Democracy in Exile: Hans Speier and the Rise of the Defense Intellectual(The United States in the World)

Anyone interested in the history of U.S. foreign relations, Cold War history, and twentieth century intellectual history will find this impressive biography of Hans Speier, one of the most influential figures in American defense circles of the twentieth century, a must-read.

In Democracy in Exile, Daniel Bessner shows how the experience of the Weimar Republic's collapse and the rise of Nazism informed Hans Speier's work as an American policymaker and institution builder. Bessner delves into Speier's intellectual development, illuminating the ideological origins of the expert-centered approach to foreign policymaking and revealing the European roots of Cold War liberalism.

Democracy in Exile places Speier at the center of the influential and fascinating transatlantic network of policymakers, many of them German emigres, who struggled with the tension between elite expertise and democratic politics. Speier was one of the most prominent intellectuals among this cohort, and Bessner traces his career, in which he advanced from university intellectual to state expert, holding a key position at the RAND Corporation and serving as a powerful consultant to the State Department and Ford Foundation, across the mid-twentieth century. Bessner depicts the critical role Speier played in the shift in American intellectual history in which hundreds of social scientists left their universities and contributed to the creation of an expert-based approach to U.S. foreign relations, in the process establishing close connections between governmental and nongovernmental organizations. As Bessner writes: to understand the rise of the defense intellectual, we must understand Hans Speier.

Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Masses and Marxism in Weimar Germany
2. The Social Role of the Intellectual Exile
3. Public Opinion, Propaganda, and Democracy in Crisis
4. Psychological Warfare in Theory and Practice
5. The Making of a Defense Intellectual
6. The Adviser
7. The Institution Builder
8. Social Science and Its Discontents
Conclusion
Abbreviations
Archival and Source Abbreviations
Notes
Archives Cited
Index

Daniel Bessner is the Anne H. H. and Kenneth B. Pyle Assistant Professor in American Foreign Policy in the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington.

Speier began his academic career studying the sociology of knowledge, and after he arrived in the United States, he directed the US government's propaganda effort against Germany. The debates recounted in Bessner's biography between Speier and other officials over how to develop effective campaigns are particularly fascinating in the context of contemporary worries about information warfare.

Democracy in Exile is directly relevant to a number of contemporary debates, not just about foreign policy but on the nature of politics itself.

Bessner's archival work has turned up many gems.

A revealing look at a thinker burned by populist upheaval who worried that 'man's nature makes the realization of the good order impossible.'

An honest and impressively compiled reminder to policy-oriented givers, grant recipients, and policymakers about some of the concerning anti-democratic roots of modern establishment philanthropy—and its understanding of the relationship between knowledge and power.

Bessner werite about his subject with sympathy and insight... Democracy in Exile should also be read by those who fear that democracy is again under threat all over the world.

This book skillfully navigates between an argument for Speier's historical importance and a critique of his ideas.

Bessner's Democracy in Exile, therefore, stacks up with the best in contemporary history that is powerfully relevant to current debates concerning foreign policy. The book shows how and why it is important to think carefully about democracy and the role scholars and intellectuals contribute to its survival.

Bessner's biography of Speier is an excellent case study of a transatlantic crossing linking Europe's interwar crises with America's permanent national security state.

A vital contribution and vivid portrait of hans Spier.