Perhaps no trio of brothers has impacted American history as much as John, Robert, and Ted Kennedy. In his most recent book, The Kennedys in the World, Lawrence J. Haas—whose career includes senior communications posts in the Clinton White House and frequent appearances as a pundit in national newspapers and cable news outlets—uses the Kennedy brothers as a lens to examine US foreign policy since World War II. Given the significance of international diplomacy to all three brothers and their combined engagement in foreign policy debates from the 1930s through the 2000s, this is an intriguing, if novel, approach.Divided into three parts, each one tracking the foreign policies of John, Robert, and Ted respectively, the book begins with the evolution of John from a “schoolboy diplomat” (xvi) into the world's preeminent Cold Warrior. Thrust into the touchy sphere of Anglo-American diplomacy in 1939 by his father Joe, then serving as US ambassador to the United Kingdom, it was clear to observers on both sides of the Atlantic that the Harvard senior was being groomed for a career in international politics, a role he embraced a decade later as a congressman and senator. As president, he combined humanitarian aid and soft power directed towards newly independent African and Asian nations with hardline stances against the Soviet Union in Cuba and Berlin, leaving an indelible mark on the world.Similarly primed by their parents into a life of public service, Robert and Ted Kennedy shaped US foreign policy in their own important ways, argues Haas. Robert's shift from a Cold War hawk to dove made him the establishment's foremost voice of conscience against the horrors unleased by the war in Vietnam. In the book's strongest section, Haas portrays Ted as “the family's best politician” (xxiii), who, while lacking the idealistic grandeur of John or the moral fortitude of Robert, had firm command over the arcane rules and palm-greasing culture of the Senate. And while his brothers’ assassinations at the peak of their careers left historians with a myriad of “what if” questions about their foreign policy legacies (counterfactual scenarios that Haas dabbles with in the epilogue), it was Ted whose career spanned for nearly half a century, decades longer than either of his brothers. As Massachusetts's senior senator, he led campaigns to levy sanctions against South African apartheid, highlighted America's unsavory role in fostering authoritarian Latin American dictatorships, secured the release of political prisoners around the globe, and was among the most vocal critics of George W. Bush's war against Iraq.Some readers may be leery of the book's elitist approach to foreign policy that maintains a relentless focus on the role of three white men in shaping history. Given the author's current position as a senior fellow with the conservative-leaning American Foreign Policy Council, it is also no surprise that the book lacks a Leftist critique of the Kennedy brothers’ collective approaches to foreign policy. For instance, missing from the book's coverage of the Peace Corps and other forms of aid that demanded “nothing of foreign governments in return” (99) are African and Marxist critiques that emphasize the role of such programs in fostering neocolonialism that exerted implicit economic and cultural control over dependent nations. And though the book's subtitle acknowledges the presence of an American “Empire,” its analysis lacks a sophisticated critical approach towards the post-World War II liberal-conservative consensus that embraced American imperialism as a global positive. More inclusion of African, Asian, and Latin American critics of American imperialism would certainly alter the book's laudatory conclusions.Nevertheless, written in fast-paced, attention-grabbing prose characteristic of a seasoned journalist, this is an absorbing narrative, complemented with an ample assortment of photographs, and is ideal for a general audience. However, despite promises to tell an “untold story about Jack, Bobby, and Ted” (xvii), the vast majority of the book's anecdotes have long been part of the historic record. The bulk of its footnotes contain oft-cited memoirs, oral histories, and newspaper accounts that are already well-covered in the secondary literature. Thus, while the final section convincingly re-centers Ted Kennedy as a late-twentieth-century diplomatic powerbroker, most foreign policy scholars and historians of post-World War II America will not find many new revelations here, and those on the Left may be off-put by a lack of engagement with serious critiques of American imperialism.
Read full abstract
Jun 14, 2023
S P Mitrakhovich 
Open Access
