From Colony to Superpower: U.S. Foreign Relations Since 1776 (100 page)

Marshall was only one—and by no means the most important—of those men who became the architects of postwar U.S. foreign policy. Kennan and Acheson played crucial roles as intellectual godfather and prime mover respectively. They were joined by such notables as Forrestal, John J. McCloy, W. Averell Harriman, Robert Lovett, and Paul Nitze. Known collectively as the American Establishment—also the Wise Men—this group came out of the tradition of public service founded by Elihu Root. Henry Stimson was their mentor and beau ideal. Mostly northeasterners, they had in common prep school and Ivy League educations and the gentleman's values inculcated there. Most of them rose to power through the great New York banking houses and law firms and belonged to the city's most prestigious social clubs. They drew from Root and Stimson a devotion to public service that transcended partisan politics, an unswerving loyalty to their presidents, a firm commitment to internationalism, and a passionate belief in the nation's destiny to reshape a war-torn world. Although they spoke of the "burdens" of world leadership, they went about their task with zest. Staunch Atlanticists who revered European traditions, like Root and Stimson they could be patronizing toward "lesser" peoples. Coming from the very nerve center of world capitalism, they were appalled by Marxist dogma and Soviet totalitarianism. They were generally pragmatic and realistic rather than ideological in resisting the Soviet Union. But they frequently exaggerated the Soviet threat to sell their programs. Sometimes, they were persuaded by their own rhetoric or became its political captives.
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Of all the Wise Men, none was more controversial and influential than Dean Gooderham Acheson. The son of British and Canadian parents, Acheson was educated at Groton, Yale, and Harvard Law School. After clerking with legendary Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, he joined one of Washington's most prestigious law firms. He entered the State Department in 1941, working mainly on economic issues. A large man, aristocratic in bearing and haughty of demeanor, he cut quite a figure with his heavy eyebrows, carefully waxed guardsman's mustache (which one writer swore had a personality of its own), elegant suits, and Homburg hat.
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He was brilliant of mind and suffered fools poorly. A clever wordsmith, he did not hesitate to turn his acerbic wit on adversaries, which sometimes got him into trouble with Congress. He was certain that his nation had the power and the proper values to grasp the reins of world leadership. The United States was the "locomotive at the head of mankind," as he once put it, and "the rest of the world is the caboose." Once he became a Cold Warrior, he focused his formidable intellect and estimable diplomatic skills on building what he called "situations of strength" to contain Communism. Although pilloried by the Republican right for being soft on Communism, as undersecretary (1945–47) and secretary of state (1949–53), he played a decisive role in shaping the Truman administration's Cold War policies. "He was not merely present at the creation," biographer James Chace has observed, "he was the prime architect of that creation."
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The first task of the Cold Warriors was to restructure the government for a new era of global involvement. The changes reflected a broad recognition that, as the world's most powerful nation with global responsibilities, the United States must better organize its institutions and mobilize its resources to wage the Cold War. But changes of this magnitude did not come easily. Truman's efforts to eliminate crippling interservice rivalries by unifying the armed services provoked a revolt by the navy's top brass and an extended struggle within the government. At one level, the battles were about parochial bureaucratic interests. They also reflected a deeper conflict between those who sought to centralize authority in the mode of the New Deal to promote efficiency and economy and protect civilian prerogatives and those traditionalists who saw decentralization and checks and balances as the best way to avert militarization and a garrison state.
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The National Security Act of July 1947—what has been called the "Magna Charta of the national security state"—was an awkward compromise.
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It created a cabinet-level, civilian secretary of defense to preside over separate departments of the army, navy, and air force. It institutionalized the wartime Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), established a National Security Council (NSC) in the White House to better coordinate policy-making, and provided for an independent Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to replace the defunct OSS. The effects of this landmark legislation were not immediately apparent. Under Marshall, Acheson, and their Republican successor, John Foster Dulles, State would dominate policy-making for the next decade. The act as subsequently modified, however, revolutionized the making of U.S. foreign policy. It institutionalized the enhanced role assumed by the military during World War II. The NSC would in time usurp the central role of the State Department. The CIA, as Clifford later put it, became "a government within a government, which could evade oversight of its activities by drawing the cloak of secrecy about itself." With the addition of more players and more competing centers of power, the policy process became more complex and more conflict-ridden.
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Even before the National Security Act passed Congress, the administration had taken the first step in implementing a policy of containment: economic and military aid for Greece and Turkey under what came to be called the Truman Doctrine. The United States' attention was first drawn to the eastern Mediterranean during the 1946 Turkish crisis. The possibility of a British withdrawal from Greece in early 1947 brought decisive action. Since 1944, British occupation forces had been assisting the Greek monarchy's efforts to suppress a left-wing insurgency. This costly and futile effort drained already scarce resources. In February 1947, London informed the State Department it could no longer keep forces in Greece.

Britain's demarche came as little surprise to many U.S. officials, was welcomed in some quarters in Washington, and spurred the government to action. Stalin did not instigate the indigenous Greek insurgency and thus far had provided no more than moral support, a point vaguely perceived by some U.S. officials. To promote their own regional and geopolitical interests rather than ideological agendas, Communist governments in Yugoslavia, Albania, and Bulgaria had backed the Greek rebels. United States officials feared that if the insurgency succeeded, Stalin might
exploit it. A leftist victory could have a bandwagon effect on the already fragile political situations in France and Italy. The collapse of the Greek government, in American eyes, could shatter Western influence in one of the most critical regions of the world and leave other areas vulnerable to Soviet influence. With the zeal of a new convert, Acheson in a secret February 27 meeting with congressional leaders—he called it an "Armageddon"—warned ominously that "like apples in a barrel infected by a rotten one, the corruption of Greece would infect Iran and all the East" and even threaten Africa, Asia Minor, and Western Europe. Not since Rome and Carthage, he concluded, had the world seen such a polarization of power.
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Truman took a hard-sell approach to secure congressional support for an unprecedented program of $400 million in aid for Greece and Turkey. The Republicans had won smashing victories in the 1946 elections, regaining control of both houses of Congress and vowing to implement massive budget cuts. Americans feared the Soviet Union, but they were preoccupied with domestic problems, uninformed about the situation in Greece, and wary of intervention abroad. Republican Senate leader Arthur Vandenberg of Michigan urged the president to "scare the hell out of the country," and Truman heeded his advice. In a much publicized speech before a joint session of Congress on March 12, the president echoed Acheson's warnings of a world divided between freedom and totalitarianism. Avoiding direct reference to the USSR, he compared the threat to Greece with the crisis preceding World War II. He called upon the United States to "support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or outside pressures." Failure to act could threaten the Middle East and Western Europe. "If we falter in our leadership," Truman concluded, "we may endanger the peace of the world—and we shall surely endanger the welfare of this nation."
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A program so novel was bound to spur opposition. Columnist Walter Lippmann protested the sweeping language of the doctrine, its seemingly indiscriminate commitment to global interventionism, and its apparent rejection of diplomacy—arguments that proved over time prescient—provoking a Washington dinner party spat with Acheson that almost ended in fisticuffs. Critics emphasized that the Greek government was a repressive monarchy rather than a democracy. Many Americans who sympathized with the purposes of the doctrine feared that unilateral U.S.
action would undermine the nascent UN, in which much hope had been invested. Others worried that aid to Greece could lead to direct U.S. military intervention in a messy civil war in a faraway land.
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As so often in the Cold War, the president's call to action, abetted by a massive public information campaign, carried the day. The threat seemed ominous, the need urgent. A Congress in open revolt on domestic issues but perhaps recalling all too vividly its obstruction of executive authority in the 1930s fell into line. In a statement rich with symbolism, Senator Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., grandson of Wilson's nemesis, averred that the choice was "whether we are going to repudiate the President and throw the flag on the ground and stamp on it."
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Legislation for measures without precedent in U.S. foreign policy passed quickly and by sizeable, bipartisan majorities, 67–23 in the Senate, and 287–107 in the House. The era of Cold War interventionism was under way.

Under the Truman Doctrine, the United States plunged into the Greek Civil War, the first of many such forays. It was an especially savage conflict with atrocities on both sides in which even children became pawns, brought home by the brutal and still unexplained assassination of CBS newsman George Polk, an unsparing critic of the Greek government. United States advisers tolerated their client's mass political arrests and executions for fear of undermining it. They would not abide incompetence, however, and assumed such control in Athens that the head of the aid mission was known as "the Most Powerful Man in Greece."
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When the counterinsurgency effort stalled in 1948, the administration rebuffed Greek appeals for U.S. combat troops, mainly because they were not available. It relied instead on massive military aid and a 450-man advisory group headed by World War II hero Gen. James Van Fleet. Van Fleet reorganized the Greek army and infused it with a fighting spirit. In late 1948, using the massive firepower provided by the United States, napalm included, the army launched a decisive offensive against rebel encampments. In November 1949, Truman claimed victory. Some Americans viewed Greece as a prototype for future interventions.
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Such claims must be qualified. In portraying the war in Greece as a struggle between Communism and freedom, U.S. officials misinterpreted
or misrepresented the conflict, ignoring the essentially domestic roots of the insurgency, blurring the authoritarian nature of the Greek government, and greatly exaggerating the Soviet role. Victory came at great cost: more than 100,000 killed, an estimated 5,000 executed, 800,000 refugees including 28,000 children, and atrocities on both sides. The United States focused narrowly on military success and did little to address the problems that had caused the rebellion in the first place. United States aid undoubtedly played an important role in the government's survival and may have deterred greater Soviet involvement. But the insurgents also made a fatal error by shifting prematurely to conventional warfare and thus exposing themselves to U.S. firepower. The crucial factor in the outcome was the role of the Communist nations. Stalin responded to the Truman Doctrine by briefly aiding the rebels, but he hedged his bets by refusing to recognize them and within six months had cut off assistance. More important, he insisted that Yugoslavia's Tito do the same, causing an irreparable split, the first fissure in the Communist "bloc." When Tito at first refused to give in, Stalin set out to destroy him through increased political and economic pressure. Ultimately, to save his regime, Tito went along. His subsequent shut-off of aid and closing of the border was the decisive event, depriving the Greek rebels of assistance and sanctuary and leaving them little choice but surrender. Here, as in similar cases, local circumstances were decisive. The United States thus achieved its primary goal in this first Cold War military intervention, but at high cost for the people involved and for reasons more complex than it conceded or perhaps recognized. Greece offered a dubious precedent for future interventions.
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"This is only the beginning," the president told his cabinet while discussing the Truman Doctrine in early 1947, and indeed one of the most creative and important ventures in the history of U.S. foreign policy quickly followed, the Marshall Plan for European economic recovery.
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It was disturbingly clear by the spring of 1947 that the crisis in the eastern Mediterranean was but the tip of the iceberg. In contrast to 1919, the United States had responded generously to postwar Europe's needs, but $9 billion in aid brought little progress toward recovery. Production had stalled, trade languished, and Europeans lacked the dollars to purchase urgently needed American goods. Acute shortages of food and fuel were exacerbated by a crippling summer 1946 drought and a bitterly cold winter. Hunger and malnutrition were rampant. United States officials viewed Germany as the key to European recovery and concluded that it
was essential to stop reparations and take the limits off German industrialization. Still facing enormous reconstruction problems themselves, the Soviets understandably rejected such proposals. Americans interpreted Soviet intransigence as a sinister design to drag Europe further down and exploit the chaos. Two years after the war, the continent remained, in Churchill's words, "a rubble heap, a charnel house, a breeding ground for pestilence and hate." Americans feared that the worsening economic crisis might produce Communist takeovers through the electoral systems in such crucial countries as France and Italy, an obvious and compelling threat to U.S. prosperity and security.
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