culations leading gradually and almost imperceptibly to the point of no return in
1965. The final decision, they said, was the result of miscalculations based upon
assumptions about the nature of the Cold War which were out of date, upon mis-
information and lack of information about Vietnam. In this analysis, Vietnam was
an aberration, a blunder that crept upon overworked men who did not perceive
in time that they were dealing with novel conditions. The decision to intervene
had been a bad choice among several real options, and the educational effect of
having made the error makes such a line of policy highly unlikely in the future.

The second broad position is held by those who might be called the Structur-
alists, who see intervention as the inevitable result of American economic orga-
nization and/or the nature of her policy-making apparatus. In this view, the
emphasis in explaining our foreign policy falls sometimes upon the alleged
imperialistic, counterrevolutionary pressures exerted by capitalistic interests, some-
times upon the aggressive instincts of a warrior caste of high ranking officers,
sometimes upon the narrowly conservative outlook of the elite of "national secu-
rity managers" who work out of the State and Defense Departments. Whatever
the stress, the sources of the Vietnam intervention are seen by the Structuralist
school as having been rooted in American society and therefore likely to remain
as influential as ever. According to the Structuralists, we are in for more Vietnams
unless we make far-reaching and even radical changes at home.

The expansion of the Vietnam War in 1965, and the series of military and
political reverses sustained by the American government as a result of
the war, have led to the most searching re-evaluation of American foreign
policy since the end of World War II. The decision to intervene in southeast
Asia was based upon grossly mistaken estimates of the internal situation in
Indochina, as well as of the effects of a protracted military engagement upon
the American domestic economy and political temper. How could such a
tragically misguided decision have been reached, and what does the episode
tell us about our country?

Among writers who have addressed these issues, few can claim a pub-
lished record of more perception, honesty, and comprehensiveness than Rich-
ard J. Barnet. He began to publish his reflections upon American foreign
policy in 1965 (after writing two books on disarmament), and gave us suc-
cessively an essay on the national security bureaucracy in No More Viet-
nams? ( 1967; edited by Richard Pfeffer), a full-scale account of postwar in-
terventions in Intervention and Revolution ( 1968), and a study of the
military-industrial complex in The Economy of Death ( 1969). Then, in 1972,
Barnet offered a comprehensive analysis of the forces shaping American for-
eign policy in his latest book, The Roots of War ( 1972).

The sources of American policy are multiple, and in The Roots of War
Barnet attempts to establish some rank order among them. There is now a
considerable revisionist literature arguing that economic factors shape Ameri-

Richard J. Barnet, The Roots of War, pp. 48-49, 179-180, 52-60, 50-52, 333-341.
Copyright © 1971, 1972 by Richard J. Barnet. Reprinted by permission of the author
ana Atheneum Publishers.

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