Idea Transcript
RECONSIDER A TIONS
WAS THE TRUMAN DOCTRINE A REAL TURNING POINT? By John Lewis Gaddis than a quarter of a century has now passed since Harry S. Truman proclaimed on March 12, 1947 that "it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or outside pressures." At the time, government officials, Congressmen, journalists and other elements of the articulate public vigorously debated the merits of the Truman Doctrine, and in the intervening years historians have kept the argument going. Defenders have seen the statement as the moment when Americans abandoned isolationism once and for all, finally accepting, however reluctantly, their full responsibilities as a world power. Critics, conversely, have seen it as the beginning of the long process by which the United States became a world policeman, committing resources and manpower all over the world in a futile attempt to contain a mythical monolith, the international Communist conspiracy. But despite their differences, critics and defenders of the Truman Doctrine tend to agree on two points: that the President's statement marked a turning point of fundamental importance in the history of American foreign policy; and that U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War grew logically, even inevitably, out of a policy Truman thus initiated. There can be no doubt that the President did employ sweeping rhetoric, implying an unprecedented commitment to resist communism wherever it appeared. But gaps between rhetoric and reality in U.S. foreign policy have often been large; indeed, such gaps might be said to constitute a defining characteristic of this country's diplomacy. Any reassessment of the Truman Doctrine, therefore, should consider first how far the statement in fact represented a radical departure from policies the United States was already following, and then to what extent the Truman administration sought to implement the wide-ranging program it so resoundingly proclaimed. I propose to argue that the Truman Doctrine, far from representing a revolution in American foreign policy, was very much in line with previously established precedents for dealing with shifts in the European balance of power; that despite its sweeping language the Truman administration, between 1947 and 1950, had neither the intention nor the capability of policing the rest of the world; and that the real commitment to contain communism everywhere originated in the events surrounding the Korean War, not the crisis in Greece and Turkey. II
It is a truism, but no less valid for that, to say that the chief objective of U.S. foreign policy has been to maintain an external environment conducive to the survival and prosperity of the nation's domestic institutions. The
THE TRUMAN DOCTRINE
387
methods employed in this search for security have varied considerably over the yearis: Utopian efforts to reform the entire structure of international relations have coexisted with cold-blooded attempts to wield power within that system; military establishments have been both massive and minute; interventionism has alternated with isolationism; multilateralism with rigid economic nationalism. In recent times there has also been a lively debate over how extensive the congenial environment must be—can the United States tolerate a world safe for diversity, or must the American way of life be imposed everywhere before it can be secure anywhere? The goal, however, has remained the same, and in this the United States has differed little from other great powers: sovereign nations, to be secure, have always required climates in which their institutions could flourish. For the United States, in the twentieth century, the most important requirement for a congenial international environment has been that Europe not fall under the domination of a single, hostile state.^ Concern over the European balance of power dates back at least to the turn of the century; certainly balance-of-power considerations played a large role in motivating both Woodrow Wilson's efforts to mediate World War I and our subsequent entry into that struggle. The totalitarian nature of Hitler's regime made Nazi Germany's threat 20 years later seem particularly ominous; it was clearly decisive in persuading Franklin D. Roosevelt that he could not allow the collapse of Great Britain after France fell in the summer of 1940. Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor actually thrust the United States into World War II, but the Roosevelt administration had decided a year and a half earlier to risk war in order to prevent the totalitarian domination of all of Europe. Truman, thus, was hardly breaking new ground when he described the world as polarized between democracy and totalitarianism: the American commitment to oppose totalitarian threats to the balance of power in Europe goes back at least to 1940, and possibly to 1917. What was novel about the Truman Doctrine was not that it marked any fundamental shift in the basic objectives of U.S. foreign policy, but rather that it indicated the emergence of a new challenge to those objectives in the postwar behavior of the Soviet Union. Washington officials did not automatically equate the Soviet variety of totalitarianism with that of Nazi Germany; indeed, the tendency during and immediately after World War II was in the opposite direction. The Russians' vigorous participation in the war had purified them ideologically in the eyes of many Americans, and while the Roosevelt administration never accepted the view that Stalin's regime had become a budding democracy, it did expect cooperation from the Soviet Union in building a peaceful postwar world. FDR, whose vision of the new international order was strongly tinged with realism, was not inclined to oppose Stalin's plans to seek security through the creation of spheres of influence along the periphery of the U.S.S.R., even ^See, for example, Nicholas J. Spykman, America's Strategy in IVorld Politics: The United States and the Balance of Ponuer, New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1942, pp. 448-449, 466-467; Walter Lippmann, U.S. Foreign Policy: Shield of the Republic, Boston: Little, Brown, 1943, p. 164; George F. Kennan, American Diplomacy: igoo-igso, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951, pp. lo-ii.
388
FOREIGN AFFAIRS
though acquiescence would have required compromising the Administration's frequently stated commitment to the principle of self-determination. Roosevelt did attach two conditions to his willingness to grant Stalin's security needs, however. First, the Russian leader would have to be discreet in establishing control over neighboring countries, operating under the fagade of democratic procedures wherever possible. This requirement reflected Roosevelt's concern over public opinion in the United States; having been led by Administration rhetoric to expect literal fulfillment of the Four Freedoms and the Atlantic Charter, Americans would not tolerate too blatant a violation of those principles. Second, the Kremlin would have to abandon further attempts to spread communism outside the Soviet Union, Moscow's conimitment to the overthrow of capitalism throughout the world had been the chief unsettling element in its relations with the West since the Russian Revolution, as Stalin himself acknowledged when he abolished the Comintern in 1943. Having just helped to defeat one dictator thought to have had unlimited ambitions, Americans could hardly be expected now to welcome the emergence of another. Stalin met neither of these conditions. The crude combination of internal subversion and external pressure which marked his efforts to establish control in Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, eastern Germany, Turkey, Iran and Manchuria between 1944 and 1946 made it impossible for Truman to continue Roosevelt's policy of cooperation—even FDR had come to doubt its feasibility at the time of his death. Nor did Stalin give any indication that he would be content with these gains: his own statements, together with the revived activity of the international Communist movement, seemed to offer clear evidence that the Soviet Union had embarked upon a program of unlimited expansion. We now know that this was an inaccurate perception of Stalin's intentions. His militant rhetoric was probably intended more for internal than external consumption. He even sought to discourage Communist parties in France, Italy, Greece and China from seizing power. But Stalin's restraining orders were not made public; what was public was a progressive escalation of anticapitalist propaganda and a pattern of action among Communist parties throughout the world too well-coordinated to ignore. Communism was a monolith, at least in Europe between 1945 and 1948;^ hence it should not be surprising that Western observers came to see the Soviet Union as posing a threat to the balance of power comparable to that of Nazi Germany. The actual decision to resist further Soviet expansion came early in 1946, one year before the proclamation of the Truman Doctrine. Increasing criticism from Congress and the public had made it clear that no additional concessions to the Russians would be tolerated, while simultaneously George * Three important new works which stress the subservient attitude of the international Communist movement to Moscow's wishes are Vladimir Dedijer, The Battle Stalin Lost: Memoirs of Yugoslavia, 1948-1953, New York: Viking, 1971, pp. ioi, 118-119; Roy A. Medvedev, Let History Judge: The Origins and Consequences of Stalinism, New York: Knopf, 1971, pp. 474-478; and Joseph R. Starobin, American Communism in Crisis, IQ43'957> Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1972, which contains new infornfiation on the famous Duclos letter of April 1945.
THE TRUMAN DOCTRINE
389
F, Kennan's influential but as yet unpublished analysis of Soviet behavior had convinced Administration officials that Russian hostility sprang chiefly from internal sources not susceptible to gestures of conciliation from the West. Evidence of a tougher policy appeared almost at once, with Truman's tacit endorsement of Winston Churchill's Fulton address, blunt public opposition to Soviet demands on Iran and Turkey, termination of German reparations shipments, refusal to compromise on the Baruch Plan, and the tenacious negotiating tactics of Secretary of State James F. Byrnes at the Paris and New York foreign ministers' meetings, and at the Paris Peace Conference.' The President made his position clear in September 1946 when he fired Henry Wallace from the Cabinet for conveying a false sense of Administration softness toward the U.S.S.R. That same month^ presidential aide Clark Clifford completed a lengthy synthesis of advice from within the government on relations with Russia, compiled at Truman's request. This document advocated a global policy of containing the Soviet Union through the use of propaganda, economic aid and even military force, not excluding atomic or biological warfare if necessary. The objective, Clifford wrote, should be to convince the Russians "that we are too strong to be beaten and too determined to be frightened."* The crisis caused by the British withdrawal of aid to Greece and Turkey early in 1947 did not, therefore, precipitate a fundamental reorientation of U.S. foreign policy. The course of action which Truman proclaimed on March 12 was very much in line with the belief, then almost a half-century old, that American security depended upon maintenance of a European balance of power. Nor did the Truman Doctrine mark the first step in the containment of the Soviet Union—that policy had been in effect for almost a year. The significance of the Greek-Turkish crisis was rather that this was the first situation in which special appropriations were necessary to carry out the Administration's program. It was this need for congressional sanction of a policy already in effect which caused the Administration to state its intentions—or overstate them—in universal terms.^ While it is clear from both contemporary and retrospective sources that the men who participated in this decision felt they were living through a revolution, one gets the impres3 New information on the toughening of policy toward the Soviet Union in 1946 is contained in Foreign Relations of the United States 1946, Vol. I, pp. 1160-1171. See also John Lewis Gaddis, The United States and the Origins of the Cold War, 1941-1947, New York: Columbia University Press, 1972, pp. 282-31S. Significantly, presidential assistant George M. Elsey wrote to Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., in 1951: "So far as foreign policy is concerned. President Truman, to use your words, 'blew the whistle on the Communists' a year earlier than you state. At his direction, the United States took the lead in March 1946 in the United Nations when Iran was first threatened by the Soviets." (Elsey to Schlesinger, October 15, 1951, George M. Elsey Papers, Box 104, Harry S. Truman Library.) « Clifford's September 1946 report is printed in Arthur Krock, Memoirs: Sixty Years on the Firing Line, New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1968, pp. 419-482. 5 Joseph M. Jones, The Fifteen Weeks {February 21-June $, 1947), New York: Viking, 1955, p. 143; George F. Kennan, Memoirs: J925-IQ50, Boston: Little, Brown, 1967, pp. 322-324; Dean Acheson, Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department, New York: Norton, 1969, p. 219; Charles E. Bohlen, Witness to History: 1929-1969, New York: Norton, 1973, p. 261.
390
FOREIGN AFFAIRS
sion that this sense of exhilaration stemmed from the way in which policy was formulated—not from the actual decisions that were made. For the first time in recent memory the State Department had actually done something, quickly, efficiently and decisively. This was the real revolution of 1947—and the only one. Ill
During the spring and summer of 1947, the Truman Doctrine came under heavy criticism for implying a commitment to oppose communism wherever it appeared. George F. Kennan, head of Secretary of State Marshall's new Policy Planning Staff, argued privately that the Truman Doctrine had best be forgotten: the United States could not defend free peoples everywhere." Walter Lippmann, inaccurately but understandably regarding Kennan's "X" article in Foreign Affairs as an expression of Administration policy, blasted the whole concept of containment as a "strategic monstrosity."^ The actual conduct of the Truman administration, however, suggests that these criticisms were wide of the mark: despite the universal rhetoric of the President's address, the U.S. government at that time had neither the intention nor the ability to police the world against communism. Indeed, Secretary Marshall himself expressed immediate reservations about the sweeping language of the Doctrine and, upon his return from the Moscow foreign ministers' conference in April, quietly sought to focus State Department planning around more limited objectives.^ Thus, State Department officials went out of their way during congressional hearings on aid to Greece and Turkey in late March to emphasize that the President's program would not automatically commit the United States to resist communism everywhere. With Marshall in Moscow, Acting Secretary of State Dean Acheson and Under Secretary of State Will Clayton even tried to avoid mentioning the Soviet Union by name in their public testimony. While Administration spokesmen acknowledged that the Greek guerrilla movement was led by Communists and did receive instructions from abroad, they carefully pointed out that the rebellion was primarily an indigenous one. There was no effort to demonstrate a comparable internal threat to Turkey: aid to that country was justified, somewhat vaguely, as a counterweight to Russian imperialism. Acheson specifically rejected any implication that the Truman Doctrine constituted a precedent for aid to other countries threatened by communism, especially China. Further requests for assistance, he said, would be evaluated individually, without reference to any general rule of policy. Was the Administration being less than candid.? Truman and his advisers " George M. Elsey memorandum of a conversation with Kennan, August 15, 1947, Elsey Papers, Box 3. ^ Walter Lippmann, The Cold War: A Study in U.S. Foreign Policy, New York: Harper, 1947. P- 21- Kennan's article appeared as "The Sources of Soviet Conduct," foreign Affairs, July 1947, pp. 566-582. 8 Bohlen, Witness to History, p. 261. See also Charles E. Bohlen, The Transformation of American Foreign Policy, New York: Norton, 1969, pp. 86-87; and a memorandum by Charles P. Kindleberger, "Origins of the Marshall Plan," July 22, 1948, Foreign Relations of the United States 1947, Vol. Ill, pp. 242-243.
THE TRUMAN DOCTRINE
391
may well have been trying to conceal the fact that plans for a general European recovery program were being made, but it does not follow from this that they were trying to trick the Congress into approving an unlimited commitment to oppose communism. The more plausible explanation for the reticence of Acheson and his colleagues is that, notwithstanding the language of Truman's speech, Clifford's 1946 memorandum and Kennan's article, the Administration in fact had no overall plan for the containment of communism in mind at this time. Its goal was the less ambitious one of restoring a balance of power in Europe; its choice of means for accomplishing this reflected an awareness of the limitations, rather than the omnipotence, of American power. U.S. officials saw the chief threat to the balance of power as political and economic, not military: wartime devastation and natural calamities had so disrupted life in Europe that Communist parties in France, Italy, Greece and elsewhere were thought to have excellent chances of coming to power through coups or even free elections. This prospect was thought dangerous, not because of the general repugnance Americans felt for communism, though that certainly existed, but because the European Communist parties were regarded as tools of the Kremlin. Their victory would have placed the European continent under the control of a single hostile power, the very thing Americans had fought World Wars I and II to prevent. U.S. policy in Europe from 1947 through 1949—the Truman Doctrine, the Marshall Plan, the Vandenberg Resolution, the North Atlantic Treaty, and the Military Assistance Program—can best be understood as an attempt, through political, economic, and, later, military means, to achieve a goal largely psychological in nature: the creation of a state of mind among Europeans conducive to the revival of faith in democratic procedures. As Kennan later put it in his memoirs, "It had been primarily the shadow, rather than the substance, of danger which we, in contemplating a European recovery program, had been concerned to dispel."^ This policy reflected a keen awareness of the limits of American power, and of the consequent need to distinguish between peripheral and vital interests. During the two years from 1945 to 1947, U.S. military forces had declined from 12 million men to 1.5 million. Unilateral possession of the atomic bomb had had little noticeable impact on relations with the Soviet Union. Fears of inflation, shared even by vigorous advocates of rearmament, made substantial increases in military spending unlikely. As Warner Schilling has observed, "There was probably no more widely shared or firmly held belief regarding defense matters than the idea that $15 billion was all the country could afford to spend.""' These constraints significantly narrowed the range of options open to U.S. officials, forcing them to concentrate their efforts where they would do the most good. Europe was given first priority; attempts were made to minimize involvement in other trouble spots, like China and Palestine, considered less vital to American security. Washington's insistence * I