The Foreign Policy of the Truman Administration: A Post-Cold War Appraisal

Author(s): Wilson D. Miscamble

Source: Presidential Studies Quarterly , Summer, 1994, Vol. 24, No. 3, Conduct of
Foreign Policy (Summer, 1994), pp. 479-494
Published by: Wiley on behalf of the Center for the Study of the Presidency and
Congress

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/27551279

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The Foreign Policy of the Truman Administration:
A Post-Cold War Appraisal

WILSON D. MISCAMBLE
Associate Professor of History
University of Notre Dame

The history of postwar American foreign policy can be understood only

in the context of the global competition between the western powers and the Soviet
bloc which came to be called the Cold War. This political and ideological contest
was never declared in any formal sense but developed in the years immediately after
World War II as erstwhile allies in the titanic battle against Hitler's Germany emerged
as fierce antagonists. The struggle essentially originated in a profound dispute over
the fate of Europe and the Near East but eventually took on global dimensions and
dominated international politics for over four decades. Only after the events of 1989
1991 has it become possible to speak of the end of the Cold War. No formal surrender
occurred, of course, but the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the demolition of
its ideology, the collapse of the communist regimes of Eastern Europe, the removal
of the dividing line across Europe and the consequent German reunification, all
eloquently testified to the termination of the long and costly conflict between the
Soviet Union and the Western powers led by the United States.
The post-Cold War international system vibrates with both promise and uncer
tainty. The need to concentrate on the complex problems of the present and to
chart a responsible course for the future, however, should not lead to a neglect of
the past. Rather, a clear understanding of the nature and the early course of the
Cold War must serve as a crucial departure point for sustained reflection on contempo
rary issues. This essay aims to contribute to such understanding. It traces American
participation in the Cold War from the end of World War II through the end of
the Truman administration. During this period the Cold War took shape and the
United States formulated the strategy, known as containment, which in various
forms and with different calibrations guided American foreign policy for the next
four decades.1
The question of the origins of the Cold War has been the subject of fierce
debate among American historians for almost three decades.2 In the nineteen-sixties
younger historians vigorously challenged the then generally accepted historical inter
pretation, which laid the blame for the Cold War firmly on the Soviets.3 Writing
at the time of American involvement in the Vietnam War and invariably deeply
opposed to this war, the revisionist or New Left challengers alleged that the United
States bore the major share of responsibility for the Cold War.4 They largely blamed

479

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480 I PRESIDENTIAL STUDIES QUARTERLY

the inherently expansionist and capitalist American economy as the root of the
problem and portrayed the Soviet Union benignly. Subsequent historical work rightly
criticized the revisionists for their present-minded concerns and their overly narrow
focus on economic factors. It emphasized the complexities of the international situa
tion, the dilemmas confronting American policy makers and the role of other nations.5
The post-revisionist literature, however, neither resolved questions regarding the
coherence of Truman's foreign policy and whether it was primarily offensive or
defensive in character nor ended debate over the wisdom and prudence of the American
response to the Soviet Union. Such issues are addressed here.
As World War II came to an end attempts at cooperation rather than any
strategy of containment characterized American policy towards the Soviet Union.
After the Nazi attack on the USSR in June 1941 Franklin D. Roosevelt moved
quickly to extend unrestricted aid to the Soviets. Clearly, he aimed to keep the
desperate Soviet armies in the war against Germany. In doing so he largely ignored
such events as the Nazi-Soviet Pack, the Soviet attack on Poland, the war against
Finland and the seizure of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia which had made the Soviets
blatant accomplices of Nazi aggression from 1939 to 1941. Roosevelt put aside
political issues which divided the two countries in order to concentrate on Germany's
military defeat. He aimed to establish a personal relationship with Stalin and naively
hoped that a benign approach would encourage the Soviet leader to moderate his
postwar objectives.6 Indeed at the Teheran Conference (November, 1943) the Ameri
cans mainly targeted British colonialism and indicated little apparent concern at the
potential expansion of Stalin's empire. Assuredly, FDR felt restrained in his policy
toward the Soviet Union not only by his failure to deliver on early promises of a
second front but also by his desire to obtain future Soviet participation in both the
War against Japan and a new, international, collective-security organization.7
Roosevelt pursued his approach of cooperation with and restraint towards the
Soviet Union throughout 1944 and into 1945 despite warnings from some American
officials, such as George F. Kennan, that Stalin intended to establish his nation as
the dominant power throughout Eastern and Central Europe.8 The Soviet intention
to dominate postwar Poland?as evidenced by the creation in 1944 of the subservient
Lublin alternative to the Polish government-in-exile in London, by the Soviet acquies
cence in the Nazi suppression of the Warsaw uprising, and by the blatant refusal
to allow British and American planes the use of airbases in the Ukraine in order to
supply the Polish fighters during the uprising?failed to divert Roosevelt from his
accommodating approach.9 At the Yalta Conference (February, 1945) he labored to
maintain cooperation with Stalin, hoping thereby to ensure the Soviet's intervention
in the Pacific War, their participation in the United Nations and perhaps a modifica
tion of their behavior in Eastern Europe.
In the interests of postwar cooperation the United States was prepared to
concede the Soviet Union substantial influence in Eastern Europe. In Roosevelt's
somewhat vague formulation this meant acceptance of an 'open' sphere of influence
in which the countries of the region would retain some internal political and economic
independence while paying due diplomatic obeisance to the USSR as regional power.10

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 FOREIGN POLICY OF TRUMAN | 481

By Roosevelt's death on April 12,1945, Soviet actions, especially in Poland, suggested

a clear plan to move beyond such an open sphere in order to control the political
lives of the nations occupied by the Red Army.11 Some indications suggest that
Roosevelt increasingly appreciated this in the weeks before his death and planned
to stiffen his approach toward Stalin.12 Ever the master of contradiction and deception,
FDR had pursued his conciliatory approach while reserving such weapons in his
diplomatic arsenal as information regarding the Manhattan Project which developed
the atomic bomb. How he might have adjusted his tactics and strategy, however,
remains unclear. What is not open to question is that he failed to prepare his successor
for the immensely difficult legacy he bequeathed him.
Only slowly and in a disorganized manner did the United States under Truman
object to Soviet hegemony in Eastern Europe and to the Soviet threat beyond this
region.13 Truman, who was not well-informed about Roosevelt's conception for
the postwar world order, initially sought to abide rather mechanistically by the agreements
reached by his revered predecessor. Despite a brusque exchange with Soviet foreign
minister Molotov, aimed at securing Soviet cooperation at the San Francisco Confer
ence to form the United Nations, Truman's early months in office continued the
cooperative Rooseveltian approach.14 Against the advice of the British Prime Minister
Winston Churchill, Truman accepted the withdrawal of Anglo-American forces
from the substantial areas they controlled at the War's end in the occupation zone
in Germany previously assigned to the Soviet Union. He recognized the Soviet
sponsored Polish government in June of 1945 after Harry Hopkins, FDR's most
trusted aide, travelled to Moscow and obtained cosmetic concessions broadening the
former Lublin regime now ensconced in Warsaw. The defeat of Japan through the
use of the atomic bomb and the subsequent American atomic monopoly meant little
in terms of the American approach to the Soviet Union.15 Neither at the Big Three
meeting at Potsdam (July-August, 1945) nor at subsequent meetings of the Council
of Foreign Ministers did the United States effectively stiffen its policy towards the
USSR. In fact, in December of 1945 James F. Byrnes, Truman's Secretary of State,
extended recognition to communist-dominated coalition governments in Bulgaria
and Romania.16 But, by the year's end, support for the cooperative approach was
decaying.
The British led the way in raising the alarm about the dangers of Soviet expansion
and the futility of attempts at cooperation. Churchill was always enough of a realist
to understand that Britain needed to oppose the domination of the continent by
one power and, in 1945, he knew the danger emanated from the Soviet Union.
Similarly, Clement Attlee's Labour Government, which replaced Churchill's in July
1945 and in which Ernest Bevin served as Foreign Secretary, held few illusions about
the Soviet Union. Bevin knew instinctively that the Soviet Union under Stalin
constituted an inveterate enemy to social democratic parties of Europe such as his
own. The British realized the danger of Soviet expansion not only in Eastern Europe
but also along the northern tier of the Middle East, especially in Iran and Turkey,
and they had the courage to oppose it thus leading to the so-called Anglo-Soviet
Cold War of 1945-1946.17 But the Second World War left England desperately

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482 j PRESIDENTIAL STUDIES QUARTERLY

weakened and incapable of responding effectively to the Soviet challenge. With the
power of Germany, Italy and Japan destroyed and with the capacity of other allies
like France and China weakened even beyond that of Britain, only the United States
possessed the political, economic and military strength to block Soviet expansion
into the power vacuums created by the War. In 1946 the Truman administration
took its first tentative steps in that direction.
A number of factors prodded Truman to adopt what came to be described as
a "get tough" approach. The rising dissatisfaction in the American domestic political
sphere with Byrnes' policy of accommodation, when joined to evidence of Soviet
meddling in Iran, made Truman more susceptible to the private and public efforts
of Winston Churchill.18 On a private visit to the United States in February 1946,
the former British Prime Minister lobbied the American president to challenge the
Soviets in Eastern Europe. In his "Iron Curtain" speech at Westminster College in
Fulton, Missouri, he pointed bluntly to the reality of Soviet expansionism and called
for Western action in response. From Moscow, the American minister-counselor
George Kennan dispatched his famous Long Telegram, which circulated widely
among senior American officials and helped construct intellectual support for a
developing disposition of firmness towards the USSR.19 Kennan argued that Stalin
needed an external enemy to justify his tyranny at home. He deemed coexistence
with the Soviets a charade and predicted that the Soviets would seek to extend this
power unless they met firm resistance. Although "impervious to the logic of reason,"
Kennan explained, Soviet power was "highly sensitive to the logic of force."20
The combination of Kennan's and Churchill's efforts eroded the legitimacy of
the policy of cooperation with the Soviet Union and transformed the perception of
the Soviets in the American official mind from difficult ally to potential foe.21 But
it is striking to gauge how little a positive impact on policy this new perception
of the Soviets actually exercised.22 A disposition to challenge and to confront the
Soviets on particular incidents, such as over the Soviet occupation of northern Iran
in March of 1946, hardly constituted a coherent policy which could be explained
to the American people. The floundering in American policy formulation continued
throughout 1946. A mood of uncertainty and anxiety gripped policymakers but few
substantive policies developed. Had the Soviets been content with their political
gains to that point, American policy might have continued in a state of drift and
remained largely detached from events in Europe. But Stalin overreached and moved
beyond cementing his control of Eastern Europe to threaten both the Mediterranean
and in Western Europe.23 The full extent of his ambitions is difficult to determine
without access to the Soviet records.24 But the American perception that Stalin hoped
to take advantage of the dislocation and desperation of Western Europe appears
well grounded. There seems little substance to the argument that if only Truman
Administration policymakers had been more wise and insightful in 1945-46, by
conceding Stalin's supposedly legitimate security needs in Eastern Europe, then the
Cold War might have been avoided.25 It was concern for Western Europe which
prompted a response of historic significance and, in time, a long-term commitment
to 'contain' the Soviet Union.

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 FOREIGN POLICY OF TRUMAN | 483

In March 1947, in reaction to a perceived Soviet threat to Greece and Turkey

and provoked by the British decision to withdraw their special support for Greece,
the United States framed a program of limited military and economic assistance
($400 million) to assist the Greeks and the Turks.26 In order to pry funds from a
parsimonious Congress, Truman cast his appeal in grandly universalist terms por
traying the issue as a conflict between totalitarian repression and democratic freedom.
Thus was born the Truman Doctrine with its promise "to support free peoples who
are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or outside pressures."27
Despite this exalted rhetoric the Truman administration, in reality, still had no
overall plan to respond to the Soviet Union. The aid to Greece and Turkey constituted
but a first and restrained element of such a response.28 Much else was yet to be
formulated. This point has not always been well understood by some historians
who have described the Truman Doctrine as virtually a prescriptive tract for global
containment. Neither the Truman Doctrine nor George Kennan's celebrated article
"The Sources of Soviet Conduct" which appeared in the July, 1947 issue of Foreign
Affairs and which called for "long-term, patient but firm and vigilant containment
of Russian expansive tendencies" represented a prescription for policy.29 Neither
outlined in any detail what the United States should do nor charted any explicit
course of action. Only in a piecemeal and staggered manner did the Truman adminis
tration decide upon the major elements of the American response to the Soviet
Union.30 Indeed, the containment doctrine, it must be said, did not dictate the
policies determined from 1947 to 1950 but rather the policies gave form and meaning
to the doctrine.
Under the leadership of George C. Marshall, who replaced Byrnes early in
1947, the Department of State seized the initiative and engaged in a remarkably
creative period of foreign policy development.31 "Unlike Roosevelt," as Alonzo
Hamby has noted, Truman never suffered from "the illusion that he could function
without the distraction of a State Department."32 During the Truman administration
Foggy Bottom rather than the White House proved the principal source of policy.33
The policymakers at State feared that Western Europe's deep economic problems,
its political weakness and its psychological exhaustion not only would redound to
the benefit of local communists?especially in France and Italy?but also leave it
vulnerable to exploitation and intimidation by the Soviet Union. Such fears, when
joined to genuine humanitarian concerns for the well-being of the European populace,
drove the United States to generate a program for European economic recovery.
This program, known as the Marshall Plan, eventually provided $13 billion in
economic assistance to aid in the reconstruction and rejuvenation of Western Europe
and prodded the Europeans towards greater economic cooperation and integration.
It concretely revealed the American commitment to this area which now was deemed
vital to American interests and national security. It was the decisive step in establishing
a political balance in postwar Europe.34
The Marshall Plan and the practice of European economic and political integra
tion which it fostered stymied the Soviet strategic objective of a weak and fragmented
Europe. It also provoked a more intense response from Stalin, who presumably

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484 I PRESIDENTIAL STUDIES QUARTERLY

considered a politically and economically healthy Western Europe a threat to his

security.35 In September of 1947 the Soviets and eight other European communist
parties, including the French and the Italian, established the Cominform ?an organi
zation devised by Moscow to control tightly local communist parties ?and embarked
on a campaign of political warfare.36 Furthermore, Stalin now discarded any pretense
of political tolerance in Eastern Europe. Utilizing the savage techniques of arrests,
persecution, purges and liquidations, he established one-party, totalitarian regimes
throughout the region where the Red Army held sway.37 The toppling of the Czech
president Eduard Benes by the communist Klement Gottwald in February 1948
gave a stunning confirmation of Stalin's intentions and deepened the fears of West
Europeans who viewed it as a precedent that might be followed in cases like Italy.
The Prague coup and the communization of all of Eastern Europe, however,
drew forth a courageous response from the West Europeans. With Bevin taking
the initiative, the British signed a multilateral defense pact with the French and the
Benelux countries?the Treaty of Brussels?in March 1948.38 This created the
Western Union and indicated a West European refusal to succumb to Soviet intimida
tion. Bevin recognized from the outset, however, that he would need to draw the
United States into a defensive alliance for it to be viable and he worked towards
this end throughout 1948. His endeavors would reach fruition in 1949.
During 1948 the contest between the Soviet Union and the Western powers
in Europe culminated in a struggle over Germany. In 1945 the victorious Allied
powers had agreed to administer their vanquished foe as one economic and political
entity through a single governing body, the Allied Control Council, sitting in Berlin.
No permanent division of the country was planned. But the Allied Control Council
proved ineffective in governing Germany and each of the four occupying powers ?
Britain, the Soviet Union, the United States and France?applied its own ideas in
its own zone.39 The supposedly temporary administrative division of Germany began
to harden into a permanent political separation in the summer of 1946 when the
Americans and the British merged their zones into an economic union, known
as Bizonia. The Russians promptly denounced the arrangement as a harbinger of
permanent division, but this economic merger did not signify an American abandon
ment of the goal of German unification. However the failure of four-power negotia
tions in 1947 to reach a settlement of the German question did induce a redirection
in Western policy. Impelled by a desire to reduce their own occupation costs and
to develop the western portion of Germany as a contributor to Western European
economic recovery, the United States and Britain persuaded the French to join them
in agreements, known as the London Program, which proposed the creation of a
West German government and state.40
The Soviet Union vehemently opposed the London Program. To prevent its
implementation, especially its initial step providing for the introduction of a separate
currency for West Germany, and in order to force the Western powers back to the
negotiating table to reach an all-German settlement satisfactory to themselves, the
Soviets instituted a blockade of the Western sectors of Berlin which lay wholly
within their zone of occupation. As is well known, the Americans and the British

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 FOREIGN POLICY OF TRUMAN | 485

responded imaginatively to this total restriction on surface traffic into Berlin with
a dramatic airlift of supplies to the besieged city which they maintained until the
Soviets lifted the blockade in May of 1949. Stalin's risky gamble, designed to inflict
a political defeat on the western powers and to disrupt the plans for west European
economic cooperation, had failed. Ironically, it instead helped cement the division
of Europe and drew forth an even stronger American commitment to the West
Europeans.
The pressure of events like the Prague coup and the Berlin Blockade, when
joined to the requests of the British, prompted the Truman administration to consider
participation in a mutual defense treaty with Western Europe. Negotiations in 1948
devised the basic framework of a treaty but the American government marked time
while awaiting the result of the 1948 presidential election and the expected change to
a Republican administration. When Truman surprisingly retained office he appointed
Dean G. Acheson as Secretary of State and proceeded ahead with negotiations to
conclude a North Atlantic security pact. The North Atlantic Treaty was signed in
Washington, D.C, on April 4,1949 by the United States, Canada and ten European
countries.41 Article 5 of the treaty lay at its heart and provided that "an armed attack
against one or more [of the signatories] shall be considered an armed attack against
them all." The U.S. Senate ratified the treaty with strong bipartisan support and
it proved a cornerstone of postwar American foreign policy. Ultimately, fears of
Soviet exploitation of Western Europe's weakness drove the United States under
Harry Truman to reverse its long practice of refusing to participate in peacetime
alliances outside the western hemisphere. At its outset the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization (NATO), formed to give substance to the treaty guarantees, possessed
little in the way of military force. It was in reality little more than a political
commitment of support until 1950 when some muscle was added to the skeletal
NATO structure. But it served as a caution and a deterrent to the Soviets and its
most crucial immediate benefit lay in the reassurance it provided the West Europeans.
Ultimately the principal benefit of NATO lay in its facilitation of political stability and
economic development. Behind American protection Western Europe subsequently
enjoyed a remarkable period of both.
The stance of the British and French on the German question in 1949 further
revealed their deep concern to envelop the United States in guaranteeing their security.
On the German issue the Americans in 1949 pursued what has been rightly described
as a "two-track" policy.42 On another they gave serious consideration to a proposal
for an all-German settlement which might involve the withdrawal of both American
and Soviet troops from the heart of Europe. The latter proposal drafted by George
Kennan and labeled Program A is in itself an indication of the fluidity in American
policymaking as late as 1949.43 But Program A was never pursued in serious negotia
tions with the Soviet Union because the British and the French effectively vetoed
it. The British were afraid to countenance any proposal which might reduce the
American political and military presence in Europe. The French agreed, both for
this reason and also because of their own peculiar security rationale which saw the
integration of the western part of Germany into Western Europe as a brake on a

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 486 I PRESIDENTIAL STUDIES QUARTERLY

resurgent Germany and a safeguard against renewed German aggression. In the end
the concerns of the Europeans swayed Acheson to proceed with the establishment
of West Germany. His involvement in the Paris Council of Foreign Ministers meeting
in May, 1949, confirmed him in this view and convinced him, correctly, that the
Soviet Union "sought only to recover the power to block progress in West Ger
many."44 In September 1949 the military occupation of Germany ended. Konrad
Adenauer's government took office and the Federal Republic began a period of
gradual advance toward full sovereignty under the mild reign of the civilian High
Commission.45
American policy on Germany did not result from any desire to utilize the
western zones in a strategy of containing the Soviet Union. As late as mid-1949
West Germany's part in the strategy of containing the Soviet Union was not defined
clearly?yet another indication of the piecemeal manner in which containment came
about. The major concern for Western policy makers rested with the passive security
risk of all of Germany?especially the industries of the Ruhr?falling under Soviet
influence or domination.46 American decisions at this point were not influenced by
notions of developing West Germany as an active military resource to contain the
Soviet Union. That would come later.
The creation of the Western military alliance through the North Atlantic Treaty
and the formation of the West Germany state meant the congealment of the division
of Europe. It also finally foreclosed any hope of extracting the Soviets from Eastern
Europe. In this region Stalin had pursued his plans to establish total domination of
the satellite states of the Soviet empire. He refused to tolerate the independence of
the communist leader Josip Broz Tito in Yugoslavia, despite Tito's having proved
himself an eager Stalinist disciple in creating a one-party police state. In June 1948
the Cominform expelled the Yugoslav Communist Party. Presumably Stalin expected
Tito's government to collapse but it did not, thereby presenting an unexpected
challenge to policymakers in the West.47 Indicative of its appreciation that the real
enemy in the short term was Soviet power and expansion rather than communism
perse, the United States adopted a cautious approach encouraging Yugoslav indepen
dence and holding for the prospect of improved relations.48 Some American poli
cymakers hoped that Tito might serve as a model for the emergence of other nationalist
Communist leaderships in the East European countries and saw such regimes as a
means to limit Soviet power. This very prospect apparently troubled Stalin sufficiently
that purges of supposed "nationalist Communist" leaders like Gomulka in Poland,
Rajk in Hungary and Clementis in Czechoslovakia were carried out in 1948-1950
revealing yet again the ferocious intention of the Soviets to maintain their grip on
their satellites. This domination left the Americans after 1949 to pursue only such
tactics as trade and credit restrictions, propaganda, support for emigre organizations
and largely ill-conceived covert operations. These did little to force the retraction
of Soviet power. In the end only the political earthquake in Eastern Europe during the
winter of 1989-1990, which was fostered by the indefatigable Solidarity movement in
Poland and ultimately permitted by Mikhail S. Gorbachev, ended the Soviet domina
tion of the region.

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 FOREIGN POLICY OF TRUMAN | 487

The respective relationships of the Soviet Union to Eastern Europe and of the
United States to Western Europe in the period from the end of World War II to
1950 contrast sharply and testify eloquently to the nature of the emerging Cold
War. The Soviets dominated the East Europeans and denied them political freedom
and personal liberties. Stalin's definition of security, with all that lay behind it ranging
from Russia's bitter history of invasions to communist ideology and his own personal
paranoia, led him to dominate the East European nations against the will of their
populations and to threaten expansion beyond their region. And, of course, here
lay the principal root and continuing cause of the Cold War. Suggestions that Soviet
actions in Eastern Europe were simply a defensive response to the 1947-48 American
initiatives founder on this reality.49
The United States assumed its position of leadership in the West much more
reluctantly and haphazardly than the Soviets did in the East. Indeed the West Euro
peans needed to persuade the Americans to commit themselves and they did so only
after appreciating that vital American interests were endangered by the Soviet threat
to Western Europe. Furthermore, through such measures as the North Atlantic
Treaty and German policy, the West Europeans helped shape the nature and structures
of the American involvement and of the Western response to the Soviet Union.
One scholar fittingly has described the American political, economic and security
commitment to Europe as an "empire by invitation."50 This commitment met with
the broad support of the democratic forces of Western Europe, the more so because
the United States encouraged policies such as economic integration and political
cooperation which helped rebuild both its wartime allies and foes and planted the
seeds for their emergence as full alliance partners. Regardless of subsequent policy
failures and missed opportunities, a certain grandeur characterizes this extraordinary
American commitment to Western Europe framed during Truman's presidency. It
endured for forty years and provided the umbrella under which the Europeans enjoyed
unprecedented prosperity and experienced real security not only from the Soviet
Union but from the fratricide which colors so much of their past.
Europe proved to be the primary initial battlefield in the Cold War but the
northeast Asian region also attracted considerable attention from American policy
makers during the late 1940s. Upon the defeat of the Japanese a long simmering
conflict broke out in China between the Nationalist government of Chiang Kai-shek
and the Communists led by Mao Tse-tung. The Truman administration extended
some postwar assistance to Chiang's government and tried to avert a full-scale civil
war in 1946. When these efforts failed and China became increasingly enveloped
in war, the United States pursued a cautious approach. The U.S. extended further
limited assistance in 1948 but refused to become deeply involved in China. It declined
to expend the substantial military and economic resources which would have been
necessary to save the incompetent and corrupt Nationalist regime.51 The Truman
administration based its decision not only on a clear recognition of the danger and
the enormity of such a rescue operation but also on a geopolitical assessment that
a China controlled by Mao could not threaten the security of the United States.
Japan, not China, was the country in the Far East deemed vital to American security

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488 j PRESIDENTIAL STUDIES QUARTERLY

because of its military-industrial potential. The U.S. stood by in 1949 as Nationalist

forces on the mainland were defeated, although it refused to grant formal recognition
to the People's Republic of China (PRC) proclaimed by Mao on October 1, 1949,
preferring instead to wait for "the dust to settle" as Acheson put it.52
The strategic assessment according Japan a higher priority to American interests
than China guided policy towards the defeated foe in the Pacific War after 1947.
Prior to this point the Allied occupation regime under the leadership of General
Douglas MacArthur implemented a program of demilitarization and democratiza
tion.53 While these twin goals were pursued economic conditions in Japan deterio
rated. The new international circumstances brought on by Soviet antagonism and
expansion in Europe prompted a reconsideration. American policymakers began to
argue the need for Japan to be politically and economically stable so that at the
occupation's end it might be capable of preventing possible Communist penetration
and disruption. The military-industrial potential of Japan would be denied the powers
in the Kremlin. As in western Europe the spector of internal collapse and chaos
which might be exploited by the Japanese Communists and the Soviet Union most
perturbed the American officials. In 1947-48 Washington charted a "reverse-course"
which altered the thrust of the occupation from reform to recovery and advanced
the political, social, and economic stability of this strategically crucial nation.54 The
changes helped cement in power the economic and political elites which have governed
Japan ever since.
In June of 1950 the northeast Asian region became the focus of international
politics when the North Koreans launched an invasion of South Korea.55 It is difficult
to accept that North Korea's Kim Il-Sung would have acted without Stalin's approval.
Be that as it may, the Truman administration interpreted the aggression in Korea
as part of a broader effort to extend communist influence and it invested the conflict
with global implications. Fears were even expressed that the Korean conflict might
have been initiated to divert American attention from Europe and to provide a cover
for aggressive Soviet actions there. The American government sensibly determined
that a communist victory in Korea would severely damage U.S. prestige and would
serve only to encourage further aggression. As the South Korean Army collapsed
and retreated down the peninsula, President Truman who acted decisively in this
crisis situation, authorized the use of American air and ground forces under the
auspices of the United Nations. Three years passed before this bloody war ended
in stalemate. During those three years the American commitment to contain the
Soviet Union took on a decidedly more military cast and U.S.-Soviet relations
plunged to a new low.56
In Asia the Korean War dramatically affected American foreign policy. The
direct confrontation of Chinese and American troops on the Korean battlefield after
December, 1950, pushed Sino-American relations into a prolonged period of bitter
hostility. Not only did the Korean War destroy any possibility of normal relations
but it also provoked policy reversals on the part of the United States regarding the
defense of Formosa and the extension of military aid to Chiang Kai-shek, who was
not established there. It ended the American effort over the previous three years to

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 FOREIGN POLICY OF TRUMAN | 489

disengage from the Nationalist Chinese and, at least, to hold open the possibility
of relations with the Chinese Communists.
While the Korean War drove the United States and China even farther apart,
it brought the U.S. and Japan much closer together. Japan served as the crucial
staging base for the American war effort in Korea which highlighted its strategic
importance. The Korean conflict seemingly confirmed the necessity for American
forces to remain in Japan to maintain security in northeast Asia after the occupation
ended. John Foster Dulles encapsulated this perception in the arrangements he negoti
ated which terminated the occupation. On September 8, 1951, the United States
and its allies in the Pacific War?except the Soviet Union and China?signed a peace
treaty with Japan.57 The United States and Japan then signed a separate Security
Treaty giving the U.S. the right to station its land, sea, and air forces in and about
Japan. Rather than risk the uncertainty of seeing Japan develop as an independent
power the United States chose a strategy of alliance with a militarily dependent
Japan. Additionally, the Korean War meant a deepening of American commitments
elsewhere in Asia and locked the U.S. in a more military oriented approach. The
American decisions to recognize the Bao Dai government in Vietnam and to extend
substantial military and economic assistance there, which moved the U.S. down the
dangerous slope to its tragic and costly involvement in Indochina, testify to this.58
The impact of the Korean War resounded far beyond Asia. It largely justified
the Truman administration's implementation of the recommendations of National
Security Council document 68 (NSC 68), which called for a vastly enhanced concep
tion of American national security and a major military build-up. NSC-68 originated
in the discussions arising in response to the Soviet explosion of an atomic bomb in
August-September of 1949. This shattered the implicit sense of security which their
atomic monopoly had engendered among American policymakers.59 In the years up
to 1949 the United States had not met the Soviet challenge by initiating a major
rearmament effort to obtain a conventional force capability to counter possible Soviet
aggression in Europe or elsewhere. Far from implementing such a measure, Truman
successfully sought to sharply limit defense spending for reasons of political popularity
and fiscal responsibility. The U.S. depended on its atomic monopoly as a deterrent
against Soviet utilization of their larger conventional forces. Deep disquiet greeted
the news that the Soviets now possessed the atomic bomb.
In response to the Soviet atomic capability President Truman made two key
decisions. Firstly, he authorized development of a thermonuclear weapon ?the hy
drogen bomb. Motivated by both fear and caution, Truman's decision revealed the
dynamics which would fuel the nuclear arms race through to the 1980s.60 The
Americans feared, correctly it should be added, that the Soviets were engaged already
upon developing a H-Bomb and they could not countenance Moscow's grabbing
the lead in the nuclear race.61 Along with his decision to develop the H-Bomb,
Truman requested a full reassessment of American foreign and military policy. A
small group of officials led by Paul Nitze thereupon prepared NSC-68, which has been
described as "the first comprehensive statement of national strategy" and submitted it
in April 1950.62

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490 I PRESIDENTIAL STUDIES QUARTERLY

In NSC-68 Nitze portrayed the Soviet Union as inherently militant and expan
sionist "because it possesses and is possessed by a worldwide revolutionary movement,
because it is the inheritor of Russian imperialism and because it is a totalitarian
dictatorship."63 Nitze raised the alarm about both Soviet capabilities and Soviet
intentions. He argued that the Soviets might be tempted to use their superior military
forces in a situation of American weakness.64 In his portrayal, the United States
needed a major conventional force build-up as well as the development of its nuclear
arsenal and NSC-68 provided budgetary and military guidelines for this rearmament.
The drafters of NSC-68 expected opposition to their recommendations from propo
nents of fiscal restraint both within the Truman administration and in the Congress.
But the Korean War cut the ground from under potential opponents and seemingly
confirmed the analysis of NSC-68.
The outlook enshrined in NSC-68 came to dominate the thinking of poli
cymakers in all sections of the Truman administration. The basic policy of the United
States would be to create what Acheson termed "situations of strength." Defense
spending received a massive boost. In Europe the Korean War and the security scare
which it sparked transformed NATO into a real military alliance with an integrated
military structure under American command and the stationing of U.S. troops in
Europe. It also prompted the decision to rearm West Germany and set that nation
on a path which ended with its inclusion in NATO in 1955.
NSC-68 had described the Soviet assault on free institutions as worldwide in
nature and argued that in the "present polarization of power a defeat of free institu
tions anywhere is a defeat everywhere." This extraordinary security definition, which
failed to make proper distinctions between vital and peripheral Americans interests,
transformed international politics into a virtual zero-sum game. The security of the
United States meshed with that of all other parts of the world. The implications
of this for U.S. foreign policy were enormous. With the lines frozen in Europe the
conflict soon extended into a global contest. American foreign policymakers would
view developments in the Middle East, Asia, Africa and even Latin America through
the sometimes distorting lens of the Cold War. By 1952 relations between the
United States and the Soviet Union had reached a total impasse. Each nation strove
to build its military strength and distrusted the other deeply. Substantive negotiations
between them proved impossible. Even when new leaders assumed power in each
country the following year there was little improvement in relations. More than
mere personalities underlay the profound and costly conflict to which the United
States remarkably remained committed until it ended in American triumph.
Truman's presidency encompassed an enormously formative period in American
diplomacy. Who would dispute Dean Acheson's finely understated observation that
"the postwar years were a period of creation"?65 The American commitment to
restore and to secure Western Europe and to pursue stability in the Far East laid
impressive foundations for four decades of American foreign policy. Despite an
uncertain start, the Truman Administration eventually grasped the essential world
realities and assumed the responsibilities of international leadership. In circumstances
of uncertainty and crisis, it constructed a foreign policy whose main elements proved
thoroughly apt and lasting.

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 FOREIGN POLICY OF TRUMAN 491

Notes
1. For an excellent overview see John Lewis Gaddis, Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal
of Postwar American National Security Policy (New York, 1982).
2. For detailed surveys of literature on the origins of the Cold War see J. Samuel Walker, "Historians
and Cold War Origins: The New Consensus," in Gerald K. Haines and J. Samuel Walker (eds.)
American Foreign Relations: a HistoriographicalReview (Westport, Ct., 1981), 207-36; and Howard
Jones and Randall B. Woods, "Origins of the Cold War in Europe and the Near East: Recent
Historiography and the National Security Imperative," Diplomatic History, 17, (Spring, 1993),
251-76.
3. The 'accepted' or traditional view of the origins of the Cold War was best represented in the
work of Herbert Feis but the most persuasive statement of the position, which still warrants
careful reading, is Arthur M. Schlesinger's "Origins of the Cold War," Foreign Affairs, 46
(October, 1967), 22-52.
4. See Joseph M. Siracusa, New Left Diplomatic Histories and Historians revd ed. (Claremont, Ca.,
1993). Many of the revisionist histories were based on shoddy research as was revealed in Robert
James Maddox, The New Left and the Origins of the Cold War (Princeton, N.J., 1973).
5. I draw upon this so-called 'post-revisionist' literature in making this appraisal. For a partial survey
of this work see John Lewis Gaddis, "The Emerging Post-Revisionist Synthesis on the Origins
of the Cold War," Diplomatic History, 7 (Summer, 1983), 171-90.
6. Roosevelt's naivete is clearer, of course, in retrospect. See the analysis of Stalin in Alan Bullock's
Hitler and Stalin: Parallel Lives (New York, 1991), which clarifies that the cooperative efforts of
Western powers were doomed to failure.
7. On Roosevelt's foreign policy see Robert Dallek's comprehensive study Franklin D. Roosevelt
and American Foreign Policy (New York, 1979); and the more eclectic work by Warren F. Kimball,
The Juggler: Franklin Roosevelt as Wartime Statesman (Princeton, N.J., 1991).
8. On Kennan's warnings and his campaign to convince policymakers to abandon the chimera of
postwar collaboration with the Soviets see Hugh De Santis, The Diplomacy of Silence: The American
Foreign Service, the Soviet Union and the Cold War, 1933-1947 (Chicago, 1980), 152-55; 166-67.
9. For an interesting insight into Western weakness in dealing with the Soviets over Poland see
Jan Nowak's Courier from Warsaw (Detroit, 1982), esp. 215-34.
10. See Eduard Mark, "American Policy Toward Eastern Europe and the Origins of the Cold War,
1941-1946: An Alternative Interpretation, "Journal of A merican History 68 (September, 1981), 313
36; and Geir Lundestad, The American Non-Policy toward Eastern Europe, 1943-1947: Universalism in
an Area not of Essential Interest to the United States (New York, 1975).
11. On Soviet policies see Vojtech Mastny, Russia's Road to the Cold War: Diplomacy, Warfare, and
the Politics of Communism, 1941-1945 (New York, 1979). On the situation in Poland see Krystyna
Kersten, The Establishment of Communist Rule in Poland, 1943-1948 (Berkeley, 1991).
12. Schlesinger argued this in "Origins of the Cold War." 28.
13. On Truman's policy-making during his first year in office see Robert James Maddox, From War
to Cold War: The Education of Harry S. Truman (Boulder, 1988); Fraser J. Harbutt, The Iron
Curtain: Churchill, America and the Origins of the Cold War (New York, 1986); and Deborah
Welch Larson, Origins of Containment: A Psychological Explanation (Princeton, N.J., 1985), 127
301.
14. Wilson D. Miscamble, "Anthony Eden and the Truman-Molotov Conversations, April, 1945,"
Diplomatic History 2 (Spring, 1978), 167-80.
15. For a survey of recent work on the use of the atomic bomb see J. Samuel Walker, "The Decision
to Use the Bomb: A Historiographical Update," Diplomatic History 14 (Winter, 1990), 97-114.
16. On Byrnes see Robert L. Messer, The End of the Alliance: James F. Byrnes, Roosevelt, Truman,
and the Origins of the Cold War (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1982).
17. On British policy see Terry H. Anderson, The United States, Great Britain and the Cold War,
1944-1947 (Columbia, Mo., 1981). For British concerns about American irresolution at this
time see Peter G. Boyle, "The British Foreign Office View of US-Soviet Relations, 1945-1946,"
Diplomatic History, 3, (Summer, 1979), 307-20.

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492 j PRESIDENTIAL STUDIES QUARTERLY

18. Churchill's private and public efforts are examined at length in Harbutt, The Iron Curtain, pp.
151-208.
19. For a competent discussion of the Long Telegram see David Mayers, George F. Kennan and the
Dilemmas of U.S. Foreign Policy (New York, 1988), 97-102.
20. For the Long Telegram see Kennan to Secretary of State, February 22, 1946, FRUS 1946, VI,
696-709.
21. "From this time on," John Lewis Gaddis contends, "American policymakers regarded the Soviet
Union not as an estranged ally, but as a potential enemy, whose vital interests could not be
recognized without endangering those of the United States." See his The United States and the
Origins of the Cold War, 1941-1947 (New York, 1972), 284.
22. On this point see Deborah Larson's Origins of Containment, 301.
23. Bennett Kovrig demonstrates convincingly that Stalin was well-advanced on cementing Commu
nist rule in Eastern Europe by 1946. See his Of Walls and Bridges: The United States and Eastern
Europe (New York, 1991), 25-30.
24. On Stalin's ambitions see the thoughtful essay by Voytech Mastny, "Europe in US-USSR Rela
tions," Problems of Communism, 37 (1988), 16-29.
25. Melvyn Leffler alludes to this argument in his recent A Preponderance of Power: National Security,
the Truman Administration and the Cold War (Stanford, 1992).
26. The significance of the Truman Doctrine and the reasons for it are discussed in Bruce R. Kuniholm,
The Origins of the Cold War in the Near East: Great Power Conflict and Diplomacy in Iran, Turkey
and Greece (Princeton, 1980); and Howard Jones, "A New Kind of War": America's Global Strategy
and the Truman Doctrine in Greece (New York, 1989).
27. For Truman's message of March 12, 1947 see Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States:
Harry S. Truman, 1947 (Washington, D.C., 1963), 176-80.
28. On this point see Jones, "A New Kind of War," 36.
29. "X" [George F. Kennan], "The Sources of Soviet Conduct," Foreign Affairs 25 (July, 1947),
566-82. For discussion of its significance see Wilson D. Miscamble, C.S.C., George F. Kennan
and the Making of American Foreign Policy, 1947-1950 (Princeton, N.J., 1992), pp. 64-7.
30. Melvyn Leffler suggests in his A Preponderance of Power that the Truman administration had
settled on a strategy of containment by the autumn of 1946 which it then proceeded to implement.
This argument is too reductionist and too dismissive of the uncertainty which existed in the
formulation of American foreign policy.
31. Dean Acheson's memoir, Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department (New York,
1969), well captures this creativity.
32. Alonzo Hamby, "Harry S. Truman: Insecurity and Responsibility," in Fred I. Greenstein, ed.,
Leadership in the Modern Presidency (Cambridge, 1988), 65.
33. The great exception to this statement proved to be the Palestine/Israel issue. On it see Michael
J. Cohen, Palestine and the Great Powers, 1945-1948 (Princeton, N.J., 1982).
34. On the Marshall Plan see Michael J. Hogan, The Marshall Plan: America, Britain and the Reconstruction
of Western Europe, 1947-1952 (New York, 1987); Gregory A. Fossedal, Will Clayton, the Marshall
Plan, and the Triumph of Democracy (Stanford, 1993); Melvyn P. Leffler, "The United States and
the Strategic Dimensions of the Marshall Plan," Diplomatic History 12 (Summer, 1988), 277-306;
and Miscamble, Kennan and the Making of American Foreign Policy, 44-74.
35. On Stalin's response see Voytech Mastny, "Stalin and the Militarization of the Cold War,"
International Security, 9 (Winter, 1984-85), 102-29.
36. On the establishment of the Cominform see William Taubman, Stalin's American policy: From
Entente to Detente to Cold War (New York, 1982), 176-78.
37. On this see Denis Healey, ed., The Curtain Falls: The Story of the Socialists of Eastern Europe
(London, 1951).
38. On Bevin's actions consult Alan Bullock, Ernest Bevin: Foreign Secretary, 1945-1951 (New York,
1983); Richard A. Best, Jr., "Co-operation with Like-Minded Peoples": British Influences on American
Security Policy, 1945-1949 (Westport, Conn., 1986), 150-56; and Martin H. Folly, "Breaking

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 FOREIGN POLICY OF TRUMAN | 493

the Vicious Circle: Britain, the United States and the Genesis of the North Atlantic Treaty,"
Diplomatic History, 12 (Winter, 1988), 59-77.
39. R. Harrison Wagner, "The Decision to Divide Germany and the Origins of the Cold War,"
International Studies Quarterly 24 (June, 1980), 155-90.
40. These developments are discussed in detail in John Gimbel, The American Occupation of Germany:
Politics and the Military, 1945-1949 (Stanford, 1968).
41. Miscamble, Kennan and the Making of American Foreign Policy, 131-40.
42. For discussion of this approach see Thomas Alan Schwartz, America's Germany: John J. McCloy
and the Federal Republic of Germany (Cambridge, Mass., 1991).
43. On the formulation and subsequent fate of Program A see Miscamble, Kennan and the Making
of American Foreign Policy, 149-77.
44. Dean G. Acheson, Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department (New York, 1969),
297.
45. For details see Schwartz, America's Germany.
46. For an excellent analysis of Germany's part?or lack thereof?in the containment strategy see
Wolfgang Krieger, "Was General Clay a Revisionist? Strategic Aspects of the United States
Occupation of Germany," Journal of Contemporary History, 18 (April, 1983), 165-84.
47. Adam B. Ulam, Titoism and the Cominform (Cambridge, Mass., 1952).
48. Lorraine M. Lees, "The American Decision to Assist Tito, 1948-1949," Diplomatic History 2
(Fall, 1978), 407-22.
49. Lef?ler offers this thesis that "Soviet actions were reactive" in A Preponderance of Power, 513
15.
50. See Geir Lundestad, "Empire By Invitation? The United States and Western Europe, 1945-1952,"
SHAFR Newsletter 15 (September, 1984), 1-21. See also Lundestad's The American "Empire": And
Other Studies of U.S. Foreign Policy in a Comparative Perspective (New York, 1990).
51. There are a number of excellent studies of Sino-American relations prior to the Korean War but
see William Whitney Stueck, Jr., The Road to Confrontation: American Policy Toward China and
Korea, 1947-1950 (Chapel Hill, 1981).
52. Nancy Bernopf Tucker, Patterns in the Dust: Chinese-American Relations and the Recognition Contro
versy, 1949-1950 (New York, 1983). See also on American decisionmaking on China, Miscamble's
Kennan and the Making of American Foreign Policy, 212-46.
53 Michael Schaller, The American Occupation of Japan: The Origins of the Cold War in Asia (New
York, 1985); and Howard B. Schonberger, Aftermath of War: Americans and the Remaking of
Japan, 1945-1952 (Kent, Ohio, 1989).
54. On the "reverse course" see Schaller, Schonberger and Miscamble, Kennan and the Making of
American Foreign Policy, 250-70.
55. The literature on the Korean War is large and impressive. For a competent overview see Burton
I. Kaufman, The Korean War: Challenges in Crisis, Credibility and Command (New York, 1986).
56. Robert Jervis, "The Impact of the Korean War on the Cold War," The Journal of Conflict
Resolution 24 (December, 1980), 563-92; and John Lewis Gaddis, "Was the Truman Doctrine
a Real Turning Point?" Foreign Affairs Vol. 52 (January, 1974), 386-402.
57. Frederick S. Dunn, Peacemaking and the Settlement of Japan (Princeton, N.J., 1963).
58. George Herring provides a balanced discussion of this matter in America's Longest War: The
United States and Vietnam, 1950-1975 2nd ed. (New York, 1986), 3-19.
59. See the relevant parts of McGeorge Bundy, Danger and Survival: Choices About the Atomic Bomb
in the First Fifty Years (New York, 1988); and Gregg Herken, The Winning Weapon: The Atomic
Bomb in the Cold War, 1945-1950 (New York, 1980).
60. See Bundy, Danger and Survival.
61. On the Soviet plans see Andrei Sakharov, Memoirs trans, by Richard Lourie (New York, 1990),
98-100; and David Holloway, The Soviet Union and the Arms Race (New Haven, 1983), 23-5.
62. The description of NSC-68 is that of Senator Henry Jackson quoted in Alexander George and
Richard Smoke, Deterrence in American Foreign Policy: Theory and Practice (New York, 1974), 26.

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494 I PRESIDENTIAL STUDIES QUARTERLY

On NSC-68 see Samuel F. Wells, Jr., "Sounding the Toscin: NSC 68 and the Soviet Threat,"
International Security 4 (Fall, 1979, 116-58; and John Lewis Gaddis, "NSC 68 and the Problem
of Ends and Means," International Security 4 (Spring, 1980), 164-70.
63. NSC 68, "A Report to the President Pursuant to the President's Directive of January 31, 1950,"
April 7, 1950, FRUS 1950, I, 246-85.
64. For an analysis, based on a close reading of American intelligence estimates, which suggests that
Nitze's argument was solidly based, see Beatrice Heuser, "NSC 68 and the Soviet Threat: A
New Perspective on Western Threat Perception and Policy Making," Review of International
Studies, 17 (1991), 17-40.
65. Acheson, Present at the Creation, p. xviii.

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