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Essay Subject: U.S. aid to Greece & Turkey in President Harry Truman's administration. Relationship to Cold War. Examaines various policies & perspectives.... More...

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Paper Abstract: U.S. aid to Greece & Turkey in President Harry Truman's administration. Relationship to Cold War. Examaines various policies & perspectives. Paper Introduction: TRUMAN DOCTRINE This research paper examines the relationship between the Truman Doctrine and the Cold War, as seen from the traditional, realist, revisionist and neo-revisionist points of view. The Truman Doctrine is the name given to the rationale advanced by the administration of President Harry Truman to justify American economic and military aid to Greece and Turkey in the spring of 1947. It expressed a consensus among senior American policymakers, which was reached earlier, that the United States in collaboration with other European nations should resist and contain the threat of Soviet communist expansion in Western Europe and its periphery. According to the traditional school of thought, reliance on the policy of containment rather than negotiations had been necessitated by Soviet actions since the Text of the Paper: The entire text of the paper is shown below. However, the text is somewhat scrambled. We want to give you as much information as we possibly can about our papers and essays, but we cannot give them away for free. In the text below you will find that while disordered, many of the phrases are essentially intact. From this text you will be able to get a solid sense of the writing style, the concepts addressed, and the sources used in the research paper. Susman. The Tragedy of American Diplomacy. Joseph and Warren I. Memoirs, 1925-195 . Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1977. One of their critics, Robert Maddox, divided theminto soft and hard revisionists. Waltham, MA: Ginn and Company, 197 .Morgenthau, Hans. New York: Harper & Row, 1963.Hixson, Walter L. The announcement of theTruman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan marked the end of any meaningfulAmerican and Soviet negotiations over Central Europe until 1989. The composition of regimes in Poland and other parts ofthe Balkans were debated by the Big Three at the February 1945 YaltaConference at which Stalin reluctantly agreed to the Declaration onLiberated Europe which called for interim governments "broadlyrepresentative of all democratic elements" and pledged "freeelections."[xii] It was not long before American (and British) policymakerslearned that Stalin was reneging on his promises and installing puppetregimes on his western border. As theEast-West arms race escalated and their global ideological competition andrivalry intensified, many writers sought to trace a connection between theTruman Doctrine and whatever American foreign intervention they deplored.Steel supported the American commitment to aid and defend Western Europe,as expressed in the Marshall Plan and NATO, because he said "it was vitalto our interests, it was within our means to achieve, and it had thesupport of those we were trying to help."[xliv] However, he condemned theTruman Doctrine "because when the cold war was conceived as a moralcrusade, it inflated an involvement that was essentially pragmatic into amoral crusade."[xlv] He said "the language of the Truman Doctrine . Acheson The Secretary of State Who Changed the American World. Heclaimed that "the technique of the Truman Doctrine was to invert reality byimporting the urgency of a political crisis in the United States to themovement of events in the international sphere, thereby affecting analteration of the political situation, which, in turn, significantlyinfluenced the international situation."[xlii] He added, "in 1947-8, inorder to mobilize the country behind his foreign policy, Truman himselfemployed and permitted his subordinates to employ many of the same means ofrestricting democratic freedoms that he would later condemn."[xliii] The Cold War would continue for many decades. "Editor's Introduction," inThe Origins of the Cold War, eds. The Origins of the Cold War. "Origins of the Cold War." Foreign Affairs 46 (October 1967): 21-52.Steel, Ronald. .it involved the containment of an ideology [and] provided the rationale fora policy of global intervention against communism, even where Americansecurity interests were not involved."[xlvi] He called McCarthyism "alogical corollary of the Truman Doctrine," a reaction to insecurity, actsof self-exorcism by a people tormented by demons."[xlvii]Neo-Revisionism and Synthesis After the end of the Cold War, a number of books have appeared makingup a new neo-revisionist school on the origins and course of the Cold Warwhich attempt to synthesize earlier views and to incorporate new evidence.Among them are the books of Leffler, Gaddis and Powarski referred to below. . policiesthat served class interests."[xxxviii] LaFeber insinuated that the reversalof American policy on reparations was influenced by the heads of largeAmerican corporations, such as General Motor's Alfred Sloan.[xxxix]Patterson called the Truman Doctrine "alarmist" and misleading.[xl] Hecited Stalin's observance of his informal agreement with Churchill ofOctober 9, 1944 under which Greece was assigned to the British sphere ofinterest. Walter LaFeber, 5-15. They were all critical ofthe overly broad language of Truman's March 12 speech which Gaddis said"encouraged a simplistic view of the Cold War which was, in time, toimprison American diplomacy in a ideological straitjacket."[lii] However,Leffler said "underlying the ideological crusade were deeply rootedgeopolitical concerns."[liii] All three agreed that the strategic interestsof the United States were directly involved in the potential loss ofWestern Europe in the late 194 s. Freelands devoted an entire book to the tenuous thesis that the RedScare, McCarthyism, was largely attributable to the political motivationsof the Truman administration and its mishandling of its employee loyalty-security program which was announced 9 days after the Truman Doctrine. America, Russia, and The Cold War, 1945-1971. Kennan, George F. According to Chace, "persuading Congress to vote the funds to shoreup Greece and Turkey was a formidable task."[ii] Since their victory in theNovember 1946 election, the Republicans, who were on a budget-cutting spreewhich had already resulted in a 7 percent cut in the wartime defensebudget, controlled the purse strings. Morgenthau, "Essay," in The Origins of the Cold War, eds. It was naiveof American statesmen in 1943-1946 to think they could do anything to alterthe realities of power, and by trying to do so, they unnecessarilyantagonized the Soviet Union. The basicproblem was that a leftist insurgency which had engulfed the country incivil war sought to overthrow a rightwing monarchist government whichBritain had installed in power in 1944 and supported since. A Preponderance of Power, National Security, the Truman Administration, and the Cold War. Stalin'sunilateral approach to security which in his view "came only byintimidating or eliminating potential challengers."[xlix] Gaddis detected from the whole record a strain of cautious realismand respect for Western strength in Stalin's moves in Europe, the MiddleEast and Asia. The Truman Doctrine is the name given to the rationale advanced bythe administration of President Harry Truman to justify American economicand military aid to Greece and Turkey in the spring of 1947. One was Soviet tardiness in withdrawing theirforces from northern Iran, which by mutual agreement with the West was tooccur by March 2, 1946, and their fomenting of a separatist movement inIranian Azerbaijan, which led to an Iranian protest at the United Nationsand a stiff American protest note and Soviet withdrawal by May. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.Schlesinger, Arthur. Similarly, David Horovitz in his 1965 book,The Free World Colossus argued that "the Cold War . While he believed vitalAmerican national interests underpinned both the Truman Doctrine and theMarshall Plan, which helped restore a reasonable balance of power inCentral Europe, he warned that "the United States should not make themistake of escalating it into global proportions, for America could notrealistically undertake to play 'policeman to the world.'"[xxxi] He lateropposed American military intervention in Vietnam on these grounds. . Kennan's views gained wide currency among Washington policy elitesin 1946-1947, but there was also considerable support for an even moreapocalyptic view of Soviet intentions which was contained in the secretreport prepared by Clifford and presidential aide George Elsey in September1946 and which stated flatly that "Soviet leaders appear to be conductingtheir nation on a course of aggrandizement designed to lead to eventualworld domination by the U.S.S.R."[xix] According to McCullough, "the Truman Doctrine was not an abrupt,dramatic turn in American policy, but . President Franklin Roosevelt placed hisfaith in postwar cooperation among the four policemen, the U.S., Britain,Russia and Nationalist China, through a system of collective security underthe United Nations. New York: Knopf, 1972.Gaddis, John Lewis. He backed down when presented with countervailing force inIran, Turkey, during the Berlin Blockade and over the occupation of Japan.He did not support the Greek communists. If anything, Leffler said American policymakers overestimated in1945-1946 their ability to influence events through economic means and inparticular failed to realize that "Britain was weaker than they thought;European financial problems were more intractable, German and Japaneseeconomic woes were more deep-seated; revolutionary nationalism morevirulent; Soviet actions more ominous; and American demobilization morerapid" than they originally contemplated.[li] They saw the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan not as anapplication of overwhelming American hegemony but rather as an attempt toremedy the appalling weaknesses of Western Europe and also Greece andTurkey which had become apparent by early 1947. J. He saw most Soviet moves there and in theNear East as consistent with "the traditional interests of Russianexpansionism," not Marxist-Leninist ideology.[xxx] He said it was"untenable . Waltham, MA: Ginn and Company, 197 .Huthmacher, J. Thedominant view among neo-revisionists is that the view of the origins of theCold War embedded in the Truman Doctrine was too simplistic and itsformulation helped bring about unfortunate consequences not intended by itsauthors, but that the policies it espoused were at the time consistent withAmerican national interests.Immediate Genesis and Contents of the Truman Doctrine On February 21, 1947, the British government notified the StateDepartment that in six weeks it would withdraw its troops from Greece andwould end all economic and military assistance to the Greek and Turkishgovernments. Cleveland: World Publishing, 1959.Yergin, Daniel. New York: Knopf, 5th ed., 1973.Patterson, Thomas G. Susman(Waltham, MA: Ginn and Company, 197 ), v-vi.[x] Kenneth L. Leffler said that "Truman administrationofficials were willing to accept a rupture in the Soviet-U.S. The United States and the Origins of the Cold War, 1941- 1947. Another wasthe aforementioned Soviet pressures on Turkey. None of these authors agreedwith the left revisionists that anti-Soviet sentiment was determinative ofthe decision by Truman to drop atomic bombs on Japan. The Cold Waroriginated in an accumulation of tensions and conflicting interests betweenthe Soviet Union and the Western powers which developed in the first fewyears after the end of World War II and which ripened into a protractedstate of hostility in the years 1948-195 . On May 3, 1946, General Lucius Clay cut off allreparations shipments to the East. George Kennan Cold War Iconoclast. Kennan Cold War Iconoclast (New York:Columbia University Press, 1989), 3 .[xix] Clifford, 126.[xx] McCullough, 559.[xxi] Ibid., 562.[xxii] George F. . Dream and Reality Aspects of American Foreign Policy. Politics Among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace. A series of events in late 1945 and early 1946 contributed to agrowing Western consensus that the Soviets were seeking to expand beyondtheir zones of occupation. Good examples of this type of thinking is contained in Gar Alperovitz'1965 book Atomic Diplomacy which essentially argues that Truman attemptedto construct an American-dominated world order, particularly in EasternEurope, through economic coercion and atomic diplomacy. Bailey, "The Kremlin Did Not Want Agreement-Except on ItsTerms," in ed. The Truman Doctrine And The Origins of McCarthyism. In the United States, Bailey said aconsiderable segment of the public in 1945-1946 "clamored that the slipperyStalin had sold to sickly Roosevelt advised by the sickly Hopkins agigantic gold brick" at Yalta.[xiv] American and British protests over Soviet policies in Poland and theBalkans occupied much of the diplomatic dialogue at the July 1945 PotsdamConference and at meetings of the Big Four Foreign Ministers in 1945-1946,but eventually Secretary of State James Byrnes negotiated with his Sovietcounterpart, Foreign Minister Vyacheslav, arrangements under which theregimes of Eastern Europe outside of Germany were recognized by the West.In 1945, Truman, who was inexperienced in foreign affairs, and poorlybriefed by FDR on them, vacillated between trying to get along with theRussians and taking a firm stand against them. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992.Morgenthau, Hans J. J. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974.McCullough, David. Thompson. Cold War Theories Volume I World Polarization,1945-1953 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1981).[xi] Ronald F. . .. Leffler, A Preponderance of Power National Security, theTruman Administration, and the Cold War (Stanford: Stanford UniversityPress, 1992), p. Soviet-American Confrontation Postwar Reconstruction And The Origins of The Cold War. relationshipbecause they were convinced that the dangers of inaction greatly exceededthe risks that inhered in provoking the Soviets." [liv] Gaddis regretted the later militarization and globalization of theCold War, but said at the time the Truman Doctrine was intended to counterthreats which were perceived as primarily political and economic, notmilitary, and limited to Western Europe and the eastern Mediterranean. The proclamation of abstractdoctrine, although it would loom larger for the historian, had to comesecond."[xxxiii]Revisionist and Neo-Revisionist Interpretations The basic thrust of the revisionist writers, whose works werepublished during the 196 s and 197 s at the height of the Cold War andwhile the Vietnam War divided the United States, was that the Cold War wascaused not by a justifiable response by the West to the communist threat toWestern Europe and the Middle East, as the traditional view holds, nor byan inevitable clash of fundamentally irreconcilable interests, as therealists believed, but rather due to the errors and misjudgments or worseof American statesmen. Kennan, Memoirs, 1925-195 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1967),325.[xxiii] Daniel Yergin, Shattered Peace: The Origins of the Cold War And TheNational Security State (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1977), 3 3.[xxiv] Kennan, 319-32 .[xxv] Hixson, 74.[xxvi] Thompson, 43.[xxvii] Hans J. the Americans must be prepared to draw the line."[xvii] It also reflectedthe gradual emergence within the American government of a broader re-evaluation of Soviet intentions which was provided by its charge d'affairesin Moscow George Kennan in his Long Telegram of February 22, 1946.According to Hixson, Kennan "depicted an unstable, xenophobic Soviet regimewhose very survival depended on expansion, especially along its ownborders," and which was motivated by neurotic fears and suspicions of theWest and a revolutionary Marxist-Leninist ideology which made it "apolitical force committed fanatically to the belief that with us there canbe no permanent modus vivendi."[xviii] Kennan did not advocate preventivewar against Russia, but rather a policy of containment, the persistentapplication of countervailing Western political, economic and militarypressure, to which he said the Soviets, as realists, would respondlogically and which over the long run might help unleash forces which wouldlead either to liberalization of the regime or its overthrow by internalforces. subjugation."[xli] He accused Truman of misleadingthe public by not revealing the corrupt and reactionary nature of theregime in Athens. "Essay." In The Origins of the Cold War, eds. . He argued that aprincipal, if not the main reason, atomic bombs were dropped on Japan wasto intimidate the Soviet Union. . Stalin acknowledged as much to Yugoslavleader Milovan Djilas in early 1945: "whoever occupies a territory alsoimposes his own system."[xiii] These developments posed a political problemfor western democratic leaders because they had failed to prepare theirpublics for this eventuality. Joseph Huthmacher and Warren I. According to Yergin, "evenas U.S. Boston: Little, Brown, 1967.Kolko, Joyce and Gabriel. . Counsel to the President A Memoir. We Know Now Rethinking Cold War History. Congressional leaders who weresummoned to the White House on February 27 appeared unconvinced untilAcheson told them: that if Greece fell to communism, a Russian"breakthrough . New York: Columbia University Press, 1989.Huthmacher, J. . Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1981.Williams, William Appleman. . . We Now Know Rethinking Cold War History (Oxford:Clarendon Press, 1997).[xiv] Thomas A. President, if youwill say that to the Congress and the country, I will support you and Ibelieve that most of the members will do the same" and added that Trumanneeded "to scare hell out of the country."[iv] Acheson and Truman's aide Clark Clifford ended up being the principaldraftsmen of Truman's speech to the Congress on March 12, which reflectedTruman's instructions that it "be free of hesitation or double-talk."[v] Itcontained the following key phrase: "I believe that it must be the policy of the United States to supportpeoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or byoutside pressures."[vi] By votes of 67-23 in the Senate and 287-1 3 in the House, a programof $4 million in aid to these countries was approved.Traditional Rationale According to the official accounts and those accepted by mostorthodox or traditional writers and historians, the Truman Doctrine andother Western actions which accompanied it in the early years of the ColdWar such as the Marshall Plan (June 5, 1947), the decision to mergeAmerican and British occupation zones in Germany in 1947-1948, the BerlinBlockade 1948-1949, the setting up of a non-communist West Germany (1948-1949) and the formation of NATO (1949) were, in Schlesinger's words "thebrave and essential response of free men to communist aggression."[vii] Thesignificance of the Truman Doctrine, said Clifford, was that "for the firsttime in peacetime, we committed ourselves to continuous and activeleadership in international affairs."[viii] That action was deemednecessary, said Huthmacher and Susman in summarizing this view, because America's wartime vision of a peaceful and progressive postwar world, built upon principles of collective security sustained by the United Nations and continuing Big Power collaboration, was shattered by the resurfacing of Russian ambitions to foment revolution and conquest on behalf of communism's cause. According toLeffler, "the specific fear was that the Greek Communists (KKE) would gainpower and align Greece with the Soviet Union."[i] Turkey was, in fact,under no immediate threat but had been subjected in 1945-1946 to strongSoviet pressures to open the Turkish Straits to Soviet bases and to cedeslices of territory in eastern Turkey to Russia. "Editor's Introduction." In The Origins of the Cold War, eds. J.Joseph Huthmacher and Warren I. In early1947, Western Europe was viewed as politically unstable, economicallyfragile, financially weak and militarily defenseless. He alleged that Henderson falsely accused Russia of interveningin Greece and that in Turkey "Russia was primarily concerned with itssecurity, not with . to place all responsibility upon Stalin and communism" oron the West for the origin of the Cold War. Byrnescame around to this view and in September 1946 told the Germans atStuttgart that the Allies favored the West Germans taking moreresponsibility for their own affairs. Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations: The Struggle for Powerand Peace (New York: Knopf, 5th ed., 1973), 9.[xxviii] Ibid., 3.[xxix] Hans J. Unfortunately, in the Truman Doctrine hesaid "we assumed a sort of unlimited commitment that we would not be ableto fulfill completely and fully . An example of the former was Wilsonian D.F. Soft-liners included former Ambassador JosephDavies, Secretary of Commerce Wallace and Hopkins. Susman, 79-1 4. Waltham, MA: Ginn and Company, 197 .LaFeber, Walter. Members ofthe American realist foreign policy school, many of whom helped frame thecontainment policy, supported the specific aims of the Truman Doctrine, butbelieved that the origins of the Cold War were systemic and opposed itssweeping anti-communist rhetoric which Truman deemed necessary to ensurebipartisan Congressional and public support. came about largelyas the result of unilateral American acts to which the Soviet Union reacteddefensively."[xxxv] The main thesis of Diane Shaver's 197 book Yalta wasthat the Cold War was produced by American, not Soviet, violations of theYalta Accords. Fleming who in his 1961 book The Cold War and Its Origins argued that byfailing to continue FDR's policies toward the Soviet Union, Truman, due toignorance and inexperience, "destroyed an essentially sound relationshipwith the Soviet Union" and that the failure of clumsy attempts by Byrnes touse threats based on America's monopoly of the atomic bomb and economiccoercion to change Soviet policy "caused Truman by the fall of 1945 toformulate the Truman Doctrine which institutionalized the conflict."[xxxiv]Most of the revisionists, soft or hard, repeated the same line Wallace hadtaken in 1947, namely, that Stalin basically was interested only inadvancing the legitimate concerns of the Soviet Union after a devastatingwar. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1973.Powarski, Ronald E. Shattered Peace: The Origin of The Cold War And The National Security State. ENDNOTES -----------------------[i] Melvyn P. Powarski, The Cold War The United States and The SovietUnion: 1917-1991 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 55.[xii] Walter LaFeber, The Origins of the Cold War, 1941-1947 (New York:John Wiley & Sons, 1971), 53-54.[xiii] John Lewis Gaddis. Susman (Waltham, MA: Ginn and Company,197 ), 9 .[xxx] Ibid., 97-98.[xxxi] Huthmacher and Susman, vii.[xxxii] Louis J. fears thatthe Soviets were prepared to use their satellite states to fight proxy warsagainst the West."[lv]Conclusion The Truman Doctrine was a necessary action by the United States andreflected a growing and prudent consensus by American policymakers tocounter what reasonably appeared to them to be a provocative and dangerousSoviet and communist threat to vital American national interests. . New York: Random House, 1991.Freeland, Richard M. On May 14, 1947Churchill called Europe "a rubble-heap, a charnel house, a breeding groundof pestilence and hate."[xxi] Kennan said "it was plain that the Sovietleaders had a political interest in seeing the economies of the WesternEuropean peoples fail under anything other their Communistleadership."[xxii] The aid to Greece and Turkey was a precursor, therefore,to the much broader and larger program of American aid to reconstructEurope which became known as the Marshall Plan. According to the traditional school of thought,reliance on the policy of containment rather than negotiations had beennecessitated by Soviet actions since the end of World War II. Hixson, George F. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997.Halle, Louis J. Walter LaFeber, The Origins of The Cold War, 1941-1947 (NewYork: John Wiley & Sons, 1971), 7.[xv] Chace, 135.[xvi] Ibid., 154.[xvii] Ibid., 155.[xviii] Walter L. Pax Americana. BibliographyBailey, Thomas A. The Limits of Power The World and United States Foreign Policy, 1945-1954. Truman. Halle, Dream and Reality Aspects of American ForeignPolicy (New York: Harper & Row, 1959), 292, 296-297.[xxxiii] Louis J. Joseph Huthmacher and Warren I. . Joseph Huthmacher and Warren I. Gaddis, agreeing with the realists, saw anirreconcilable conflict in 1945-1947 between Western aims in Europe,liberal democracy, open markets, and collective security vs. TRUMAN DOCTRINE This research paper examines the relationship between the TrumanDoctrine and the Cold War, as seen from the traditional, realist,revisionist and neo-revisionist points of view. Nazi Germany's wars ofaggression forced a marriage of convenience, the Grand Alliance of theUnited States, Great Britain and the Soviet Union, which, despite a greatdeal of mutual suspicion, remained intact until the common Axis enemies(Germany and Japan) were destroyed. He argued that "statesmen think andact in terms of interest defined as power."[xxvii] He decried the Americanbelief in Wilsonian ideals, that there was "a rational and moral politicalorder, derived from universally valid abstract principles."[xxviii] In hisview, "spheres of influence are the ineluctable byproduct of the interplayof interests and power in a society of sovereign nations."[xxix] The SovietUnion had a legitimate sphere of interest in Eastern Europe. Secretary of State JamesByrnes wavered between the hawkish and moderate camps. "The Kremlin Did Not Want Agreement-Except on Their Terms." In The Origins of the Cold War, 1941-1947, ed. On FDR's wartime diplomacy with Stalin, the consensus is that he wasright to endeavor to enlist the Soviets to cooperate in the establishment amore peaceful world order, but Powarski said "Roosevelt overestimated hisown ability to influence Stalin."[xlviii] The contours of postwar Europewere settled on the battlefield. . Patterson, Soviet-American Confrontation PostwarReconstruction And The Origins of the Cold War (Baltimore: Johns HopkinsPress, 1972, 27.[xli] Ibid., 188 and 193.[xlii] Richard Freeland, The Truman Doctrine And The Origins of McCarthyism(New York: Knopf, 1972), 94.[xliii] Ibid., 36 .[xliv] Ronald Steel, Pax Americana (New York: Viking Press, 1967), 11.[xlv] Ibid., 5.[xlvi] Ibid., 22.[xlvii] Ibid., 25.[xlviii] Powarski, 64.[xlix] Gaddis, 14-15.[l] Ibid., 14.[li] Leffler, 16.[lii] John Lewis Gaddis, The United States and the Origins of the Cold War,1941-1947 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1972), 352.[liii] Leffler, 146.[liv] Ibid., 5 4.[lv] Powarski, 9 . we shouted a war cry and proclaimedan ideological crusade."[xxxii] He cautioned, however, that for Truman andAcheson, "what was important was to obtain Congressional authorization andappropriations for aid to Greece and Turkey. J. . The Truman Doctrine was the direct outgrowth of a conviction whichChace said Truman and Acheson held in the fall of 1946 that "the Turkishcrisis was a clear sign that the Russians would not be content with asphere of influence in Eastern Europe, but instead were engaged in a policyof renewed expansion. New York: Viking Press, 1967.Thompson, Kenneth. New York: Columbia University Press, 1972.Gaddis, John Lewis. The Cold War The United States and The Soviet Union, 1917-1991. . According to Chace, "in 1945 and 1946 American foreign policyfluctuated like a compass needle seeking the right azimuth."[xv] However,concerns about Soviet actions outside their zone of control intensifiedduring 1946. . Thereal turning point in the militarization and globalization of the Cold Warwas the North Korean invasion of South Korea on June 25, 195 with Chineseand Soviet support which Powarski said "seemed to confirm . Cold War Theories Volume I World Polarization, 1945- 1953. He told senior State Department official WilliamBullitt that Harry Hopkins had told him that Stalin "doesn't want anythingbut security for his country, and I think that if I give him everything Ipossibly can and ask nothing in return, noblesse oblige, he won't try toannex anything and will work with me for a world of democracy andpeace."[xi] The failure of the Allied armies to launch a second front in Europeuntil June 1944 and the victories of the Red Army in the East ensured thatthe Soviet Union would end up in 1945 in control of most of Central and allof Eastern Europe. Halle, The Cold War As History (New York: Harper & Row,1967), 118.[xxxiv] Robert James Maddox, The New Left And The Origins of The Cold War(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974), 4, 4 and 41.[xxxv] Maddox, 8 .[xxxvi] William Appleman Williams, The Tragedy of American Diplomacy(Cleveland: World Publishing, 1959), 169 and 2 8.[xxxvii] Joyce and Gabriel Kolko, The Limits of Power The World and UnitedStates Foreign Policy, 1945-1954 (New York: Harper & Row, 1972), 11.[xxxviii] Ibid., 333-334.[xxxix] Walter LaFeber, America, Russia and The Cold War, 1945-1971), 2 .[xl] Thomas G. In Germany, harsh occupation policies, including Sovietactions to repress democratic politics in Berlin, and Russian (and French)insistence on taking reparations from the western zones met British andAmerican resistance. might open three continents to Sovietpenetration."[iii] Senator Arthur Vandenberg said: "Mr. . Itswording served an immediate political purpose in generating bipartisansupport, but it was the first step down a slippery road that led to somelater American actions during the Cold War which made little sense. The Cold War As History. William Williams arguedthat "American leaders initially assumed that the combination of Americanstrength and Russian weakness would enable them to structure the postwarworld according to the principles of the Open Door Policy," a capitalist,free trade-oriented economic system, of which the Truman Doctrine and theMarshall Plan were two sides.[xxxvi] Gabriel and Joyce Kolko maintainedthat "the United States' ultimate aim at the end of World War II was bothto sustain and to reform world capitalism."[xxxvii] The purpose of theTruman Doctrine was to sustain reactionary elements in Greece and Turkeyand "to make plausible [to Congress and the American public] . .implied a commitment far beyond the communist threat to those nations . New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2d. The United States could not, because thestability and independence of Western Europe were vital American interests.Essential to European recovery was the revitalization of German industryand its integration into Western Europe which inevitably meant a dividedGermany.Realist Perspective As director of the State Department's Policy Planning Staff, Kennanparticipated in the formulation of the Truman Doctrine and the MarshallPlan. Susman. In like vein, realist-revisionist Louis Halle said the United Stateshad pursued unrealistic aims toward the Soviet Union during World War II.But he said in 1947, we awoke to a new and frightening reality -- "westernEurope and England" as well as Greece "on the edge of collapse"-- andbelatedly took appropriate action. New York: Harper & Row, 1959.Halle, Louis J. On the other hand, he probed forWestern weakness. A hard core of economic determinism pervades many of the works whichMaddox places in the hard revisionism category. At a meeting with Achesonand Forrestal on August 15, 1946, Truman agreed that "it was vital toprotect the Straits from any Soviet incursion" and authorized an Americannaval show of force in the Straits that fall, after which Soviet pressurediminished.[xvi] Other events included the disclosure in early February1946 of a Soviet spy ring in Canada, Stalin's speech to the Supreme Sovieton February 9, 1946 in which he emphasized the threat posed to the SovietUnion by hostile international capitalism and stressed the need forrearmament, Winston Churchill's 'Iron Curtain' speech in Fulton, Missouriof March 5, 1946, the permanent disappearance of 15 London-based Polesinvited for talks behind the Iron Curtain and new demands by Molotov for aRussian share in the control of coal and steel production in the Ruhr. Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1992.Maddox, Robert James. Susman, eds. British Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevinplayed a key role in promoting the idea of merging economically andadministratively the American and British zones into Bizonia which wasfinally accomplished in January 1947. The New Left And The Origins of the Cold War. Susman, v-x. Joseph and Warren I. Especially in the Mediterranean and the Near East . New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1971.Chace, James. The United States' political, economic, and military response to this threat represented her assumption of leadership among the 'peace loving' peoples of the world in defense of self-determination and other 'democratic' values.[ix] According to Thompson, "the official viewpoint has tended toattribute major responsibility for the outbreak and intensification of theCold War to the Soviet Union and in particular to Premier [Josef] Stalinand the policies he pursued."[x] Sources of East-West Conflict, as Perceived in the West. Most revisionists condemnedthe Truman Doctrine as based on a faulty reading of Soviet intentions andactions and as an expression of American attempts to achieve worldeconomic, political and military hegemony in league with reactionary forceswhich contributed to the deepening and prolongation of the Cold War. New York: Harper & Row, 1972.Leffler, Melvyn P. He objected, however, to the inclusion of Turkey, which he thoughtnot to be under any imminent threat, and more fundamentally, to "thesweeping nature of the commitments it implied" and placing American aid "inthe framework of a universal policy rather than in that of a specificdecision addressed to a specific set of circumstances."[xxiv] WalterLippmann, who supported the American commitment to oppose Soviet designs onwestern Europe, similarly questioned the messianic rhetoric of the TrumanDoctrine and as well Kennan's theory of containment which he said was a"strategic monstrosity," which could "be implemented only by recruiting,subsidizing and supporting a heterogenous array of satellites, clients,dependents and puppets" at enormous cost to the West.[xxv] By the 196 s,Lippmann was drawing a cause and effect relationship between the mismatchbetween American resources and commitments such as in the Vietnam War whichhe said could be traced back to 1947 and Truman's decision to "follow astrategy aimed at bringing about the decline and disintegration ofCommunist ideology and power" which had led to "the United States becomingdangerously overextended."[xxvi] Morgenthau was of a similar mind. 143.[ii] James Chace, Acheson The Secretary of State Who Created The AmericanWorld (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1998), 165.[iii] Leffler, 145.[iv] Ibid.; and Chace 166.[v] David McCullough, Truman (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992), 546.[vi] Walter LaFeber, ed., The Origins of the Cold War, 1941-1947 (New York:John Wiley & Sons, 1971), 155.[vii] Arthur Schlesinger, "Origins of the Cold War," Foreign Affairs 46(October 1967): 22-52.[viii] Clark Clifford with Richard Holbrooke, Counsel to the President AMemoir (New York: Random House, 1991), 13 .[ix] J. InSeptember 1946, Wallace was forced to resign after he gave a speech inwhich he called for a return to Roosevelt's policies toward Russia. Within a few days, the key decision-makers in theadministration, Undersecretary of State Dean Acheson and AssistantSecretary of State Loy Henderson, prepared recommendations that the UnitedStates replace the British and secured the concurrence of Secretary of WarJames Forrestal, Secretary of State George Marshall and Truman. a continuation of a policy thathad been evolving since Potsdam."[xx] Moreover, much more was deemed to beat stake than the future of Greece and Turkey or the Middle East. Gaddis said "Stalin was fully prepared to useunconventional means to promote Soviet interests beyond the territories heruled" and "he by no means excluded the possibility of eventual war withcapitalism."[l] He said new information suggests that Stalin did initiallyfavor German unity because he thought that "economic distress" might leadthe Germans to lean to the East, but the Soviets' actions in Germany in1945-1947 united West Germans against him. . It expressed aconsensus among senior American policymakers, which was reached earlier,that the United States in collaboration with other European nations shouldresist and contain the threat of Soviet communist expansion in WesternEurope and its periphery. Among his close advisershardliners included Admiral William Leahy, FDR's Chief of Staff, thenSecretary of the Navy Forrestal, Ambassador to the Soviet Union AverellHarriman and, on economic issues, Under Secretary of State Joseph Grew.Retiring Secretary of War Henry Stimson, especially on atomic issues, andmilitary leaders such as Generals George Marshall and Dwight Eisenhowertook a more moderate stance. Joseph Huthmacher and Warren I. The British, hardpressed financially,could see little point in subsidizing a starving and devastated Germanyonly to see a large portion of its industry siphoned off to Russia. ed., 1972. Powarski and Leffler agreed that economic factors were more importantin influencing postwar American policies than the traditional historiansallowed. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1998.Clifford, Clark with Richard Holbrooke. policymakers were formulating the Truman Doctrine, they saw beforethem an economic crisis [in Western Europe] with momentousproportions."[xxiii] Marshall arrived at the conclusion after meeting withStalin on April 15, 1947 that Stalin was hoping to take advantage of theturmoil in Western Europe through the large communist parties in Italy andFrance and could afford to wait. If this paper is not what you are looking for, you can search again: Search for: or Click here to request an essay written just for you.

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