Miskolc Journal of International Law
MISKOLCI NEMZETKÖZI JOGI KÖZLEMÉNYEK
VOLUME 9. (2012) NO. 1. PP.
John Kadar1 - Eric Allen Engle2:
Truman and the Rise of the Cold War
Lessons from the past for the present
Introduction
The period referred to as the Cold War was inaugurated after the death of Franklin Delano Roosevelt (hereafter FDR) and the end of World War II (hereafter, WW2). The events of the past can reveal competing and complimenting patterns and meanings and the many historical narratives in print are proof of this variety. Regarding the wartime collaboration between the US and USSR, most historian are in agreement. During World War II, Franklin Roosevelt and Stalin established an effective working relationship that seemed to bode well for the prospect of a stable future, devoid of major confrontations. The agreements proceeded from the following exchange of promises:
1)The US would provide loans to the USSR which
the latter would use to purchase American war materiel
required to keep Soviet armies in the field on the Eastern
Front. The extension of the "lend lease" loans for
–The US and UK would open up a second front in Europe in order to relieve the pressure on Soviet armies and in order to hasten the defeat of Hitler, the top strategic priority of the Allies ("Hitler first", i.e. targeting Nazi Germany prior to Imperial Japan).
3)The division of the spoils would be in
accordance with efforts and results in the field and not
necessarily on the basis of
4)Germany would not be allowed to rebuild itself into a viable industrial and military power capable of making war against Soviet Russia. Germany would be required to pay reparations to indemnify the USSR's vast wartime losses.
It cannot be denied that the Soviet armies were doing the far greater share of the fighting and dying in the European theater of war between 1941 and 1943. Hitler had directed his generals to conquer the USSR after having overrun most of Europe. It is also an accepted fact that the war in the East had provided the US and UK with a much needed respite which allowed them to
1 John Kadar: Ph.D. New School for Social Research taught political science at State University of New York (Cortland).
2 Dr.Jur. Eric Allen Engle, LL.M. (Bremen) Humboldt University of Berlin - Faculty of Law.
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recover from prior defeats and to mobilize
for the final push to dislodge Hitler from occupied Europe.
Only when the Soviet armies succeeded in turning back the
Wehrmacht from the gates of Moscow and Stalingrad was hope
revived for defeating Hitler's armies in Europe. Only while
Hitler's armies were tied down and suffering reversals of
fortune on the battlefields of the Eastern Front could the US
and UK hope to successfully carry out a
USSR. Stalin's spies in the US likely confirmed President Roosevelt’s sincerity to maintain friendly relations with the USSR during and after the war. What happened after President Roosevelt died suddenly in 1945 to transform the friendly relations between the US and USSR and move them into a high state of tension, insecurity and war preparation known as the Cold War has been the subject of many treatises.
Though a definitive answer waits to be written, some historians have offered updated interpretations based on new information released from the Soviet archives. One also has a right to expect more realistic results from historians after the easing of passions which biased perspectives and judgments along nationalistic lines for many years, not to mention the release of archive documents which had been held secret. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate five historical narratives which appeared in print between 1996 and 2007:
1)John Lewis Gaddis, The Cold War: A New History3.
2)Michael J. Hogan, A Cross of Iron:
Harry S. Truman and the Origins of the National Security
State,
3)Melvyn P. Leffler, For the Soul of Mankind5.
4)Arnold A. Offner, Another Such Victory:
President Truman and the Cold War,
5)Vladislav Zubok, Konstantin Pleshakov, Inside the Kremlin's Cold War.7
Specifically, this paper focuses on the answers they provide to the question how the Cold War arose from a previous period of relations characterized by collaboration based on mutual trust and good faith. The first task is to describe how each of the five contemporary historians have come to make their conclusions regarding the origins of the Cold War, specifically to answer what factors led FDR's successor, Harry Truman, to adopt policies which contravened the former agreements with Stalin. This section merely summarizes their conclusions or inferences
3John Lewis Gaddis, The Cold War: A New History. New York: Penguin (2007).
4Michael J. Hogan, A Cross of Iron:
Harry S. Truman and the Origins of the National Security
State,
5Melvyn P. Leffler, For the Soul of Mankind. New York: Hill and Wang (2007).
6Arnold A. Offner, Another Such Victory:
President Truman and the Cold War,
7Vladislav Zubok, Konstantin Pleshakov, Inside the Kremlin's Cold War. Cambridge MA: Harvard Univ. Press (1996).
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form the facts they have selected as evidence. Then, an analysis is offered for how their conclusions may have strayed too far from the known facts or how the subtraction or addition of other facts can lead to different conclusions. Finally an effort will be made to suggest how a collation of the evidence from the several narratives could better answer the questions which prompted their individual approaches. By “better” is meant more truthfully, allowing that the whole truth of a past under investigation may never be discovered and also that such truths as can be discovered are merely provisional.
John Lewis Gaddis
According to Professor Gaddis, the
If FDR had accepted Stalin as a "junior partner" during the war, Truman, according to Gaddis, saw no need to divide the spoils of victory on the basis of FDR's mistaken assessment of the
8John Lewis Gaddis, The Cold War: A New History. p. 14 (hereafter Gaddis).
9Gaddis, p. 14.
10Gaddis, p. 14.
11Gaddis, p. 26.
12Gaddis, p. 26.
13Gaddis, p. 28.
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power ratio between the US and USSR. Truman
believed that possession of the atomic bomb should produce a
conciliatory response from Stalin.14 If
Stalin insisted on getting what he had been originally
promised then he was overreaching and behaving irrationally
Does Professor Gaddis present persuasive
evidence for his conclusions about Stalin and the USSR?
Actually, no. In fact, he presents no empirical evidence for
his conclusions. It has already been established that Stalin,
unlike Trotsky, was willing to abandon the call for world
revolution for the sake of building socialism in one country,
the Soviet Union. But, apparently, Professor Gaddis is
ignorant of that fact
14Gaddis, p. 26.
15Gaddis, p. 28.
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international law. All in all, the concessions granted to Stalin were less than one might have reasonably expected in proportion to the Soviet contribution to the defeat of fascism or of those due a "junior partner". To conclude otherwise form the evidence warrants that we ask ourselves about Professor Gaddis's ability to evaluate questions of evidence.
With the possible exception of the Berlin
blockade Stalin did not overreach - and he quickly recovered
his sanity and backed off from a possible nuclear
confrontation over Berlin. Stalin did consolidate his power in
Eastern Europe
Vladislav Zubok and Constantine Pleshakov
Zubok and Pleshakov make an unfortunate
contribution to the case, blaming Stalin for setting off the
Cold War. For them, Stalin was a psychopath, a monster whose
murderous ways would have been projected onto the world stage
unless he was restrained by Truman.16 They
make vague references to Stalin's criminality and
Arnold Offner and Melvyn Leffler
Like a Gaddis, Professor Offner concludes that the changed ratio of power between the US and the USSR after the US came to possess atomic bombs justified Truman downsizing the spoils of war promised by President Roosevelt to Stalin - such is the routine practice in statecraft when a promise made under one set of circumstances is abrogated because changes allow for better terms. In this spirit, Truman's Secretary of State, James Byrnes, pushed his counterpart, V.I. Molotov, to give up on most territorial gains in China and Japan as well as in Turkey and Iran. At the 1945 Moscow Foreign Minister's Conference, Truman and Byrnes had not yet decided to pressure Stalin and Molotov to loosen their control in Eastern Europe but they were adamant in withdrawing other concessions previously offered or suggested by President Roosevelt. It seems,
16Vladislav Zubok, Konstantin Pleshakov, Inside the Kremlin's Cold War. p. 11 (hereafter Zubok).
17Zubok, pp.
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according to Offner, that Stalin, the astute
power politician, understood that the atomic bomb had given
the Americans extra leverage in getting their way in Moscow
(1945) and would continue to do so as long as that asymmetric
power advantage held. Thus, Stalin seems to have reluctantly
accepted the changed terms Byrnes put on the table. That
Stalin did so without too much alarm proves that Stalin was a
Gaddis views the relations between the US and
the USSR as that between implacable foes, one of which
Truman, on the other hand, according to
Offner, was drunk with new found (nuclear) power and chose,
contrary to the advice of some of his closest advisers,
including Byrnes, Stimson and Acheson, to press for further
concessions from Stalin.20 He was
determined to have Stalin back down in Eastern Europe and also
accede to the
18Arnold A. Offner, Another Such Victory:
President Truman and the Cold War,
19Offner, pp.
20Offner, p. 123.
21Offner, p. 123.
22Offner, pp.
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began a military build up in order to close
the power gap with the US. The overthrow of local regimes in
Eastern Europe entailed ruthless repression and also an
increased use of Marxist Leninist rhetoric to counter Truman's
own expropriation of the
Professor Leffler, too begins his narrative
with Truman's recognition that the atomic bomb had altered the
ratio of power significantly in favor of the US. But Leffler
does not conclude that Truman's
Leffer makes a strange case regarding
Truman's recourse to these provocative policies when he
suggests that Stalin could have viewed them in the framework
of power politics and hence responded pragmatically instead of
relying on
23Offner p. 211.
24Leffler, For the Soul of Mankind. p. 54. (hereafter Leffler).
25Leffler p. 48.
26Leffler, p. 63.
27Leffler, p. 66 .
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conclusion turns a blind eye to the fact
that Truman, as Offner has suggested, could have chosen to
reject the
Neither Offner or Leffler offer a narrative
that effectively account for the sudden shift after 1947 to
policies regarding the USSR which caused a seemingly
irreversible drift into what became known as the Cold War.
When Winston Churchill made his infamous "Iron Curtain" speech
of 1946, comparing the USSR with Nazi Germany only one year
after the defeat of the genocidal fascists, Truman wisely did
not indicate support for the hard line taken by Churchill
echoing the dark fascist past and practically calculated to
heat up a
Michael Hogan
According to Hogan, Truman's political
instincts were not necessarily deficient. He did not want a
policy amounting to an all out effort to rearm and instructed
his new Secretary of State General George Marhsall to reign in
the overly ambitious appropriation requests of the Joint
Chiefs. Truman and Marshall according to Hogan favored just
enough spending to effectively demonstrate to the USSR that
they were serious about containing Soviet ambitions in Europe
28 Michael J. Hogan, A Cross of Iron:
Harry S. Truman and the Origins of the National Security
State,
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excessive given the power ratio between the
US and USSR. Truman's "moderation" resulted in a
What tipped the battle over military
appropriations in favor of the extremist position of the
military (and their civilian national security allies like
Clark Clifford, Paul Nitze and Kennan) was the Soviet coup in
Czechoslovakia in early 1948 where
George Kennan's years in retirement were
spent in trying to absolve himself from affiliation with the
Cold War ideology his Mr. X memorandum
created. He came to realize that its overstatements and
Conclusions:
This work has presented the ideas in
ascending order of intellectual rigor. We started with the
least accurate analysis, the one which however carried the day
in 1948 – simplicissimus, Stalin as an ideologue and a global
menace aiming at world domination. The perception of the
relationship between Stalin and Truman by Western scholars
over time has become more and more refined and more and more
accurate to conclude with what can be seen as today's
basically accurate picture. Stalin, constrained and then
cornered, fought hard and rationally just to maintain those
concessions which had been promised to him and the Soviet
people for their blood sacrifices in World War II. He had no
visions of global domination, just an aim of Soviet self
preservation. Truman, likewise constrained by domestic
economic and ideological pressures
29Hogan, p. 108.
30Hogan, p. 112.
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be destroyed by the war in Europe. Churchill and his Home Office did this by attempting to play off the US and USSR against each other whether in Iran, Greece or Berlin. Rather than see the conflict in simplistic binary terms of an ideological zero sum conflict, this paper has argued for a more balanced and nuanced perspective. Both Truman and Stalin, though cognitively flawed, could often penetrate to the core of a complex situation and both at times sincerely desired to collaborate with each other. But, in the end, their clarity of mind failed them during crucial tests. Truman, for his part, was more ideological than Stalin and overplayed the U.S. position. This in turn brought out responses from Stalin which added more fuel to already overheated passions. The lessons for contemporary policy makers are implicit: to see Putin's Russia as ideologically driven and determined is almost certainly inaccurate. To see “the West” as a monolithic actor with a universal ideology and appeal is likewise overly simplistic. Prudent action and reaction in international relations requires realistic appraisals of partners and opponents. Just as the US misapprehended Stalin, in a position of absolute global domination, the US today, in a much weaker position likewise misapprehends a rising Russia. But those ideas are for another work at another date.
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