A 'Defense Intellectual' and His Policy Pratfalls
For Throwback Wednesday, the ultimate Swamp Thing
It’s been exactly ten years since James R. Schlesinger died.
I wasn’t a fan.
Enjoy!
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Before the memory of James R. Schlesinger slips into murky posterity, let’s spend some time bashing the deceased.
Until the dawn of the Cold War, Washington’s “Wise Men” were WASPS with backgrounds in law or on Wall Street. But when the federal government appointed itself the planet’s perpetual protector from communism, the brain trust needed legions of fresh recruits. There was so much to do!
Diplomats, think tankers, cabinet secretaries, and presidential “special assistants” still needed Ivy League pedigrees — Schlesinger had three sheepskins from Harvard — but Irishmen and Italians were allowed into the club. Mormons and Jews, too. (Schlesinger converted to Lutheranism in his early twenties.) Work histories diversified, as bankers, stockbrokers, and lawyers were joined by economists, industrialists, and scientists.
A professorship at the University of Virginia brought Schlesinger to the attention of RAND. “Everything about him,” wrote Fred Kaplan in The Wizards of Armageddon, “spelled ‘defense intellectual’ — the slightly jaded sensibility, the whiff of arrogance, the pipe-puffing affectation of cool insouciance.” A position with Nixon’s Bureau of the Budget came next, followed by the chairmanship of the Atomic Energy Commission, then a brief stint as CIA director. In July 1973, Schlesinger took the reins of the Pentagon.
During his tenure at DOD, Schlesinger presided over a truly deranged “contingency plan.” Amidst the Yom Kippur War crisis in October 1973 — Israel attacked by its neighbors, oil exports to the U.S. halted by the Middle East’s petrocracies — the U.S. plotted to invade and occupy one or more nations in the Persian Gulf region. Schlesinger scheduled the assault for late November. Iran was pressed for logistical help, an aircraft carrier moved into position, and thousands of Marines, who had conducted desert maneuvers the previous summer, prepared to go ashore.
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