0826212069

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.For quotation on corporatism, see Hogan, Marshall Plan, 2 3.11.Brune, Guns and Butter, 362.24 / Truman and Korealater, on October 7, the Soviet Union created the German DemocraticRepublic, all but sealing the fate of a permanently divided Germany.And as if these setbacks were not enough, the new year dawned withmore bad news.12In January 1950, the Soviet delegate to the United Nations stormedout of a Security Council meeting to protest its refusal to seat the newPeople s Republic representative, and in February, the USSR signedthe Treaty of Friendship, Alliance, and Mutual Assistance with thenew Chinese government.In the meantime, Americans were shockedby the audacity of Russian espionage when British officials arrestedKlaus Fuchs on February 3 for spying on the Manhattan Project andpassing nuclear secrets to the Soviets.This relentless procession ofevents slashed the American psyche like repeated thrusts of a dag-ger.The coup de grace was delivered a few days later in Wheeling,West Virginia, when Senator Joseph R.McCarthy, taking advantageof the supercharged atmosphere, unleashed his first barrage againstalleged communist infiltration into the highest levels of the federalgovernment.13To be sure, McCarthy took advantage of an already supercharged po-litical atmosphere, combined with the recent international crises, and bydoing so created a full-blown domestic crisis.His February speech notonly marked the beginning of his national political ascendancy, it alsolaid the groundwork for vitriolic anti-communist attacks on PresidentTruman, Secretary of State Dean Acheson, and later Dwight D.Eisen-hower.Certainly not coincidentally, the Wisconsin senator s Wheelingharangue occurred only two weeks after Alger Hiss s conviction inthe famous Whittaker Chambers Alger Hiss case.Although Hiss sconviction on perjury charges would not under ordinary circumstanceshave precipitated a political crisis, the implications of the case wereenormous.Hiss s presumed involvement in a Soviet spy ring in the1930s may have gone technically unpunished, but McCarthy seemedto single-handedly try and convict for treason not only Alger Hiss, butalso every person who fit his general description.And because Hiss hadbeen a Democrat and a New Dealer, this made all Democrats and NewDealers suspect.Thus, as historian Stephen J.Whitfield explains, the12.Gaddis, Strategies, 89 91; Wells, Sounding the Tocsin, 117 18; Walter LaFeber,America, Russia, and the Cold War, 1945 1984, 84 89.13.Wells, Sounding the Tocsin, 117; Dean Acheson, Present at the Creation: My Yearsin the State Department, 321, 355; Charles E.Bohlen, Witness to History, 1929 1969, 237.NSC-68 and the Korean War / 25political fallout for the Democratic party and for the fate of liberalswas immediate. 14In this atmosphere, policymakers began to formulate the ideas con-tained in NSC-68.By January 1950, Truman was sufficiently movedby recent events and the ascension of the national security plannersthat he reluctantly agreed to a systematic reappraisal of the nation smilitary capacities.In doing so, he gave the green light to the buildingof the hydrogen bomb as well as a directive to the Departments ofState and Defense to review the nation s military commitments andcapabilities.The results of this review appeared as NSC-68, which was,in the words of Dean Acheson, designed to so bludgeon the massmind of top government that not only could the President make adecision but that the decision could be carried out. As it turned out,NSC-68 was a decisive victory for the national security planners.Theeconomy-minded Louis Johnson was left completely out of the writingprocess of NSC-68.Dean Acheson and Paul Nitze won the day, withthe considerable backing of Leon Keyserling, upon whose economicphilosophy the report was based.Although Truman was still skepticalabout the import of such developments, it was clear that the nationalsecurity planners were poised to push aside the economizers and hadcaught the attention of the president.15On April 14, 1950, the National Security Council released to Presi-dent Truman A Report to the National Security Council by the ExecutiveSecretary on United States Objectives and Programs for National Security(NSC-68).This document established the intellectual and psychologicalunderpinnings of American defense and national security policies formore than a generation.The basic thrust of the report was that theSoviets had developed a workable fission bomb and certainly wouldattain thermonuclear capability in a relatively short period of time.Itfollowed from this premise that by 1954 the Soviets would be able tolaunch a devastating preemptive attack against the United States.TheUnited States could not preclude such a strike, according to the report,without a significant increase in its military and economic capacity.TheSoviet threat to American interests, the report concluded, was more14.Whitfield, Culture of the Cold War, 28.15.Arthur A.Stein, Domestic Constraints, Extended Deterrence, and the Incoher-ence of Grand Strategy: The United States, 1938 1950, 114 18; Seyom Brown, The Facesof Power: Constancy and Change in United States Foreign Policy from Truman to Clinton,36 38.For Acheson quotation see Present at the Creation, 374.26 / Truman and Koreaimmediate than had previously been estimated. In reality, NSC-68was more than a call to arms it called for more foreign economic aid,greater military assistance for the nation s allies, more investment inpropaganda and information campaigns, increased intelligence capa-bilities, and a massive expansion of the nuclear stockpile.16One of the most significant presumptions of NSC-68 was the year ofmaximum danger: 1954.By then, policymakers presumed that the So-viet Union would possess enough nuclear force to deal a crippling blowto the United States, thus leaving Western Europe completely open toa massive Soviet advance.Thus, national security planners set 1954 asthe target date for the completion of the massive buildup prescribed inNSC-68 [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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