William Pfaff | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | December 29, 1928 |
| Died | April 30, 2015(2015-04-30) (aged 86) Paris, France |
| Alma mater | University of Notre Dame |
| Occupation(s) | Writer, political commentator |
| Website | www |
William Pfaff (December 29, 1928 – April 30, 2015) was an Americanauthor,op-edcolumnist for theInternational Herald Tribune and frequent contributor toThe New York Review of Books.
Pfaff was born inCouncil Bluffs, Iowa, and was of German, English, and Irish origin. He grew up in Iowa andGeorgia and graduated from theUniversity of Notre Dame in 1949, having majored in literary and political studies.[1]
Thanks to a letter of recommendation fromFrank O'Malley, an English professor at Notre Dame, Pfaff obtained a job working for the lay-CatholicCommonweal magazine in 1949.
Pfaff served in infantry and Special Forces units of theUnited States Army during and after theKorean War. TheKorean Armistice Agreement was signed while Pfaff was on a cruise ship and so he never saw action. He was honorably discharged with the rank of staff sergeant.
He returned toCommonweal as an assistant editor and in 1955 for extensive travel in Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. After a brief passage atABC News in New York (1955–1957), he was invited to joinFree Europe Committee. In 1961, he was hired byHerman Kahn at theHudson Institute and became one of its first members.
I don't see that devastating a small country's economy, then mounting a 25,000-man invasion, which kills over 300 people and wounds hundreds more, to seize a disreputable but unimportant military adventurer over whom U.S. courts have disputed jurisdiction, should be considered a success.
— Pfaff on theUS invasion of Panama.[2]
His first book,The New Politics: America and the End of the Postwar World (with Edmund Stillman) was published in 1961. Seven others followed.
Robert Heilbroner wrote in 1964:
"I suspect that in the future it will no longer be possible to qualify as a wholly serious thinker if one has not, to whatever small degree, made one's peace or accommodation with [his] harsh message."
During the 1960s, Pfaff co-wrote three books with Ed Stillman:The New Politics: America and the End of the Postwar World (1961),The Politics of Hysteria: The Sources of Twentieth-Century Conflict (1964), andPower and Impotence: The Failure of America's Foreign Policy (1966). In 1971, Pfaff added a fourth book, this time without Stillman's co-authorship, entitledCondemned to Freedom.
In his role at the Hudson Institute, Pfaff provided the counterpoint to Kahn's more bellicose views at official events and debates. Fed up with the debate over theVietnam War, Pfaff moved toParis in 1971 to become Deputy Director of the Hudson Institute Europe, founded by Stillman but eventually becoming independent of Kahn's Hudson Institute.
In 1978, he resigned from the Hudson Institute Europe to continue his career as a freelance journalist and writer. His most prestigious contract was withWilliam Shawn'sThe New Yorker. Between 1971 and 1992, he published more than 70 "Reflections" ("a political-literary form of your own invention," his editor, Shawn, wrote to him), on international politics and society in the magazine. Pfaff's other long-standing contract was for a twice-weekly opinion column for theInternational Herald Tribune; it continued in one form or another until his death.
In 1989, Pfaff brought together a modified collection of several of hisNew Yorker pieces, "The Barbarian Sentiments." Although it was mostly written and edited in 1988, the political events of 1989 culminating in the fall of theBerlin Wall seemed to vindicate Pfaff's views on foreign policy. He was honored by being a finalist for the 1989 National Book Award, and in the years that followed, he became a much sought-after lecturer throughout the world.
In 1993, he publishedThe Wrath of Nations: Civilization and the Furies of Nationalism, a study of nationalism.
Before theIraq War in 2003, Pfaff wrote several columns questioning the war. Many of the columns were collected in the 2004 collection,Fear, Anger and Failure: A Chronicle of the Bush Administration's War Against Terror, from the Attacks of September 11, 2001 to Defeat in Baghdad, published by Algora. About the same time, Pfaff published a book about the appeal of revolutionary violence in the 20th century,The Bullet's Song.
In 2010, Pfaff published his last book,The Irony ofManifest Destiny.
His magazine articles have appeared in The New York Review of Books, Harper's, Foreign Affairs, World Policy Journal, The National Interest, and other publications in the United States, and elsewhere in Commentaire (Paris), Neue Zürcher Zeitung and DU magazine (both Zurich), Politica Exterior (Madrid), Europäische Rundschau (Vienna), Blätter für deutsche und internationale Politik (Berlin), and other journals.
The American historianArthur M. Schlesinger Jr. has called him "Walter Lippmann's authentic heir." He died of a heart attack after a fall in 2015.[1] He is buried in Paris, inPère Lachaise cemetery (Division 87th, Box 16427)
