J. William Fulbright, Vietnam, and the Search for a Cold War Foreign Policy

An abridged biography of Fulbright, focusing on his career as Chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and critic of the Vietnam War.

Randall Bennett Woods (Author)

9780521588003, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 13 February 1998

304 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.6 cm, 0.41 kg

'In this compelling biography, Randall Woods has vividly captured the contradictions of a complex man and the political drama of his three tumultuous decades in the US Senate.' Ronald Steel, University of Southern California and author of Walter Lippman and the American Century

J. William Fulbright was the longest serving and most powerful chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Both an intellectual and an internationalist, he had great influence over the course of American foreign relations in the 1960s and 1970s. Fulbright was also the most prominent, and the most effective, of the first American critics of the Vietnam War. His criticism was particularly galling and damning to Lyndon Johnson because Fulbright was a principled internationalist who could not be dismissed as an ideologue. Fulbright used hearings by the Foreign Relations Committee as a forum in which to advance his powerful critique of the war, and his writings constitute an ongoing, comprehensive critique of American foreign policy. This abridgement of Woods' prize-winning biography of J. William Fulbright presents the full story of Fulbright's role as one of the leading congressional opponents of the Vietnam War.

1. Taking the stage
2. Cuba and Camelot
3. 'Freedom's Judas-Coat'
4. Of myths and realities
5. Avoiding Armageddon
6. Escalation
7. Texas hyperbole
8. The hearings
9. The politics of dissent
10. Widening the credibility gap
11. The price of Empire
12. Denouement
13. Nixon and Kissinger
14. Of arms and men
15. Sparta or Athens?
16. Cambodia
17. A foreign affairs alternative
18. Privileges and immunities
19. The invisible wars
20. Conclusion.

Subject Areas: Vietnam War [HBWS2], History of the Americas [HBJK]