This thesis critically examines the career and significance of America’s first Secretary of Defence James V. Forrestal from a post-Cold War perspective. Within traditional Cold War scholarship, Forrestal’s legacy is problematic. The nature of his role as a defence administrator, combined with his suicide in 1949, has led scholars to underestimate his significance and relegate his legacy to the occasional biography. The few studies that examine his contribution utilise conventional analytical approaches that fail to fully assess his policymaking impact. The end of the Cold War, however, has brought additional insight into the policy concerns that dominated the conflict, new analytical approaches to its scholarship and fresh material on which to base a re-assessment. As this thesis demonstrates, the employment of new methodologies to study Forrestal’s impact is long overdue. By drawing on theories specifically related to leadership and decision-making behaviour, this thesis brings a deeper, fuller understanding of Forrestal’s policy-making impact as a Cold War official through an examination of his professional conduct. Despite Forrestal’s many successes, political controversies surrounding his defence career overshadowed his many achievements. This thesis argues that such controversies were the result of Forrestal’s dedication as a public official, his policy-making and management styles, and the structure of his authority as defence secretary. They were not, as some have argued, the result of his ineffectiveness as a policy-maker, “hawkish” attitudes or declining mental health. His collapse, furthermore, was not the natural conclusion of any paranoid delusions or obsessive nature, but rather a result of Forrestal’s dedication to his work at the expense of his own health. This thesis undertakes a content analysis of Forrestal’s writings and an examination of his policy-making approach, concentrating on the evolution and execution of his policy advice and initiatives, as well as the structure of his authority as secretary of defence. It begins with a biographical overview of his life and public service career, as well as an assessment of existing Cold War scholarship and its general tendency to underestimate Forrestal’s significance. The components of his legacy are then analysed thematically, with chapters devoted to his foreign policy influence, his role in the unification controversy and his administrative efforts as defence secretary. Throughout, Forrestal’s career and significance is reassessed both in the application of new theoretical and methodological insights, and the analysis of recently declassified and reorganised documents, particularly the complete and unexpurgated version of Forrestal’s official diaries.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/282522 |
| Creators | Belinda Lohrisch |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Detected Language | English |
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