By 1948, YIIS began a journal, World Politics, and ran one of the most prestigious programs of postgraduate training in America.41

  EDWARD MEAD EARLE, THE ACIS, AND THE PRINCETON SEMINAR

  Earle42 was a firm advocate of internationalism, receiving support from Rockefeller and Carnegie foundations for his work in the American Committee for International Studies (ACIS), of which he was research director from 1939,43 and for a research seminar at Princeton (1937–1943). His approach to diplomacy and military history was practical, his main concern being to develop a more hard-headed and globalist—i.e., Realist—approach to American foreign affairs within the academy and polity. Although there is no necessary or automatic connection between Realism and globalism, Earle’s interpretation of American national security requirements necessitated an activist foreign policy backed up by military force. Though a Realist, Earle showed an equal awareness of the domestic sources of U.S. foreign policy, including morality, trade, and defense of freedom. He was also free of the cynicism about human nature characteristic of postwar Realists, believing in the perfectibility of man and the educability of public opinion to back a muscular foreign policy.44