The Past Has Another Pattern: Memoirs

by George W. Ball

In his long and multifaceted career as a diplomat, international lawyer, and statesman, George W. Ball has been at the center of many crises. His book is filled with candid portraits of major figures on the world stage, as well as keen and controversial insights into past and present international problems.

Genres: History, Politics, Biography, Autobiography

544 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 1982

Reviews

[Stefania Dzhanamova · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the most eminent dissenters in the Cold War era was George Ball. 
Lyndon Johnson's Undersecretary of State was against escalation in Vietnam and against Johnson's decision in July 1965 to go to war.

Knowing what a disaster the Vietnam War became – more than 58,000 Americans dead, a Presidency ruined, a nation divided, and a prestige-compromising defeat in front of the whole world – Ball's arguments against American intervention proved to be correct, and he did oppose virtually all Johnson's advisers alone. However, as becomes clear from his own memoirs, while he did succeed in conveying several strong arguments criticizing American policy in Vietnam and take a clear stand against sending ground troops to Vietnam in those fateful July 1965 meetings with Johnson and other high-level advisers, his stance was inconsistent. At most of the important moments when the issue of deepening the American commitment to Vietnam before 1965, George Ball did not voice any opposition. He was even active in enlarging the American commitment in Southeast Asia to the point that President John F. Kennedy was vexed by his sweeping public suggestions about the "irrevocable commitment" of the United States. 

Although George Ball's dissent took place mainly during the Johnson administration, it all began during the Kennedy era. By 1960, Ball had already become a prominent figure in the Democratic Party. Having spent some time in Washington as an evaluator of American bombing against Germany during the Second World War, He became one of the chief supporters of Adlai E. Stevenson as his old friend from Illinois sought the presidency. Kennedy initially appointed Ball Undersecretary of State for Economic Affairs, but promoted him to Undersecretary of State as a replacement for Chester B. Bowles, who had not been working effectively with Sectary of State Dean Rusk. 

Ball soon developed reservations about American involvement in Vietnam. His work as a lawyer after World War II had often taken him to Paris. As a result he became well informed on the French defeat during its attempt to take hold of its former colony. He came to fear that the United States would repeat the mistakes made by France in Indochina. He also firmly believed that Washington should concentrate on relations with Europe, not with Asia and Africa. The idea that the United States could successfully carry out a policy of nation-building in the Third World was an illusion in his opinion, so he doubted that Vietnam should become a focus for American foreign policymakers.

Ball expressed his concern over this issue in November 1961. Following a proposal from General Maxwell D. Taylor and Deputy Special Assistant for National Security Affairs Walt W. Rostow to dispatch combat troops to Vietnam, the Undersecretary of State spoke candidly to Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara and Deputy Secretary of the Pentagon Roswell L. Gilpatric:
"[W]e must not commit forces to South Vietnam or we would find ourselves in a protracted conflict far more serious than Korea." The Viet Cong, he continued, were mean and tough, as the French had learned to their sorrow, and there was always danger of provoking Chinese intervention as the United States had in Korea. The Vietnam problem was not one of repelling invasion but of embroiling America in a revolutionary situation "with strong anticolonialist overtones." 

A few days later Ball took his case to JFK. “Within five years we’ll have three hundred thousand men in the paddies and jungles [of Vietnam] and never find them again,” he warned the president, if the Taylor-Rostow proposals were implemented. Ball again emphasized the precedent of the French defeat in Vietnam. According to him, Kennedy seemed unimpressed by the arguments of his Undersecretary of State: “George, you’re just crazier than Hell. . . . That just isn’t going to happen.”

That one talk with the President seemed to comprise all of Ball’s dissent during the Kennedy years. He attended twenty-five meetings on Vietnam with Kennedy, but not once did he speak out as he had in November 1961. He was equally reserved with JFK in their various phone conversations on Vietnam. 

This behavior of his raises the question of why Ball kept his feelings in check, despite harboring deep reservations about the American policy in Southeast Asia. As he explains it, the reason for his restraint was that he had no desire to become isolated in the Kennedy administration – his unconventional views would have pushed him away from Camelot. Unlike other Cold War dissenters, such as Henry A. Wallace during the early part of Harry S. Truman’s presidency, for instance, Ball was a sly politician. He preferred to remain quiet in order to preserve his influence within the administration. In resisting American escalation in Vietnam, he would choose to voice his views carefully – and only occasionally.

Not only did George Ball keep his reservations to himself while John F. Kennedy was in the White House, but he also played a significant role in the late summer of 1963 in deepening the American commitment in Vietnam. Ball sided with officials such as State Department officials Roger Hilsman and W. Averell Harriman, who believed that the removal of Diem, America’s ally in South Vietnam since the mid-1950s, might well be needed if a popular Saigon government capable of diminishing the appeal of the communists were to be established. President Diem’s oppression of the Buddhists that summer, thought to have been encouraged by his brother Ngo Dinh Nhu, strengthened Ball’s belief that the current South Vietnamese President should be ousted unless he distanced himself from his fascistically inclined brother, Nhu. 

On August 24, 1963, Ball got the opportunity to act on this belief. With Kennedy, McNamara, Dean Rusk, National Security Adviser McGeorge Bundy, and CIA Director John A. McCone all out of Washington, a telegram arrived from Henry Cabot Lodge, the American ambassador in Saigon, reporting the inevitability of a coup by South Vietnamese generals against Diem. Ball seized the moment by endorsing (with a few modifications) a reply to Lodge, composed by Harriman and Hilsman, that said if Diem did not cut his ties to Nhu, the Kennedy administration would not discourage those generals plotting his overthrow. Ball also phoned the president to acquire his approval of the telegram. The telegram was dispatched.
Once Kennedy, McNamara, Rusk, Bundy, and McCone returned to Washington, it soon became apparent that Ball, Hilsman, and Harriman had been reckless. McNamara, for instance, wondered whether any other leader would prove more able than Diem. Ball, though, was in no mood for backing down. On August 28 he told his colleagues: “We had no option but to back a coup. We are already beyond the point of no return. The question is how do we make this coup effort successful.” When McNamara and Kennedy objected, Ball persisted: “We can’t win the war against the Communists with Diem in control. We must decide now to go through to a successful overthrow of Diem.”

The generals did not carry out a coup against Diem in the late summer, but two months later they did. The result was the death of Diem. As the American encouragement of the aborted coup created much of the momentum that led to the subsequent overthrow of Diem in November, the Kennedy administration bears some blame for the unstable, short-lived Saigon governments that followed Diem’s. This increased America’s responsibility for South Vietnam. Ball, therefore, had played a role in bringing about this increased commitment.

When Johnson became president, Ball also gave no indication that he was a dissenter. At a momentous meeting held only two days after JFK’s assassination, Johnson announced to his advisers, “I will not lose in Vietnam.” Ball was one of only six officials present to hear Johnson make that pledge. Although he could have used this opportunity to alert the new president to the dangers of staying the course in Vietnam, he said nothing. 

Silence or acquiescence characterized Ball’s stance on Vietnam during the first six months of the Johnson presidency. Talking to McGeorge Bundy in December 1963, he said an effort should be made to stifle press reports that the communists were in a stronger position since the coup against Diem lest such reports cast doubt on the American capability to emerge victorious from the jungles of Vietnam. In addition, Ball did not point out that the January 1964 coup, which overthrew the South Vietnamese military junta that had been in power since Diem’s death, showed how unstable the Saigon government that Johnson was trying to support was and that this required a re-assessment of American policy in Vietnam. Furthermore, when in May the same year, the President spoke to him about the need to secure more funding from Congress for the struggle against the communists in Vietnam, the Undersecretary of State did not object.

As in his relations with Kennedy, Ball tries to justify his behavior by explaining that as in his relations with John Kennedy, he was anxious to show his loyalty to Lyndon Johnson. He did not wish to give the impression during the early months of Johnson’s presidency "that he was an erratic maverick." Dean Rusk was undoubtedly remembering correctly when he said that “George Ball didn’t come into my office every other day saying, ‘Look, we’ve got to do something radically different in Viet Nam.’”

It was not until late spring 1964 that Ball began to express his concerns about American policy in Southeast Asia. In a letter to Dean Rusk on May 31, Ball revealed that in the previous fortnight he had “had the feeling that plans [for Vietnam] were going forward too precipitously and that there was an inarticulate wish to sweep the difficult issues under the bed. Collaboration with the Deputy Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs U. Alexis Johnson, Ball had formulated questions, which he attached to his letter to Rusk. These questions, which Ball advised Rusk to ask other American officials, included: whether American air strikes on the North (which were being considered in the Johnson administration) would hinder the Viet Cong in the South. If American backing for Saigon led to the use of American troops in the South, would that not make the United States look like a colonial power? What would be the response in the United Nations to an American attack on North Vietnam? 

Despite this direct opposition to deeper American involvement in Vietnam, Ball again failed to stand his ground when in early August Johnson decided to commit himself more deeply to the defense of the Saigon government. In response to alleged North Vietnamese attacks on American ships in the Gulf of Tonkin, Johnson secured passage of a resolution in Congress that essentially gave him the freedom to do whatever he deemed necessary to challenge the Communists in Vietnam. America was ready, the resolution stated, “as the President determines, to take all necessary steps, including the use of armed force.” The President also authorized a retaliatory strike against North Vietnam that was soon carried out. Ball’s response to all of this was again one of quiet acquiescence. In key National Security Council discussions on the Gulf of Tonkin episode, he said nothing. In fact, he was even one of the main drafters of the resolution. 

It was not until the fall of 1964 that George Ball's campaign for a re-assessment of American policy in Vietnam gathered any sort of momentum. At a meeting on September 19, Ball strongly criticized McNamara’s recommendation that the President respond to another alleged Communist attack on American vessels in the Gulf of Tonkin by sending a naval patrol into the Gulf to show that the United States would not back down. Johnson found Ball's arguments persuasive, but added that he also saw merit in the proposals of the hawks. 

President Johnson's words motivated Ball to finish his first substantial memorandum listing his reservations about American commitment in Vietnam. In this paper, entitled “How Valid are the Assumptions underlying our Vietnam policies,” Ball argued that there were four options for LBJ: continue with the present policy, send American troops to South Vietnam, bomb the North, or negotiate a settlement. The first approach would be a failure, argued Ball, and sending American troops would be a great blunder, as both American losses and the animosity among the Vietnamese people toward the United States would increase. Bombing the North would also prove ineffective: it would not create a more stable Saigon government, would cause Hanoi to send troops into the South, and hence would force Johnson to send troops to the South to save South Vietnam. Diplomacy was the best option for the United States, concluded Ball. He suggested a coalition government in South Vietnam, which included the Viet Cong. 

Ball had the opportunity to discuss his paper with McNamara, Rusk, and McGeorge Bundy on November 7. His colleagues, however, were united in their criticism of Ball’s recommendations. The Secretary of Defense was particularly militant. He was “absolutely horrified,” Ball recalled. “He treated it [the memorandum] like a poisonous snake. . . . He really just regarded it as next to treason.” Ball’s first attempt to express his dissenting views was thus rebuffed. It was not until 1965, when Johnson initiated Operation Rolling Thunder, a sustained bombing of North Vietnam, that George Ball would again voice his opposition to the administration’s course of action in Vietnam. 

The culmination of his dissent in 1965 was the position he took in those tense White House meetings in July when the Johnson team discussed whether to accept the recommendation made by McNamara that the United States send 175,000 troops to South Vietnam to prevent it from falling to the Viet Minh. Ball understood that McNamara was essentially proposing a general war. That is why he decided to oppose McNamara's plan with all he was worth. Encouraged by Johnson's cautiousness, he made sobering observation after sobering observation: the war would be protracted; American soldiers were unprepared for jungle warfare; the Chinese Communists could intervene; the backing of the American people for the war would diminish once casualties increased; international opinion would also turn against the war; and, in the end, the United States would lose. A “tactical withdrawal” was what Ball suggested to avert this disaster in the making.

President Johnson seemed impressed by Ball’s prediction that U. S. soldiers would find it difficult to prevail in Vietnam. “Can westerners, in [the] absence of intelligence, successfully fight Orientals in jungle rice-paddies?” the President asked. Ball proceeded to emphasize the weakness of the South Vietnamese government that the United States was trying to uphold and to argue that a long war would weaken, not fortify, America. 

George Ball fought impressively to stop the United States from going to war in Vietnam. The trouble with his performance was that while he did alert Lyndon Johnson to the risks of a hawkish policy, he did not give him any workable alternatives. Furthermore, McGeorge Bundy, Rusk, and Lodge all believed McNamara was offering the president more rational advice. As it would soon become apparent, Ball had failed to change Johnson’s mind.

THE PAST HAS ANOTHER PATTERN is a vivid and thought-provoking journey into the recent past. In his memoir, George Ball takes a retrospective look at the major foreign policy issues of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, and especially at the Vietnam War. Although Lyndon Johnson would later claim Ball was deliberately charged with the task of being the "devil's advocate" in the Administration, the tone of this book and the thoughts on these pages show that George Ball's criticism of Johnson's foreign policy was earnest.

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was really good. Overlong in some areas; but an excellent history, memoir, and examination of midcentury diplomacy. He does incredible summaries of figures like De Gaulle and Johnson in just a few pages, that capture a better likeness than many full-length works.

[Justin Tapp · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Past Has Another Pattern, Memoirs by George Ball (Book Review #19 of 2023)

This memoir, available only in print, is a must-read for any aspiring diplomat. People looking to remember what it was like when policymaking was more private, involved serious scholarship, and was often less partisan than today will enjoy this memoir-- as well as those who want to remember what it was like to read and write well. There are many important chapters of history ranging from the early days of the European common market and construction of NATO, the Cuban missile crisis, civil strife in Cyprus, the Vietnam war, and the fall of the Shah of Iran that are memorialized in this book from the perspective of the number two U.S. diplomat under both Kennedy and Johnson, and subsequent to his resignation, an elder statesman-advisor.

George W. Ball served as Under Secretary of State (what is now Deputy Secretary of State), the number two U.S. diplomat in two presidential administrations and a much stronger role than today, as Ball was frequently involved in White House meetings and policymaking sessions where Secretary Dean Rusk was also present. He initially began as the Assistant Secretary for Economic Affairs under Kennedy, whose favor he won with a series of briefing papers after the 1960 election, in which Ball had worked for Adlai Stevenson's primary campaign. While not an Ivy League graduate, Ball was an erudite scholar who didn't hesitate to drop in French and Latin lines, as well as citing poetry and literature. His understated preference for political leaders are those who show themselves to be literate men of culture. He was a classical liberal who believed in pursuing greater trade and cooperation (as opposed to isolationism and unilateralism) for the greatest good of all. He chose to be an optimist while also being a realist and taking the long view when helping craft U.S. policy. The memoir is detailed and revealing, writing about many of his friends and co-workers-- including Presidents-- in a candid way. He was a happily married man, and the book is as much about his friendships along the way as anything.

Ball was present almost accidentally in a footnote of American history, being in Europe and conducting a scientific survey of the effect of Allied bombing for the U.S. military alongside characters such as Adlai Stevenson and John Kenneth Galbraith during the last days of World War II. Upon the surrender of Germany (Ball was in Paris on V-E Day), the survey team went immediately to Flensburg, which was surreally occupied by the still-armed Nazis led by Admiral Doenitz who claimed to be the legitimate German state. Their mission was to interrogate Nazi central planner of production Albert Speer, a member of Hitler's inner circle, at a castle surrounded by SS guards:

"Here we were-- Galbraith, (Paul) Nitze, and I-- sitting in an ugly bourgeous German house in the middle of the night surrounded by several thousand armed Nazi troops, who would have killed us automatically two weeks before. We were listening to a top Nazi conjure up Hilter--dead just twenty two days-- as a living, ominous presence, talking in a conversational tone of weird events in that house of madmen, the underground bunker...And the tale he was telling was not (Conrad's) Lord Jim but The Heart of Darkness-- the Gothic saga of a madman obsessed by power" (p. 57).

The bombing study mission was to determine how effective the bombing had been and how the Nazis had adjusted their production as a result. The conclusions reached from Speer, such as learning that the firebombing of civilian cities such as Dresden were largely ineffective militarily, would later shape Ball's principled opposition to Lyndon Johnson and Robert McNamara's strategies in the Vietnam War. It also chillingly leads him to the realization that young and educated democratic men like Speer, who was convicted and sentenced to prison at Nuremberg, had been in a position to help stop Hitler during the early days, but chose to go along or, at best, chose to turn a blind eye. Ball accepts that, had locations and circumstances been similar, many in American politics would have done the same. Some would have fiercely resisted and paid with their lives, some would have fled, some would have kept their heads down and gone to work justifying it as making miniscule differences at the margins, and others would have become full-fledged party members, "advancing up the hierarchical ladder" (p. 66). Writing from his vantage point of 1980, Ball sees narrowly-avoided outcomes of a rise of an autarcic figure. "Had Watergate followed a different course-- and it could have, but for luck and an indefatigable press...our basic institutions could have been dangerously undermined." Had a Eugene McCarthy arisen in a period "had we then been in the midst of a searing depression or been as angry and divided as during the Vietnam War," his friends may have joined the "new reality" (p.66-67).

Ball's post-war career took him to Europe where his law practice established an office in Paris. It was there he became a friend and advisor to Jean Monnet, the architect and champion of what would ultimately become the European Union. Ball's instincts were closer to that of a classical liberal, with underlying belief in the gains from trade, cooperation, and multilateral institutions. In both public and private sector, he had a front-row seat for policy decisions regarding Lend Lease, the Marshall Plan, the earliest days of the formation of the eventual European Common Market, the foundations of NATO, and the Global Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. He also traveled to Africa and the Middle East as part of his legal consulting work and saw first-hand the angst of Belgium and France in giving up its colonies. France's experience and defeat in Vietnam also shaped his thinking about the war. Ball had met Charles de Gaulle-- an opponent of Monnet -- in both private and public life and took from him (and Europe) the wisdom that the United States could never achieve victory in Vietnam, something the rest of Presidents Kennedy and Johnson's inner circle scoffed at since they saw the United States role as somehow more moral or noble than that of simple colonialism.

Ball was an almost inexplicably a stalwart admirer and friend of Adlai Stevenson and he encouraged him to run for President three times, even though he was deeply frustrated with the flaws in Stevenson's personality, including his indecisiveness. Ball served as one of Stevenson's campaign advisors and speech writers and supported him for his principles and as a Democratic Party standard-bearer even though he knew the causes were lost. For Ball, Stevenson had been an effective governor of an important midwestern state, was resolute on the important issues that Ball admired, and a trustworthy friend and educated professional like Ball himself. In 1952, there were many Democrats who supported the Republican Eisenhower over Stevenson and saw ending the decades-long Democratic hold on the White House as important to preserving democracy. As a student of ancient history, Ball was concerned about the consequences of electing a General and military hero, and even more concerned about a Vice President Richard Nixon. As time went on, Ball grew even more contemptuous of Nixon and his public statements, suspicious of Nixon's scruples and true motivations, plunging headlong into the 1968 campaign of Hubert Humphrey largely in order to warn America of what a danger he felt Nixon would be. Even just before the Watergate scandal was fully realized, Stevenson's public comments about Nixon's management (and Kissinger's as well) proved prophetic. Ball played only a minor role in JFK's 1960 campaign as he'd backed Stevenson in the primary (which were managed differently back then). Polls had suggested that a Stevenson-Kennedy ticket would run strong against Nixon. But Ball records an incident in which JFK profanely threatens Stevenson if he does not nominate him at the convention. Stevenson, like Ball, had a certain distaste for people who spoke in crass and uncultured manner. Stevenson, deeply offended by Kennedy's threat and even moreso by his curse words, remarkably refused to support him. Ball later encouraged Stevenson to accept JFK's somewhat gracious nomination as UN Ambassador in 1961, and Kennedy eventually came around to nominating ball as an Under Secretary (the economist John Kenneth Galbraith as one of his advocates as JFK's advisors grew concerned that Kennedy was nominating too many Republicans for such positions). One of the most personally emotional parts of the book was in attending Stevenson's funeral in 1965.

The most interesting chapters are that of his frequent time in the White House as Under Secretary of State, and Acting Secretary as he and Dean Rusk alternated time outside the country. Before accepting an appointment in the Kennedy administration, Ball studied Kennedy's book and Senate speeches to determine whether he could serve him. He did so only once he determened that Kennedy's policies were truly different from his father Joseph Kennedy's infamous policy of isolationism and appeasement before WWII. While insulated from the Bay of Pigs incident, Ball was present for the entirety of the Cuban Missile Crisis (he gets a brief cameo mention in the movie Thirteen Days), hosting meetings of the "excom" group at the State Department to foster more intense and creative discussion than would happen if Kennedy were in the room. He praises Kennedy's wisdom in those days and recounts the intense but respectful exchanges of ideas, painting the braintrust as largely more together than combative. There is a photo in the book of a commemorative plaque that Kennedy gave senior staff during those days.

Ball was Acting Secretary when Kennedy was assassinated, and recounts those days of receiving President Johnson and Mrs. Kennedy following their return from Dallas, the State Department's role in arranging the large international funeral, and other details of the emotionally difficult period (Ball refused to attend the memorial service in person). Johnson inherited Kennedy's brain trust and none of them apparently thought twice about serving the man. Ball warmly recounts Johnson's colloquialisms and Texas country nature. While strongly opinionated, Ball found Johnson open for debate and the pair had a solid rapport. Johnson, who felt insecure about his lack of education in comparison with the braintrust he inherited from Kennedy, frequently boasted of his advisors' educational pedigree (of which Ball arguably had the least). While Ball publicly implemented Kennedy and Johnson's policies on Vietnam, he spent late nights writing detailed memos of the policies and expressing his predictions of an inextricable quagmire. On November 7, 1961 when the Administration was just beginning to militarize its effort, Ball had a conversation with Kennedy. he predicted "Within five years we'll have three hundred thousand men in the paddies and jungles and never find them again." Kennedy rebutted with "George, you're just crazier than hell. That just isn't going to happen" (p. 367). Ball rembered those words once our troops commitments were over 500,000 on roughly the same time frame.

Under Secretary Ball writes of several other diplomatic efforts in the 1960s that he pursued in order to stay away from the increasing Vietnam obsession. Among them, the U.S. intervention in the Dominican Republic, of which Ball contains interesting insights. He also recounts his shuttle diplomacy between Cyprus, Greece, and Turkey during the 1960s. This chapter is what prompted me to buy the book after Christopher Hitchens quoted derisively from it in his own book on Cyprus (see my review). Ball writes very critically of Archbishop Makarios, blaming him for instigating the ethnic violence on the island. I have a greater acceptance of his opinion of the man after reading his candid observations of dozens of other international figures in the book. Ball spares no criticism for Nixon and Kissinger's bungling of the situation in the 1970s and laments the high price paid on both sides. Ball's later chapters on the Middle East are also interesting, as he was briefly an advisor to President Carter during the run up to the overthrow of the Shah of Iran. Ball's words and advice were again rather prophetic.

Ball spent his post-government years as in financial banking, serving on the boards of companies, and writing opinion columns for Newsweek and other outlets. Writing this memoir in the early days of the Reagan administration (and just before Gorbachev), he concludes by turning his thoughts toward the future. He greatly feared nuclear war and felt Reagan's rhetoric and defense buildup could only result in a reciprocal response from the Soviet Union that could only increase the odds of an accidental or intentional detonation. Ball's long view of history meant he accepted that empires rise and fall and he accepted that the current global system that America had built in the aftermath of WWII would one day pass away; he did not venture to guess what new coalitions would arise, only that they would. He was a great optimist on technological progress, but deeply concerned about the United States' cultural foundations being eroded. His closing paragraphs from 1982 could have been written in 2023, lamenting the decline of social mores and cohesiveness, the manipulation of educational standards to "conform to rigid sociological preconceptions" (p. 491), the free pass given to criminals and cheats as "innocent victims of social unfairness," and the loss of connection to art, literature, and poetry ("Who can quote any recent poet other than Eliot or occassionally Auden?")-- namely the debasing our literature with sex and violence while insisiting on it conforming to "a whole new set of social strictures, largely reflecting real or contrived ethnic sensitivies" (ibid). I believe that Ball would have recognized and understood how we got to 2023 and not have been terribly surprised by the events of 2016-2021.

This book is five stars. An underrated and under-read memoir that deserves to be available digitally.

[noblethumos · Rating 5 out of 5]

George Ball’s The Past Has Another Pattern: Memoirs (1982) offers a candid and insightful reflection on his career as a U.S. diplomat and policy advisor during the mid-20th century. Best known for his opposition to U.S. military involvement in Vietnam, Ball served as Under Secretary of State from 1961 to 1966 and later as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. His memoir presents a critical perspective on American foreign policy, emphasizing the role of pragmatism, diplomacy, and historical awareness in international affairs.


Ball structures his memoir around key moments in U.S. foreign policy, including the Cuban Missile Crisis, European economic integration, and, most significantly, the escalation of the Vietnam War. His firsthand account provides valuable insights into the inner workings of U.S. decision-making, particularly the tensions between hawkish and dovish factions within the Johnson administration. Ball’s opposition to the Vietnam War is a central theme, and he argues that U.S. policymakers failed to grasp the historical and political complexities of Southeast Asia, leading to a misguided and costly intervention.


One of the book’s strengths is Ball’s intellectual rigor and his ability to contextualize foreign policy decisions within broader historical patterns. His reflections on diplomacy highlight the importance of long-term strategic thinking, in contrast to the short-term, reactive policies that he critiques. Additionally, his discussion of U.S.-European relations, particularly his advocacy for economic cooperation and integration, underscores his vision of diplomacy as a means to foster stability and mutual prosperity.


However, The Past Has Another Pattern also has its limitations. While Ball provides sharp critiques of U.S. foreign policy, his memoir is ultimately a personal account, and as such, it is selective in its focus. His portrayal of internal policy debates, while detailed, is shaped by his own perspective, sometimes minimizing the complexity of opposing viewpoints. Additionally, while his critique of the Vietnam War is compelling, some readers may find that he underestimates the domestic political pressures that constrained policymakers’ choices.


Overall, The Past Has Another Pattern is a valuable contribution to the literature on U.S. foreign policy and diplomatic history. Ball’s reflections offer both a historical account of key Cold War events and a broader argument about the necessity of strategic foresight in policymaking. His memoir remains relevant for scholars of international relations, diplomacy, and American political history, providing a nuanced perspective on the challenges of global leadership and decision-making.

GPT

[Richard Walden · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a very well-organized autobiography, with subheadings contained in each chapter. Ball is erudite and eloquent; many apposite references are made to verse of poets both famed and obscure. This book should be mandatory reading for all government policy makers and State Department personnel. If Ball's advice had been given more credence, many of the mistakes made by our presidents, especially Johnson and Nixon, in the 60s and 70s, might have been avoided.

[David Hill · Rating 4 out of 5]

George Ball was a contemporary and colleague of many of the big names in our Cold War history - Stevenson, Acheson, Rusk, McNamara. These names are still known. No longer household names, to be sure, but not yet obscure historical figures. Ball certainly deserves mention along with those other names.

He worked on bomb damage survey crews in Europe after D-Day and was one of the first to interrogate Albert Speer. After the war, he worked with Jean Monnet in building European common market, supervised airdrops that saved hostages in the Congo, was a member of JFK's ExCom during the Cuban Missile Crisis, was Undersecretary of State under JFK and LBJ.

The most compelling part of his memoirs is the sixty or so pages on the Vietnam War. Ball was an early critic, a lone voice of caution in the Johnson administration. This is not a rehash of the Pentagon Papers nor does it include any military history. It's an analysis of the diplomatic and political factors, the failure to learn from recent history, the application of logical errors, and a general critique of how LBJ was advised by his cabinet. Ball is unforgiving in his criticism of Nixon and Kissinger.

The last chapter is an attempt to look into the near future. He's a bit of a curmudgeon by this point, railing on the coarsening of society ("nobody can name a modern poet anymore") but in spite of his being away from the levers of power for some time was still full of insight into America's challenges in the 1980's. Predicting the future is hard; Ball doesn't really try in this final chapter, but does point out areas of coming difficulty: impending changes in the Soviet Union, the effect of high oil prices, looming immigration issues, nuclear proliferation, even centrifugal forces threatening a unified Europe.

The writing is as solid as the story he tells. A good book isn't just the plot; it's the writing, too. Ball's plot is fascinating, and the writing is generally on a high level. As an undergraduate he studied literature before going for his law degree.