The End of Ambition: The United States and the Third World in the Vietnam Era

by Mark Atwood Lawrence

At the start of the 1960s, John F. Kennedy and other American liberals expressed boundless optimism about the ability of the United States to promote democracy and development in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America. With US power, resources, and expertise, almost anything seemed possible in the countries of the Cold War's Third World--developing, postcolonial nations unaligned with the United States or Soviet Union. Yet by the end of the decade, this vision lay in ruins. What happened? In The End of Ambition, Mark Atwood Lawrence offers a groundbreaking new history of America's most consequential decade. He reveals how the Vietnam War, combined with dizzying social and political changes in the United States, led to a collapse of American liberal ambition in the Third World--and how this transformation was connected to shrinking aspirations back home in America. By the middle and late 1960s, democracy had given way to dictatorship in many Third World countries, while poverty and inequality remained pervasive. As America's costly war in Vietnam dragged on and as the Kennedy years gave way to the administrations of Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard M. Nixon, America became increasingly risk averse and embraced a new policy of promoting mere stability in the Third World.

Genres: History, United States, Politics, Nonfiction

376 pages, Hardcover

Published February 22, 2022

Reviews

[Joseph Stieb · Rating 4 out of 5]

I would describe this book as useful for historians but not terribly fun to read. It is rather wonky, with a lot of discussion of aid programs and the inner workings of the NSC. The main argument, though, is interesting. MAL contends that the United States, especially liberal admins, went through a rapid disillusionment about the Third World in the Vietnam era. At the start of the 60s, liberals were very optimistic about building better relations with Third World nations, as well as keen on using new theories such as modernization to develop these countries while squeezing out communist influences.

But their dreams ran headlong into reality in the case study nations: Iran, South Africa, India, Indonesia, and Brazil. Most of these nations had been colonized at some point, and they were skeptical at a minimum of US and European influences. Some featured left-leaning if non-aligned leaders that were resistant to US designs. These societies were also too dynamic and complicated to serve as laboratories for US development theories. Eventually, the US chose to side with stability and anti-communism, as well as a limited version of top-down reformism (like that of the Shah), rather than economic and political transformation. This usually meant siding with military rulers or autocrats. Of course, Vietnam loomed over all of this. It poisoned the US image in the Third World, hampered relations, but also made the US prefer nations that would offer support (even merely verbal support) for this war. Truly one of the ways that Vietnam was a disaster was in swallowing up all of these other policy efforts.

Nixon then picked up on and even embraced LBJ's stability-focused approach to the Third World. MAL emphasizes that there was more continuity btw their approaches than previous historians had perceived. Furthermore, this book is useful for showing a global arc in the 1960s toward the consolidation of pro-US authoritarian regimes in much of the post-colonial world, a process that then set up various challenges and revolutions in the succeeding decades.

A few critiques: I think this book should have been shorter. The case studies really drag out and exhaust the reader with detail. Illustrating the big picture points in more abbreviated case studies would have made this book more accessible. Also, this was essentially a book about liberals and world affairs, and I think it should have been framed as such. I thought the book eschewed opportunities to make some really interesting points about Cold War liberalism, which has become something of a hot topic recently.

In sum, this is an important and thoroughly researched book for scholars of the Cold War and US-Global South relations, but I think it's too academic and a bit too dry for general readership.

[Andrew Sternisha · Rating 4 out of 5]

Strong work on US foreign affairs in relation to areas outside of Vietnam during the Vietnam era. Lawrence makes the argument that it was LBJ rather than Nixon who changed US policy to be more appeasing to dictators in the name of realpolitik. He portrays JFK as more engaged with proponents of different views, but LBJ’s famous intolerance for disagreement caused him to surround himself with men who saw other nations as pawns rather than partners in the Cold War. This study is clearly an American study rather than a transnational survey, but Lawrence attempts to illustrate some ways in which other nations (most notably India) affected US foreign policy rather than vice versa. Would recommend to anyone seriously interested in the historiography of the 1960s US foreign relations.

[Christy-JC Carter]

This was recommended to me by a young scholar in the field, and I see why. Dr. Lawrence's research is impressive. I appreciated the arc of the book. I gathered some useful material for my class lectures, but the bulk was too detailed for my needs as a generalist. Someone who is interested in 1960s US foreign policy beyond (& also connected to) Vietnam (India, Iran, etc) will find this enlightening.