I am reading Amadae, Sonja Michelle. 2003. Rationalizing Capitalist Democracy: The Cold War Origins of Rational Choice Liberalism. So far it is very interesting. One unexpected piece of information concerned the intellectual origins of the neocons, although she does not even mention that movement by name. What she does do is to trace the missile gap, which became a centerpiece of the Kennedy campaign to Albert Wohlstetter, who inspired Richard Perle and many of the people around Scoop Jackson. It seems that the shenanigans of this group disgusted Eisenhower and led to his warning in his farewell address against the military industrial complex. Wohlstetter, it seems, was not highly respected within RAND, but he won a small group of energetic supporters by claiming that the Soviet Union could successfully attack simultaneously every American base thereby leaving the US vulnerable. Just as today, the military regarded as possibility as ridiculous and the proto-neocons has seriously out of touch with reality. Like today, this group was very successful in waging a propaganda war to make the country fearful about the nonexistent missile gap.
-- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University michael at ecst.csuchico.edu Chico, CA 95929 530-898-5321 fax 530-898-5901
