Arthur schlesinger, Jr.’s “Middle Way Out of Vietnam”;: The limits of “Technocratic Realism”; as the basis for foreign policy dissent

Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. became a critic of President Lyndon Johnson's policies regarding U.S. military involvement in Southeast Asia. In an extensive persuasive campaign between 1966 and 1968, Schlesinger attempted to unify dissent against the Vietnam War by proposing what he called a “middle way out of Vietnam.”; This essay explores Schles‐inger's Vietnam alternative by considering it as representative of the mode of foreign policy argument critic Philip Wander calls “technocratic realism.”; While Wander's categorization and analysis of foreign policy argument has focused on the justificatory discourse of Presidential administrations, this essay applies Wander's critical terms to foreign policy dissent. The essay argues that dissent which is grounded in the assumptions of “technocratic realism”; can offer only an incomplete critique of U.S. foreign policy, because such dissent does not question the policy's underlying purposes.