In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

  • Rational Model for Analyzing U.S. Foreign Policy Advocates and Decision Makers: The Newman Legacy
  • Carol Winkler (bio)

Robert P. Newman was a man of firmly held and passionate opinions. He lived his life according to the bedrock belief that scholars had an obligation to critically analyze and publicly engage with key turning points in U.S. foreign policy—no matter what the ensuing controversy. His underlying motivation was straightforward: “We study foreign policy because we hope to increase our chances of survival.”1 He understood that such a path was inextricably tied to contested values, but rather than avoid such messy endeavors, he doggedly examined some of the most challenging subjects of American foreign policy in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. He focused on fundamental questions: Should President Truman have used the atomic bomb in Japan? What were the motivations, strategies, and consequences of the anti-Communist movement that reached its peak in the McCarthy era? Did myths about China unduly prolong the U.S. commitment to the Vietnam War? What were the doctrinal origins of George W. Bush’s use of preemptive war? What happens when ideology instead of evidence guides contemporary American foreign policy?

Newman staunchly believed that scholars, particularly those trained in rhetoric and argumentation, ought to explore U.S. foreign policy decision making from a rational perspective. He lauded policy advocates and decision makers who considered the strength of evidence and arguments relevant to the full [End Page 683] array of available policy options; he excoriated those who did not. Many critical scholars today question whether rational models can serve as a sufficient (or even fitting) process for assessing foreign policy, given the heightened role that emotion and ideology now play in swaying the politicized American public.2 Newman understood the relevance of these factors and readily acknowledged that a well-reasoned, critical examination of American foreign policy would often fail to sway governmental decision makers. Recalling an experience with his own Recognition of Communist China? A Study in Argument,3 for example, Newman remembered that the book sold 20,000 copies, received favorable reviews from the New York Times, the Saturday Review, and the American Political Science Review, and sparked sufficient interest to prompt a read by State Department officials. Nevertheless, the government’s decision makers at the time went on to completely ignore his conclusions.4 Despite disappointments, Newman continued to adamantly insist that a failure to carefully consider the arguments and evidence driving foreign policy decision making would have dire consequences for the U.S. citizenry in both the short and long term.

Newman’s crowning scholarly achievement is Owen Lattimore and the “Loss” of China, published by the University of California Press in 1992. The biography focuses on Owen Lattimore, a renowned Far Eastern scholar from Johns Hopkins University who emerged as a central figure in government debates over why China shifted from an American ally in World War II to a Communist enemy. In March of 1950, Joseph McCarthy accused Lattimore of being the nation’s top Soviet spy and the head of the Alger Hiss espionage ring. The U.S. government eventually exonerated Lattimore of subversion charges after a wide range of government agencies subjected him to more than five years of interrogation. Newman painstakingly documents how the various U.S. government investigators assigned to Lattimore’s case deliberately entrapped him, unlawfully obtained and manipulated evidence to use against him, and withheld potentially exculpatory evidence from his defense.5

Owen Lattimore and the “Loss” of China certainly presents a nuanced read of U.S.-China policy in the 1930s and 1940s, but the book primarily focuses on the period when Lattimore underwent investigation for accusations regarding his potential ties to communism. Newman based the book’s conclusions on an analysis of 38,900 pages of FBI material collected on Lattimore from 1941 to the 1970s, previously classified records of the Senate [End Page 684] Internal Security Subcommittee, the totality of Lattimore’s published writings and private papers, germane congressional hearings and court cases, and secondary sources related to both the time and Lattimore himself.

The book’s multiple reviews in Library Journal, New Republic, Common-weal...

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