U.S. - Soviet relations

The issue arose again during the Allied invasion of Italy. There, too, concern with expediting military victory and securing political stability caused Britain and the United States to negotiate with the fascist Badoglio regime. "We cannot be put into a position," Churchill said, "where our two armies are doing all the fighting but Russians have a veto." Yet Stalin bitterly resented being excluded from participation in the Italian negotiations. The Soviet Union protested vigorously the failure to establish a tripartite commission to conduct all occupation negotiations. It was time, Stalin said, to stop viewing Russia as "a passive third observer. ... It is impossible to tolerate such a situation any longer." In the end, Britain and the United States offered the token concession of giving the Soviets an innocuous role on the advisory commission dealing with Italy, but the primary result of the Italian experience was to reemphasize a crucial political reality: when push came to shove, those who exercised military control in an immediate situation would also exercise political control over any occupation regime.

The shoe was on the other foot when it came to Western desires to have a voice over Soviet actions in the Balkan states, particularly Romania. By not giving Russia an opportunity to participate in the Italian surrender, the West-in effect-helped legitimize Russia's desire to proceed unilaterally in Eastern Europe. Although both Churchill and Roosevelt were "acutely conscious of the great importance of the Balkan situation" and wished to "take advantage of" any opportunity to exercise influence in that area, the simple fact was that Soviet troops were in control. Churchill-and privately Roosevelt as well-accepted the con-sequences. "The occupying forces had the power in the area where their arms were present," Roosevelt noted, "and each knew that the other could not force things to an issue." But the contradiction between the stated idealistic aims of the war effort and such realpolitik would come back to haunt the prospect for postwar collaboration, particularly in the areas of Poland and other east European countries.

Moments of conflict, of course, took place within the context of day-to-day cooperation in meeting immediate wartime needs. Some-times, such cooperation seemed deep and genuine enough to provide a basis for overcoming suspicion and conflict of interest. At the Moscow foreign ministers conference in the fall of 1943, the Soviets proved responsive to U.S. concerns. Reassured that there would indeed be a second front in Europe in 1944, the Russians strongly endorsed a postwar international organization to preserve the peace. More impor-tant, they indicated they would join the war against Japan as soon as Germany was defeated, and appeared willing to accept the Chiang Kaishek government in China as a major participant in world politics. In some ways, these were a series of quid pro quos. In exchange for the second front, Russia had made concessions on issues of critical impor-tance to Britain and the United States. Nevertheless, the results were encouraging. FDR reported that the conference had created "a psy-chology of ... excellent feeling." Instead of being "cluttered with suspicion," the discussions had occurred in an atmosphere that "was amazingly good."

The same spirit continued at the first meeting of Stalin, Churchill, and Roosevelt in Tehran during November and early December 1943. Committed to winning Stalin as a friend, FDR stayed at the Soviet Embassy, met privately with Stalin, aligned himself with the Soviet leader against Churchill on a number of issues, and even went so far as to taunt Churchill "about his Britishness, about John Bull," in an effort to forge an informal "anti-imperial" alliance between the United States and the Soviet Union. A spirit of cooperation prevailed, with the wartime leaders agreeing that the Big Four would have the power to police any postwar settlements (clearly consistent with Stalin's commitment to a "sphere of influence" approach), reaffirming plans for a joint military effort against Japan, and even--after much difficulty--appearing to find a common approach to the difficulties of Poland and Eastern Europe. When it was all over, FDR told the American people: "I got along fine with Marshall Stalin ... I believe he is truly representative of the heart and soul of Russia; and I believe that we are going to get along very well with him and the Russian people--very well indeed." When pressed on what kind of a person the Soviet leader was, Roosevelt responded:

"I would call him something like me, ... a realist."

The final conference of Stalin, Churchill, and Roosevelt at Yalta in February 1945 appeared at the time to carry forward the partnership, although in retrospect it would become clear that the facade of unity was built on a foundation of misperceptions rooted in the different values, priorities, and political ground rules of the two societies. Stalin seemed to recognize Roosevelt's need to present postwar plans--for domestic political reasons--as consistent with democratic, universalistic principles. Roosevelt, in turn, appreciated Stalin's need for friendly governments on his borders. The three leaders agreed on concrete plans for Soviet participation in the Japanese war, and Stalin reiterated his support for a coalition government in China with Chiang Kaishek assuming a position of leadership. Although some of Roosevelt's aides were skeptical of the agreements made, most came back confident that they had succeeded in laying a basis for continued partnership. As Harry Hopkins later recalled, "we really believed in our hearts that this was the dawn of the new day we had all been praying for. The Russians have proved that they can be reasonable and far-seeing and there wasn't any doubt in the minds of the president or any of us that we could live with them and get along with them peacefully for as far into the future as any of us could imagine."

In fact, two disquietingly different perceptions of the Soviet Union existed as the war drew to an end. Some Washington officials believed that the mystery of Russia was no mystery at all, simply a reflection of a national history in which suspicion of outsiders was natural, given repeated invasions from Western Europe and rampant hostility toward communism on the part of Western powers. Former Ambassador to Moscow Joseph Davies believed that the way to cut through that suspicion was to adopt "the simple approach of assuming that what they say, they mean." On the basis of his personal negotiations with the Russians, presidential aide Harry Hopkins shared the same confidence.

The majority of well-informed Americans, however, endorsed the opposite position. It was folly, one newspaper correspondent wrote, "to prettify Stalin, whose internal homicide record is even longer than Hitler's." Hitler and Stalin were two of the same breed, former Ambas-sador to Russia William Bullitt insisted. Each wanted to spread his power "to the ends of the earth. Stalin, like Hitler, will not stop. He can only be stopped." According to Bullitt, any alternative view implied "a conversion of Stalin as striking as the conversion of Saul on the road to Damascus." Senator Robert Taft agreed. It made no sense, he insisted, to base U.S. policy toward the Soviet Union "on the delightful theory that Mr. Stalin in the end will turn out to have an angelic nature." Drawing on the historical precedents of the purge trials and traditional American hostility to communism, totalitarianism, and Stalin, those who held this point of view saw little hope of compromise. "There is as little difference between communism and fascism," Monsignor Fulton J. Sheen said, "as there is between burglary and larceny." The only appropriate response was force. Instead of "leaning over backward to be nice to the descendents of Genghis Khan," General George Patton suggested, "[we] should dictate to them and do it now and in no uncertain terms." Within such a frame of reference, the lessons of history and of ideological incompatibility seemed to permit no possibility of compromise.

But Roosevelt clearly felt that there was a third way, a path of mutual accommodation that would sustain and nourish the prospects of postwar partnership without ignoring the realities of geopolitics. The choice in his mind was clear. "We shall have to take the responsibility for world collaboration," he told Congress, "or we shall have to bear the responsibility for another world conflict." President Roosevelt was neither politically naive nor stupid. Even though committed to the Atlantic Charter's ideals of self-determination and territorial integrity, he recognized the legitimate need of the Soviet Union for national security. For him, the process of politics--informed by thirty-five years of skilled practice--involved striking a deal that both sides could live with. Roosevelt acknowledged the brutality, the callousness, the tyranny of the Soviet system. Indeed, in 1940 he had called Russia as absolute a dictatorship as existed anywhere. But that did not mean a solution was impossible, or that one should withdraw from the struggle to find a basis for world peace. As he was fond of saying about negotiations with Russia, "it is permitted to walk with the devil until the bridge is crossed."

The problem was that, as Roosevelt defined the task of finding a path of accommodation, it rested solely on his shoulders. The president possessed an almost mystical confidence in his own capacity to break through policy differences based on economic structures and political systems, and to develop a personal relationship of trust that would transcend impersonal forces of division. "I know you will not mind my being brutally frank when I tell you," he wrote Churchill in 1942, "[that] I think I can personally handle Stalin better than either your Foreign Office or my State Department. Stalin hates the guts of all your top people. He thinks he likes me better, and I hope he will continue to do so." Notwithstanding the seeming naivete of such statements, Roosevelt appeared right, in at least this one regard. The Soviets did seem to place their faith in him, perhaps thinking that American foreign policy was as much a product of one man's decisions as their own. Roosevelt evidently thought the same way, telling Bullitt, in one of their early foreign policy discussions, "it's my responsibility and not yours; and I'm going to play my hunch."

The tragedy, of course, was that the man who perceived that fostering world peace was his own personal responsibility never lived to carry out his vision. Long in declining health, suffering from advanced arteriosclerosis and a serious cardiac problem, he had gone to Warm Springs, Georgia, to recover from the ordeal of Yalta and the congres-sional session. On April 12, Roosevelt suffered a massive cerebral hemorrhage and died. As word spread across the country, the stricken look on people's faces told those who had not yet heard the news the awful dimensions of what had happened. "He was the only president I ever knew," one woman said. In London, Churchill declared that he felt as if he had suffered a physical blow. Stalin greeted the American ambassador in silence, holding his hand for thirty seconds. The leader of the world's greatest democracy would not live to see the victory he had striven so hard to achieve.

2.2 The Truman Doctrine.

Few people were less prepared for the challenge of becoming president. Although well-read in history, Truman's experience in foreign policy was minimal. His most famous comment on diplomacy had been a statement to a reporter in 1941 that "if we see that Germany is winning [the war] we ought to help Russia, and if Russia is winning we ought to help Germany and that way let them kill as many as possible, although I don't want to see Hitler victorious under any circumstances." As vice-president, Truman had been excluded from all foreign policy discus-sions. He knew nothing about the Manhattan Project. The new president, Henry Stimson noted, labored under the "terrific handicap of coming into... an office where the threads of information were so multitudinous that only long previous familiarity could allow him to control them." More to the point were Truman's own comments: "They didn't tell me anything about what was going on. . . . Everybody around here that should know anything about foreign affairs is out." Faced with burdens sufficiently awesome to intimidate any individual, Truman had to act quickly on a succession of national security questions, aided only by his native intelligence and a no-nonsense attitude reflected in the now-famous slogan that adorned his desk: "The Buck Stops Here."

Truman's dilemma was compounded by the extent to which Roo-sevelt had acted" as his own secretary of state, sharing with almost no one his plans for the postwar period. Roosevelt placed little trust in the State Department's bureaucracy, disagreed with the suspicion exhibited toward Russia by most foreign service officers, and for the most part appeared to believe that he alone held the secret formula for accom-modation with the Soviets. Ultimately that formula presumed the willingness of the Russian leadership "to give the Government of Poland [and other Eastern European countries] an external appearance of inde-pendence [italics added]," in the words of Roosevelt's aide Admiral William Leahy. In the month before his death, FDR had evidently begun to question that presumption, becoming increasingly concerned about Soviet behavior. Had he lived, he may well have adopted a significantly tougher position toward Stalin than he had taken previously. Yet in his last communication with Churchill, Roosevelt was still urging the British prime minister to "minimize the Soviet problem as much as possible . . . because these problems, in one form or another, seem to arrive everyday and most of them straighten out." If Stalin's intentions still remained difficult to fathom so too did Roosevelt's. And now Truman was in charge, with neither Roosevelt's experience to inform him, nor a clear sense of Roosevelt's perceptions to offer him direction.

Without being able to analyze at leisure all the complex information that was relevant, Truman solicited the best advice he could from those who were most knowledgeable about foreign relations. Hurrying back from Moscow, Averell Harriman sought the president's ear, lobbying intensively with White House and State Department officials for his position that "irreconcilable differences" separated the Soviet Union and the United States, with the Russians seeking "the extension of the Soviet system with secret police, [and] extinction of freedom of speech" everywhere they could. Earlier, Harriman had been well disposed toward the Soviet leadership, enthusiastically endorsing Russian interest in a postwar loan and advocating cooperation wherever possible. But now Harriman perceived a hardening of Soviet attitudes and a more ag-gressive posture toward control over Eastern Europe. The Russians had just signed a separate peace treaty with the Lublin (pro-Soviet) Poles, and after offering safe passage to sixteen pro-Western representatives of the Polish resistance to conduct discussions about a government of national unity, had suddenly arrested the sixteen and held them incommunicado. America's previous policy of generosity toward the Soviets had been "misinterpreted in Moscow," Harriman believed, leading the Russians to think they had carte blanche to proceed as they wished. In Harriman's view, the Soviets were engaged in a "barbarian invasion of Europe." Whether or not Roosevelt would have accepted Harriman's analysis, to Truman the ambassador's words made eminent sense. The international situation was like a poker game, Truman told one friend, and he was not going to let Stalin beat him.

Just ten days after taking office, Truman had the opportunity to play his own hand with Molotov. The Soviet foreign minister had been sent by Stalin to attend the first U.N. conference in San Francisco both as a gesture to Roosevelt's memory and as a means of sizing up the new president. In a private conversation with former Ambassador to Moscow Joseph Davies, Molotov expressed his concern that "full information" about Russian-U.S. relations might have died with FDR and that "differences of interpretation and possible complications [might] arise which would not occur if Roosevelt lived." Himself worried that Truman might make "snap judgments," Davies urged Molotov to explain fully Soviet policies vis-a-vis Poland and Eastern Europe in order to avoid future conflict.

Truman implemented the same no-nonsense approach when it came to decisions about the atomic bomb. Astonishingly, it was not until the day after Truman's meeting with Molotov that he was first briefed about the bomb. By that time, $2 billion had already been spent on what Stimson called "the most terrible weapon ever known in human history." Immediately, Truman grasped the significance of the infor-mation. "I can't tell you what this is," he told his secretary, "but if it works, and pray God it does, it will save many American lives." Here was a weapon that might not only bring the war to a swift conclusion, but also provide a critical lever of influence in all postwar relations. As James Byrnes told the president, the bomb would "put us in a position to dictate our own terms at the end of the war."

In the years subsequent to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, historians have debated the wisdom of America's being the first nation to use such a horrible weapon of destruction and have questioned the motivation leading up to that decision. Those who defend the action point to ferocious Japanese resistance at Okinawa and Iwo Jima, and the likelihood of even greater loss of life if an invasion of Japan became necessary. Support for such a position comes even from some Japanese. "If the military had its way," one military expert in Japan has said, "we would have fought until all 80 million Japanese were dead. Only the atomic bomb saved me. Not me alone, but many Japanese. . . ." Those morally repulsed by the incineration of human flesh that resulted from the A-bomb, on the other hand, doubt the necessity of dropping it, citing later U.S. intelligence surveys which concluded that "Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated." Distinguished military leaders such as Dwight Eisenhower later opposed use of the bomb. "First, the Japanese were ready to surrender, and it wasn't necessary to hit them with that awful thing," Eisenhower noted. "Second, I hated to see our country be the first to use such a weapon." In light of such statements, some have asked why there was no effort to communicate the horror of the bomb to America's adversaries either through a demonstration explosion or an ultimatum. Others have questioned whether the bomb would have been used on non-Asians, although the fire-bombing of Dresden claimed more victims than Hiroshima. Perhaps most seriously, some have charged that the bomb was used primarily to intimidate the Soviet Union rather than to secure victory over Japan.

Although revulsion at America's deployment of atomic weapons is understandable, it now appears that no one in the inner circles of American military and political power ever seriously entertained the possibility of not using the bomb. As Henry Stimson later recalled, "it was our common objective, throughout the war, to be the first to produce an atomic weapon and use it. ... At no time, from 1941 to 1945, did I ever hear it suggested by the president, or by any other responsible member of the government, that atomic energy should not be used in the war." As historians Martin Sherwin and Barton Bernstein have shown, the momentum behind the Manhattan Project was such that no one ever debated the underlying assumption that, once per-fected, nuclear weapons would be used. General George Marshall told the British, as well as Truman and Stimson, that a land invasion of Japan would cause casualties ranging from five hundred thousand to more than a million American troops. Any president who refused to use atomic weapons in the face of such projections could logically be accused of needlessly sacrificing American lives. Moreover, the enemy was the same nation that had unleashed a wanton and brutal attack on Pearl Harbor. As Truman later explained to a journalist, "When you deal with a beast, you have to treat him as a beast." Although many of the scientists who had seen the first explosion of the bomb in New Mexico were in awe of its destructive potential and hoped to find some way to avoid its use in war, the idea of a demonstration met with skepticism. Only one or two bombs existed. What if, in a demonstration, they failed to detonate? Thus, as horrible as it may seem in retrospect, no one ever seriously doubted the necessity of dropping the bomb on Japan once the weapon was perfected.

On the Russian issue, however, there now seems little doubt that administration officials thought long and hard about the bomb's impact on postwar relations with the Soviet Union. Faced with what seemed to be the growing intransigence of the Soviet Union toward virtually all postwar questions, Truman and his advisors concluded that possession of the weapon would give the United States unprecedented leverage to push Russia toward a more accommodating position. Senator Edwin Johnson stated the equation crassly, but clearly. "God Almighty in his infinite wisdom," the Senator said, "[has] dropped the atomic bomb in our lap ... [now] with vision and guts and plenty of atomic bombs, . . . [the U.S. can] compel mankind to adopt a policy of lasting peace ... or be burned to a crisp." Stating the same argument with more sophistication prior to Hiroshima, Stimson told Truman that the bomb might well "force a favorable settlement of Eastern European questions with the Russians." Truman agreed. If the weapon worked, he noted, "I'll certainly have a hammer on those boys."

Use of the bomb as a diplomatic lever played a pivotal role in Truman's preparation for his first meeting with Stalin at Potsdam. Not only would the conference address such critical questions as Eastern Europe, Germany, and Russia's involvement in the war against Japan;

It would also provide a crucial opportunity for America to drive home with forcefulness its foreign policy beliefs about future relationships with Russia. Stimson and other advisors urged the president to hold off on any confrontation with Stalin until the bomb was ready. "Over any such tangled wave of problems," Stimson noted, "the bomb's secret will be dominant. ... It seems a terrible thing to gamble with such big stakes and diplomacy without having your master card in your hand." Although Truman could not delay the meeting because of a prior commitment to hold it in July, the president was well aware of the bomb's significance. Already noted for his brusque and assertive manner, Truman suddenly took on new confidence in the midst of the Potsdam negotiations when word arrived that the bomb had successfully been tested. "He was a changed man," Churchill noted. "He told the Russians just where they got on and off and generally bossed the whole meeting." Now, the agenda was changed. Russian involvement in the Japanese war no longer seemed so important. Moreover, the United States had as a bargaining chip the most powerful weapon ever unleashed. Three days later, Truman walked up to Stalin and casually told him that the United States had "perfected a very powerful explosive, which we're going to use against the Japanese." No mention was made of sharing information about the bomb, or of future cooperation to avoid an arms race.

Yet the very nature of the new weapon proved a mixed blessing, making it as much a source of provocation as of diplomatic leverage. Strategic bombing surveys throughout the war had shown that mass bombings, far from demoralizing the enemy, often redoubled his commitment to resist. An American monopoly on atomic weapons would, in all likelihood, have the same effect on the Russians, a proud people. As Stalin told an American diplomat later, "the nuclear weapon is something with which you frighten people [who have] weak nerves." Yet if the war had proven anything, it was that Russian nerves were remarkably strong. Rather than intimidate the Soviets, Dean Acheson pointed out, it was more likely that evidence of Anglo-American cooperation in the Manhattan Project would seem to them "unanswer-able evidence of ... a combination against them. ... It is impossible that a government as powerful and power conscious as the Soviet government could fail to react vigorously to the situation. It must and will exert every energy to restore the loss of power which the situation has produced."

In fact, news of the bomb's development simply widened the gulf further between the superpowers, highlighting the mistrust that existed between them, with sources of antagonism increasing far faster than efforts at cooperation. On May 11, two days after Germany surren-dered--and two weeks after the Truman-Molotov confrontation--America had abruptly terminated all lend-lease shipments to the Soviet Union that were not directly related to the war against Japan. Washington even ordered ships in the mid-Atlantic to turn around. The action had been taken largely in rigid bureaucratic compliance with a new law governing lend-lease just enacted by Congress, but Truman had been warned of the need to handle the matter in a way that was sensitive to Soviet pride. Instead, he signed the termination order without even reading it. Although eventually some shipments were resumed, the damage had been done. The action was "brutal," Stalin later told Harry Hopkins, implemented in a "scornful and abrupt manner." Had the United States consulted Russia about the issue "frankly" and on "a friendly basis," the Soviet dictator said, "much could have been done"; but if the action "was designed as pressure on the Russians in order to soften them up, then it was a fundamental mistake."

Russian behavior through these months, on the other hand, offered little encouragement for the belief that friendship and cooperation ranked high on the Soviet agenda. In addition to violating the spirit of the Yalta accords by jailing the sixteen members of the Polish under-ground and signing a separate peace treaty with the Lublin Poles, Stalin seemed more intent on reviving and validating his reputation as architect of the purges than as one who wished to collaborate in spreading democracy. He jailed thousands of Russian POWs returning from German prison camps, as if their very presence on foreign soil had made them enemies of the Russian state. One veteran was imprisoned because he had accepted a present from a British comrade in arms, another for making a critical comment about Stalin in a letter. Even Molotov's wife was sent to Siberia. In the meantime, hundreds of thousands of minority nationalities in the Soviet Union were removed forcibly from their homelands when they protested the attempted obliteration of their ancient identities. Some Westerners speculated that Stalin was clinically psychotic, so paranoid about the erosion of his control over the Russian people that he would do anything to close Soviet borders and prevent the Russian people from getting a taste of what life in a more open society would be like. Winston Churchill, for example, wondered whether Stalin might not be more fearful of Western friendship than of Western hostility, since greater cooperation with the noncommunist world could well lead to a dismantling of the rigid totalitarian control he previously had exerted. For those American diplomats who were veterans of service in Moscow before the war, Soviet actions and attitudes seemed all too reminiscent of the viselike terror they remembered from the worst days of the 1930s.

When Truman, Stalin, and Churchill met in Potsdam in July 1945, these suspicions were temporarily papered over, but no progress was made on untying the Gordian knots that plagued the wartime alliance. Truman sought to improve the Allies' postwar settlement with Italy, hoping to align that country more closely with the West. Stalin agreed on the condition that changes favorable to the Soviets be approved for Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Finland. When Truman replied that there had been no free elections in those countries, Stalin retorted that there had been none in Italy either. On the issue of general reparations the three powers agreed to treat each occupation zone separately. As a result, one problem was solved, but in the process the future division of Germany was almost assured. The tone of the discussions was clearly not friendly. Truman raised the issue of the infamous Katyn massacre, where Soviet troops killed thousands of Polish soldiers and bulldozed them into a common grave. When Truman asked Stalin directly what had happened to the Polish officers, the Soviet dictator responded: "they went away." After Churchill insisted that an iron fence had come down around British representatives in Romania, Stalin dismissed the charges as "all fairy tales." No major conflicts were resolved, and the key problems of reparation amounts, four-power control over Germany, the future of Eastern Europe, and the structure of any permanent peace settlement were simply referred to the Council of Foreign Ministers. There, not surprisingly, they festered, while the pace toward confrontation accelerated.

The first six months of 1946 represented a staccato series of Cold War events, accompanied by increasingly inflammatory rhetoric. In direct violation of a wartime agreement that all allied forces would leave Iran within six months of the war's end, Russia continued its military occupation of the oil-rich region of Azerbaijan. Responding to the Iranian threat, the United States demanded a U.N. condemnation of the Soviet presence in Azerbaijan and, when Russian tanks were seen entering the area, prepared for a direct confrontation. "Now we will give it to them with both barrels," James Byrnes declared. Unless the United States stood firm, one State Department official warned, "Azer-baijan [will] prove to [be] the first shot fired in the Third World War." Faced with such clear-cut determination, the Soviets ultimately withdrew from Iran.

Yet the tensions between the two powers continued to mount. In early February, Stalin issued what Supreme Court Justice William Douglas called the "Declaration of World War III," insisting that war was inevitable as long as capitalism survived and calling for massive sacrifice at home. A month later Winston Churchill--with Truman at his side--responded at Fulton, Missouri, declaring that "from Stetting in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the [European] continent." Claiming that "God has willed" the United States and Britain to hold a monopoly over atomic weapons, Churchill called for a "fraternal association of the English speaking people" against their common foes. Although Truman made no public statement, privately he had told Byrnes in January: "I'm tired of babying the Soviets. They [must be] faced with an iron fist and strong language. . . . Only one language do they understand--how many divisions have you?" Stalin, meanwhile, charged Britain and the United States with repressing democratic insurgents in Greece, declaring that it was the western Allies, not the Soviet Union, that endangered world peace. "When Mr. Churchill calls for a new war," Molotov told a foreign ministers' meeting in May, "and makes militant speeches on two conti-nents, he represents the worst of twentieth-century imperialism."

During the spring and summer, clashes occurred on virtually all the major issues of the Cold War. After having told the Soviet Union that the State Department had "lost" its $6 billion loan request made in January 1945, the United States offered a $1 billion loan in the spring of 1946 as long as the Soviet Union agreed to join the World Bank and accept the credit procedures and controls of that body. Not surprisingly, the Russians refused, announcing instead a new five-year plan that would promote economic self-sufficiency. Almost paranoid about keep-ing Westerners out of Russia, Stalin had evidently concluded that participation in a Western-run financial consortium was too serious a threat to his own total authority. "Control of their border areas," the historian Walter LaFeber has noted, "was worth more to the Russians than a billion, or even ten billion dollars." A year earlier the response might have been different. But 1946 was a "year of cement," with little if any willingness to accept flexibility. In Germany, meanwhile, the Russians rejected a Western proposal for unifying the country and instead determined to build up their own zone. The United States reciprocated by declaring it would no longer cooperate with Russia by removing reparations from the west to the east. The actions guaranteed a permanent split of Germany and coincided with American plans to rebuild the West German economy.

The culminating breakdown of U.S.-Soviet relations came over the failure to secure agreement on the international control of atomic energy. After Potsdam, some American policymakers had urged the president to take a new approach on sharing such control with the Soviet Union. The atom bomb, Henry Stimson warned Truman in the fall of 1945, would dominate America's relations with Russia. "If we fail to approach them now and continue to negotiate with . . . this weapon rather ostentatiously on our hip, their suspicions and their distrust of our purposes and motives will increase." Echoing the same them, Dr. Harold Urey, a leading atomic scientist, told the Senate that by making and storing atomic weapons, "we are guilty of beginning the arms race." Furthermore, there was an inherent problem with the "gun on our hip" approach. As the scientist Vannevar Bush noted, "there is no powder in the gun, [nor] could [it] be drawn," unless the United States were willing to deploy the A-bomb to settle diplomatic disputes. Recognizing this, Truman set Dean Acheson and David Lilienthal to work in the winter of 1945--46 to prepare a plan for international control.

But by the time the American proposal had been completed, much of the damage in Soviet-American relations seemed irreparable. Al-though the Truman plan envisioned ultimate sharing of international control, it left the United States with an atomic monopoly--and in a dominant position--until the very last stage. The Soviets would have no veto power over inspections or sanctions, and even at the end of the process, the United States would control the majority of votes within the body responsible for developing peaceful uses of atomic energy inside the Soviet Union. When the Russians asked to negotiate about the specifics of the plan, they were told they must either accept the entire package or nothing at all. In the context of Soviet-American relations in 1946, the result was predictable--the genie of the atomic arms race would remain outside the bottle.

Not all influential Americans were "pleased by the growing polari-zation. Averell Harriman, who a year earlier had been in the forefront of those demanding a hard-line position from Truman, now pulled back somewhat. "We must recognize that we occupy the same planet as the Russians," he said, "and whether we like it or not, disagreeable as they may be, we have to find some method of getting along." The columnist Walter Lippmann, deeply concerned about the direction of events, wondered whether the inexperience and personal predilections of some of America's negotiators might not be part of the problem. Nor were all the signs negative. After his initial confrontation with Molotov, Truman appeared to have second thoughts, sending Harry Hopkins to Moscow to attempt to find some common ground with Stalin on Poland and Eastern Europe. The Russians, in turn, had not been totally aggressive. They withdrew from Hungary after free elections in that country had led to the establishment of a noncommunist regime. Czechoslovakia was also governed by a coalition government with a Western-style parliament. The British, at least, announced themselves satisfied with the election process in Bulgaria. Even in Romania, some concessions were made to include elements more favorably disposed to the West. The Russians finally backed down in Iran--under considerable pressure--and would do so again in a dispute over the Turkish straits in the late summer of 1946.

Still, the events of 1946 had the cumulative effect of creating an aura of inevitability about bipolar confrontation in the world. The preponderance of energy in each country seemed committed to the side of suspicion and hostility rather than mutual accommodation. If Stalin's February prediction of inevitable war between capitalism and commu-nism embodied in its purest form Russia's jaundiced perception of relations between the two countries, an eight-thousand-word telegram from George Kennan to the State Department articulated the dominant frame of reference within which Soviet actions would be perceived by U.S. officials. Perhaps the preeminent expert on the Soviets, and a veteran of service in Moscow in the thirties as well as the forties, Kennan had been asked to prepare an analysis of Stalin's speech. Responding in words intended to command attention to Washington, Kennan declared that the United States was confronted with a "political force committed fanatically to the belief that [with the] United States there can be no permanent modus vivendi, that it is desirable and necessary that the internal harmony of our society be broken if Soviet power is to be secure." According' to Kennan, the Russians truly believed the world to be divided permanently into capitalist and socialist camps, with the Soviet Union dedicated to "ever new heights of military power" even as it sought to subvert its enemies through an "underground operating directorate of world communism." The analysis was fright-ening, confirming the fears of those most disturbed by the Soviet system's denial of human rights and hardline posture toward Western demands for free elections and open borders in occupied Europe.

Almost immediately, the Kennan telegram became required reading for the entire diplomatic and military establishment in Washington.

2.3 The Marshall Plan.

The chief virtue of the plan Marshall and his aides were Grafting was its fusion of these political and economic concerns. As Truman told a Baylor University audience in March 1947, "peace, freedom, and world trade are indivisible. . . . We must not go through the '3os again." Since free enterprise was seen as the foundation for democracy and prosperity, helping European economies would both assure friendly governments abroad and additional jobs at home. To accomplish that ^ goal, however, the United States would need to give economic aid directly rather than through the United Nations, since only under those circumstances would American control be assured. Ideally, the Marshall Plan would provide an economic arm to the political strategy embodied --in the Truman Doctrine. Moreover, if presented as a program in which even Eastern European countries could participate, it would provide, at last potentially, a means of including pro-Soviet countries and breaking Stalin's political and economic domination over Eastern Eu-rope.

On that basis, Marshall dramatically announced his proposal at Harvard University's commencement on June 5, 1947. "Our policy is directed not against any country or doctrine," Marshall said, "but against hunger, poverty, desperation, and chaos. Its purpose should be revival of a working economy. Any government that is willing to assist in the task of recovery will find full cooperation ... on the part of the United States government." Responding, French Foreign Minister George Bidault invited officials throughout Europe, including the Soviet Union, to attend a conference in Paris to draw up a plan of action. Poland and Czechoslovakia expressed interest, and Molotov himself came to Paris with eighty-nine aides.

Rather than inaugurate a new era of cooperation, however, the next few days simply reaffirmed how far polarization had already extended. Molotov urged that each country present its own needs independently to the United States. Western European countries, on the other hand, insisted that all the countries cooperate in a joint proposal for American consideration. Since the entire concept presumed extensive sharing of economic data on each country's resources and liabilities, as well as Western control over how the aid would be expended, the Soviets angrily walked out of the deliberations. In fact, the United States never believed that the Russians would participate in the project, knowing that it was a violation of every Soviet precept to open their economic records to examination and control by capitalist outsiders. Furthermore, U.S. strategy was premised on a major rebuilding of German industry--something profoundly threatening to the Russians. Ideally, Americans viewed a thriving Germany as the foundation for revitalizing the economies of all Western European countries, and providing the key to prosperity on both sides of the Atlantic. To a remarkable extent, that was precisely the result of the Marshall Plan. Understandably, such a prospect frightened the Soviets, but the con-sequence was to further the split between East and West, and in particular, to undercut the possibility of promoting further cooperation with countries like Hungary and Czechoslovakia.

In the weeks and months after the Russians left Paris, the final pieces of the Cold War were set in place. Shortly after the Soviet departure from Paris the Russians announced the creation of a series of bilateral trade agreements called the "Molotov Plan," designed to link Eastern bloc countries and provide a Soviet answer to the Marshall Plan. Within the same week the Russians created a new Communist Information Bureau (Cominform), including representatives from the major Western European communist parties, to serve as a vehicle for imposing Stalinist control on anyone who might consider deviating from the party line. Speaking at the Cominform meeting in August, Andre Zhdanov issued the Soviet Union's rebuttal to the Truman Doctrine. The United States, he charged, was organizing the countries of the Near East, Western Europe, and South America into an alliance com-mitted to the destruction of communism. Now, he said, the "new democracies" of Eastern Europe--plus their allies in developing coun-tries--must form a counter bloc. The world would thus be made up of "two camps," each ideologically, politically, and, to a growing extent, militarily defined by its opposition to the other.

To assure that no one misunderstood, Russia moved quickly to impose a steel-like grip on Eastern Europe. In August 1947 the Soviets purged all left-wing, anticommunist leaders from Hungary and then rigged elections to assure a pro-Soviet regime there. Six months later, in February 1948, Stalin moved on Czechoslovakia as well, insisting on the abolition of independent parties and sending Soviet troops to the Czech border to back up Soviet demands for an all new communist government. After Foreign Minister Jan Masaryk either jumped or was pushed from a window in Prague, the last vestige of resistance faded. "We are [now] faced with exactly the same situation . . . Britain and France faced in 1938-39 with Hitler," Truman wrote. The Czech coup coincided with overwhelming approval of the Marshall Plan by the American Congress. Two weeks later, on March 5, General Lucius Clay sent his telegram from Germany warning of imminent war with Russia. Shortly thereafter, Truman called on Congress to implement Universal Military Training for all Americans. (The plan was never put in place.) By the end of the month Russia had instituted a year-long blockade of all supplies to Berlin in protest against the West's decision to unify her occupation zones in Germany and institute currency reform. Before the end of spring, the Brussels Pact had brought together the major powers of Western Europe in a mutual defense pact that a year later would provide the basis for NATO. If the Truman Doctrine, in Bernard Baruch's words, had been "a declaration of ideological or religious war," the Marshall Plan, the Molotov Plan, and subsequent developments in Eastern Europe represented the economic, political, and military de-marcations that would define the terrain on which the war would be fought. The Cold War had begun.

Chapter 3: The Role of Cold War in American History and Diplomacy.

3.1 Declaration of the Cold War.

In late February 1947, a British official journeyed to the State Depart-ment to inform Dean Acheson that the crushing burden of Britain's economic crisis prevented her from any longer accepting responsibility for the economic and military stability of Greece and Turkey. The message, Secretary of State George Marshall noted, "was tantamount to British abdication from the Middle East, with obvious implications as to their successor." Conceivably, America could have responded quietly, continuing the steady stream of financial support already going into the area. Despite aid to the insurgents from Yugoslavia and Bulgaria, the war going on in Greece was primarily a civil struggle, with the British side viewed by many as reactionary in its politics. But instead, Truman administration officials seized the moment as the occasion for a dramatic new commitment to fight communism. In their view, Greece and Turkey could well hold the key to the future of Europe itself. Hence they decided to ask Congress for $400 million in military and economic aid. In the process, the administration publicly defined postwar diplomacy, for the first time, as a universal conflict between the forces of good and the forces of evil.

Truman portrayed the issue as he did, at least in part, because his aides had failed to convince Congressmen about the merits of the case on grounds of self-interest alone. Americans were concerned about the Middle East for many reasons--preservation of political stability, guar-antee of access to mineral resources, a need to assure a prosperous market for American goods. Early drafts of speeches on the issue had focused specifically on economic questions. America could not afford, one advisor noted, to allow Greece and similar areas to "spiral downward into economic anarchy." But such arguments, another advisor noted, "made the whole thing sound like an investment prospectus." Indeed, when Secretary of State Marshall used such arguments of self-interest with Congressmen, his words fell on deaf ears, particularly given the commitment of Republicans to cut government spending to the bone. It was at that moment. Dean Acheson recalled, that "in desperation I whispered to [Marshall] a request to speak. This was my crisis. For a week I had nurtured it."

When Acheson took the floor, he transformed the atmosphere in the room. The issue, he declared, was the effort by Russian communism to seize dominance over three continents, and encircle and capture Western Europe. "Like apples in a barrel infected by the corruption of one rotten one, the corruption of Greece would infect Iran and alter the Middle East . . . Africa . . . Italy and France." The struggle was ultimate, Acheson concluded. "Not since Rome and Carthage has there been such a polarization of power on this earth. . . . We and we alone are in a position to break up" the Soviet quest for world domination. Suddenly, the Congressmen sat up and took notice. That argument, Senator Arthur Vandenberg told the president, would be successful. If Truman wanted his program of aid to be approved, he would--like Acheson--have to "scare hell" out of the American people.

By the time Truman came before Congress on March 12, the issue was no longer whether the United States should extend economic aid to Greece and Turkey on a basis of self-interest, but rather whether America was willing to sanction the spread of tyrannical communism everywhere in the world. Facing the same dilemma Roosevelt had confronted during the 1930S in his effort to get Americans ready for war, Truman sensed that only if the issues were posed as directly related to the nation's fundamental moral concern--not just self-interest-- would there be a possibility of winning political support. Hence, as Truman defined the question, the world had to choose "between alternative ways of life." One option was "free," based on "representative government, free elections, guarantees of individual liberty, and free-dom of speech and religion." The other option was "tyranny," based on "terror and oppression, a controlled press and radio, . . . and a suppression of personal freedoms." Given a choice between freedom and totalitarianism, Truman concluded, "it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities."

Drawing on the "worst case" scenario implicit in Kennan's telegram, Truman, in effect, had presented the issue of American-Soviet relations as one of pure ideological and moral conflict. There were some who criticized him. Senator Robert Taft, for example, wondered whether, if the United States took responsibility for Greece and Turkey, Americans could object to the Russians continuing their domination over Eastern Europe. Secretary of State Marshall was disturbed at "the extent to which the anticommunist element of the speech was stressed." And George Kennan, concerned over how his views had been used, protested against the president's strident tone. But Truman and Acheson had understood the importance of defining the issue on grounds of patri-otism and moral principle. If the heart of the question was the universal struggle of freedom against tryanny--not taking sides in a civil war-- who could object to what the government proposed? It was, Senator Arthur Vandenberg noted, "almost like a presidential request for a declaration of war. . . . There is precious little we can do except say yes." By mid-May, Truman's aid package had passed Congress over-whelmingly.