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Imperial Brotherhood
Gender and the Making of Cold War Foreign Policy
Published by: University of Massachusetts Press
Series: Culture and Politics in the Cold War and Beyond
344 Pages, x 0.90 in
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This provocative book begins with a question about the Vietnam War. How is it, asks Robert D. Dean, that American policymakers—men who prided themselves on "hardheaded pragmatism" and shunned "fuzzy idealism"—could have committed the nation to such a ruinous, costly, and protracted war? The answer, he argues, lies not simply in the imperatives of anticommunist ideology or in any reasonable calculation of national interest. At least as decisive in determining the form and content of American Cold War foreign policy were the common background and shared values of its makers, especially their deeply ingrained sense of upper-class masculinity.
Dean begins by examining the institutions that shaped the members of the U.S. foreign policy establishment—all-male prep schools, Ivy League universities, collegiate secret societies, and exclusive men's clubs—that instilled stoic ideals of competition, duty, and loyalty. Service in elite military units during World War II further reinforced this pattern of socialization, eventually creating an "imperial brotherhood" imbued with a common global vision. More than that, according to Dean, the commitment to tough-minded masculinity shared by these men encouraged the pursuit of policies that were aggressively interventionist abroad and intolerant of dissent at home.
Applying his gendered analysis to the McCarthy era, Dean reveals how the purge of suspected homosexuals in the State Department not only paralleled the repression of the political left, but also reflected a bitter contest for power between the foreign policy elite and provincial Congressional conservatives. He then shows how issues of manliness similarly influenced the politics and policies of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. Just as programs like the Peace Corps were grounded in ideals of masculine heroism, decisions about intervention in Vietnam were inextricably bound up with ideas about male strength and power. In the end, Dean makes a persuasive case that these elite constructions of male identity fundamentally shaped the course of American foreign policy during the early decades of the Cold War.
Dean begins by examining the institutions that shaped the members of the U.S. foreign policy establishment—all-male prep schools, Ivy League universities, collegiate secret societies, and exclusive men's clubs—that instilled stoic ideals of competition, duty, and loyalty. Service in elite military units during World War II further reinforced this pattern of socialization, eventually creating an "imperial brotherhood" imbued with a common global vision. More than that, according to Dean, the commitment to tough-minded masculinity shared by these men encouraged the pursuit of policies that were aggressively interventionist abroad and intolerant of dissent at home.
Applying his gendered analysis to the McCarthy era, Dean reveals how the purge of suspected homosexuals in the State Department not only paralleled the repression of the political left, but also reflected a bitter contest for power between the foreign policy elite and provincial Congressional conservatives. He then shows how issues of manliness similarly influenced the politics and policies of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. Just as programs like the Peace Corps were grounded in ideals of masculine heroism, decisions about intervention in Vietnam were inextricably bound up with ideas about male strength and power. In the end, Dean makes a persuasive case that these elite constructions of male identity fundamentally shaped the course of American foreign policy during the early decades of the Cold War.
Robert D. Dean is assistant professor of history at Eastern Washington University.
"Dean's fascinating study of Cold War foreign policy elites contributes to the movement to reconsider U.S. foreign relations history in light of recent scholarship in social and cultural history. . . . Along with shedding light on foreign policy formulation, the book breaks ground in men's history by illuminating the gender codes created by establishment men (the 'imperial brotherhood' of the title) and their detractors."—American Historical Review
"Superb. . . . An important book not only for historians of U.S. foreign relations but also for scholars interested in reexamining traditional historical questions through the lens of gender. Dean, equal parts diplomatic and gender historian, corroborates what the earlier writers had suggested: the officials who committed the United States to war in Vietnam despite the evident problems of fighting there did so at least partly to demonstrate their toughness and to avoid any taint of appeasement in the face of aggression. But Dean, drawing on prodigious research, ranges far beyond this relatively simple idea to develop a complex and compelling, if sometimes problematic, argument to explain why U.S. policymakers cared so mightily in the 1960s about demonstrating their manhood."—Reviews in American History
"A provocative examination of the origins and history of an upper-class 'ideology of masculinity' and the imperial brotherhood of American foreign policymakers it spawned. Using an analysis of the politics of gender and sexuality, Dean demonstrates that the basis for participation in the U.S. Cold War government rested not only on a devotion to masculinity, but sexual orthodoxy as well. He connects the Red Scare of the McCarthy era with a little known 'Lavender Scare,' both of which were designed to ensure that suspected commitment to manliness at home and abroad, and their participation in the Vietnam War, Dean claims, represented the final elevation of the imperial brotherhood's obsession with personal toughness to the field of foreign policy."—Choice
"...shrewd analysis and solid scholarship..."—The Women's Review of Books
"A thought-provoking case study of the inter-connections between gender ideology--especially masculinity and homophobia--and U.S. foreign policy..."—Emily S. Rosenberg, author of Financial Missionaries to the World: The Politics and Culture of Dollar Diplomacy, 1900-1930
"Dean's profiles of key American policymakers greatly deepens our understanding of the origins of the Vietnam War."—Christian G. Appy, editor of Cold War Constructions: The Political Culture of United States Imperialism, 1945-1966
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