Book Review, Edmund F. Wehrle, Between a River and a Mountain: The AFL-CIO and the Vietnam War

Among the most important historical trends in late twentieth-century America were the decline of labor and the long-term consequences of the Vietnam War. Progressives have long excoriated the AFL-CIO for its work with the CIA in promoting anticommunist labor unions in southeast Asia and around the world. Edmund F. Wehrle's Between a River and a Mountain: The AFL-CIO and the Vietnam War explores these connections and effectively shows both the historical antecedents of organized labor's postwar anticommunism and the long-term effects of that stance.

It's unlikely that anyone here is going to read a long discussion of the details of Wehrle's argument. So I will just say that he makes a convincing argument that Vietnam undermined the AFL-CIO and has continued to hamper it. George Meany was a unrepentent anticommunist. This in itself did not need to be such a problem for labor, but it became a problem because of Meany's gruff and often uncompromising personality. He personified one of labor's greatest long-term historical problem: ossification of leadership. Meany headed the organization from 1952 until 1979, when he was well into his 80s. Meany came to power during the McCarthy era and in fact, he played no small role in making sure that nothing smacking of socialism stayed in postwar labor. By the time of the anti-war protests, Meany had made a long and successful career of steering American labor far from the shores of alliances with communists and he could not relate at all to the grassroots movement against the war, especially when this movement began to take over the Democratic party. A change in leadership at this point might have prevented some of labor's recent misfortunes. The AFL-CIO found itself stuck between a Republican party that it agreed with on foreign policy but which had no time for it on economic issues and a Democratic party that had common economic interests but serious divides over cultural and foreign policy issues.

Meany's tenure was marked by his willingness to work with the CIA to promote anticommunist unions. When the CIA became anathema for progressives, labor was soiled. Throughout the 1980s and even to some extent until today, labor has never repudiated its actions. Some of this is cultural--working-class support of the war in Iraq still remains stronger than the national average and repudiation of its foreign policy action could be seen as betrayal by some of the unions, particularly the crafts. But despite its efforts since John Sweeney took over in 1995, many progressives still remain suspicious of organized labor. There are many reasons for this, many of which are not labor's fault, but the legacy of Vietnam has to be considered among the most important.

As for the book itself, Wehrle provides a well-written account of this important subject. His discussion of the CVT, the South Vietnamese labor union supported by Meany and the CIA, shows the effects of labor's actions on the ground in South Vietnam. Wehrle argues that Meany was deaf to the increasing antiwar movement within locals. I'm not sure how important this is--I wonder just how many locals really opposed the war, particularly when compared to the blue collar support for the war that Richard Nixon courted. But like any good book, Wehrle raises questions to be answered with further research.

This is an important book for anyone interested in not only labor and Vietnam but in the ways progressives think about foreign policy. I have long bemoaned the fact that so many left-of-center people have chosen to not think realistically about US foreign policy in the post-Vietnam world. For all of Meany's flaws, and they were many, he did have a stand and he used his influence to push a vision of the world he thought was right. So did the anti-Vietnam movement. Unfortunately, progressives never moved beyond condemnation of the war to a real position on what role the United States should play in the world. Many left-liberals have a knee-jerk negative reaction to whatever foreign policy positions the US government takes. We need to do better. Reading Wehrle might help us think harder about these issues.

From Colony to Superpower, Part XIV

This is the fourteenth installment in the 20 part series Rob Farley and I have commenced to review George Herring's From Colony to Superpower: U.S. Foreign Relations since 1776. See the Herring Review tag below for previous entries. Rob's entry for this week is here.

This week covers the Truman Administration (1945-53). It's amazing thinking about what a huge change these years were for the United States. Before World War II, the U.S. tried very hard to stay out of international commitments unrelated to trade, had little interest in policing the world (outside of Latin America anyway), and had a strongly isolationist population. But the war created a new U.S. foreign policy of one of two world superpowers vying for world control. This is one of many reasons why I think World War II is the second most important event in American history (after the Civil War, and just above the introduction of slavery, the Constitutional Convention, and the civil rights movement). It was so transforming to all of America. Maybe I'll do a full post on this soon.

Anyway, the Truman years brought the beginnings of the Cold War, the atomic bomb, the Korean War, NATO, the Marshall Plan, the Chinese Revolution, the Berlin Airlift, the birth of the CIA, McCarthyism, and many other amazingly important events. That Americans dealt with the transition relatively smoothly is surprising. By this, I mean there was little organized opposition to this shift in U.S. foreign policy, with the most substantive criticisms coming from the right, who wanted the Cold War fought with more vigor.

One of the most disastrous success in U.S. foreign policy history may have been the success of covert operations in Greece in 1948. Not that I think Soviet domination of Greece would have been a good thing, but because it converted many in the foreign policy and intelligence establishments of the value of covert operations, leading to many horrible incidents from Iran and Guatemala to Chile and Indonesia. And of course, the Bay of Pigs.

I do wish Herring had dealt a bit more with Vietnam and the our support of French colonialism. It's mentioned, but only in passing. This was a major blunder, as early support of Ho Chi Minh could have created a peaceful transition to power in Vietnam and avoided the Vietnam War, and by proxy, the Khmer Rouge. On the other hand, the U.S. was not mentally prepared to support anticolonial movements in 1945 and failed to do so in almost every case. Racism toward non-whites still dominated the foreign policy establishment and the Vietnamese being more qualified to run their land than the French occurred to few.

On the other hand, I was pleased to see Herring rely on one of the most interesting books of the new U.S. and the World field, Ed Wehrle's Between a River and a Mountain: The AFL-CIO and the Vietnam War, which I reviewed here. The AFL got deeply involved in American foreign policy during these years, supporting conservative labor movements throughout Europe and eventually Vietnam, Latin America, and other parts of the world. They basically offered themselves up to the CIA as stools, particularly under the leadership of the deeply anti-communist George Meany. This is the kind of work that I hoped Herring would reference throughout his work, expanding our view and broadening our understanding on the nation's foreign relations.

Overall, while Truman left the presidency with low ratings and reputation, it's hard to criticize him too harshly on the foreign policy front. He made some terrible decisions (supporting apartheid South Africa for instance), it's true, and he did provide Roosevelt's leadership. But considering he was pretty unqualified and uninformed on these issues when he took office, it seems that he acquitted himself fairly well. He could have tried to run an armed convoy through to Berlin, he could have committed ever-increasing U.S. aid and military advisers to Chiang Kai-Shek in a losing cause, he could have let MacArthur run roughshod over him and bomb China. These were incredibly challenging years, and I can think of a lot of worse outcomes than where we were in 1953 and I can think of a lot of presidents who would have handled things far less well.