Truman and Korea: The Political Culture of the Early Cold War (review)

Abstract

Book Reviews 283 atom, but her scope totally excludes the victims of Japanese depredations elsewhere in Asia and the Pacific. And her narrative of the Enola Gay's mission says, Ã la Nitze, that the atomic bombs did not end the war in a timely manner; this belief "was fabricated ex post facto." So much for Asada and the other chroniclers of Japan's surrender ; they, presumably, lack the investigative power of postcolonial anthropology. Thus, we have much new information about the Japanese surrender, and some contested points can be labeled settled. But the atom is still a menace, the Japanese are still self-righteous, and the Americans are still imperialists (perhaps we should call it hegemonists now). Nitzeans and Truman defenders will no doubt clash forever. Truman and Korea: The Political Culture of the Early Cold War. By Paul G. Pierpaoli Jr. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1999; pp. xi + 261. $32.50. Truman and Korea examines the political economy of military mobilization during the Korean War. (Its subtitle is something of a misnomer, since the book spends little time dealing directly with political culture.) The important story the author tells has too often been submerged in the larger tale of superpower confrontation during the early Cold War era. As in many other accounts of this period, the Truman administration dramatically confronts a variety of formidable foes in highstakes struggles for power and influence. Unlike most other accounts, however, the battles Paul G. Pierpaoli Jr., recounts do not involve Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, or Kim Il Sung, but rather American business, labor, and the Republican Party. This book underlines the fact that the changes in American society during the early Cold War era were as much the result of these domestic struggles as they were consequences of the Soviet threat. After a brief introduction explaining the significance of the Korean War mobilization , the book moves chronologically from the American intervention in the war in June 1950 through the first few months of the Eisenhower administration in 1953. Roughly the first half of the book focuses on the establishment of an array of new institutions to implement the Truman administration's mobilization plans. As Pierpaoli points out, these plans went far beyond what was required to carry on the war in Korea. The Korean War became a political vehicle for the much broader national effort set out in NSC 68, the rather innocuous file name for one of the foundational documents of American Cold War strategy. The mobilization started large and became even larger after the Chinese intervention in the war in late November 1950. Both the Truman administration and most members of Congress believed that such a vast expansion of the military budget, which had quadrupled by early 1951, required wage and price controls to prevent rampant inflation and crippling shortages of raw materials. The effort resembled nothing so much as a 284 Rhetoric & Public Affairs New Deal for the national security establishment, complete with a palpable sense of national emergency and an alphabet soup of agencies known by their initials. Indeed, by the beginning of February 1951, the administration had created 19 such agencies to administer both the military buildup and the system of economic controls associated with it (55). The new agencies' activities directly affected many central issues in the American political economy, including prices, wages, and profits. Not surprisingly, depending on how they handled these questions, the mobilization authorities drew opposition from many quarters, particularly organized labor and business. Wage and price controls were imposed only after a brief period of high inflation, so the levels at which prices and wages were frozen represented substantial gains for some sectors of the economy at the expense of others. The process of returning the controlled prices and wages to "normal" relationships was politically controversial. When former General Electric president Charles Wilson and other business people appointed to run the economic control apparatus failed to give organized labor a serious role in the process, labor's representatives walked out of crucial advisory committees and refused to cooperate in the wage freeze for several months in 1951. For its part, business resisted efforts to raise wages without corresponding price hikes, precipitating...