The End of Ambition: The United States and the Third World in the Vietnam Era

In this incisive investigation of U.S. policy toward the Third World during the presidencies of John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, Mark Atwood Lawrence highlights a fundamental shift in approach that occurred after Johnson replaced Kennedy. The End of Ambition bolsters the arguments of Robert Rakove and other historians that Kennedy's boldly ambitious effort to align the United States with the grand social, political, and economic aspirations of a newly emergent Third World represented his most innovative foreign policy initiative. Although Kennedy's efforts to win the hearts and minds of the peoples and rulers of Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America were never fully realized and were beset from the outset by inconsistencies and internal bureaucratic opposition, his policies left a powerful legacy for Johnson. Yet, as Lawrence carefully delineates, Johnson chose a different path. Jettisoning Kennedy's enthusiasm for democratization and development in the Third World and...