Topics: U.S. Policy and Politics Lyndon Johnson and Europe: In the Shadow of Vietnam Thomas Alan Schwartz. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2003. Rogue Nation: American Unilateralism and the Failure of Good Intentions Clyde Prestowitz. New York: Basic Books, 2003. Cuba the Morning After: Confronting Castro's Legacy Mark Falcoff. Washington: AEI Press, 2003. Cuba on the Verge: An Island in Transition Terry McCoy. New York: Bulfinch Press, 2003. U.S. Policy in Post-Saddam Iraq: Lessons from the British Experience Michael Eisenstadt et al.. Washington: Washington Institute for Near East Policy, 2003.

It was June 18, 1945, at the White House. President Truman was canvassing the views of his senior advisers on the prospect of invading Japan; various views were offered and just before the meeting broke up Harry Truman said, "We haven't heard from you, McCloy, and no one leaves this meeting without standing up and being counted." John McCloy proceeded to stand up and be counted: we ought to have our heads examined if we do not seek a political end to the war before an invasion, he said. We have two instruments to use: first, we could assure the Japanese that they could retain their emperor. Second, he said, we could warn them of the existence of the atomic bomb-a subject that was virtually taboo even in this restricted company. Truman was impressed, and sympathetic to the point about the emperor. He assigned McCloy and Secretary of War Henry Stimson to work out a plan, but history turned in a different direction-toward Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The point is not whether Mr. McCloy was right, but that he stands as an example of the bold and candid counsel provided by that heroic generation of men and women who served their country in peace and war, and served so wisely after Pearl Harbor. Indeed, Mr. McCloy served in various capacities and he was quick to remind us that he began as an artillery officer in World War I. Among his many accomplishments was his service as High Commissioner for Germany after World War II, when he and Konrad Adenauer carefully nurtured the young Federal Republic back into the European family. Later, in 1961, he began another career, this time advising successive presidents as the chairman of the presidential advisory committee on arms control and disarmament-known in Washington simply as the McCloy Committee.

It was in this assignment that he negotiated one of the seminal documents of the era: the U.S.-Soviet Joint Statement of Agreed Principles of arms control and disarmament, adopted in September 1961. Painstakingly hammered out by Mr. McCloy with the ever-difficult Valerian Zorin (and invariably referred to as the McCloy-Zorin principles), these principles were a road map to the future. They led to the first serious arms control agreement, the test ban treaty of 1963. One has to conclude that having witnessed the very dawn of the atomic era, John McCloy was determined to make certain that these awesome weapons would never be used again. Writing of this project for Foreign Affairs, he concluded:

One can reasonably assume that both the leaders and the peoples of the Soviet Union ...