George Ball: Behind the Scenes in U.S. Foreign Policy.

In this age of political sleaziness, when the most memorable events of our late 20th-century public life seem to be sex and money scandals that reach into the White House and Congress, it is well to remember that we have done better in the past. "In times of change and danger," John Dos Passos said, "a sense of continuity with generations gone before can stretch like a lifeline across the scary present"

George Ball is one of those "lifelines." A midwestern Stevenson Democrat who served as undersecretary of state in the Kennedy-Johnson administrations, Ball is best remembered as a consistent opponent of the war in Vietnam and an effective advocate of European union. Born in 1909, Ball saw the lessons of the century's two world wars as the need to transform Europe from a group of antagonistic national states into a continent served by a multilateral force and common economic goals promoting international prosperity.

French defeat in Vietnam and the lessons of Korea convinced Ball that an expanding American commitment against communism in Vietnam was a grave error. Along with Senators Mike Mansfield and Wayne Morse, Ball accurately foresaw the cost in blood, treasure, and domestic tranquillity to be paid as a result of the greatest U.S. foreign policy error in the country's history. From 1961 to 1966, his was the only voice in the decision-making councils to warn consistently against the tragic policies in southeast Asia.

James A. Bill, director of the Reves Center for International Studies at the College of William and Mary, warmly makes the case for Ball's virtues in a "behind the scenes" study of his role in American diplomacy. Though not a conventional biography tracing Ball's life from birth to death in the rich detail common to the genre, this book provides enough personal background and attention to the principal actions of Ball's public career to qualify as the best biography of the man to date.

Bill's book has much to tell us about how and why we conducted our foreign affairs toward Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America during the cold war years. But his story inevitably winds back to Vietnam and the ill-fated discussions that shaped policy in the 1960s. Much of what Bill describes is familiar -- the meetings with JFK and LBJ, Rusk, McNamara, the two Bundys, Rostow, Clifford, the Joint Chiefs, the wise men, and a host of secondary characters who struggled to define a sensible response to the challenge in southeast Asia.

Bill uses this material to pose the central questions that historians will forever debate about Ball and Vietnam: Because he was so prescient about the consequences of involvement in the war, why didn't he make his views public, especially in 1966 after he left the administration? Instead, Ball consistently defended Johnson and his Vietnam policy in public. As late as 1971, for example, after the publication of the Pentagon Papers, "Ball argued that the Johnson administration never deliberately deceived the American public about the war."

According to Bill, Ball's decision not to break with LBJ rested on five considerations: A resignation in protest would have been "an empty and ineffective gesture", it would have been an inexcusable act of disloyalty to colleagues who were doing their best for the country; it would have destroyed his ability to put some restraints on Vietnam actions and influence foreign policy initiatives in other parts of the world; Vietnam represented only a small part of his duties, perhaps as little as 10 percent; and it would have foreclosed the possibility of shaping future international events in another administration, where he hoped he might become secretary of state.

Bill acknowledges that Ball's explanation of his decision not to take public issue with the Vietnam policy was flawed. When Richard Nixon continued the war for four years after becoming president in 1969, Ball did not hesitate "to frontally and publicly attack the administration." Ball's actions suggest a measure of self-serving political calculation that diminishes his stature as a statesman and make him comparable more to a Robert McNamara than a George Marshall.

"In spite of George Ball's blemishes," Bill concludes, "his career stands on balance as an enduring model of excellence in statesmanship. He practiced a special prudence that enabled him to make the link between ideals and realities with a moral context." Perhaps. A future biography that looks in greater detail at Ball's career may help us take a surer measure of the man and his important career.