Richard B. Russell: Southern Nationalism and American Foreign Policy

Richard B. Russell: Southern Nationalism and American Foreign Policy. By Jeff Woods. Biographies in American Foreign Policy. (Lanham, Md., and other cities: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc., c. 2007. Pp. [xxii], 173. $66.00, ISBN 978-0-7425-4497-0.)

Richard B. Russell seems awkwardly out of place in a series devoted to significant figures in American foreign policy. The longtime senator from Georgia was a towering congressional figure and, most notably, a leader who thwarted civil rights progress for decades.

As chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, however, Russell exerted enormous influence on U.S. defense policy during the cold war's early years. He presided over the 1951 hearings into President Harry S Truman's dismissal of General Douglas MacArthur as commander of United Nations forces in Korea. At a time when some Republicans were breathing fiery talk about impeachment and...