Where the Buck Stopped: Harry S Truman and the Cold War

Abstract

Anyone who bought stock in Harry S Truman’s historical and public reputation shortly before the end of the Cold War has made a killing: the collapse of the Soviet Union and the consequent mood of self-congratulation, combined with disillusionment about modern-day U.S. presidents’ conduct, both official and personal, precipitated a spike in nostalgia for and celebration of the Truman presidency among the public, politicians, and a number of prominent historians—a phenomenon exemplified and influenced by the fortuitous 1992 publication of David McCullough’s best-selling, Pulitzer Prize-winning biography, Truman.1 Among historians of U.S. foreign policy, that same year was at least as notable for the appearance of Melvyn P. Leffler’s long-awaited A Preponderance of Power: National Security, the Truman Administration, and the Cold War, which, despite the author’s earlier highly critical assessments, concluded that HST’s essential containment strategy and policies in the early Cold War had been, on the whole, “judicious,” “wise,” and, above all, “prudent.”2 Four years later, John Lewis Gaddis’ influential We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History further boosted Truman’s repute, with its conclusion that new communist sources confirmed that “authoritarianism in general, and Stalin in particular” were to blame for the Cold War, and that Truman’s policy of containment had been both necessary and successful.3 During the post–September 11 debates over presidential leadership and the possibility of a U.S. war in Afghanistan and then Iraq, commentators frequently cited Truman as a role model. “Is George W. Bush another Harry S. Truman?” asked one analyst on the New York Times op-ed page. “He and we should surely hope so.”4