The Dawn of Universal History: Selected Essays from a Witness of the Twentieth Century

Rating:
Summary: Trying hard to find theories and systems: so French
Review: Raymond Aron, a witness to the twentieth century, only lived from 1905 to 1983, and was most famous for being a French professor, if not the greatest French professor, as noted in the Introduction by Tony Judt, (See the first note at the end of the Introduction on page xxv). Judt himself has written books on the French left and French intellectuals. I wondered how often Aron might have left France, and Judt reveals that his sense of timing was pretty good. "A Jew and a socialist, he left France following the establishment of the puppet regime at Vichy and joined Charles de Gaulle's Free French organization in London." (p. vii). Like a government that temporarily did not have a country, he must have made a lot of plans for things to do when he was home again. "Upon returning to France Aron served briefly in André Malraux's post-war Ministry of Information before returning to the university world to teach sociology, at the same time taking up what proved to be a lifelong parallel career as a journalist and political commentator." (p. vii).

The essays in this book were originally collected in 1996 in France for publication of a history, and were translated into English for this 2002 Basic Books edition. The first footnote on page 31 has an additional note revealing "All footnotes in this book are Raymond Aron's own notes to his texts," translated from the French 1996 edition. The book has an index, in which there are many entries for Vietcong, Vietminh (League for the Independence of Vietnam), Vietnam war, Johnson and, etc., which lead to a strange footnote on page 362:

"Johnson did not tell the senators that U.S. torpedo boats had been attacked by North Vietnamese gunboats while the South Vietnamese were carrying out commando operations in the same region."

This confusing mix of covert activities is not offered as clarification for the famous resolution of August, 1964, but as an explanation of the American attempt to devise a strategy for Vietnam:

"Like the French colonels in Algeria, many of the president's advisers believed that the techniques of subversion and persuasion could be effective in any circumstances. The commando operations ordered by President Kennedy in May 1961, by way of a riposte to infiltration, then resumed on a larger scale* by Johnson, had nothing in common with the organization of parallel hierarchies. Then there was the conviction, sincere in many cases, that the United States would jeopardize its role all over the world if it accepted defeat in any part of it: This theory was proved by events to be a self-fulfilling prophecy. Last, we must take into account the perhaps inevitable corruption of the men who conduct high politics. . . . To be able to order such bombings in cold blood, and then enjoy a good night's sleep, calls for a kind of transformation. Such a transmogrification may be necessary, but it takes place so easily that it always amazes me when I encounter it in men I used to know before they went into public life."

This is from an essay, "The Imperial Republic," that attempted to understand "The United States and the International System," which was originally published in French in 1984, well after the reunification of Vietnam, the death of former President Johnson, the humiliation of Nixon's efforts to keep anything secret because it was a matter of national security, as he imagined the (expletive deleted) Vietnam war was in a recorded conversation with John Dean that had long been public. But Raymond Aron was dead by then, too, and this publication was actually prepared then by Jean-Claude Casanova, Pierre Hassner, Stanley Hoffmann, Pierre Manent, and Dominique Schnapper. (p. 503, Provenance of Texts). Publication of someone's work after death might allow others to emphasize something which borders on the incredible. In such instances, the crazy bit seems to be the assumption that anyone was getting "a good night's sleep," while artillery was being pounded out for H & I, ambushes at bridges, trails, roads, and rivers had to have some guard up at all hours keeping watch over the kill zone, and people expected to find a newspaper at their front door when they got up to start their day in other parts of the world. Even professors must be up at all hours to find time to put words on paper and keep track of whatever secrets they have been able to discover.

The confusion surrounding the footnote on page 362 has been so great at all times since August 1964, that it looks like a great mistake when a truth slips out in this book: U.S. torpedo boats had been attacked by North Vietnamese gunboats. The gunboats had been directed at a covert operation that was directed on a large scale by Johnson, and the North Vietnamese had expected to run into U.S. destroyers because Johnson had ordered two destroyers to cruise in the Gulf of Tonkin when the undercover operation was also approved, but small swift boats that had attacked a radar installation were able to slip away while the American destroyers were shooting at targets (phantom blips on a screen) that were miles from nowhere. The South Vietnamese were not involved in this operation, in spite of what McNamara told senators off the record. French historians are much more likely to base their accounts on information received from the North Vietnamese, who would be the only Vietnamese who had any knowledge of what happened that night in August 1964, and "U.S. torpedo boats had been attacked by North Vietnamese gunboats" was precisely what the North Vietnamese were saying.

Reading the PENTAGON PAPERS, Aron was unable to figure out Kennedy's policy. "But he refused to send in units of GIs." (p. 361). 15,000 advisers from the Pentagon seems to be about what Bush expected to leave in Iraq before 2003, and he is still trying to make that work.