HARRY TRUMAN(S) LEADERSHIP
The nation’s new chief executive, Harry S . Truman, succeeded Frank- lin D . Roosevelt as president before the end of the war . An unpretentious man who had previously served as Democratic senator from Missouri, then as vice president, Truman ini- tially felt ill-prepared to govern . Roosevelt had not discussed com- plex postwar issues with him, and he had little experience in international affairs . “I’m not big enough for this job,” he told a former colleague .
Still, Truman responded quickly to new challenges . Sometimes im- pulsive on small matters, he proved willing to make hard and carefully considered decisions on large ones . A small sign on his White House desk declared, “The Buck Stops Here .” His judgments about how to respond to the Soviet Union ulti- mately determined the shape of the early Cold War .
ORIGINS OF THE COLD WAR
The Cold War developed as dif- ferences about the shape of the postwar world created suspicion and distrust between the United States and the Soviet Union . The first — and most difficult — test case was Poland, the eastern half of which had been invaded and occupied by the USSR in 1939 . Moscow demanded a government subject to Soviet in- fluence; Washington wanted a more independent, representative govern-
ment following the Western model . The Yalta Conference of February 1945 had produced an agreement on Eastern Europe open to different in- terpretations . It included a promise of “free and unfettered” elections .
Meeting with Soviet Minister of Foreign Affairs Vyacheslav Mo- lotov less than two weeks after be- coming president, Truman stood firm on Polish self-determination, lecturing the Soviet diplomat about the need to implement the Yalta ac- cords . When Molotov protested, “I have never been talked to like that in my life,” Truman retorted, “Carry out your agreements and you won’t get talked to like that .” Relations de- teriorated from that point onward .
During the closing months of World War II, Soviet military forces occupied all of Central and Eastern Europe . Moscow used its military power to support the efforts of the Communist parties in Eastern Eu- rope and crush the democratic par- ties . Communists took over one nation after another . The process concluded with a shocking coup d’etat in Czechoslovakia in 1948 .
Public statements defined the be- ginning of the Cold War . In 1946 Stalin declared that international peace was impossible “under the present capitalist development of the world economy .” Former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill delivered a dramatic speech in Ful- ton, Missouri, with Truman sitting on the platform . “From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic,” Churchill said, “an iron curtain has
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descended across the Continent .” Britain and the United States, he de- clared, had to work together to coun- ter the Soviet threat .
CONTAINMENT
Containment of the Soviet Union became American policy in the postwar years . George Kennan, a top official at the U .S . embassy in Moscow, defined the new approach in the Long Telegram he sent to the State Department in 1946 . He extended his analysis in an arti- cle under the signature “X” in the prestigious journal Foreign Affairs . Pointing to Russia’s traditional sense of insecurity, Kennan argued that the Soviet Union would not soften its stance under any circumstances . Moscow, he wrote, was “committed fanatically to the belief that with the United States there can be no perma- nent modus vivendi, that it is desir- able and necessary that the internal harmony of our society be disrupt- ed .” Moscow’s pressure to expand its power had to be stopped through “firm and vigilant containment of Russian expansive tendencies . . . .”
The first significant application of the containment doctrine came in the Middle East and eastern Medi- terranean . In early 1946, the Unit- ed States demanded, and obtained, a full Soviet withdrawal from Iran, the northern half of which it had oc- cupied during the war . That sum- mer, the United States pointedly supported Turkey against Soviet demands for control of the Turkish
straits between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean . In early 1947, Amer- ican policy crystallized when Britain told the United States that it could no longer afford to support the gov- ernment of Greece against a strong Communist insurgency .
In a strongly worded speech to Congress, Truman declared, “I be- lieve that it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjuga- tion by armed minorities or by out- side pressures .” Journalists quickly dubbed this statement the “Truman Doctrine .” The president asked Congress to provide $400 million for economic and military aid, mostly to Greece but also to Turkey . After an emotional debate that resembled the one between interventionists and isolationists before World War II, the money was appropriated .
Critics from the left later charged that to whip up American support for the policy of containment, Tru- man overstated the Soviet threat to the United States . In turn, his state- ments inspired a wave of hysterical anti-Communism throughout the country . Perhaps so . Others, how- ever, would counter that this argu- ment ignores the backlash that likely would have occurred if Greece, Tur- key, and other countries had fallen within the Soviet orbit with no op- position from the United States .
Containment also called for ex- tensive economic aid to assist the re- covery of war-torn Western Europe . With many of the region’s nations economically and politically unsta-
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ble, the United States feared that lo- cal Communist parties, directed by Moscow, would capitalize on their wartime record of resistance to the Nazis and come to power . “The pa- tient is sinking while the doctors de- liberate,” declared Secretary of State George C . Marshall . In mid-1947 Marshall asked troubled European nations to draw up a program “di- rected not against any country or doctrine but against hunger, poverty, desperation, and chaos .”
The Soviets participated in the first planning meeting, then depart- ed rather than share economic data and submit to Western controls on the expenditure of the aid . The re- maining 16 nations hammered out a request that finally came to $17,000 million for a four-year period . In early 1948 Congress voted to fund the “Marshall Plan,” which helped underwrite the economic resur- gence of Western Europe . It is gen- erally regarded as one of the most successful foreign policy initiatives in U .S . history .
Postwar Germany was a special problem . It had been divided into U .S ., Soviet, British, and French zones of occupation, with the for- mer German capital of Berlin (it- self divided into four zones), near the center of the Soviet zone . When the Western powers announced their intention to create a consoli- dated federal state from their zones, Stalin responded . On June 24, 1948, Soviet forces blockaded Berlin, cut- ting off all road and rail access from the West .
American leaders feared that losing Berlin would be a prelude to losing Germany and subsequently all of Europe . Therefore, in a successful demonstration of Western resolve known as the Berlin Airlift, Allied air forces took to the sky, flying supplies into Berlin . U .S ., French, and British planes delivered nearly 2,250,000 tons of goods, including food and coal . Stalin lifted the blockade after 231 days and 277,264 flights .
By then, Soviet domination of Eastern Europe, and especially the Czech coup, had alarmed the West- ern Europeans . The result, initiated by the Europeans, was a military al- liance to complement economic ef- forts at containment . The Norwegian historian Geir Lundestad has called it “empire by invitation .” In 1949 the United States and 11 other countries established the North Atlantic Trea- ty Organization (NATO) . An attack against one was to be considered an attack against all, to be met by ap- propriate force . NATO was the first peacetime “entangling alliance” with powers outside the Western hemi- sphere in American history .
The next year, the United States defined its defense aims clearly . The National Security Council (NSC) — the forum where the President, Cabinet officers, and other execu- tive branch members consider na- tional security and foreign affairs issues — undertook a full-fledged review of American foreign and defense policy . The resulting docu- ment, known as NSC-68, signaled a new direction in American security
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policy . Based on the assumption that “the Soviet Union was engaged in a fanatical effort to seize control of all governments wherever possible,” the document committed America to assist allied nations anywhere in the world that seemed threatened by Soviet aggression . After the start of the Korean War, a reluctant Truman approved the document . The United States proceeded to increase defense spending dramatically .