Memoirs tend to be somewhat one-sided, and the present volume is no exception. Nonetheless, it is well worth reading. Spruille Braden—chairman of the U.S. delegation to the Chaco Peace Conference, wartime ambassador to Colombia and Cuba, postwar ambassador to Argentina, and Assistant Secretary of State for Latin-American Affairs—has told his story, as he says, “with no holds barred.” It is an important story. Braden’s protracted clash with Argentine strongman Juan Perón, surely one of the more significant episodes in the history of U.S.-Latin American relations, is recounted with details and personal touches not found in the Foreign Relations volumes. The memoir also indicates a continuity in Braden’s political thinking without which his policies as ambassador are unintelligible.
This is a key point. Because Braden turned up in the 1960s on the national board of the John Birch Society (a fact curiously omitted in a memoir so otherwise candid), it is sometimes thought that he shifted from a “liberal” anti-fascist position in the mid-1940s to an “ultra-conservative” anti-communist stance later on. He confirms that such was not the case. Like many business-oriented American “conservatives” (and “liberals”), Braden thought of himself as being consistently anti-totalitarian; he merely shifted the emphasis of his attack as circumstances required. In that sense, despite the stridency of his tone and the extremism of some of his concluding policy recommendations—such as his call to “throw the Russian, Chinese, Ghanian, and local Communists bodily out of Cuba by a properly planned, all-out invasion” (p. 432)—Braden is more representative of American diplomats and policy-makers than is at first apparent.
The memoir demonstrates this point clearly. Braden recalls that even during the war one of his chief concerns was to prevent the spread of Communist influence in Cuba (pp. 302-306). He confirms that his opposition to Perón was based not merely on the latter’s collaboration with the Nazis but also on Perón’s “collusion with the Communists” (p. 334). On the other hand, Braden recounts with some pride his consistent record of antagonism to Dominican Republic dictator Trujillo—to whom he refers as “the monster” (p. 269)—and he devotes considerable space to his work, as ambassador to Colombia, in overcoming a Nazi threat to the Panama Canal. He also notes that as postwar Assistant Secretary of State he differed from many State Department and Pentagon personnel in opposing military aid to Latin American dictators (p. 364).
Not having been privy to the larger New Deal policy strategy regarding Latin America, Braden apparently did not appreciate the subtleties in the approaches of such “left-liberals” as Harry Dexter White and Lawrence Duggan, who, like Braden, wanted to promote Latin American economic development within a context of continuing U.S. influence. Braden therefore dismisses White and Duggan, among others, as “communists” (his evidence for applying the label to them is inconclusive at best). Nelson Rockefeller’s behavior as wartime Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs he finds more difficult to explain. The result is simply a scathing pen-portrait of Rockefeller as an overprivileged, under-qualified dilettante in Latin American policy-making (p. 452). Nonetheless, there emerges from these pages a Braden whose overall goals were not substantially different from those of other men with whose tactics he disagreed so violently.
The memoir is replete with humor, most of it intentional. A sample of unintentional humor is Braden’s explanation that he discontinued his Yale alumni fund contributions because he didn’t like “the Rostows and scores of other Leftists teach[ing] socialism or communism” (p. 407). Some of the best personal anecdotes are contained in an appendix which was at first excised from the text by “a so-called Liberal publisher” and restored at the last minute by Arlington House. They alone make the volume worth the admission price.
