Truman Administration Research Articles

"A New Kind of War": America's Global Strategy and the Truman Doctrine in Greece.

In the aftermath of the Second World War, civil war erupted in Greece between Western-orientated government forces and Communist rebels. The Truman administration subsequently became heavily involved in the internal conflict, including the establishment of an American military presence on Greek soil and regular arms shipments. This early containment policy, focusing on Greece as a crucial outpost in the Mediterranean arena, was symbolic of America's Commitment to Free World Principles, and her fear that the Soviet's ultimate goal was world domination.

The Truman Presidency, by Michael J. Lacey

The Truman Presidency, <i>by Michael J. Lacey</i>

Dean Acheson and the ‘Special Relationship’: The West Point Speech of December 1962

Dean Acheson, an influential architect of U.S. foreign policy in the decades following the Second World War, was secretary of state under President Harry S. Truman (I949-53). Acheson was instrumental in the creation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the rebuilding and rearming of Germany. Perhaps more than any other American statesman, Acheson believed that the North Atlantic Community represented the culmination of human cultural, economic and political development. Acheson left office at the end of the Truman administration to return to his private law practice in Washington, D.C. He continued speaking out on foreign policy issues and served as an unofficial adviser to the Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon administrations. President John F. Kennedy (I961-3) often consulted Acheson on NATO matters or when international crises struck. It was on 5 December I962, shortly after the U.S.-Soviet near-confrontation in October over the presence of Soviet missiles in Cuba, that Dean Acheson made his now infamous West Point speech which led the way in debunking the so-called special relationship between Great Britain and the United States. By early December I962, the Cuban Missile Crisis was already deemed an American success. Although Acheson had advocated an air strike on the Cuban missile sites and strongly disagreed with Kennedy's blockade decision, he had 'gained respect for the President' during those tension-filled days of October.' He was looking forward to getting out of Washington in two months for his annual January hiatus to Antigua and the Southern Windward Islands. But first Acheson had to finish writing two articles and deliver a speech. 'Three things of my own are about to burst on the world,' Acheson wrote Lady Pamela Berry, wife of W. Michael Berry, editor-in-chief of the Daily Telegraph and a respected observer of British politics in her own right, on 3

The Iranian Crisis of 1945–1946 and the Spiral Model of International Conflict

Diplomatic historians of all persuasions agree that the Iranian Crisis of 1945–1946 played a considerable part in initiating the Cold War. For revisionist writers, the confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union that took place during these months resulted from American efforts to carve out a sphere of influence in the oil-producing areas of the Middle East. By the autumn of 1945, according to this view, U.S. firms had gained controlling interests in the consortia holding exclusive rights to work the extensive petroleum deposits located in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain; more importantly, Iranian officials were making repeated overtures to American concerns in an effort to counterbalance established British interests with more dynamic ones based in the United States. When the Red Army prevented the government in Tehran from suppressing separatist movements in Azerbaijan and Kurdistan in December 1945, the Truman Administration manipulated the Security Council of the United Nations into mandating a Soviet withdrawal from northern Iran.

Guns and Butter: The Pre‐Korean War Dispute Over Budget Allocations: Nourse's Conservative Keynesianism Loses Favor Against Keyserling's Economic Expansion Plan

Abstract. Focusing on the disagreement between Edwin Nourse and Leon Keyserling, two members of the first Council of Economic Advisers, the Truman Administration's gradual shift from Nourse's belief that a choice had to be made between “guns or butter” and Keyserling's claim that an expanding economy permitted large defense expenditures without sacrificing an increased standard of living is explained. In 1949, when Keyserling gained support from such presidential friends as Dean Acheson and Clark Clifford and persuaded the President, Nourse resigned as CEA Chairman, warning about the dangers of budget deficits and increased funding of “wasteful” defense costs. Keyserling succeeded to the chairmanship. He influenced Truman's Fair Deal proposals and the economic sections of National Security Council resolution 68 which, in April, 1950, as serted that the larger armed forces America needed would not affect living standards or risk the “transformation of the free character of our economy.”

The Long Peace: Inquiries into the History of the Cold War

How has it happened that the United States and the Soviet Union have managed to get through more than four decades of Cold War confrontation without going to war with one another? Historian John Lewis Gaddis suggests answer to this and other vital questions about post-war diplomacy in this new book. Gaddis uses recently declassified American and British documents to explore several key issues in Cold War history that remain unresolved: Precisely what itwas about the Soviet Union's behaviour after World War II that American leaders found so threatening? Whether the United States really wanted a sphere of influence in post-war Europe? What led the Truman administration first to endorse, but then immediately to avoid American military involvement on the mainland of Asia? This is a provocative exercise in contemporary history, certain to generate new insights on both past and present aspects of the age we live in.

White House ethics: the history of the politics of conflict of interest regulation

Preface Acknowledgments Introduction The Antecedents Conflict of Interest and the Truman Administration The Appearance of Impropriety: Conflict of Interest and the Eisenhower Years Ethics and the New Frontier The Kennedy Administration and Momentum for Reform After Kennedy: The Ethics Program in Limbo The Nixon Years and the Loss of Public Confidence The Carter Presidency and Ethics Reform Conflict of Interest and the Reagan Administration Epilogue Bibliography Index

Le rôle et l’influence de la Cour Suprême dans la vie économique des Etats-Unis au XXe siècle

This short study has been put together in order to show the differences in the American economic policies between the XIXe and XXth centuries, more especially since the New Deal period. In such an evolution, the Supreme Court played an important role, through a new interpretation of the commerce clause. This was done progressively, and sometimes without seeing really where the President and Congress should go, and which method should be used. But the true difference between the old onception and that which resulted from the Roosevelt and Truman administration seems to be the death of the old distrust towards interventionism.

The Constitution and United States Foreign Policy: An Interpretation

Perhaps best single sentence defining Constitution was, appropriately, penned by father of document in 1792. In such charters of as Constitution, James Madison wrote, every word ... decides a question between power and liberty. He hoped being republicans, Americans would be anxious to establish efficacy of popular charters, in defending liberty against power, and power against licentiousness. Some one hundred eighty years later, while writing one of few extended analyses of relationship between Constitution and foreign policy, Louis Henkin noted in one critical area Madison's insight had been tragically neglected. No greater power existed than American, and specifically president's, ability to destroy all civilization, but books that deal with Constitution say little about American foreign relations, Henkin lamented, and those dealing with foreign policy have roundly controlling relevance of Constitution.' In truth, neglect of connection between foreign affairs and constitutional principles is relatively new. From time of Federalist, whose opening essays stressed foreign policy problems threatened new nation's liberties and security, and of 1792-1793 Hamilton-Madison debate over president's powers in global arena, through bitter imperialist versus anti-imperialist confrontations of 1898-1900, Americans argued over appropriate foreign policy while keeping Constitution closely in view, and they fought over constitutional principles with acute awareness of their effect on international affairs. By World War II, however, debate had dramatically changed. Scholars led by Edward S. Corwin repeatedly raised danger of conducting foreign policy without due regard for constitutional restraints, but Congress, courts, and, above all, executive ignored warnings. In top secret National Security Council document NSC 68 of April 1950, which became blueprint for United States policy thereafter, Truman administration argued the integrity of our system will not be

Harry S. Truman: The Man from Independence

This book comprises a select variety of topics by leading experts in their fields, provides many new insights, and accurately reflects what is currently of interest to Truman scholars. On balance, this collection makes an important contribution to our knowledge of Truman's administration, and scholars of Truman will certainly want it on their shelves. American Historical Review

The Presidential Documents Series: The Harry S. Truman Administration. Official Conversations and Meetings of Dean Acheson

The Presidential Documents Series: The Harry S. Truman Administration. Official Conversations and Meetings of Dean Acheson

Selling the Marshall Plan at Home: The Committee for the Marshall Plan to Aid European Recovery

Historians of the early Cold War period have given little attention to the efforts of members of nongovernmental organizations to influence foreign affairs. One such group, the Committee for the Marshall Plan to Aid European Recovery (CMP), founded in late September 1947, became the principal instrument through which the State Department persuaded Congress and the American people to sponsor a huge program for reconstructing postwar Europe.1 This ad hoc committee comprised a coalition of corporate and labor interests and a liberal elite closely linked to the internationalist “foreign policy establishment” associated with the Truman administration, as well as some key members of Congress.2 Although labeled a “citizens' organization,” the CMP was hardly independent of State Department influence and could be described as an external propaganda agency acting on behalf of the European Recovery Program (ERP). The sheer eminence of its members, with their frequent contact with congressmen and senators, and the perpetual public appearances of its most prominent supporters allowed the CMP to succeed in convincing Congress that the foreign policy establishment backed the Department of State and its plans for the ERP. In close cooperation with the State Department and the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, the CMP provided and briefed witnesses for congressional hearings, thus demonstrating well the paternalism of prominent internationalists in their efforts to “educate the public” when they held the support of public opinion to be necessary. To do this, CMP members employed tested techniques that seemed to reveal a strong public consent by the American people for the Marshall Plan that did not necessarily exist, except among themselves. The efforts of CMP members illustrate the importance of public opinion in foreign policy but also show very clearly how government and private interest groups could manipulate this “opinion” for their own purposes.3

Prologue to Containment: The Truman Administration's Response to the Trieste Crisis of May 1945

Prologue to Containment: The Truman Administration's Response to the Trieste Crisis of May 1945

Red Scare Politics: California's Campaign Against Un-American Activities, 1940–1970

The explanations for the red scare of the Cold War years have often been concerned with the direction taken by anti-Communist pressures. These have sometimes been represented as welling up from below, perhaps in the form of grassroots anxieties and resentments directed at well-to-do liberals and intellectuals, or as Catholic and immigrant enmity towards the Soviet Union. Such populistic currents may be portrayed as disturbing the normal routines of American politics. More often in recent years anti-Communist sentiments have been presented as elite-inspired influences working their way down in the polity, such as the anti-Soviet rhetoric and policies of the Truman administration, or the partisan opportunism of Republican politicians. The American political process itself may then be held to account. There have been a few attempts to test these interpretations by studies at state level, although it is not self-evident that such studies will favour either of these explanations. Indeed, the more detailed the study the more it is likely to acknowledge the complexity of American anti-communism. The evidence of California suggests that the second great red scare arose out of the convergence of pressures both from aboveandfrom below, in a process involving at least three different political dimensions.

The Great "Red Menace": United States Prosecution of American Communists, 1947-1952

During the years 1947-1952 the Cold War, the anti- communist foreign policy of the U.S. government, and the reassertion by the American Communist party of its allegiance to the Soviet Union, the international communist movement, and a literal Marxist-Leninist ideology gradually gave rise to an anti-communist hysteria and to the repression and persecution of American Communists. Author Peter L. Steinberg shows that both the Truman Administration and the Communist Party were in part responsible for the McCarthy era that followed. Both were reacting to the ideologiical warfare conducted by J. Edgar Hoover. Using his allies in government, Hoover took advantage of the Cold War atmosphere to demand demonstrable action against communists. The Truman Administration responded with a loyalty program that seemed to legitimze the American people's worst fears, leading to demands for further action. The Communist Party's decision to go underground played into the hands of its enemies. Steinberg sees the attack on American communists as a necessary prelude to the demand for patriotic conformity and as a factor contributing to the development of an internal political police.

The Limits of Influence: British Policy and American Expansion of the War in Korea

Since 1945, with the possible exception of the brief period of the Cuban missile crisis, global conflict has never loomed more ominously on the horizon than during the months following China's massive intervention in Korea during the fall of 1950. The SinoAmerican clash brought intense pressure in the United States for punitive measures against China, pressure that would have been difficult for the Harry S. Truman administration to resist had United Nations troops been forced to evacuate the peninsula in the face of the Communist onslaught. Direct action against China, in turn, would have brought a major prospect of Soviet embroilment. In such circumstances, hostilities would have been likely to spread to Europe as well. Thus the Chinese move into Korea could easily have set off a train of events culminating in World War III. The Chinese confrontation with the United States in Korea was

Peacemaking in Asia: The United States, Great Britain, and the Japanese Decision to Recognize Nationalist China, 1951?52

One of the great distortions of international politics since World War II has been the truncated relations between Japan and mainland China. Despite geographical proximity, mutual trade needs, and cultural affinity, Japan did not give diplomatic recognition to the People's Republic of China (PRC) until 1978. One obstacle to normalized relations between the two nations was the peace pact Japan signed with the rump Nationalist Chinese government on Taiwan a few hours before the termination of the allied occupation of Japan on 28 April 1952. This Japanese decision was preceded by more than one year of prolonged and often heated controversy among American, British, Japanese, and Nationalist diplomats. This paper focuses on the Anglo-American conflict over Sino-Japanese relations and its impact on Japan's decision to recognize Nationalist China in 1952. Japan replaced China as the key to the Truman administration's plans for the Pacific region as the chances of the Nationalist Chinese regime of Chiang Kai-shek surviving the civil war with the Communists grew dimmer. Prodded by George F. Kennan and the State Department's Policy Planning Staff, American policymakers decided in the fall of 1947 to halt the peace treaty initiative of General Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander of Allied Powers (SCAP), for fear that an early settlement would leave Japan demilitarized and neutral in the developing Cold War. Instead, they cooperated with conservative business and political leaders in emasculating many of the reforms of the first years of the occupation and promoted an economic recovery program designed to make Japan the industrial "workshop" of Asia. Southeast Asia, rather than mainland China, was projected as the primary source for Japan's industrial raw materials and foodstuffs and as a major outlet for capital goods exports. At the same time, American officials made military plans for Japan and Southeast Asia to bolster non-Communist regimes and facilitate economic integration of the region. The new programs for Japan and Southeast Asia were implicitly directed at containing communism in China.1

Writing the History of Nuclear Energy: The State of the Art

Over forty years have passed since the devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki dramatically opened the atomic age. Other important milestones in the nuclear era also are receding into the shadows of history. It has been thirty-five years since Harry S. Truman announced his decision to develop a thermonuclear bomb, thirty-two years since Dwight D. Eisenhower's “Atoms-for-Peace” proposals, twenty-eight years since the first large nuclear reactor in the United States began producing electrical power, twenty-two years since the Limited Test Ban Treaty, thirteen years since the SALT I agreement, and six years since the accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant. These and other epochal events are rapidly becoming a part of the vaguely remembered and dimly perceived past. Many are distant enough, it would seem, for historians to investigate and explain. Despite the importance of the subject and the rich opportunities it offers, historians have been slow to undertake research on many aspects of nuclear energy. They have thoroughly explored nuclear issues only for the period of the 1940s and early 1950s. The sole topic that has inspired an extended and contentious historiographical controversy is the decision to use atomic bombs against Japan, and that debate, currently at least, seems mainly to be resolved. Historians have produced some outstanding works on the Truman administration's subsequent nuclear arms policies, but for later periods the volume of serious history dwindles sharply. Indeed, in a reversal of the usual pattern, the major shortcoming in the writing of scholarly history on nuclear energy is a lack of quantity rather than quality.

Making Threats: Minimal Deterrence, Extended Deterrence and Nuclear Warfighting

This analysis contributes to a political sociology of the arms race by linking the history of U.S. strategic policy with sociological explorations in the organization of power. American nuclear policy illustrates continuity and episodic change. Continuity is expressed in near-universal support among policy-makers of a policy of “extended” rather than “minimal” deterrence. Extended deterrence implies a threat to use nuclear weapons first. The change in nuclear policy is the variation in the determination to modernize the nuclear force structure. That is, the actual commitment to prepare to fight and win a nuclear war oscillates from one period to another. Sustained efforts to improve the nuclear force structure have been concentrated in four periods: the Truman administration between 1947 and 1950, the first two years of the Kennedy administration, the last two years of the Nixon administration, and the last year of the Carter administration to the present. The determination to modernize the nuclear force structure is situated within intra-elite debates between advocates of containment and proponents of rollback, and the installation of new foreign policy projects necessary to adjust the position of the U.S. in the world arena.

The Triangular Route to Vietnam: The United States, Great Britain, and Southeast Asia, 1945–1950

on 1 may 1950, the president of the United States, Harry S. Truman, allocated $10 million in military aid for the French-sponsored governments of Indochina, and approved cin principle' a programme of economic assistance to them. The amount of money involved was paltry in light of the billions the United States had given to western Europe under the Marshall Plan, and no one at the time believed the president's decision to be darkly portentous. In retrospect, however, this decision may well be considered what the authors of the Pentagon Papers called 'a tangible first step' towards deeper American involvement in Vietnam.1 Why did the Truman administration take this step? Robert Blum, who addresses this issue directly in his recent book, argues that the administration's commitment to contain perceived Communist expansionism, reinforced by the conservative 'China Lobby,' was extended to cover Southeast Asia when China came under Communist control in 1949. Other writers, concerned with the larger issue of United States military intervention in Vietnam, have addressed the question tangentially. Frances Fitzgerald suggests that American ethnocentrism caused a generation of policymakers to misunderstand the nature of the Vietnamese conflict and to make judgements that were tragically inappropriate ; this was intervention through cultural ignorance. A neo-Marxist analysis by Gabriel Kolko stresses United States interest in maintaining access to Far Eastern raw materials. Studies by Michael Schaller and William Borden demonstrate that US concern for Japanese economic recovery led policymakers to seek trading partners for Japan in Southeast Asia, and required that the United States protect these markets against Communist subversion or invasion. It might be easiest to say, with two other recent