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The Forty Years War: The Rise and Fall of the Neocons, from Nixon to Obama

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Four and a half ENGROSSING Stars! "The Forty Years War" is an enjoyable investigative work of recent history and political machinations concerning "neo-conservatives", their philosophy, and events they influenced at the highest levels of government. They are one of the most distinctive political camps in America and therefore should get our attention, whether we agree with them or not. This book by authors Len Colodny and Tom Shachtman covers events and key personnel from Nixon to Obama seen in a different light. Neocons are more complex than simply being militaristic 'hawks' and some originate from an unexpected source. They adhere to the political philosophy of author, scholar, military educator, and political advisor Dr. Fritz G. A. Kraemer (1908-2003), a alluring man "with two doctorates [law and economics] and a rapier of an intellect". Born in Germany, he fought the Nazis and communists before emigrating to the USA and joining the Army, receiving a battlefield commission and a Bronze Star at the WW-II's Battle of the Bulge. Neocons include the likes of Kraemer protégés Henry Kissinger (who evolved in a direction explained in the book) & Alexander Haig, former Democrats Paul Wolfowitz & Richard Perle, diplomat Vernon Walters, James Schlesinger, William Kristol, Eliot Abrams, Democrat "Scoop" Jackson, and Douglas Feith, and many others. And what these Neocons have been up to over the last 7 presidential administrations may amaze some and disturb others, as they have waged 40 years of political war with opposing forces.

Along the way, the book cites fascinating moments, people, and key organizations in our history: the true origins of the "Nixon doctrine", the Coalition for a Democratic Majority, the "salted peanuts" memo, "dead keys", Vietnam, Watergate, the SALT II tribulations, an openly weeping President Lon Nol, Nixon's 'Saturday Night Live' TV show surprise, China, the U.S.S.R, "Team B", Iran-Contra, Lebanon, the Project for a New American Century (PNAC), Afghanistan, Iraq, right up to the Obama administration. While I don't agree with everything here, the authors provide alternative food for thought and do cover a lot of ground in a highly-readable, deeply-investigated, and informative manner. The neocon impact on recent history, like it or not, as cited in "The Forty Years War", makes for compelling reading which may cause your view of certain recent events and key historical players to change significantly in terms of 'why' certain events happened or did not happen. Highly Recommended as a great feat of historical scholarship. Four and a half ENGROSSING Stars (This review is based on a Kindle 2 download, reviewed in text-to-speech and written modes.)

I must preface my comments with the admission that I played a small role in the development of this book, offering comments to the authors based on my 12 years as supervisory archivist for the Nixon tapes.

There are many reasons to read, and to write, history. One of those reasons is to aid our understanding of how we as a nation got to where we are today. By elucidating the role of Fritz Kraemer's philosophy on policy-makers over the past 40 years, the authors have added to this understanding.

Richard Nixon admired men with strong personalities (John Connally and Bob Haldeman, for example) and people with strong beliefs (Catholics, for example). Nixon was so interested in Kraemer's beliefs, although he did not share them, that he asked Kissinger to bring him in for a conversation. This was a signal mark of respect by Nixon, who accorded it to very few other people. It marks Kraemer as a first-rate intellect.

Colodny & Schachtman demonstrate the influence that Kraemer and his ideas had on two generations of policy-makers at the highest echelons of the government. Of course, the concept of projecting strength is not new; in a sense, it lay behind the creation and implementation of the Cold War containment strategy of surrounding the communist states with American-led military alliances with their forward bases. It lies behind the strategic concept of the aircraft carrier and airborne divisions. The Soviets used the same concept in building the Cuban missile bases that led to the 1962 crisis.

So, Kraemer was not an original thinker, but he was an influential one. He contrasted Nixon's foreign policy pragmatism with his own philosophical idealism. American foreign policy in the 20th century can be seen as vacillating between idealism (Wilson's 14 Points and the Kellogg--Briand pact)and pragmatism (our support for friendly dictators). For 40 years Kraemer personally influenced policy-makers from Haig & Kissinger to Rumsfeld & Cheney, as the authors demonstrate.

The militarist philosophy he espoused is exemplified today by the enormous military/industrial complex against which Dwight Eisenhower warned us. It is so ingrained in our political life that there was no "peace dividend" when the Cold War ended. Even now, with huge budget deficits, no major politican in either party is suggesting significant reductions in the size of our current military establishment, which reputedly is larger than the next two dozen countries combined.

This huge military establishment begs to be used, or mis-used, as it was in the second Iraq war. The response to the 9/11 attacks was invasion of Afghanistan and the on-going effort to defeat the Taliban, rather than focusing on defeating terrorists. We are muddling ourselves out of Iraq, after having inflicted enormous damage on that country and its people. Even though the American military has shown no special talent for defeating insurgencies, the President is sending more troops to Afghanistan. Fritz Kraemer would be pleased.

Len Colodny and Tom Shachtman break new ground in modern history by fully exploring the influential role played by longtime military adviser Fritz Kraemer, the man who discovered Henry Kissinger and brought Alexander Haig into the Nixon administration's National Security Council. Kraemer's influence continues to this day, as former vice president Dick Cheney echoes Kraemer's belief in the dangers of provocative weakness. Many books have explored the relationship between Kissinger and Richard Nixon. Few have mentioned Kraemer more than briefly. The Forty Years War more than makes up for that omission, and for this alone, it should be considered a groundbreaking work of history.

Len Colodny and Tom Shachtman's "The Forty Years War" is a welcome addition to the growing literature of "neoconology". Where some (see Justin Raimondo) have focused on the social democratic - and indeed Trotskyite roots of the "classic neocons", others have focused on the Cheney - Rumsfeld "Vulcans" (see James Mann) - the hawks of the Bush cabinet. In the later case the "neocon" label is usually applied with loose fit. This book fills a gap by bringing the two streams together.

Where others have focused on Irving Kristol or Leo Strauss as "the neocon godfather", Colodny and Shachtman find another contender, Fritz Kraemer, a German American defense policy wonk. As portrayed, Kraemer emerges as a kind of old school Prussian militarist, who came to give his fealty to Democracy (with a capital D) not the Kaiser. He was an in house Pentagon guru and a mentor to Kissinger before they fell out. Numerous Washington hawks fell under Kraemer's spell, including Alexander Haig, Ford's Secretary of Defense- James Schelsinger and most of the later day neocons. Kraemer wanted Democracy to pursue aggressive military superiority versus totalitarian foreign enemies, and saw diplomacy, loss of focus and 'weakness' as the domestic enemy. You get the impression Kraemer loved Democracy in abstracto, it was just real world democratic politics he couldn't understand.

Although subtitled the rise and fall of the neocons, "The Forty Years War" really focuses on the Nixon-Ford era. This comproses at least two thirds of a book that is more Nixon history than neocon history. I was surprised to learn that it was Nixon, not Kissinger, who was the real father of detente. He nurtured the idea prior to his 1968 election and had to convert Kissinger, his new Kraemerite recruit to the need for a very non-Kraemerite diplomatic road to Moscow. Nixon really had left his ice cold warrior phase behind, even if his liberal critics, perhaps still smarting over Hiss, never quite got the memo.

Nixon's detente ultimately left his right wing exposed. Many Conservatives were unwilling to defend him when he most needed their help. Cullodny, who authored "Silent Coup", a Watergate revisionist book, saw the right exercising a more active role in his demise. He sees Alexander Haig as wanting Nixon out of the White House before any detailed Senate impeachment trial could get near the Moorer / Radford spy case. This is a little known, if somewhat amateurish, case where the Joint Chiefs of Staff conducted an illegal operation to spy on Kissinger and his secret diplomacy. Nixon discovered the plot and let the plotters know he knew. Rather than sack JCS Chairman Admiral Moorer, Nixon left him in place, presumably to increase his leverage over the Pentagon whilst he redirected US foreign policy. During the Frost Nixon interviews Nixon maintained that "the plumbers" were necessary to ensure security for his foreign policy reformation. At the time, this was seen as self serving, but presumably this affair was on Nixon's mind.

When Colodny's "Silent Coup" first proposed Nixon was removed to serve military interests, it was thrown into the 'conspiracy theory' bin. Subsequent revelation that Mark Felt (head of the FBI's "Cointelpro" dirty tricksdepartment boss) was "Deep Throat", should have convinced serious historians that another look is required. Perhaps Felt was more a player than a whistleblower. Cullodny also discusses the Haig and Bob Woodward links. Woodward, no Robert Redford, was Haig and Moorer's ex briefing officer before he quit the navy to turn reporter. At that time young officers rarely obtained early release from their stints. Woodward was out a year early. Woodward's string of later books, according to Cullodny, share a common theme. All boost the credentials of the uniformed military and manage to direct all criticism back to the civilians. Woodward's employer "The Washington Post" had CIA connections going back through Philip Graham to "Operation Mockingbird", a program to influence the domestic and international media.

It was also during the Nixon era that the original alliance between the GOP hawks and the "classic" neocons was forged. Nixon needed the "Scoop Jackson" Democrats to get his program through Congress where the GOP lacked the numbers. Kissinger and Nixon saw the ABM program as a useful diplomatic bargaining chip, so they were happy to let the Scoop squad manage ABM in Congress. The Wolfowitzes and co learned their craft on ABM. When Kissinger cashed this chip on the diplomatic table, the neocons saw it as a sell out. ABM was revived under Reagan as Star Wars, although the neocons would turn on Reagan too, although some would label themselves "neo-Reaganites", but only after airbrushing Reykjavik from memory.

There are some other sidelights that stand out from his narrative. Remember the "Huston Plan"? This was a proposal from the dark recesses of the Nixon administration to severely restrict civil liberties, allow covert interception, black bag operations etc. In reality Attorney General Mitchell, horrified by the plan and ordered it "deep sixed" once he got wind of it. Colodny makes the ironic observation that compared the PATRIOT ACT, Huston actually looks mild. Then there is the "unitary executive theory" - promoted by Cheney and the ill named 'Federalist Society'. Nixon ("when the President does it , it isn't illegal") was perhaps a practitioner rather than a theorist of "UET". This is what ultimately did him in.

"The Forty Years War" is large and detailed rich. The writing style is workman-like but the historical analysis is superior.

In the first part of this book, "Book One", to page 224, the authors report the behind the scenes efforts of multiple people to undermine Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger, guided by Fritz Kraemer, working from the Pentagon.

General Haig is shown to be an ambitious and master manipulator, who undermined Nixon, and could easily have been charged with treason had his actions been known. His Wikipedia profile reports none of what is in this book, and someone needs to update it: [...].

Haig's mastery of manipulation is shown by Nixon's advice to Gerald Ford to retain Haig as chief of staff, because "he was always loyal to the commander he served." Nixon didn't know that Haig's intellectual commander was Fritz Kraemer and other neocons.

Fred Buzhardt, Nixon's counsel who was supposed to be defending him, in the portrayal in this book, had at best conflicts of interest, or was incompetent, or was in cahoots with Haig in removing Nixon from office.

In the second part of the book (which I haven't read yet), many of these same neocons who brought Nixon down play important roles in the following presidencies, particularly George W. Bush's and the Iraq war.

This book is a look behind the scenes starting with Nixon that just has me shaking my head!

I have been waiting for a well researched, scholarly, non-fictional historical report of the influences of military conservatives for a very long time. The only thing that could be better is first hand confessions of the underhanded, unAmerican actions by the NEOCONS and military conservatives but hell will freeze over before we get that and some of them are now dead and have been judged. This is an UNDENIABLE smoking gun of the disengenuous actions of a group of unAmericans used to further their own goals and feather their own nests. I just wished the authors had started with the Tonkin Gulf incident which even Robert McNamara and the US Navy admit...NEVER HAPPENED. Or perhaps the attack on the USS Liberty. This book moves that claims that many of us have had for many years OUT of the realm of conspiracy theories and into the camp of historical facts. The more Americans that read and accept this book for what it is, the better off America will be. I put this book in the same group as Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler's book, "War is a Racket" and Robert McNamara's "The Fog of War" (DVD). In his farewell address to the nation, George Washington warned America of people who are more loyal to ONE MAN or ONE PARTY than to the CONSTITUTION and the American PEOPLE.

Evidently there was a war going on inside the Nixon White House between the pragmatists and the idealogs -- and the little known idealog Fritz Kramer at the Pentagon mentored and shaped the thinking of Henry Kissinger, Donald Rumsfield, Alexander Haig, Dick Cheney, Ronald Reagan and many others who would come to power. It details a dark side of Haig during Watergate, at the time he helped run the White House. This book brings so much of what really happened to light. It's a fascinating read, and a truly important, insightful revision of our American history. I'm posting a link to it on my Facebook page because I want my friends to know the truth.

Fritz Kraemer is certainly a mysterious and important figure. For many years prior to her death in 1988, Mae Brussell tried to unearth information about him to answer an important historical puzzle: was he the SAME Fritz Kraemer who was a top General for Adolph Hitler in WWII?? Given Operation Sunrise, Paperclip, etc., it would certainly be possible that he was recruited by the OSS, ONI and the Pentagon and secretly brought to the US after the war. (I've just ordered this book so have not read it yet)
The extraordinary secrecy and lack of information about him prevented Mae Brussell from ever gaining any definitive information. I would suggest this tight control and lack of information may suggest the answer to her question is very well positive.
That would certainly explain the neo-cons fascist programs and policies, their advocacy and practice of deceit, agressive wars and destruction of individual rights and liberties, among their many atrocities.
When high level Nazis went underground starting in 1943 (De Spinne and Odessa), their plans were to establish the Underground Reich. For this effort, they were extremely successful in dispersing individuals, assets, industrial materials, artwork and massive financial assets overseas (i.e., Egypt, South Africa, Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, etc.). Martin Bormann was the top man in charge of the Underground Reich - assisted by many others from the German military, industry, finance, etc. Otto Skorzeny was a very important high level figure in this who went to Egypt in the years after the end of the war. We were told, of course, that these figures died during or at the end of the war as cover for their ongoing work. Their allies in the West, especially in business, finance, politics and the US military and intelligence agencies recruited them and covered up their identities and ongoing nefarious activities. Researcher Dave Emory describes the Underground Reich: "An entity which maintains the long-term interests of German-based multinational conglomerates, it includes heavy industry, chemicals, communications, as well as international shipping, banking and financial interests." He says that the many units which make up the "Underground Reich," having survived World War II, persist and flourish as major components of the current global capital elite. (Keep in mind that Germany was defeated militarily; Nazism was neither defeated nor destroyed)
Read up on the history of the Bush family, especially Prescott Bush, to learn about one of the top level groups that worked tirelessly to establish a New Reich, re-christened a "New World Order." You will then understand why the policies of the Bush/Cheney regime so closely mirrored those of Germany in the 1930's and 40's.
Fritz Kraemer, at a very high level in the Pentagon, has been a key and essential player in this whole scenario.
Is the underground Reich real and has it been influential? My answer has two parts: First, their initial goal for post-war Nazism was to pit the US and the Soviet Union against each other; hopefully to eradicate Communism and make the US susceptible to infiltration and ultimate control. It was within 2 years of the end of WWII that the "Cold War" began, precisely pitting the US and the Soviet Union against each other.
Several decades later, Communism did indeed disappear.
Second, the long range goal of the Underground Reich was to ultimately turn the United States into the Fourth Reich. With ongoing endless global wars of aggression, the eradication of fundamental rights that were essential and primary to the United States' original core political principles (see the grotesquely misnamed "Patriot Act I and II"), the elimination of habeus corpus (a legal foundation for liberty that dates back to the Magna Carta), the President (both Bush AND Obama) claiming the right for extra-judicial assassination (i.e., targeted MURDER w/o evidence, trial, or any due process at all) incl. of US citizens, the suppression of dissent in the US, the complete subjugation of political, legal and financial interests and rights to the Corporate elite and the Warfare State, etc., etc., would suggest the record is starkly clear.
Do you need any more evidence that the Nazis - via the Underground Reich - have also achieved that long range goal?

I was a teenager when I sat on the couch in small town central Ohio watching the Watergate hearings on TV and telling mom I thought Dean was lying. Thirty years later I read Dean's book Conservatives without a Conscience and thought he was an honorable man trying to make amends and do what was right. This book sheds new light on his role and that of many more who are more important characters in the drama in Washington DC. Reading between the lines, the neoconservative movement was just one aspect of a multifaceted approach the military had at that time of undermining America's Presidents, imposing their own preferences over those of the people. I did not realize that Bob Woodward was military intelligence or that the military helped him get his job at the Post without the necessary experience to be a reporter (he had to leave and go to another less prestigeous newspaper with the aid of the military once it was realized how difficult it really is to be a reporter). Nor did I realize that his books clearly serve the preferences of the military and their supporters in Washington. The book is a good summary of the Nixon era and a quick summary of the neoconservative operations since then and their impact on our country.

Get tough

This book, The Forty Years War (2009) by Len Colodny and Tom Shachtman, is about a style of argument supporting global superpower policies. It reminds me of the flash bang gravy train trying to make my block safe for the Republican National Convention in September, 2008, in Saint Paul, Minnesota, where, if there were tree snakes rippling upward in your bong water, I would be a tree snake.

Cambodia is mentioned in the book as an opportunity for Nixon to stand firm so that Asians could understand the significance of American power. When the North Vietnamese Army attempted to overthrow a government in Laos, the troops of Thailand supported by American pilots were able to repel the North Vietnamese. So:

Nixon, Kissinger, and Haig
wanted to do the same for Cambodia,
as a test of Vietnamization
and of the Nixon Doctrine.
When Sihanouk refused to decide
on letting in South Vietnamese troops
and then headed off on another
restorative trip to France
Lon Nol, with tacet agreement from the United States,
staged a coup. (p. 75).

People who had hoped that American policy would not turn out to be vicious and brutal were concerned, so:

Kissinger disparaged these concerns,
coming as they did from advisors
he considered his "bleeding heart"
liberal "house doves."
Kissinger wanted the incursion.
This was a moment that called
for Kraemer-like military aggression,
and for once Nixon was willing
to authorize real, not feigned, action. (p. 75).

Half a page in the index lists entries for Fritz G. A. Kraemer and Sven Kraemer. Fritz died in September 2003, at the age of 95, and Kissinger's eulogy:

Lauding Kraemer as "the prophet"
and referring to him as
"the policymaker." . . .
"The prophet thinks in terms of crusades,
the policymaker hedges against
the possibility of human fallibility."
That dichotomy, Kissinger told Rowny
privately after the funeral, was
the source of his estrangement
from Kraemer, whose main weakness was
his "lack of practicality." (p. 405).

Among the thinkers on military matters, this book is built on the irony that a global strategy can be prone to or fond of:

Kraemer, Rowny, and Walters
shared many things:
a military background,
a tough assessment of the world,
patriotic pride,
a belief in elites,
a faith in the idea
that military force
should be the primary tool
in the conduct of U. S.
foreign affairs, and
a fundamental distrust
of Communism and of all
dictatorial regimes. (p. 28).

In tough situations, Kraemer thought:

"They can, however,
be made to listen if you are able
actually to bear down on them,
not brutally but forcefully." (p. 29).

I have been overly brutal in my reactions to Americans who don't listen to anything like $14 trillion becoming the kind of problem a monetary net full of political jellyfish has when everybody wants to do what we always do with $14 trillion after the money has already been spent. A gambling addiction provides plenty of mechanisms for dealing with things that go up, down, and sideways in free markets. Full faith and credit always made issuing debt a way to increase wealth before now. So, now:

Economics is no substitute for military force.
The one way to prevent war
was to develop military might
and to make sure other countries
understood your willingness
to use it. (p. 29).

Trying to have it both ways, fiscal conservatives are mentioned in this book before the awful present is described:

The second reason was economics:
Worsening
financial conditions
were hastening
the demise of
neocon rule. (p. 430).

Colin Powell is given credit for endorsing Obama because:

Contending that the next president
would have to "show the world that
there is a new administration
that will reach out," Powell essentially
ratified Obama's . . . willingness to pursue
results through dialogue rather than
relying on threats and bullying
in dealing with America's enemies and friends. (p. 431).

Two weeks before the election in 2008, there was an American raid in Syrian territory "aimed at taking out an Iraqi insurgent leader who had been wreaking havoc inside Iraq." (p. 431). American power is out to get anyone "facilitating, financing or providing expertise or safe haven for such efforts." (p. 431). If only Americans had been so good about putting the Social Security trust fund in a lockbox, this would not seem like hundreds of chattering monkeys to me.